Poverty

[xoggoth]

The study called for reform of the tax and benefits system to move people from illegal jobs into legitimate work.

I agree totally with that. My suggested reform. Abolish tax. Abolish benefits. Huge boost to incentives from top to bottom of the economic scale. Since there is no tax to evade or benefits to falsely claim, all jobs that are not illegal are automatically legitimate.

[John Galt]

The study called for there to be more support, training and development for people who wanted to move from cash-in-hand to formal work.

Why would they want to move to formal work when they can get cash in hand jobs and avoid the contribution to Brownstuff??

[bogeyman]

Water under the bridge now as I'm nearly as rich as Threaded, But when I first left home I had to take a job for less than £50K - This as you can imagine was really hard work (But I always managed to find money for cigars & champers)

Oh come off it! Nobody is even remotely as rich as Threaded.

I hear Gates has withrawn from public life because he was so embarrassed at coming second to Threaded in the Rich Cvnts of the World index.

[Clog II The Avenger]

“I wonder if I could get away with using that excuse in court?... I personally only earn £10k p.a. and have 3 kids to support”

I WATCHED ONE Court case that was prosecuting a claimant for not declaring earnings of £11 per week (casual). Yet I wonder how many members of the jury where honest in claiming their Court expenses? Not only that I have never known a barrister not to fiddle his travel claim or to exaggerate his hours. But that is not called fiddling in the legal word as it comes under “Costs Assessment” when someone objects to the fiddling. A few weeks not declaring £11 results in hundreds if not thousands of pounds being fiddled in expenses in the case.

[bennyboy]

Water under the bridge now as I'm nearly as rich as Threaded, But when I first left home I had to take a job for less than £50K - This as you can imagine was really hard work (But I always managed to find money for cigars & champers)

I can't even begin to imagine how you survived!

[wc2]

None of these "poor" people, drink, smoke, have mobile phones or satellite television, do they?

Water under the bridge now as I'm nearly as rich as Threaded, But when I first left home I had to take a job for less than £50K - This as you can imagine was really hard work (But I always managed to find money for cigars & champers)

[bennyboy]

I personally only earn £10k p.a. and have 3 kids to support

Is that really what a young troll is refered to as?

[Fleetwood]

None of these "poor" people, drink, smoke, have mobile phones or satellite television, do they?

[Troll]

It found that people working and claiming benefits did so out of "need not greed".


I wonder if I could get away with using that excuse in court?... I personally only earn £10k p.a. and have 3 kids to support

[DimPrawn]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5084648.stm

People who work and claim benefits do so often because they are in dire financial trouble, a Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) study has said.
Many claimants took illegal cash-in-hand jobs to pay for food and heating or to make debt repayments.

The study's author said they were "hard-working, ordinary people trying to survive day by day".

The study called for reform of the tax and benefits system to move people from illegal jobs into legitimate work.

The JRF study was based on six years of work by the East London Community Links project.

The Community Links project offers those in deprived areas education, childcare provision as well as help and advice.

It found that people working and claiming benefits did so out of "need not greed".

Spokesman Aaron Barbour said: "If you're poor and living in a deprived area, informal work is actually helping people out of absolute abject poverty, helping them survive.

"It's providing for the basics like food and heating."

Despite the introduction of tax credits, designed to supplement the incomes of the low-paid, many people in the study said they felt the system trapped them in a poverty cycle.

In short, the tax and benefits system provided these people with few financial incentives to give up benefits and declare paid work.

More understanding

People with health and childcare issues were particularly prone to working in what is often called the "informal economy".

"They are hard-working, ordinary people trying to survive day by day," Aaron Barbour, study author and Community Links' policy development manager, said.

"The government needs to understand and include the informal economy in all its strategies if it is to reach its employment, anti-poverty and regeneration targets," he added.

The study called for there to be more support, training and development for people who wanted to move from cash-in-hand to formal work.

It added that there also needed to be tax and benefit reform, based on an understanding of why people worked cash-in-hand.

In addition, employers needed to allow more flexible working for those with health and childcare issues.

As for government measures to combat benefit fraud, the study concluded they had "limited success where poverty drives the decision to work informally".



Simple solution (as has been said here a thousand times).

1. Flat rate tax system
2. Remove most of the benefits system
3. Scrap the pathetic, idiotic tax credits system.
4. Give everyone a large tax free allowance (I would say £10K min)

Result is less dependence on the state and more people working.