15 people? Are you that sheltered from reality? Try a million.
Edit: What kind of middle class bubble is Lemmy living in? Plenty of people are abusing the system, just because you haven’t seen them from your university campuses or your cottage in Chipping Norton doesn’t make them non existent.
Mate I work a minimum wage warehouse job and my partner works part time in a supermarket. We rent a 2 bed terrace house that hasn’t had any work done to it in 20 years and can barely afford to keep the lights on. Middle class I ain’t.
Well stop acting as though it’s an insignificant number of people who abuse the system. I’m not talking about immigrants either. There are millions who could be in work but aren’t.
But in the grand scheme of things it’s a relatively small percentage of people. And If they were serious about saving the tax payers money they wouldn’t have written off a few billion in COVID loans a few years back.
They couldn’t give two shits if some bloke is down the job center claiming a few hundred quid to sit on his arse, and tbh neither should we. There’s significantly bigger fish to fry.
It’s not just some bloke is it? It’s an entire demographic. Our schools are failing people from the very start and they aren’t interested in social mobility or education.
We spent £230bn on welfare last year alone. Granted a percentage of that chunk is fixed, but to act as though there is no headroom and people aren’t gaming the system ever is just insanity.
Yes the rich need taxing, but this isn’t a mutually exclusive kind of situation. We shouldn’t just tax the rich and spend stupidly elsewhere.
When did I say people aren’t playing the system? I said it’s massively overestimated given the numbers of people that aren’t playing the system.
And welfare spending also includes Pensions. It’s also by far and away the largest portion of that pie. Maybe we could take the state pension away from people who already have a nice cushty private pension and distribute that percentage back to people who aren’t in a position to retire at all?
For the record, it seems like ~10 million people aren’t working who are of working age in the UK. If it’s millions, it would mean that at least 1 in 5 people not working abuses the system. Do you really think it’s that high?
It depends how many people claiming sick you think are actually unable to work. It benefits both the claimants and government to fudge the statistics to make it seem like the long term unemployed are receiving sickness benefits.
The OP is clearly using hyperbole. But only 1% of the welfare bill goes on unemployment benefits, so even if absolutely everyone on unemployment benefits is cheating and you cut them off, you don’t save much. In reality the majority of people on unemployment benefits are not cheating the system - a system that already sanctions the unemployed for not actively seeking work.
There is more to it than the budget. It’s a cultural thing. People become comfortable being on benefits. And I’m not just talking job seekers, I’m talking about the long term “sick” many of whom I personally believe are exaggerating their symptoms.
I don’t think just giving people a bit of cash every week that they can blow on drugs or booze is necessarily the best use of resources, nor is it even beginning to scratch the surface of the wider social issues.
15 people? Are you that sheltered from reality? Try a million.
Edit: What kind of middle class bubble is Lemmy living in? Plenty of people are abusing the system, just because you haven’t seen them from your university campuses or your cottage in Chipping Norton doesn’t make them non existent.
Mate I work a minimum wage warehouse job and my partner works part time in a supermarket. We rent a 2 bed terrace house that hasn’t had any work done to it in 20 years and can barely afford to keep the lights on. Middle class I ain’t.
Well stop acting as though it’s an insignificant number of people who abuse the system. I’m not talking about immigrants either. There are millions who could be in work but aren’t.
But in the grand scheme of things it’s a relatively small percentage of people. And If they were serious about saving the tax payers money they wouldn’t have written off a few billion in COVID loans a few years back.
They couldn’t give two shits if some bloke is down the job center claiming a few hundred quid to sit on his arse, and tbh neither should we. There’s significantly bigger fish to fry.
It’s not just some bloke is it? It’s an entire demographic. Our schools are failing people from the very start and they aren’t interested in social mobility or education.
We spent £230bn on welfare last year alone. Granted a percentage of that chunk is fixed, but to act as though there is no headroom and people aren’t gaming the system ever is just insanity.
Yes the rich need taxing, but this isn’t a mutually exclusive kind of situation. We shouldn’t just tax the rich and spend stupidly elsewhere.
When did I say people aren’t playing the system? I said it’s massively overestimated given the numbers of people that aren’t playing the system.
And welfare spending also includes Pensions. It’s also by far and away the largest portion of that pie. Maybe we could take the state pension away from people who already have a nice cushty private pension and distribute that percentage back to people who aren’t in a position to retire at all?
When you said like 15 people are abusing the system. There are millions out there and you know it.
Yes scrap the triple lock as well, it’s a load of bollocks too.
I don’t know it. Can you show any kind of proof?
For the record, it seems like ~10 million people aren’t working who are of working age in the UK. If it’s millions, it would mean that at least 1 in 5 people not working abuses the system. Do you really think it’s that high?
It depends how many people claiming sick you think are actually unable to work. It benefits both the claimants and government to fudge the statistics to make it seem like the long term unemployed are receiving sickness benefits.
The OP is clearly using hyperbole. But only 1% of the welfare bill goes on unemployment benefits, so even if absolutely everyone on unemployment benefits is cheating and you cut them off, you don’t save much. In reality the majority of people on unemployment benefits are not cheating the system - a system that already sanctions the unemployed for not actively seeking work.
There is more to it than the budget. It’s a cultural thing. People become comfortable being on benefits. And I’m not just talking job seekers, I’m talking about the long term “sick” many of whom I personally believe are exaggerating their symptoms.
I don’t think just giving people a bit of cash every week that they can blow on drugs or booze is necessarily the best use of resources, nor is it even beginning to scratch the surface of the wider social issues.