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

[Cyclone]

Housing benefit, or the extent to which it is applied is the biggest clue to one of the key problems.

 

The housing market is completely dysfunctional. Prices are too high. Not enough new building. Not enough social housing. As long as one of the key basics of life remains wildly overpriced then a lot of other problems will not be solved.

 

The basics of shelter and warmth cost way too much in the UK. The benefits system is a reflection of that.

 

Sorry to say but all governments over last 30 years are culpable for letting this situation develop. IMO fix 1 is a controlled house price crash over 24 months of approx 30-50%

 

You can't force a price change though, it's dependent on supply and demand.

 

I don't believe that HB does very much to prop up either rent prices or housing prices. Most private rental is significantly higher than the HB rate which suggests to me that HB isn't setting a minimum except for poor quality housing.

BTL wasn't driven by HB either, it was driven by cheap credit, which was also the key driver for rapidly increasing house prices between 2000 and 2007. Prices are adjusting though, house prices have been flat or had small falls for about 5 years now, whilst inflation is running at about 5%.

[chem1st]

If chem1st wants to pay benefits to millionaires then he's probably on his own with that.

 

Surely the system should be the same for us all.

 

Besides which, the NIT a millionaire would receive would soon be recouped by the FRT he pays on income past the NIT, all it would do, would give him the same opportunities and treatment wrt income-tax-benefits as everyone else were his income to drop. It would function as a social safety trampoline.

 

We currently pay benefits to millionaires indirectly by giving poor people money to spend on renting land who then give it to the monopolists. Nobody benefits and work incentives are retarded, so much so that iit has become irrational for many to work, and it is not they whom are at fault, it is the system which encourages such behaviour.

[iansheff]

Put the money in creating jobs, cut JSA and if you can not work then you will be looked after.... This is what out grandparents believed and are now freezing on a next to nothing pension and there only fault is fighting for our freedom and paying for our education in the most horrific palces........

 

More jobs is whats needed..... Cut it all to less than £8K per annum raise minimum wage and for those who need it give the help without discrimination.....

 

By the way do not blame this government it was screwed up way before then.......

 

Cut JSA are you joking? When I was unemployed I got £65 a week and never claimed for council tax rebate as I worked with an agency and the hassle if I worked a day made it not worth claiming. How do you expect someone to live on £65 a week? It might not have been this Governments fault but they are not helping, the tories believe that if you are not working then you are a scrounger and that the working man should know their place.

[epiphany]

I've heard this before - the Green Party used to bang on about it (maybe they still do).

 

How would you fund it? (It would be extremely costly).

 

Many advocates are right to point out that we would need a banking system with more public stakeholdership in order to fund a universal credit system.

 

Interestingly, several noted economists on the "right" and "left" support the Basic Income. Milton Friedman was probably its most famous advocate. This is someone who believed in a minimal tax system - read up on how he would have funded it, you might have missed something.

[chem1st]

You can't force a price change though, it's dependent on supply and demand.

 

I don't believe that HB does very much to prop up either rent prices or housing prices. Most private rental is significantly higher than the HB rate which suggests to me that HB isn't setting a minimum except for poor quality housing.

BTL wasn't driven by HB either, it was driven by cheap credit, which was also the key driver for rapidly increasing house prices between 2000 and 2007. Prices are adjusting though, house prices have been flat or had small falls for about 5 years now, whilst inflation is running at about 5%.

 

Implied yields for B2L taking into account local housing benefit gives you a properties minimum value in current climate.

 

Housing benefit goes up and up because it is based on the average rent. The forced rise (due to government rent setting) in social housing costs forces this up further still. This in turn, forces up private housing, which then is used as a reason to increase social housing rents even further still.

 

Even a blind man can see this.

[Cyclone]

Take current benefit expenditure, divide by number of people, pay it to all.

You now have starving children in families that simply cannot find work.

Or did you imagine that there was enough work for everyone?

 

If wages and tax takes rise, increase citizens income, if they fall, decrease it. Were all in it together then. You want to be better off, you work. Everybody employed in admin for administration of current benefits can be made redundant and enter the productive part of the economy.

Admirable in the long run, but a bunch more unemployed people in the short.

You do know we spend more on administration than we spend giving JSA to over 1 million of the unemployed?

 

And by introducing CI in the form of a NIT, and tinkering with the EMTR by introducing one flat tax upon income in the form of wages/profits earned via labour, we stimulate productive work.

That's what the unified benefits system will do.

[kidley]

You can't force a price change though, it's dependent on supply and demand.

 

I don't believe that HB does very much to prop up either rent prices or housing prices. Most private rental is significantly higher than the HB rate which suggests to me that HB isn't setting a minimum except for poor quality housing.

BTL wasn't driven by HB either, it was driven by cheap credit, which was also the key driver for rapidly increasing house prices between 2000 and 2007. Prices are adjusting though, house prices have been flat or had small falls for about 5 years now, whilst inflation is running at about 5%.

 

 

While ever the private landlords can charge high rents house prices will rise its a good investment, the situation we are in now is just a temporary glitch

[chem1st]

Cut JSA are you joking? When I was unemployed I got £65 a week and never claimed for council tax rebate as I worked with an agency and the hassle if I worked a day made it not worth claiming. How do you expect someone to live on £65 a week? It might not have been this Governments fault but they are not helping, the tories believe that if you are not working then you are a scrounger and that the working man should know their place.

 

He would be wise to look at the proportion of cash transfer payments that are JSA wrt the welfare state.

 

FTR housing benefit is something daft like 8 times greater.

Pensions something like 20 times greater.

 

All those workshy houses claiming more in dole than the unemployed!

[chem1st]

You now have starving children in families that simply cannot find work.

How do you work that one out? Children require less food than an adult.

 

Or did you imagine that there was enough work for everyone?

Of course there isn't. But with CI unemployment is a price WORTH paying.

 

Admirable in the long run, but a bunch more unemployed people in the short.

That's what the unified benefits system will do.

 

Going back to your first point I take it children should starve?

 

UC is good and I support it, but it is not good enough.

 

The poorest will be effectively taxed at 74% on low incomes. Unless everyone else is to pay a flat rate effective tax of 74%, then I do not think it fair, and I consider it to be a hindrance to social mobility. 50% max if you ask me.

[Cyclone]

Implied yields for B2L taking into account local housing benefit gives you a properties minimum value in current climate.

 

Housing benefit goes up and up because it is based on the average rent. The forced rise (due to government rent setting) in social housing costs forces this up further still. This in turn, forces up private housing, which then is used as a reason to increase social housing rents even further still.

 

Even a blind man can see this.

 

Only a man with HB spectacles on can see it. You see everything through the lens of HB as far as I can tell.

HB only affects the rent of the least desirable worst condition houses where it does set a minimum. Everything else is set in comparison to market rates and that is set by supply and demand in the local market.