Unemployed earning more than working households

"The fact is, however, that I have never known a retiring police officer to say that he cannot find another job."

Eh, duh .. quel surprise.

WM

Of course it is - but it has to be paid for out of taxation on earned income. You cannot pay benefits which are paid for out of taxation on benefits, unless there is sufficient money coming in from taxed earned income!

Ret.

Just saying.

WM

Yawn. Let me guess, you're posting from uk.legal and are one of the resident nutjobs, incapable of rational discussion or even using usenet properly. Bye bye.

Yup.

(I've just killfiled that loony, he's obviously clueless and incapable of any sort of rational discussion...)

I think the main problem is the obsession with getting income tax rates as low as possible. The Tories set a target of 20% for the basic rate, and even introduced a lower 20% band with the intention of this eventually becoming the basic rate. Labour then continued with this with a promise not to raise tax rates, something which was seen as successful election strategy, and last year they achieved the Tories target (although in Brown's usual style completely screwed up the political triumph of acheiving the Tory target by abolishing the

It does seem people are stupid enough to look at the basic rate of income tax as the barometer of how much tax they are paying, so all the stealth taxes go unnoticed as long as income tax rates aren't increased.

This means incorporating benefit withdrawal rates into income tax would probably be far too risky politically. Even though this is effectively what now happens with non means tested benefits like the state pension and child benefit, which are generally far more popular that means tested add-on's like pension credit and tax credits.

The "stick" clearly isn't working - in our current society it is not going to. What is needed is the "carrot" - get a job, even a crappy low paid part time temporary job, and you'll be significantly better off. No fiddle, no fraud, completely above board.

The WTC attempts to do this, but fails because of the high withdrawal rate especially when combined with HB & CTB.

You really do not know who The Man is?

WM

bviously.invalid...

Seems Andy is someone locked into his DWP manual (and very rude at that).

WM

No there wouldn't, because they'd get their earnings (albeit taxed at a high rate) *in addition* to their benefits, instead of the current situation where they pretty much get it as a *replacement* of their benefits.

Now someone in a crappy low paid job looks at their benefit claiming neighbours, sat on their arse all day, but still being able to afford the same things they can afford. So they say why bother. Or they fiddle the system by working cash in hand.

With universal benefits and no means testing, the people that get up off their arse and take the low paid jobs nobody wants to do will find themselves much better off than their idle neighbours, and benefit fraud would be massively cut.

The point is that the benefit rates would be set at a level which ensures the essentials are paid for, eg food, a room, second hand clothes etc rather than some daft attempt to chase a percentage of average earnings as now. About 5-6k per person, a bit less for children, maybe varying with local housing costs, and with disability premiums only where the disability results in a higher cost of living. Ie enough to live on, but not the sort of amount anyone would *want* to live on.

OK!

Ret.

Well I certainly don't, for a start!

Ret.

Well ... you worked for him and you were a little version.

WM

I'm not sure what you mean by that. But I have to ask the question; If retiring police officers can invariably walk into another job - why are there so many who claim that there are no jobs available?

Ret.

Because most people are not retiring police officers (for one reason).

WM

Indeed - but why should a retiring police officer be any more suitable a person for delivering groceries than a recently redundant administrator or steel worker?

Ret.

Well, they are not, in my eyes ... although they *may* have more transferable skills. You also retire younger.

WM

True - but many unemployed people claiming benefits are a lot younger than retiring police officers!

Ret.

Many unemployed people do not have clean slates (in many ways).

WM

Then you could argue that they are the authors of their own misfortune and we should not be bailing them out!

Ret.

Slates are not just due to criminal records (i.e. health, time out of work, overqualified, physical appearance, race, sex ... etc etc).

One could, if one was not a caring, secular. humanistic, positivist ;)

WM