Universal credit is going to take years to get put in place. The guy on ESA I was talking about tried to apply for it, but was told to go on ESA. So I can't see Universal Credit being sorted for another 5 yrs plus. Even in the Job Centre here UC is only in one room.
I'm increasingly tempted (though not entirely convinced) by the idea of abolishing most benefits in favour of a universal basic income. I imagine the admin costs for that would be about as low as you can possibly go. There are a few trials around, it'll be interesting to see what happens with them.
Tax evasion and Tax avoidance are two different things. Evasion is illegal, as you are hiding what you have so you don't get taxed. I see that in the same light as people on lower benefits who are playing the system. One comes to 16bn a year the other 1.3bn a year. But benefit cheats are the ones who are targeted far more harshly. I wonder why that is?
I think a lot of the problems with Universal Credit is sabotage from within. All these different departments don't want to save money by "merging." They all want their share of the pot and protect it vigorously. In theory UC should work because it is just totalling what the umpteen departments are giving/taking and making it into 1 payment. The problem we have with most policies is resistence, not only from opposition but also from within with every change met with such resistance and willing changes to fail. Any failures are pushed as the policy being wrong rather than the policy not being properly administered or even needing a tweak. It's like buying a used car for your Dad because his old car was always in the garage. The Tories say it will be more reliable, has better fuel consumption and is much safer. Labour say it is the wrong car and will break down more, use more fuel and is a disaster waiting to happen. Your Dad is still saying there was nothing wrong with his car and it never had a problem. Then it gets a puncture. The Tories say there's nothing wrong with the car so just drive it. Labour say that the car needs a new engine and the exhaust is too loud. Your Dad says "See" because he still believes the car that was in the garage all the time "never had a problem." No-one just says "Let's mend the puncture." So there is no Tories admitting to a problem. We have no Labour being truthful and saying there need to be some refinements and those that are facing the changes don;t ever want anything to change anyway because "it never used to be a problem" or "thats the way we've always done it." 2 answers that any manager in any firm hears a million times when trying to improve something.
I don't think they are targetting benefit cheats more harshly. They take frauds to court as they do tax evaders if they can**** And they are trying to alter the system to stop people legally "playing the system." Yes they have problems with it because it obviously should not be penalising people that DO have real needs. But that is the point. If Labour stopped banging on about the Tories penalising disabled people and instead tried to work to refine the policy (if the Tories would let them) then we would actually move forward instead of this tug of war over right and wrong. I daresay many people within the Labour party think the policy is right however this is politics and of course it becomes the blame game so they can't say it needs adjustments. They have to say the whole policy is bad. I know "them and us" was used earlier in this thread but that is exactly what the politicians and all the activists/campaigners push. Them = Bad, Us = Good. There is no middle ground and thus policy change is constantly met with resistance, making things cost much much more, making it take much longer to get right and by the time it gets anywhere near working properly the other side is in power and of course then has to change policy again because they spent so many years saying the policy was bad. 2 steps forward, 1 step back repeat ad infinitum. And I do think we still move forward that 1 step because the UK system is much better today than it was 50 years ago and each decade improves. I just think that we should target the money at the needy rather than the wanty. While political parties try to expand the definition of "needy" it works against the objective of helping the actual needy. ***Obviously those who are rich have access to the means to defend themselves should there even be a suspicion of evasion. There are far too many loopholes and exemptions and allowances for their lawyers to cloud the issue with rather than just have a tax system that says "you earnt £2 million, your tax is £885,800 and your NI is £43,523.52. It should also be simplified more where you can only earn money and not share options, deferred payments or anything else that can be utilised to pay less.
Wouldn't that stop people from "aspiring?" What's the point in being a team leader rather than just a packer if you get paid the same. Meaning if at present team leader gets £1.50 more an hour then there is the incentive? I remember arguing back in the early noughties about the tax credit system being crazy. That was before it was expanded like now. Confused me why they bother taking £40 tax off me only to then credit me £45 back.
