Sometimes, people are in deep poverty not because they are lazy, but because something is causing them to function at a level below the average capacity. It might be acute or it might be chronic.
All of the well-meaning discussions below about nice rational choice and careful planning really fail to take that basic fact into account. What they are all doing is saying "you won't starve if you make just a little more effort". Nobody can really deny that this is true, but certain people at certain times, for reasons way beyond their control, cannot.
If your potted theory of how to live on tuppence and spare string doesn't take into account the mental and physical capacity of the person doing it, it's not worth the paper that you really shouldn't bother to write it on.
And I don't want to hear about people feigning illness either. I acknowledge that such things go on but unless you can find a way to sort those people from the genuinely needy, WITHOUT it further eroding the limited capacity of those needful people, you're just making it worse for the genuine cases.
It's all very easy when you're mentally and physically well to make a carefully tabulated budget and choose coolly and rationally at the supermarket. But if your bipolar disorder has you on a manic cycle and you haven't slept because the neighbour's dog barks all night, and your kid is being bullied because of his scruffy trainers, and the landlord hasn't fixed the mould that keeps growing up the walls, and you're frightened and angry and feeling hopeless, your decision making gets so badly fucked up.
So please take that into account whilst you discuss your solutions.
Good post, and all of that is perfectly true.
The best answer to poverty is to get more people into work. That means more people in paid work, ending the couples penalty, helping families stay together, and having better childcare provision - childcare being the biggest driver of poverty due to the absolute care costs and the penalty of needing to abstain from work to provide childcare.
The coalition made great steps in getting lots of people into work onwards, such that we got to a near 50-year low on unemployment, and we shouldn't forget that or go back to how things were pre-2010.
If we are to revisit welfare provision in this country I think it should be focussed on better childcare provision (it's one of the most expensive in the world here) and supporting those with mental and physical health problems with remote and home working.
In short, support to work - which is good for everyone: parents and children.
Work only helps when the work actually pays the bills. Milliband may have lost in 2015 but his "squeezed middle" analysis, hit by the high cost of living, was absolutely valid. Too many jobs pay too poorly hence so many people in working poverty having to rely on supplementary benefits.
Good point. If you work full-time (35 hours a week) at minimum wage for 225 days a year (less weekends, holidays, statutory holidays and couple of sickness) at £8.21 p/h you should be able to pull in at least £1,050-£1,100 a month though (gross).
£1,000 a month is well over double UC and only screws you if you have very high transport/housing or childcare costs. FWIW, I've done it on less when I first bought my own house with a heavy (5.89%!) interest only mortgage, and I couldn't afford to go out or run my car very much.
So I don't think it's far off. I'd prefer it to be free of NI and tax, with a positive pensions contribution, and having much better funded childcare. Also, employers taking care of their employees and helping with providing lunch and social facilities. Better apprenticeships and adult training, and the on-the-job career development.
About the only thing he is not too keen on is cinnamon.
Many years ago our labrador puppy started chewing at our back door whenever we were out. We were advised to smear English mustard on to put him off, which we did before going out.
When we came back he'd chewed a hole through the door big enough to put his head through! Wood tastes much nice with a bit of mustard apparently.
Beware experts!
During these long days of lockdown, it is a perfect time to draw up and populate two lists:
a) things my dog does like; and
b) things my dog does not like.
Just for future reference, like. Although a) is proving to be a very, very long list.
Get yourself an English pointer, they are very discerning. Ours likes fish but won't touch prawns or crab. No idea why.
Well as Divvie would explain he is clearly pelagic rather than demersal in his tastes.
Clearly he misses out the fact - cheap food = full of sugar and other crap to keep costs down.
The only difference between now and the 19th century is that then cheap food was poor quality and often featured things that weren't food (so you were under weight). Now it contains calories that aren't easy to burn off.
If you were a one parent family with say two kids and struggling financially this would seem a cheap way to feed the family for three or four dinners
500g of pasta, one tin of tomatoes and 1kg of chicken is not going to provide 12 dinners, unless they are all for Tiny Tim. What planet are you on?
Two tins of tomatoes.
I am on planet normal - that could easily make one adult and two kids half a weeks dinners
It works out at about 300 calories per meal for 12 meals. An adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day and a child aged 6-12 needs 1600-2200. So 300 for your main meal of the day looks pretty inadequate. I shop and cook for a family of five and I can tell you that your meal would do us for about one dinner, maybe with a bit left over. Our kids are far from fat (in fact most clothes don't fit them because they are too skinny) so we are definitely not overfeeding them.
Fair enough, let them buy double what I suggested - three or four meals for less than £12
I think there is general agreement that people can just about afford to eat a decent diet on benefits as long as they don't buy anything else. Unfortunately people also need to pay for clothes, transport, heating, etc. Some people compound their difficulties by not knowing how to cook (a widespread problem not only affecting the poor; not helped by schools no longer teaching home economics). Some people working long hours and shifts don't have time to cook. Some people don't have the equipment. I just find all this smug wisdom being dispensed by well off people a bit too Marie Antoinette* for my liking. (*I know she was misquoted).
How much do you think is required to feed a family of four 2 children 2 adults per week? As a pound figure?
