Unemployed earning more than working households

It's called a "welfare state". It's what we live in. No, I don't agree with it either, but it's what we're stuck with.

That's a bit rich coming from a person who is sponging off the taxpayer while they remain idle, living off a very generous pension after retiring earlier than most people can dream of doing.

You have played the system to your advantage in *exactly* the same way that benefits claimaints have.

The period of receipt of unemployment benefit must be followed by a period in employment or self-employment (or at least by a period "off the books").

If that does not happen (and for many of the people at the very heart of this discussion, it won't), the notion of tax payable on the benefit is just that

- notional. They'll never be asked to pay it. It will never become payable.

Compare and contrast with the Revenue's attitude to the tax due on earnings from employment or self-employment - a completely different set of criteria is used. In essence, if you earned it, you'll pay the tax on it, irrespective of your current or future circumstances... or else.

Absolutely - and that is what is being suggested. It would be a far more fair system. Of course, people on reasonable salaries would pay far more than £30K per year in NI and income-tax contributions, whilst those on zero and low incomes would contribute less than they receive.

Not unless you made the benefits high enough to live on *comfortably*.

The case right now is that once a person is on benefits, it is difficult to start work at minimum wage, because income is likely to fall. That is especially true if contemplating taking on a job that is unlikely to last, where benefits will stop immediately the job is taken, but will not resume until some time after the job is lost.

Which is the same argument that you use to justify your early retirement on your generous pension.

If you can use the rules to benefit yourself, you would surely be a fool not to do so, regardless of how fair or otherwise the rules are.

I will agree with that. Just as the system provided *you* with an incentive to retire long before you were unable to work effectively.

Not yet

No

For what it's worth, I agree fully, I know of 3 people who have left work to take employment as plumbers. All trained while working full time and

2 are fiddling, and one has his own business.

That's OK. You can only mean that either:

(a) you were not over the requisite age by the particular cut-off date for this year's payment (but expect to get next year's), or

(b) there was some mistake in the claim or its processing and the payment has been delayed.

Alan has been very clear about it. He is due to it in the fact that everyone gets it, but the idiots who run the scheme ballsed it up and it is ongoing while they sort it. Income has nothing to do with it, and Alan never mentioned income in relation to that.

So get qualified. In fact, if they had any sense, they would do as I did, qualify, then while in a good job, broaden the qualifications to other area and make yourself employable to a few areas. It is a factor in the past, that jobs are for life. Nowadays you need to future proof against governments devastating wide areas of jobs, like the miners, shipyards, steelworks etc.

Webmanager_CritEst posted

Evidence for what?

That seems a strange objection! You [presumably] wouldn't be able to just turn up at a Post Office counter and say "I claim my CI", any more than you can just turn up and claim your state pension or a [full] passport. It would be tied to a specific birth or citizenship registration, so you could claim it only by impersonating someone else who was entitled to the money but had not claimed it. *Exactly* this possibility already exists in respect of pensions; but you very rarely hear of fraudulent impersonation [as opposed, eg, to cases where deaths aren't registered so pensions continue to be paid].

The money doesn't go to a physical body but to a virtual body

-- eg to a NI number -- and preferably not as cash but as negative tax for most families or to a bank account. As above, there is "prior art" in the form of the state pension.

And it would remain so. OTOH, it is [allegedly] easy to do it currently in many other ways that would simply disappear. But, as in my previous article, I regard fraud reduction as a minor part of the CI scheme. Far more important is the inherent *fairness* it brings to the problem of alleviating poverty and related hardships, and consequently the change in attitude to the whole tax-benefit system.

Widespread fraud?

WM

The difference being that I have worked continuously from the age of 16 to

54 without claiming a penny in dole - and during those 38 years of continuous employment I continuously paid NI and superannuation contributions (in the latter case at a rate of 11% of my gross income which is higher than most workers).

Ret.

That has no relevance, whatsoever, as much as you (and others) may like to think it has.

WM

So you have sponged less than a person who has never worked. That 11% is artificial - the pay was increased in order to fund it. Your take-home pay was better than most workers at a similar skill level.

The principle is the same, Kev - you have taken and are taking far more than your "fair share" from the public purse.

If the system is such that people can legitimately use it to live without working, then blame the system, not the people who use it to their advantage.

OTOH I see nothing good in the Protestant work-ethic. Work is not *of itself* a "good thing". If society can survive well with less work needing to be done, then that's great. The problem is not the fact that people are idle, it is that the work distribution is uneven.

In certain aspects I agree with that. I worked for 38 years from the age of

16 - but only because I had to. I had no wish to go out to work, it was simply a 'necessary evil'. If somehow I could have got hold of enough money to enable me to live comfortably without going out to work - then I wouldn't have gone out to work.

Having said that, however, as a husband and father I had a responsibility to look after my family and ensure that they were financially sound. I wanted to provide for them and put a roof over their heads - and I didn't expect someone else to do that for me. I did, however, cease working the moment I achieved the happy postion of being able to, and still live comfortably.

Ret.