People on benefits are treated way more harsh then tax evaders. If a person thinks otherwise they are deluded. Angus Robertson, the Scottish National party’s leader in Westminster, asked the prime minister why 3,250 Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) staff have been assigned to investigate welfare fraud, while 300 specialise in dealing with the rich. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/apr/13/benefit-or-tax-evasion-row-over-the-tories-targets There are loads more reports on how more aggressive people on benefits are targeted then tax evaders. The poor are easy targets so treated far more ****.
It's going to happen if you like it or not tbh. Computers/ robots will push more and more people out of work. Those people will need money to survive. The unskilled won't be needed in the future.
Angus Robertson is grandstanding. There will be umpteen times more people involved in benefit fraud than tax evasion. The £ value is misleading. For every 1 person evading a million in tax there might be 40 people fraudulently claiming £25,000 welfare. I would suggest that the 300:3250 is more in favour of the welfare fraudster than the tax evader because it is more likely that there are more people available for each tax evasion case than welfare case. It isn't about assigning people per £. It is about signing people per case.
There won't be a future if Mr Trump has his 'f*** the planet way. The rest is semantics. Those of you old enough look in your grandkids eyes and promise them a future and then get out there and do something positive. Love is the drug.
In theory some incentive remains - my understanding is that you get your basic income from the government and any wages you earn are yours to keep on top of that. So the team leader would still have more money than the packers. Although you'd think the importance of that extra £1.50 an hour would be reduced when you start off with a basic income. I'm not entirely convinced yet though. It might just be that the cost of living/surviving would go up as more people had more money. It'll also be hard to balance, maybe even impossible. If you set the basic income level too high I'm sure a lot of people would either stop working completely or maybe reduce their hours and the tax burden on those who do work could get so heavy they don't think it's worthwhile any more and stop as well. Then (potentially) there isn't enough money to fund it and the whole system collapses. But equally if the level is set too low people without work may not be able to afford to live. You'd also have some people (maybe those with disabilities etc) who may need a higher basic income for whatever reason. In the U.K. for example, I don't think our current level of tax receipts would support a high enough basic income to allow people to live on it and inevitably a lot of people currently on benefits would end up worse off. But if you increased taxes and offered a much higher basic income then I suspect you'd run the risk of that first "vicious cycle" scenario above - some people stop working so there's less tax money, taxes on those who do work have to go up, more people stop working and so on. We'll just have to see how the various trials go.
Give it another 50 years and robots will be doing 75% of the jobs humans do now, so something like this will be essential.
Now we've got caught up on the meaning of this universal benefit idea. The idea I favour is to give every adult of working age £x amount per week. If someone then gets a job as a packer (s)he can top this up by the wage of that packer. If (s)he manages the packer (s)he'll be paid more. Doesn't alter management structures so maintains "aspiration"; ensures that working always pays, no matter how poorly paid a job is; ensures no-one needs foodbanks. We'd need a safety net for the dysfunctional among us, but it seems a winner to me. Oh, and I am guessing that scrapping of the benefits machinery would mean there would little or zero cost.
Even politicians defend the idea that people are not going to go to work for an extra 50p/£1 per hour more than their benefits. The reality of working vs not working for most* is not as simple as £250 a week not working and £300 a week working (40 hours at min wage.) If it were then it's a no brainer. They will all go to work. Weigh up getting £250 a week for doing nothing, plenty of time for themselves, spend as much time as they want with their kids (which a lot still don't) etc. Absolutely no worries. Then weigh up getting £350 a week, however you get paid for 40 hours but lose 45, because it takes half an hour to get to work and another half hour back. Weigh up the bus costs £15 a week. While politicians are happy to defend the idea of people "not willing to do these jobs" (which is not true in most cases) or "why would anyone go to work for such a minimal amount extra" then we are f***** anyway. They have pampered the British people with excuses because it suits them to keep pay low and bring in workers instead. They should not have been accepting this as a viable reason in the first place and pushed people to have the pride in "providing for themselves" rather than turned it into "is it worth it or not" scenario. It should not be an option "not to work" if you are able. There should never have been this choice. There are a fair amount that do think like this though. "Not worth going to work because after taking off travel costs I only get an extra £35 and thats 45 hours work for £35." Politicians and campaigners have to shoulder as much blame as the actual "non worker" because they created this environment where it is an acceptable argument.
