"I've paid into the system!"

[Chelle-82]

Fair enough. I cant argue with the first point.

Second point, I would unify benefits. One pot for all. Everybody working and not working gets something + the not working get extra.

 

This 'paying in more get out more' is a rubbish idea IMO. But if you can show me a country where this system works I'd be happy to reconsider.

 

---------- Post added 12-05-2015 at 12:24 ----------

 

 

No, I think the adverts telling people to 'shop your neighbour' is unsavoury and devisive.

 

---------- Post added 12-05-2015 at 12:25 ----------

 

Like I said above, often its 'chinese whispers'.....the government has units anyway for spying on people and catching them in the act.

 

It's not my job to do that.

 

No not this bloke! There's nowt wrong with him apart from suffering from idolitus.

 

And he can't hold his own water so all the street knows about him, from his own gob!

[ubermaus]

A week. £760 million a week!

 

The unified benefits system is supposed to ensure that working always makes someone better off, no marginal rate of effective tax of >100% (or even = 100%).

 

---------- Post added 12-05-2015 at 12:56 ----------

 

 

They can cover the cost by halving the tax code for everyone then.

And then taking off another 25% to cover the administration costs.

Everyone will be £10 a week worse off, but they'll get something tangible.

 

Its a repatriation of wealth...its more symobilic than anything. If the public feel they are getting something for putting in, then they are happy. As for admin, it's unified...all one master server which we log in and out of. Essentially a reduction in the need for DWP points. The admin is merely the management and upkeep of a digital system.

Edited May 12, 2015 by ubermaus
....

[sgtkate]

I have only just seen the opening entry to this thread and I like the idea of people who put more into the system being able to get more out of the system when they need it.

 

For this to work effectively, I guess everyone would need an 'account' opened up by the Government when they're born.

 

I suppose the time you spend in hospital for being born should not be an amount put onto your personal account - but your parents.

 

However, your schooling should be. I bet that costs a lot. It must be £1,000s per year and there's many years. Any healthcare you take advantage of must also be accounted for.

 

So, when you're 16, I bet you'd be running a deficit with the Government of many thousands of Pounds... now, when you start paying taxes and NI those amounts (both or just one?) can be used as credits to your notional account.

 

It will probably take you many years of working to get to a zero balance.

 

If you have a <£0 balance, it doesn't stop you receiving any benefits, you would just receive them at the lowest amount.

 

If you have a >£0 balance, then you can start to get better benefits - for example, if you go into hospital (under the NHS) maybe you could elect to have a separate room with a nice TV and wifi...

 

If you are made unemployed and you have a notional surplus, maybe you can elect to take the basic unemployment benefit, or top it up a little bit to make the time you spend unemployed that bit easier to handle.

 

Obviously you can still elect to use private healthcare, schooling and what-have-you as you can today. They still exist.

 

I like the concept.

 

You never get to separately add to or withdraw from this notional account. It just maintains a running total for you - are you providing more to society than you are taking from it?

 

Last year George Osborne sent me a letter with a nice pie chart showing me how much tax and NI I'd paid in the previous year. I found it to be a scary figure. I thought at that time that I must now be giving more back than I have taken out, overall... but then I did recall that I went to university for free (I even got a grant, and a loan) and I've been to hospital a few times (that can't be cheap) and the GP a lot... and I'm only 40 - so maybe I would still be running at a deficit??? Who knows how much it costs to 'keep a person'? I mean, I've taken for the most part of my earlier life, I'm paying back (a lot) now, but it'll only be 30 years before I'm taking back out again...

 

Possibly, but it shouldn't be on amount earned, but hours worked or something that doesn't discriminate people who earn low pay but work hard.

 

Say you get a £1 added to your pot for each hour you work and how much you earn each hour is irrelevant.

People who are unable to work because of a long term illness or disability get 37 hour week given.

If you lose your job for any reason then your pot carries on accruing at the rate it was before you were jobless for say 3 months and then goes on to half time for another 9 months and then returns to zero.

Woman who take time out to look after children maintain a 37 hour week contribution until the child is 16? (massively up for debate around the age but the idea is there!)

People who come to the UK later in life (after 18) have not 'used' any of our resources so could earn 'back' contributions if they work at least 30 hours per week

 

Starter for 10 anyway. To be honest, I do much prefer the Greens citizen income as an ideal, but I just can't how we could fund it at a high enough level to allow people to switch to part time work and not lose out too much financially. I might be a socialist, but I'm not a financially suicidal one!

[Harrystottle]

I worked for thirty-odd years before being made redundant in my mid-50's. Because I had a vocational pension I was told I wouldn't qualify for any benefits at all.

 

This what people like me loathe about the system, when they see on TV stories about 35 stone people in their early twenties who have never worked, lolling around home stuffing their faces and playing on their x-boxes getting disability benefit because they are as fat as a pig.

 

They have contributed nothing and probably will never contribute anything because their lack of any saleable employment skills means it is highly unlikely that they will ever get any sort of a job.