About £150. Less if the kids are on free school meals. The Food Standards Agency have a report on the cost of a healthy food basket in Northern Ireland in 2018, they have it as £159 for a family of 4 with 2 school age kids. Presumably it is higher in 2020 with inflation, but NI may have higher costs than GB. I think we probably spend about £200/week on food for a family of 5. We don't shop at the cheapest supermarket and get organic meat and milk, but we cook everything from scratch which saves money and don't normally buy any alcohol.
And on uc the least that family would get per week is 229£ the most 253£
Add in 100£ per month for gas and electric 25£ per month for internet two sim only deals for the adults 10£ a month comes to another 33£ a week
So using your figure we come to 183£ leaving them between 46£ a week and 70£ a week
Aha you say they may need to pay some towards rent well lets add in another 100£ a month for rent and 60 for council tax thats another 34£ a week
Still leaves a net of 12£ a week to 36£ a week
Clothes and bus fares. Car needs a repair. Haircuts. Furniture and appliances need to be replaced. School trips. Curtains and bedding. This all assumes your benefits are paid on time, you don't get sanctioned unfairly, you're not subject to the bedroom tax etc.
The last sentence brings us back to UBI...
I'd like to see fair minimum determined by focus group and explicit listing of what, on average, should be covered as basic (what speed of broadband etc etc) year by year. And I'd mandate from government that contract exits are made available for discretionary services for change of circumstances (e.g. get sacked, you may bin Sky Sports: when you so wish)
That I would expect it to almost always work out at pretty much the 60% of median relative poverty line that the right love to whinge about is besides the point. The fact the right like to whinge about it is reason enough to sink government money into making an explicit calculation.
And UBI, plus a restructuring of tax to make good the difference (e.g. if you take UBI, you go on higher tax rates for a period of time, your call. And 'something, something' for the self employed), yes please. And btw, state pension, child benefit, student financing - yes, ultimately, they're going to be UBI too.
The contract exits seem a good idea or for that matter contract breaks. However what did I not list that you consider necessary?
Both adults have a mobile, they have internet access, they have gas and electric,they have food a roof some money left over for discretionary spending on clothes etc. That is by its very definition a safety net. The purpose of benefits is to provide support when you fall on hard times not to provide a living.
UBI is a pipedream that will never happen because it would cost too much. Merely giving every adult in britain 1000£ a month ubi would cost in the region of 480 billion and 1000 a month would not be enough to live on it would probably need to be double that assuming housing benefit and other benefits would be axed. Add in the NHS, defence,schools etc and you are pretty much looking at the entirety of GDP going to the government coffers. When that happens no one is getting enough extra from working to bother. Why would a surgeon do a hugely stressful job when he is not getting a lot more than the ubi recipient
Your maths is completely flawed because you're assuming that it would be new money.
If the UBI replaces the tax-free threshold then it is effectively cost-neutral for anyone over the tax-free threshold. Or is not much extra cash for those above the tax-free threshold.
For anyone on benefits it would replace or supplement the benefits they were getting previously - so again not much extra cash up front.
It should lead to major cost reductions. You could essentially abolish Job Centre Plus and streamline much of HMRC. Job centres should be about helping people find work because they want to rather than because they need to pretend they want to and need to attend meetings or they'll get sanctioned.
Done properly people should actually want to work anyway as the poverty trap the current benefits system creates would be abolished.
A surgeon would be earning well more than the UBI, that is ridiculous. In fact done properly every single person who works would be earning more than the UBI, the UBI would be the floor not the ceiling that benefits currently create.
It is your maths that is flawed I am afraid. The tax free threshold is 12500 or so about a 1000 a month. That saves you paying tax of 200£ a month so giving someone a 1000 a month is a net loss of 800£.
Yes if you abolished housing benefit and uc that would be a saving but lets face it that won't happen and if it did the howls of protest would be huge as people would be getting even less than they are now.
Going back to that family of four they currently get
1100 a month uc 1000 a month housing benefit about 150£ a month reduction on council tax
That is before we add in free school meals, prescriptions etc.
You plan to replace this with 2X1000 ubi leaving them 250£ less well off
In addition you are giving every basic rate tax payer a boost to their pay of 1000£ a month in pay while charging them 200£ more tax
In the case of the employed, the UBI would be *entirely* taxed off their wages and given back to them by the government.
At this point, people then say, why bother?
The point is to make the system utterly dependable. You get your UBI each month, no matter what. Lose your job, UBI etc etc
No forms to fill out, no claims to be made.
This has the important effect of reducing the obstacles to getting a job from unemployment - at the moment, there is a whole dance about signing off benefits etc.
In a UBI system, get some work, get some money, pay some tax. Your UBI cannot be effected.
Well see there is the issue you then have, if for example UBI is 1000 a month and if you work it all gets clawed back....
Working a 37.5 hour week full time means you are working 1950 hours a year. A person working currently and earning 18000 a year loses 12000 automatically to claw back ubi plus the tax to cover the rest of govenment expenditure is probably working 1950 hours a year for 3 to 4000 pounds. A mere 70 to 80 pounds extra in their pocket a week. How many will just say not worth it?
Which is the old, old argument against benefits.....
Yet people do jobs where they get *less* than benefits - rare, but it does happen
Very common are jobs which only make marginally more than benefits. Tons of those. No shortage of applicants...
