Capping benefits to £26,000 a year - I think its wrong, do you?

[gnvqsos]

Nope. Why can't they move to outer London? To more affordable places like Bromley or Romford or Uxbridge? After all it's not like they're working and will have to fork out £4000 a year for a season ticket. Or if they're determined to stay in the city centre why can't their children share rooms? Or even the parents use the sitting room as bedroom so they can fit in smaller cheaper accommodation?

 

That's the choice people who work have to make if they live in London.

 

The three areas you chose are very expensive,and this invalidates your argument.

[truman]

Surely it would make more sense to cut benefits back to £6,000 a year, and then put up the minimum wage to £10 an hour, so anyone getting our of bed and doing a days work gets a decent wage? I bet this would have huge support

 

What would a £10 an hour minimum wage do to differentials?Wouldn't someone who is reasonably skilled and on £10 an hour now want paying more than the minimum wage?

[gnvqsos]

What would a £10 an hour minimum wage do to differentials?Wouldn't someone who is reasonably skilled and on £10 an hour now want paying more than the minimum wage?

 

This is an issue plus many employers circumvent pay rates by paying per job eg many cleaners now paid pr sq foot

[chem1st]

What would a £10 an hour minimum wage do to differentials?Wouldn't someone who is reasonably skilled and on £10 an hour now want paying more than the minimum wage?

 

It would destroy work incentives further as (still, some) people already lose £1 in benefit per £1 earned. They'd have to work (effectively) for free for longer.

 

UC is the way forwards. Then a man who works at least increases his purchasing power somewhat vs the same man who does no work whatsoever.

 

For working for no increase in purchasing power is virtual slavery and does nothing for demand in the economy.

[Cyclone]

You can't directly order a price cut that much I agree with.

 

But if we're honest the reason why BoE base rates are held so low is as a kind of life support mechanism for over-indebted mortgage holders. So my plan to bring prices down would be:

Possibly, I'm not sure that forcing lots of recent home owners into bankruptcy or mortgage default will do much to help the wider economy though.

 

1. Increase base rate by 2% over next 2 years.

2. Continue with reforms to HB to weed out the serious abuses by BTL landlords

I'm not sure how a landlord can abuse it...

3. Stringent rules introduced re: mortgage borrowing. Increase the power if the law to deal with mortgage application fraud.

Couldn't hurt, although the problem has largely disappeared now I think. A case of closing the stable door.

4. A national program of house building, powered by a cross-party consensus to build 300,000 sustainable homes per year, a massive proportion of which must be social housing to replenish our social housing stock

Not so sure about this. Maybe taxing 'land banks' would encourage developers to dispose of the land on their books by either building or releasing to self builders though.

 

All that would bring down prices quite nicely. The only people hurt would be the feckless - the ones we are keeping on life support in houses they could never have afforded to begin with.

Unfortunately by just dumping on those feckless you'll harm the rest of the economy as well.

[Tony]

Not so sure about this. Maybe taxing 'land banks' would encourage developers to dispose of the land on their books by either building or releasing to self builders though.

 

Would you tax every other firm's stock too?

[GodStar]

Now you wont believe this but its true there are some people in London claiming £100,000 per year in rent its these people they are after

 

How true this is I dont know but it wouldnt surprise me. Anybody claiming housing benefit who doesnt need to be in London for their job (assuming they have one) should be obliged to take housing in a cheaper location. If they want a house for free, they can live where they are told.

[Cyclone]

I agree with this form of tax-benefit system.

 

I would argue the case of land poverty in relative terms in order to justify the citizens income for everyone. Seeing as all wealth is generated ultimately from the land.

If I occupy land I deprive others of using said land,so if I were to pay an LVT it could go into a pot to pay everyone else. And everyone else whom occupies land could do so too.

Resulting in everyone being paid a CI, and everyone occupying land paying an LVT, the amount of the LVT depending upon the amount, quality and desirability of land occupied.

 

Once we have removed the forms of exploitation existing currently we could then see about tinkering with tax rates, lowering them as much as possible and using LVT to fund CI. Perhaps even trying to set a maximum income relative to the CI, for example we could impose an income tax of 100% on the superrich. This would not affect their wealth, it would only affect their income, and thus to improve their wealth they would be inclined to use land efficiently and increase production benefiting us all.

Say your income is capped at £1XYZ and you can buy 1ABC, one would utilise his capital to increase production of ABC and thus reduce it's cost, whilst one has his income capped at 1XYZ, one can now buy 2 lots of ABC, and with a fixed income, one has increased his wealth and in turn the prosperity of everyone.

 

Typical politics of envy, which would have the typical result of driving the wealthy offshore and denying the UK any tax income from that at all.

[Cyclone]

I will go even further on this one, but housing benefits should be capped at £6,000 per annum, and we should only pay benefits for a maximum of 2 children. I don't know what each child means in benefits, but say its £40 per child, then in effect you would be able to claim £80 a week maximum to feed all your children.

 

If you only have 2 children to feed, then its still not a bad deal, clearly if you have 7 or 8 or 9 children then this would create a problem for these people. Do I care? no

The government can't take that approach, it's generally frowned upon to let children starve, even if their parents are feckless.

[I1L2T3]

Possibly, I'm not sure that forcing lots of recent home owners into bankruptcy or mortgage default will do much to help the wider economy though.

I'm not sure how a landlord can abuse it...

Couldn't hurt, although the problem has largely disappeared now I think. A case of closing the stable door.

Not so sure about this. Maybe taxing 'land banks' would encourage developers to dispose of the land on their books by either building or releasing to self builders though.

Unfortunately by just dumping on those feckless you'll harm the rest of the economy as well.

 

There would have to be some short term pain for some. But the feckless would be replaced by solvent purchasers buying into the market for the first time. And they would have money to spend on their new properties on retail purchases and improvements. A boost for retail sectors and trades people.

 

Also, the house building would have stimulus effects and could address chronic shortages in some regions.

 

Lower prices and more social housing would increase labour mobility. Lower rents too along with the unblocking of houses that nobody can move from would increase mobility too.

 

The pain we are suffering is not worth it. Get the feckless out of their homes - they are an economic bottleneck and all of us should be fed up with paying the price for their mistakes.