 

Yet people who have worked for donkeys years get no better treated than if they'd never worked at all.

[Chelle-82]

I worked for thirty-odd years before being made redundant in my mid-50's. Because I had a vocational pension I was told I wouldn't qualify for any benefits at all.

 

This what people like me loathe about the system, when they see on TV stories about 35 stone people in their early twenties who have never worked, lolling around home stuffing their faces and playing on their x-boxes getting disability benefit because they are as fat as a pig.

 

They have contributed nothing and probably will never contribute anything because their lack of any saleable employment skills means it is highly unlikely that they will ever get any sort of a job.

 

Yet people who have worked for donkeys years get no better treated than if they'd never worked at all.

 

Shhhh!

 

You'll bring out the 'BUT THEY COULD BE MENTALLY ILL' brigade!

[L00b]

My own car? yes.

Someone elses car? no.

 

assault? yes. If I had to.

You've not really understood how this society thingymajjig works, have you?

That's the problem with the Ed Balls school of mathematics that the Socialists attend.

I LOL'd. Yes, I actually LOL'd. Well played, Sir convert, well played

[ubermaus]

You've not really understood how this society thingymajjig works, have you?

I LOL'd. Yes, I actually LOL'd. Well played, Sir convert, well played

 

It wasnt a statement. I was answering a question between shopping a benefit cheat and reporting assault.

[Cyclone]

Its a repatriation of wealth...its more symobilic than anything. If the public feel they are getting something for putting in, then they are happy. As for admin, it's unified...all one master server which we log in and out of. Essentially a reduction in the need for DWP points. The admin is merely the management and upkeep of a digital system.

 

If it's just digital, numbers in and out, then not taking it in the first place is better than taking it and giving it back. Transactions don't happen for free, and systems need writing and maintaining.

[Hippogriff]

Effectively, this is shrinking the public pot. Public services would suffer and we wouldnt have a welfare system at all. Just a load of ghettos with crime and poor people and then a bunch of fairly comfortable to very rich people...

 

I'd hope not because the standard of stuff we all get these days is actually pretty good.

 

Some may rail against that, but I think it's pretty good.

 

So there would be a Basic or Value range of stuff introduced and a Premium or Gold Standard range introduced. Maybe it would even out.

 

Public Services are - after all - 100% paid for by the private sector, right? I mean, Governments don't make money themselves... they receive money in the form of taxes and that money comes from the private sector as opposed to the public sector, which - brutally described - is just another drain on resources - yes, people who work in the public sector also pay taxes, but as it's the Government paying them in the first place it's all just funny money... so, therefore, everything comes from the private sector and the wages they pay people.

 

The alternative is the rich paying for their own Gold Standard services anyway... kind of a status quo.

 

I mean, if I knew I could get a Consultant's appointment at the click of a finger, and a procedure undertaken on my within a short timescale, I would not elect to pay out for private medical insurance. Sadly, I cannot get these things, so I do.

 

It seems fair-minded to me that people should get out more if they pay in more. More fair-minded than everyone gets the same, regardless of how much they pay in. That's just enforced wealth redistribution and the people at the bottom will still moan that it's not enough.

 

A case being, not only does a rich person have to pay more taxes and get the same medical treatment (etc.) but they also - really - have to choose to purchase medical insurance on top and then get penalised further from a tax perspective. That doesn't feel fair-minded.

 

I like what the OP started here. It's a good idea.

[Cyclone]

I worked for thirty-odd years before being made redundant in my mid-50's. Because I had a vocational pension I was told I wouldn't qualify for any benefits at all.

 

This what people like me loathe about the system, when they see on TV stories about 35 stone people in their early twenties who have never worked, lolling around home stuffing their faces and playing on their x-boxes getting disability benefit because they are as fat as a pig.

 

They have contributed nothing and probably will never contribute anything because their lack of any saleable employment skills means it is highly unlikely that they will ever get any sort of a job.

 

Yet people who have worked for donkeys years get no better treated than if they'd never worked at all.

 

They'll also die at 45, and despite the x-box have a miserable, torrid life. I wouldn't envy them too much.

 

---------- Post added 12-05-2015 at 13:41 ----------

 

My own car? yes.

Someone elses car? no.

 

assault? yes. If I had to.

 

I'm glad you're not my neighbour, but you're part of the malady in society IMO, and people with the same attitude.

You wouldn't report the theft of someone elses car, seriously, what is wrong with you? You might as well condone car theft and benefits fraud for that matter.

 

If you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

 

---------- Post added 12-05-2015 at 13:41 ----------

 

Yes thats right...the money would come from the £140 billion raised from big business tax avoidance.

 

Avoidance is by definition legal, so you can't magically wave a wand and make it disappear.

 

---------- Post added 12-05-2015 at 13:43 ----------

 

It wasnt a statement. I was answering a question between shopping a benefit cheat and reporting assault.

 

And the answer was that you'd not report a car theft that you saw.

 

There is simply no moral justification for knowing about a crime like that and not reporting it.