63% marginal rate if you are on UC and in a low paid (maybe part-time) job, just saying.
Over on Twitter, @Cyclefree is not impressed by my defence of Kate Bingham.
Not remotely surprised.
Why let the fact someone's doing a good job get in the way of the fact you've got a bee in your bonnet?
I think it woule be awfully churlish to suggest it has not worked out on this occasion, but you would still want to make sure processes for appointment (even expedited appointment) are sound (if indeed there was an issue this time, I cannot remember the details), as you won't always get so lucky.
Who was it who first said: "The harder I work, the luckier I get".
I have no qualms with expedited appointments so long as someone is prepared to say "this is who I appointed, this is why I did, and I take responsibility for the results of what they do". Which is what happened.
If the procurement had gone badly the government would have been held to account and been forced to take responsibility for how it had screwed up. The fact that they had appointed someone wouldn't shield them from criticism.
Gary Player: "the more I practise, the luckier I get".
Correct. I think it arose during an interview and the full version is that he said there was a good deal of luck in the game of golf, but on the whole he found '...the more I practice the luckier I get.'
About the only thing he is not too keen on is cinnamon.
I've got a nasty feeling that cinnamon is toxic to some animals. Haven't googled it, so could be wrong, but please check before allowing your dog any more exotic things. It's a sad fact that some dogs adore chocolate but it's terrible for them.
Onions - very, very bad.
Grapes too, I think, are to be avoided.
If you give dogs small amounts of chocolate and then build it up a bit, it seems to give them a degree of immunity. My wife was very thankful of this when her two Westies raided Robert Plant's bag and stole then devoured his man-size Yorkie (chocolate bar, not dog).
Mr. Plant was well pissed off though.
Pity that doesn't work with humans. If small amounts of chocolate could give us a 'degree of immunity', we could dispense with this vaccination stuff and just deliver Mars bars to everybody.
About the only thing he is not too keen on is cinnamon.
Many years ago our labrador puppy started chewing at our back door whenever we were out. We were advised to smear English mustard on to put him off, which we did before going out.
When we came back he'd chewed a hole through the door big enough to put his head through! Wood tastes much nice with a bit of mustard apparently.
Beware experts!
During these long days of lockdown, it is a perfect time to draw up and populate two lists:
a) things my dog does like; and
b) things my dog does not like.
Just for future reference, like. Although a) is proving to be a very, very long list.
Get yourself an English pointer, they are very discerning. Ours likes fish but won't touch prawns or crab. No idea why.
Well as Divvie would explain he is clearly pelagic rather than demersal in his tastes.
Depends if he eats flouders and monkfish. Tres demersal.
Clearly he misses out the fact - cheap food = full of sugar and other crap to keep costs down.
The only difference between now and the 19th century is that then cheap food was poor quality and often featured things that weren't food (so you were under weight). Now it contains calories that aren't easy to burn off.
If you were a one parent family with say two kids and struggling financially this would seem a cheap way to feed the family for three or four dinners
500g of pasta, one tin of tomatoes and 1kg of chicken is not going to provide 12 dinners, unless they are all for Tiny Tim. What planet are you on?
Two tins of tomatoes.
I am on planet normal - that could easily make one adult and two kids half a weeks dinners
It works out at about 300 calories per meal for 12 meals. An adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day and a child aged 6-12 needs 1600-2200. So 300 for your main meal of the day looks pretty inadequate. I shop and cook for a family of five and I can tell you that your meal would do us for about one dinner, maybe with a bit left over. Our kids are far from fat (in fact most clothes don't fit them because they are too skinny) so we are definitely not overfeeding them.
Fair enough, let them buy double what I suggested - three or four meals for less than £12
I think there is general agreement that people can just about afford to eat a decent diet on benefits as long as they don't buy anything else. Unfortunately people also need to pay for clothes, transport, heating, etc. Some people compound their difficulties by not knowing how to cook (a widespread problem not only affecting the poor; not helped by schools no longer teaching home economics). Some people working long hours and shifts don't have time to cook. Some people don't have the equipment. I just find all this smug wisdom being dispensed by well off people a bit too Marie Antoinette* for my liking. (*I know she was misquoted).
How much do you think is required to feed a family of four 2 children 2 adults per week? As a pound figure?
About £150. Less if the kids are on free school meals. The Food Standards Agency have a report on the cost of a healthy food basket in Northern Ireland in 2018, they have it as £159 for a family of 4 with 2 school age kids. Presumably it is higher in 2020 with inflation, but NI may have higher costs than GB. I think we probably spend about £200/week on food for a family of 5. We don't shop at the cheapest supermarket and get organic meat and milk, but we cook everything from scratch which saves money and don't normally buy any alcohol.
And on uc the least that family would get per week is 229£ the most 253£
Add in 100£ per month for gas and electric 25£ per month for internet two sim only deals for the adults 10£ a month comes to another 33£ a week
So using your figure we come to 183£ leaving them between 46£ a week and 70£ a week
Aha you say they may need to pay some towards rent well lets add in another 100£ a month for rent and 60 for council tax thats another 34£ a week
Still leaves a net of 12£ a week to 36£ a week
Clothes and bus fares. Car needs a repair. Haircuts. Furniture and appliances need to be replaced. School trips. Curtains and bedding. This all assumes your benefits are paid on time, you don't get sanctioned unfairly, you're not subject to the bedroom tax etc.
