What actually happens to people who'll lose benefits?

[HairyArsedBloke]

There is a very simple solution.

Get rid of all unemployment benefits
Get rid of minimum wage
Get rid of employers NI, etc.
Get rid of employment protection, 'elf and safety, etc laws

Then let supply and demand reach equilibrium.

[EternalOptimist]

I'm sick of hearing about the less fortunate. How do I get to be less fortunate so I can start getting all these advantages they seem to get?

I dont think they are really advantages.

I think there are two types of dole-ite.

1. The ones who find themselves in trouble and need help, while they get out of trouble.

2. The ones who are happy where they are and milk the system


its the second ones that we hate

[Sysman]

In Germany you cannot benefits unless you have a permanent abode but you can't get a permanent abode unless you have an income

On my first trip to Germany at the age of 16 I was genuinely surprised by the number of beggars on the street, and I wondered why.

It was a long time ago...

[vetran]

Its only fair

Vouchers are electronic and personalised, they are used for basic needs such as housing and energy. They cannot be exchanged with others so have no value other to those in receipt of them or their creditors.

So no ebay market.

Look at childcare vouchers many private companies operate these effectively and with plenty of discretion.

Current system is to give the money to the benefit claimant who then spends it, they then get refused services because they don't pay their bills. They get evicted or lose childcare or have their electric cut off. They then apply for hardship payments etc which adds extra bureaucracy. By passing the money straight from the state to the service provider it improves the chances they will rent to benefit claimants and decreases evictions with the resulting losses to the landlord and the state.

By tracing the movement of money we can also ensure landlords etc are correctly registered and paying tax. So we know the tenant is less likely to die from a faulty gas boiler or electrocution, the care worker isn't a registered sex offender etc.

Also by analysing the spend we can use our buying power to drive prices down so we don't pay a premium for pre payment meters or pay the highest rates for energy when we could save by approaching e.g. British Gas directly and say we have 100,000 people who need gas give us your best price so we pay less than anyone could privately.

To ensure claimants have a stake in the energy use give them an average energy use figure and pay them extra pocket money for every penny they save. Look there is even a green / eco part of this! If they go over the 70% usage figure target them for home insulation etc and then once its insulated take some money off them if they can't close the windows in mid winter and have the heating on full blast.

Debit card - A number of documentaries have shown individuals on benefits frequently spend the grocery money on booze / fags / clothes / iphones first which can't be good for the children. Also if you remove the luxury items from the mix the purchased goods have less value second hand so reducing the ebay market.

It also reduces fraud risk if you are claiming using multiple identities there are only so many turkey twizzlers you can eat so there will be anomalous spend patterns that supermarket data mining techniques can detect.

Also if you work with the supermarkets they can target healthy eating options that will help families on low incomes ,just as a Tesco Clubcard does for shopper class and spend pattern now, allowing supermarkets demonstrate social responsibility and be held to account for selling stuff full of E numbers cheaply to the poor.

We can also examine spend so we can see how much money they actually need to survive and target investment effectively. e.g. we see 5% of benefit is spent on mobile phones top ups we can investigate and put in solutions that cost less. We can also target benefit amounts by taking an average spend against location and claimant type and making sure spend is sufficient to cover the minimum needs so people have just enough and not make widespread and guestimate limits like less than £26,000 in benefits which may cause hardship in exceptional cases.

I can tell you honestly from personal experience if you have your accommodation covered then you can live quite pleasantly on £12k with 2 or more kids.

Yes there is a privacy element to this but lets face it this is one third of our earnings and its being treated like a slush fund for accounting.

The vouchers are for the essentials I don't care if they spend their pocket money on booze or fags. I just want to make sure they and more importantly their children are homed and fed before they do.

[Sysman]

I dont think they are really advantages.

I think there are two types of dole-ite.

1. The ones who find themselves in trouble and need help, while they get out of trouble.

2. The ones who are happy where they are and milk the system


its the second ones that we hate

Some comment I heard on a business programme the other week which was discussing the early 1980s:

Unemployment was an acceptable price to pay to get inflation under control.

Shudder.

[EternalOptimist]

Deary , deary me.

Vectraman, I was on the dolio for ten years. By the time I got to the end of your spiel, I had already thought of a dozen ways to fiddle it.

you are pissing against the wind

[Alf W]

Tories seem to think that all these 'benefit scroungers' that they will cleverly trip up will think "fair cop, good while it lasted, I'll just have to go and get a job in an Investment Bank now".

The reality is that the vast majority of people on benefits aren't there by choice but as a result of circumstance. If you take away their sources of shelter and food then you get angry desperate communities that erupt in crime and violence at the slightest provocation. As for a precedent for this then you only have to look back to the early Eighties when Thatcher tried 'sticking it' to the poorer end of society to create a market for the rich to get richer.

This current situation must be a dream come true for the Tories as they can justify any of their insane social fantasies under the guise of everybody needing to suck up their bit of the pain (funny thing is I can't see any pain that Cameron and his two fags are going to have to suck up apart from losing a bit of child benefit).

Now, interestingly, had the Falklands War not happened in 1982 then Thatcher and the Tories would almost certainly have been booted out in the General Election of 1983 (probably would have been 84 in the event) and regarded as one of the most damaging terms of office held in the 20th Century.

What sort of person thinks along the lines that it's a good idea to make half a million people unemployed at the same time as reducing police funding, denying thousands access to vital financial assistance and reducing investment in University education? I notice that the health budget is intact but, then, even Tories get sick from time to time.

Next time Osborne's up here I'll be there with a box of eggs to chuck and they'll be Ostrich ones if I can get my hands on them the ruddy faced, smug tw*t!

[vetran]

Deary , deary me.

Vectraman, I was on the dolio for ten years. By the time I got to the end of your spiel, I had already thought of a dozen ways to fiddle it.

you are pissing against the wind

Possibly we are but how would you fiddle it? Seriously interested

[AlfredJPruffock]

Well I dont visit this site as I often as I used to - but judging by some fo the recent comments its odd how it seems to be more like Socialist Worker rather than a Contracting Site.

14 posts to DoomsDay

[EternalOptimist]

Possibly we are but how would you fiddle it? Seriously interested

The first way, and probably the most obvious.
Ali Baba in the corner shop would sell you sixteen portions of healthy eating, a sack of spuds and new trainers for the kids. value 100 quid.
thats what the receipt says.
he hands you over the counter six tins of dog food, some beans and spaghetti, a crate of ale and 50 fags, value 90 quid.

end result - the kids suffer even more, the corner shop/fence gets rich

been there, done that