The last sentence brings us back to UBI...
I'd like to see fair minimum determined by focus group and explicit listing of what, on average, should be covered as basic (what speed of broadband etc etc) year by year. And I'd mandate from government that contract exits are made available for discretionary services for change of circumstances (e.g. get sacked, you may bin Sky Sports: when you so wish)
That I would expect it to almost always work out at pretty much the 60% of median relative poverty line that the right love to whinge about is besides the point. The fact the right like to whinge about it is reason enough to sink government money into making an explicit calculation.
And UBI, plus a restructuring of tax to make good the difference (e.g. if you take UBI, you go on higher tax rates for a period of time, your call. And 'something, something' for the self employed), yes please. And btw, state pension, child benefit, student financing - yes, ultimately, they're going to be UBI too.
The contract exits seem a good idea or for that matter contract breaks. However what did I not list that you consider necessary?
Both adults have a mobile, they have internet access, they have gas and electric,they have food a roof some money left over for discretionary spending on clothes etc. That is by its very definition a safety net. The purpose of benefits is to provide support when you fall on hard times not to provide a living.
UBI is a pipedream that will never happen because it would cost too much. Merely giving every adult in britain 1000£ a month ubi would cost in the region of 480 billion and 1000 a month would not be enough to live on it would probably need to be double that assuming housing benefit and other benefits would be axed. Add in the NHS, defence,schools etc and you are pretty much looking at the entirety of GDP going to the government coffers. When that happens no one is getting enough extra from working to bother. Why would a surgeon do a hugely stressful job when he is not getting a lot more than the ubi recipient
Your maths is completely flawed because you're assuming that it would be new money.
If the UBI replaces the tax-free threshold then it is effectively cost-neutral for anyone over the tax-free threshold. Or is not much extra cash for those above the tax-free threshold.
For anyone on benefits it would replace or supplement the benefits they were getting previously - so again not much extra cash up front.
It should lead to major cost reductions. You could essentially abolish Job Centre Plus and streamline much of HMRC. Job centres should be about helping people find work because they want to rather than because they need to pretend they want to and need to attend meetings or they'll get sanctioned.
Done properly people should actually want to work anyway as the poverty trap the current benefits system creates would be abolished.
A surgeon would be earning well more than the UBI, that is ridiculous. In fact done properly every single person who works would be earning more than the UBI, the UBI would be the floor not the ceiling that benefits currently create.
It is your maths that is flawed I am afraid. The tax free threshold is 12500 or so about a 1000 a month. That saves you paying tax of 200£ a month so giving someone a 1000 a month is a net loss of 800£.
Yes if you abolished housing benefit and uc that would be a saving but lets face it that won't happen and if it did the howls of protest would be huge as people would be getting even less than they are now.
Going back to that family of four they currently get
1100 a month uc 1000 a month housing benefit about 150£ a month reduction on council tax
That is before we add in free school meals, prescriptions etc.
You plan to replace this with 2X1000 ubi leaving them 250£ less well off
In addition you are giving every basic rate tax payer a boost to their pay of 1000£ a month in pay while charging them 200£ more tax
In the case of the employed, the UBI would be *entirely* taxed off their wages and given back to them by the government.
At this point, people then say, why bother?
The point is to make the system utterly dependable. You get your UBI each month, no matter what. Lose your job, UBI etc etc
No forms to fill out, no claims to be made.
This has the important effect of reducing the obstacles to getting a job from unemployment - at the moment, there is a whole dance about signing off benefits etc.
In a UBI system, get some work, get some money, pay some tax. Your UBI cannot be effected.
Well see there is the issue you then have, if for example UBI is 1000 a month and if you work it all gets clawed back....
Working a 37.5 hour week full time means you are working 1950 hours a year. A person working currently and earning 18000 a year loses 12000 automatically to claw back ubi plus the tax to cover the rest of govenment expenditure is probably working 1950 hours a year for 3 to 4000 pounds. A mere 70 to 80 pounds extra in their pocket a week. How many will just say not worth it?
Which is the old, old argument against benefits.....
Yet people do jobs where they get *less* than benefits - rare, but it does happen
Very common are jobs which only make marginally more than benefits. Tons of those. No shortage of applicants...
Go through the numbers I posted and point out where I was mistaken about the extra costs. I already pointed out your error in thinking the tax free allowance gives you a reduction of tax of that amount when it actually equates to saving you paying basic rate tax on the first 1042 a month you earn which at 20% is about 200 a month not a thousand
There's a very interesting debate on whether you can be malnourished and still be fat - I think you probably can. This is an extreme case, but we do live in a culture that sees being fat as a sign of overnutrition rather than poor nutrition, or perhaps we should call it 'misnutrition'. We find it hard to square being fat with being too poor to eat well, but actually the two are not mutually exclusive at all.
Malnourished absolutely doesn't just mean underweight. The quality of food, including vitamins, minerals, balanced diet is key. Quite a few African countries have overwieght populations of malnourished people.
Famously Japanese sailors were constantly stricken by Beriberi despite being "well fed" due to lack of correct nutrients. It is trivial to be fat and malnourished.
so the extra 310,000,000,000 is getting close to 150% increase on the rates of income tax to stand still for 1000 a month ubi which is less than people currently get on uc. Raise the ubi amount and it only gets worse.
As I mentioned below - the people with jobs get nothing. In effect their tax free allowance is paid to them by the government in a true UBI. Hence no net change for the employed (who earn more than the tax free allowance).
As I pointed out a 12500 tax free allowance isnt 12500 in your pocket its the tax you would of paid on it which is about 200 a month
The tax system would be changed in a UBI to move the tax free allowance from the pay packet to the UBI system. Tax free allowance would effectively cease to exist.
So, will you be willing to praise a successful vaccination programme in the UK?
Thought not
A great many Johnson Government detractors have given credit where it is due, particularly over vaccine provision. I don't think it means they are obliged to give a free pass to earlier incompetence, much of which may have cost lives.
Nor should anyone. But acknowledgement of good and bad when they occur lends weight to pointing out future good and bad situations.
Sometimes, people are in deep poverty not because they are lazy, but because something is causing them to function at a level below the average capacity. It might be acute or it might be chronic.
All of the well-meaning discussions below about nice rational choice and careful planning really fail to take that basic fact into account. What they are all doing is saying "you won't starve if you make just a little more effort". Nobody can really deny that this is true, but certain people at certain times, for reasons way beyond their control, cannot.
If your potted theory of how to live on tuppence and spare string doesn't take into account the mental and physical capacity of the person doing it, it's not worth the paper that you really shouldn't bother to write it on.
And I don't want to hear about people feigning illness either. I acknowledge that such things go on but unless you can find a way to sort those people from the genuinely needy, WITHOUT it further eroding the limited capacity of those needful people, you're just making it worse for the genuine cases.
It's all very easy when you're mentally and physically well to make a carefully tabulated budget and choose coolly and rationally at the supermarket. But if your bipolar disorder has you on a manic cycle and you haven't slept because the neighbour's dog barks all night, and your kid is being bullied because of his scruffy trainers, and the landlord hasn't fixed the mould that keeps growing up the walls, and you're frightened and angry and feeling hopeless, your decision making gets so badly fucked up.
So please take that into account whilst you discuss your solutions.
Good post, and all of that is perfectly true.
The best answer to poverty is to get more people into work. That means more people in paid work, ending the couples penalty, helping families stay together, and having better childcare provision - childcare being the biggest driver of poverty due to the absolute care costs and the penalty of needing to abstain from work to provide childcare.
The coalition made great steps in getting lots of people into work onwards, such that we got to a near 50-year low on unemployment, and we shouldn't forget that or go back to how things were pre-2010.
If we are to revisit welfare provision in this country I think it should be focussed on better childcare provision (it's one of the most expensive in the world here) and supporting those with mental and physical health problems with remote and home working.
In short, support to work - which is good for everyone: parents and children.
Work only helps when the work actually pays the bills. Milliband may have lost in 2015 but his "squeezed middle" analysis, hit by the high cost of living, was absolutely valid. Too many jobs pay too poorly hence so many people in working poverty having to rely on supplementary benefits.
Good point. If you work full-time (35 hours a week) at minimum wage for 225 days a year (less weekends, holidays, statutory holidays and couple of sickness) at £8.21 p/h you should be able to pull in at least £1,050-£1,100 a month though (gross).
£1,000 a month is well over double UC and only screws you if you have very high transport/housing or childcare costs. FWIW, I've done it on less when I first bought my own house with a heavy (5.89%!) interest only mortgage, and I couldn't afford to go out or run my car very much.
So I don't think it's far off. I'd prefer it to be free of NI and tax, with a positive pensions contribution, and having much better funded childcare. Also, employers taking care of their employees and helping with providing lunch and social facilities. Better apprenticeships and adult training, and the on-the-job career development.
Then, I think we're getting somewhere.
Its only double uc when you forget that people on uc get housing benefit etc
Can anyone explain reasonably briefly what this is about? It seems to have been allegations that recipients of child welfare benefits have been prosecuted for fraud on the back of a defective system, a bit like the Post office problem here but it is not easy to make out from the article which clearly assumes a lot of background knowledge.
I think you have accurately summarised the situation. For British readers perhaps the confusion arises from the alien concept of government ministers resigning over their incompetence.
One Minister resigning for a problem in their department sounds reasonable to me. The entire government standing down over a single issue sounds bonkers. Although it all starts to make sense once you realise there's an election in March anyway, and they were apparently facing a No Confidence motion next week. In practice, I would guess they will most likely stay in office till the election, given how long it took for them to form the coalition in the first place.
Clearly he misses out the fact - cheap food = full of sugar and other crap to keep costs down.
The only difference between now and the 19th century is that then cheap food was poor quality and often featured things that weren't food (so you were under weight). Now it contains calories that aren't easy to burn off.
If you were a one parent family with say two kids and struggling financially this would seem a cheap way to feed the family for three or four dinners
500g of pasta, one tin of tomatoes and 1kg of chicken is not going to provide 12 dinners, unless they are all for Tiny Tim. What planet are you on?
Two tins of tomatoes.
I am on planet normal - that could easily make one adult and two kids half a weeks dinners
It works out at about 300 calories per meal for 12 meals. An adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day and a child aged 6-12 needs 1600-2200. So 300 for your main meal of the day looks pretty inadequate. I shop and cook for a family of five and I can tell you that your meal would do us for about one dinner, maybe with a bit left over. Our kids are far from fat (in fact most clothes don't fit them because they are too skinny) so we are definitely not overfeeding them.
Fair enough, let them buy double what I suggested - three or four meals for less than £12
I think there is general agreement that people can just about afford to eat a decent diet on benefits as long as they don't buy anything else. Unfortunately people also need to pay for clothes, transport, heating, etc. Some people compound their difficulties by not knowing how to cook (a widespread problem not only affecting the poor; not helped by schools no longer teaching home economics). Some people working long hours and shifts don't have time to cook. Some people don't have the equipment. I just find all this smug wisdom being dispensed by well off people a bit too Marie Antoinette* for my liking. (*I know she was misquoted).
How much do you think is required to feed a family of four 2 children 2 adults per week? As a pound figure?
About £150. Less if the kids are on free school meals. The Food Standards Agency have a report on the cost of a healthy food basket in Northern Ireland in 2018, they have it as £159 for a family of 4 with 2 school age kids. Presumably it is higher in 2020 with inflation, but NI may have higher costs than GB. I think we probably spend about £200/week on food for a family of 5. We don't shop at the cheapest supermarket and get organic meat and milk, but we cook everything from scratch which saves money and don't normally buy any alcohol.
And on uc the least that family would get per week is 229£ the most 253£
Add in 100£ per month for gas and electric 25£ per month for internet two sim only deals for the adults 10£ a month comes to another 33£ a week
So using your figure we come to 183£ leaving them between 46£ a week and 70£ a week
Aha you say they may need to pay some towards rent well lets add in another 100£ a month for rent and 60 for council tax thats another 34£ a week
Still leaves a net of 12£ a week to 36£ a week
Clothes and bus fares. Car needs a repair. Haircuts. Furniture and appliances need to be replaced. School trips. Curtains and bedding. This all assumes your benefits are paid on time, you don't get sanctioned unfairly, you're not subject to the bedroom tax etc.
The last sentence brings us back to UBI...
I'd like to see fair minimum determined by focus group and explicit listing of what, on average, should be covered as basic (what speed of broadband etc etc) year by year. And I'd mandate from government that contract exits are made available for discretionary services for change of circumstances (e.g. get sacked, you may bin Sky Sports: when you so wish)
That I would expect it to almost always work out at pretty much the 60% of median relative poverty line that the right love to whinge about is besides the point. The fact the right like to whinge about it is reason enough to sink government money into making an explicit calculation.
And UBI, plus a restructuring of tax to make good the difference (e.g. if you take UBI, you go on higher tax rates for a period of time, your call. And 'something, something' for the self employed), yes please. And btw, state pension, child benefit, student financing - yes, ultimately, they're going to be UBI too.
The contract exits seem a good idea or for that matter contract breaks. However what did I not list that you consider necessary?
Both adults have a mobile, they have internet access, they have gas and electric,they have food a roof some money left over for discretionary spending on clothes etc. That is by its very definition a safety net. The purpose of benefits is to provide support when you fall on hard times not to provide a living.
UBI is a pipedream that will never happen because it would cost too much. Merely giving every adult in britain 1000£ a month ubi would cost in the region of 480 billion and 1000 a month would not be enough to live on it would probably need to be double that assuming housing benefit and other benefits would be axed. Add in the NHS, defence,schools etc and you are pretty much looking at the entirety of GDP going to the government coffers. When that happens no one is getting enough extra from working to bother. Why would a surgeon do a hugely stressful job when he is not getting a lot more than the ubi recipient
Your maths is completely flawed because you're assuming that it would be new money.
If the UBI replaces the tax-free threshold then it is effectively cost-neutral for anyone over the tax-free threshold. Or is not much extra cash for those above the tax-free threshold.
For anyone on benefits it would replace or supplement the benefits they were getting previously - so again not much extra cash up front.
It should lead to major cost reductions. You could essentially abolish Job Centre Plus and streamline much of HMRC. Job centres should be about helping people find work because they want to rather than because they need to pretend they want to and need to attend meetings or they'll get sanctioned.
Done properly people should actually want to work anyway as the poverty trap the current benefits system creates would be abolished.
A surgeon would be earning well more than the UBI, that is ridiculous. In fact done properly every single person who works would be earning more than the UBI, the UBI would be the floor not the ceiling that benefits currently create.
It is your maths that is flawed I am afraid. The tax free threshold is 12500 or so about a 1000 a month. That saves you paying tax of 200£ a month so giving someone a 1000 a month is a net loss of 800£.
Yes if you abolished housing benefit and uc that would be a saving but lets face it that won't happen and if it did the howls of protest would be huge as people would be getting even less than they are now.
Going back to that family of four they currently get
1100 a month uc 1000 a month housing benefit about 150£ a month reduction on council tax
That is before we add in free school meals, prescriptions etc.
You plan to replace this with 2X1000 ubi leaving them 250£ less well off
In addition you are giving every basic rate tax payer a boost to their pay of 1000£ a month in pay while charging them 200£ more tax
In the case of the employed, the UBI would be *entirely* taxed off their wages and given back to them by the government.
At this point, people then say, why bother?
The point is to make the system utterly dependable. You get your UBI each month, no matter what. Lose your job, UBI etc etc
No forms to fill out, no claims to be made.
This has the important effect of reducing the obstacles to getting a job from unemployment - at the moment, there is a whole dance about signing off benefits etc.
In a UBI system, get some work, get some money, pay some tax. Your UBI cannot be effected.
Well see there is the issue you then have, if for example UBI is 1000 a month and if you work it all gets clawed back....
Working a 37.5 hour week full time means you are working 1950 hours a year. A person working currently and earning 18000 a year loses 12000 automatically to claw back ubi plus the tax to cover the rest of govenment expenditure is probably working 1950 hours a year for 3 to 4000 pounds. A mere 70 to 80 pounds extra in their pocket a week. How many will just say not worth it?
Which is the old, old argument against benefits.....
Yet people do jobs where they get *less* than benefits - rare, but it does happen
Very common are jobs which only make marginally more than benefits. Tons of those. No shortage of applicants...
Go through the numbers I posted and point out where I was mistaken about the extra costs. I already pointed out your error in thinking the tax free allowance gives you a reduction of tax of that amount when it actually equates to saving you paying basic rate tax on the first 1042 a month you earn which at 20% is about 200 a month not a thousand
The tax free rate has a knock-on effect on the higher tax rate take too, although I doubt it's a massive amount.
Note: England only figures (as per @Foss's edited post, doh!)
PHW data also shows 126,375 people have now received a first dose of the coronavirus vaccine as at 10pm on Thursday, January 14. That is an increase of 13,402 on the figure reported the day before.
There are 129 people who have received both of their vaccine jabs, up from 121 on Thursday.
so the extra 310,000,000,000 is getting close to 150% increase on the rates of income tax to stand still for 1000 a month ubi which is less than people currently get on uc. Raise the ubi amount and it only gets worse.
As I mentioned below - the people with jobs get nothing. In effect their tax free allowance is paid to them by the government in a true UBI. Hence no net change for the employed (who earn more than the tax free allowance).
As I pointed out a 12500 tax free allowance isnt 12500 in your pocket its the tax you would of paid on it which is about 200 a month
The tax system would be changed in a UBI to move the tax free allowance from the pay packet to the UBI system. Tax free allowance would effectively cease to exist.
Which part are you failing to understand 12500 tax free allowance is not 1000 pounds in your pocket it is 200£ per month
The reproduction number, or R value, of coronavirus transmission in the UK is between 1.2 and 1.3, the Government Office for Science and the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) has said.
Not what ZOE is suggesting (or is the Sage estimate more lagging?)
Worth noting that, as relieved as everyone will be with a successful vaccine and suppression of Covid-19, it won't win the next election for Boris. We'll move straight on to the (nasty) economic and social fall-out.
If the Tories can show by GE2024 that Brexit has been smoothed and normalised, that they're doing the right things by their voters, are on the road to full recovery and with a plan (which won't be finished by then) to get there, with people still unsure of Labour, they will win.
But, they could screw it up (majorly), Starmer could get the whole Labour movement singing in unison and peeling off soft Tories, and there's the massive elephant in the room of the Union too.
It's an open goal for both, IMHO, but right now I'd say Labour is simply too far behind and damaged to be on an equal footing, so the Tories have definitely got the ball.
Sometimes, people are in deep poverty not because they are lazy, but because something is causing them to function at a level below the average capacity. It might be acute or it might be chronic.
All of the well-meaning discussions below about nice rational choice and careful planning really fail to take that basic fact into account. What they are all doing is saying "you won't starve if you make just a little more effort". Nobody can really deny that this is true, but certain people at certain times, for reasons way beyond their control, cannot.
If your potted theory of how to live on tuppence and spare string doesn't take into account the mental and physical capacity of the person doing it, it's not worth the paper that you really shouldn't bother to write it on.
And I don't want to hear about people feigning illness either. I acknowledge that such things go on but unless you can find a way to sort those people from the genuinely needy, WITHOUT it further eroding the limited capacity of those needful people, you're just making it worse for the genuine cases.
It's all very easy when you're mentally and physically well to make a carefully tabulated budget and choose coolly and rationally at the supermarket. But if your bipolar disorder has you on a manic cycle and you haven't slept because the neighbour's dog barks all night, and your kid is being bullied because of his scruffy trainers, and the landlord hasn't fixed the mould that keeps growing up the walls, and you're frightened and angry and feeling hopeless, your decision making gets so badly fucked up.
So please take that into account whilst you discuss your solutions.
Good post, and all of that is perfectly true.
The best answer to poverty is to get more people into work. That means more people in paid work, ending the couples penalty, helping families stay together, and having better childcare provision - childcare being the biggest driver of poverty due to the absolute care costs and the penalty of needing to abstain from work to provide childcare.
The coalition made great steps in getting lots of people into work onwards, such that we got to a near 50-year low on unemployment, and we shouldn't forget that or go back to how things were pre-2010.
If we are to revisit welfare provision in this country I think it should be focussed on better childcare provision (it's one of the most expensive in the world here) and supporting those with mental and physical health problems with remote and home working.
In short, support to work - which is good for everyone: parents and children.
Work only helps when the work actually pays the bills. Milliband may have lost in 2015 but his "squeezed middle" analysis, hit by the high cost of living, was absolutely valid. Too many jobs pay too poorly hence so many people in working poverty having to rely on supplementary benefits.
Good point. If you work full-time (35 hours a week) at minimum wage for 225 days a year (less weekends, holidays, statutory holidays and couple of sickness) at £8.21 p/h you should be able to pull in at least £1,050-£1,100 a month though (gross).
£1,000 a month is well over double UC and only screws you if you have very high transport/housing or childcare costs. FWIW, I've done it on less when I first bought my own house with a heavy (5.89%!) interest only mortgage, and I couldn't afford to go out or run my car very much.
So I don't think it's far off. I'd prefer it to be free of NI and tax, with a positive pensions contribution, and having much better funded childcare. Also, employers taking care of their employees and helping with providing lunch and social facilities. Better apprenticeships and adult training, and the on-the-job career development.
Then, I think we're getting somewhere.
Its only double uc when you forget that people on uc get housing benefit etc
True, but not very much of it and for some pretty unappealing housing.
If you team up with someone to rent a two-bed flat, or one-bed flat in a couple, you can get something quite nice for £500 pcm in most places.
About the only thing he is not too keen on is cinnamon.
The only things my pair won't eat is lead shot and mushrooms.
My sister's dog nicked a piece of fruit cake on Christmas Day. Having worked at a vets she knew that dried fruit could be poisonous to dogs if consumed above a certain quantity, so she cut and dismantled a similar portion of the cake, and carefully counted how many raisins it contained.
Having then satisfied herself that this was probably below the lethal quantity, she turned around to discover that the dog had eaten the rest of the cake.
And? (He asked, with some trepidation....)
Sister decided she had no option but a trip to the vets (on Christmas Day); hence the trepidation was in the resulting bill. The dog was most put out, but lived.
so the extra 310,000,000,000 is getting close to 150% increase on the rates of income tax to stand still for 1000 a month ubi which is less than people currently get on uc. Raise the ubi amount and it only gets worse.
I don't quite understand how it can be that short. If you set the rate of UBI at the same as UC and raised tax on ALL income you could make something that had more or less the same effect as the current tax rates but without all the daft marginal tax holes that people fall in to. Everyone has the same marginal rate.
Say, £1000 / month and a flat rate of 50% on all income. What would that look like? Or would it need to be a flat rate of 60%?
I thought that there were reports just yesterday saying that the vaccine in Israel did massively reduce the transmission of the virus?
That would be welcome but we still don't know how long protection from the virus lasts? Will we need to vaccinate everyone again in the late summer/autumn or will it get us through to this time next year?
That seems like less of a worry to be honest. If regular vaccinations are required I see no reason why that wouldn't happen.
With the mRNA technology (especially if the Imperial ideas for room temperature storage work out), we should be seeing faster change cycles for new vaccines.
I would strongly suspect, go forward, that the annual flu vaccine campaign gets expanded to cover most people and it will be more a matter of "What do we target in the national vaccine campaigns, this year?"
That's a rather grim view of the future. Why exactly should it be that humankind in the 21st century are at the mercy of infectious diseases flying about in a way that our ancestors were not? I don't subscribe to it.
This isn't correct, it's simply that we never had the resources to deal with disease as we do today. And Covid has acted as a catalyst in all this. It's probably where we'd have ended up in ~ 2050 or so without Covid coming along and giving rocket boosters to global antiviral research.
Comments
£1,000 a month is well over double UC and only screws you if you have very high transport/housing or childcare costs. FWIW, I've done it on less when I first bought my own house with a heavy (5.89%!) interest only mortgage, and I couldn't afford to go out or run my car very much.
So I don't think it's far off. I'd prefer it to be free of NI and tax, with a positive pensions contribution, and having much better funded childcare. Also, employers taking care of their employees and helping with providing lunch and social facilities. Better apprenticeships and adult training, and the on-the-job career development.
Then, I think we're getting somewhere.
https://twitter.com/CrimeLdn/status/1350062286774394881?s=19
There are 129 people who have received both of their vaccine jabs, up from 121 on Thursday.
NEW THREAD
https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/11/26/hatchings-matchings-and-dispatchings/
Though the real figures look substantially worse than my cautious estimates.
If the Tories can show by GE2024 that Brexit has been smoothed and normalised, that they're doing the right things by their voters, are on the road to full recovery and with a plan (which won't be finished by then) to get there, with people still unsure of Labour, they will win.
But, they could screw it up (majorly), Starmer could get the whole Labour movement singing in unison and peeling off soft Tories, and there's the massive elephant in the room of the Union too.
It's an open goal for both, IMHO, but right now I'd say Labour is simply too far behind and damaged to be on an equal footing, so the Tories have definitely got the ball.
If you team up with someone to rent a two-bed flat, or one-bed flat in a couple, you can get something quite nice for £500 pcm in most places.
Say, £1000 / month and a flat rate of 50% on all income. What would that look like? Or would it need to be a flat rate of 60%?
It's probably where we'd have ended up in ~ 2050 or so without Covid coming along and giving rocket boosters to global antiviral research.