Jump to content
House Price Crash Forum

Jobseekers Allowance - Unfair For Savers


dave

Recommended Posts

0
HOLA441
<snip from an earlier post>

The real scandal in this country is the 2.6 (2.7?) million people on 'incapacity' benefit.

Anyone else constantly stumbling across 'incapacitated' people in the street?

<ends>

I'm one of the millions of disabled people in the country and yes, people are stumbling over me in the streets. They are knocking me down in the streets, on the buses and just about every where. Because I look "normal" people assume that I am slow because I am either stupid, drunk or deliberately clumsy. If I am in a wheelchair people are quite happy to bump into me and obstruct me because it's unlikely I'll be able to stop them.

I think the point is that it is hard to believe that 1 in 10 or 1 in 12 people of working age in this country are incapacitated. Are that many people really that sick? This is not to say that there aren't many many people who are unable to work because of illness etc.

Sadly, at times I am even too weak to be able to verbally defend myself.

Hell is other people...

I think the scandal of the incapacity benefit is also a scandal but for different reasons. People who have the same disease as I, are not being treated or cured on the NHS. Therefore we have thousands of people who would love to work and love to be well, stuck on the scrapheap.

This is certainly very true. A friend of mine - 25 and more or less healthy, but is currently off work and cannot go back until he sees a specialist. Waiting time for initial appointment on the NHS 5 and a half months. He is sitting at home being completely unproductive and crawling up the wall. What a complete and utter waste of a human resource.

At one stage the govt influenced doctors to put older workers in areas of unemployment onto IB instead of adding them to the unemployment stats.

Which is probably why there are 2.7 million people on incap benefits...now after leaving these people to rot and not retrain, not support industry in their local areas them etc., they want to test them to see if they really are incapacitated. Bah! I don't begrudge these people getting incap benefits as they were incapacitated by the government.

Now back to the original point. IB is also means tested and my council means tests disabled people who ask for help. This means that young disabled people who are saving to buy a home (like me) are rejected in favour of providing care for elderly people who own houses.

Just to give you an example. My old landlord has an elderly non-working husband. They have put all their money into property and have assets including BTL. They also get free council care for the husband because they don't keep their savings in cash.

They just keep buying property.

I however, work and support myself. My savings for a home means that I don't get the care and I need. The more I need to spend on care the less I have for a home. I can't even cut my own toe-nails or bathe on a daily basis. The property rich landlord gets council care to do that and a paid carerr.

Yep. This goes for all government benefits. Always mean tested and the frugal and sensible who save are punished, whilst the wasters, spendthrifts, and property gamblers get the goodies. This is the sort of thing that makes me begrudge every penny I pay in tax. Recent governments seems to be encouraging people NOT to behave in what i would call a sensible manner. One great big moral hazard.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
  • Replies 54
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

1
HOLA442

<<My question: why should my taxes go to support yet another person that does't need support? >>

AND

<<This man IS financially secure wth £35K in the bank - it amazes me why the hell he needs to claim any financial benefit at all or has the gall to even think about claiming.>>

As someone above pointed out, presumably he has paid national insurance whilst employed. That is, I N S U R A N C E, not tax. You are saying that it is OK for the state to renage on promises made when national insurance contributions were brought in.

I don't think so, and I think many on here would agree. The workers have an insurance policy with a provider. That provider should not just be able to wriggle out of the contract when it suits them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2
HOLA443

Exactly - should my house contents insurer not pay out for my house being flooded because I have enough savings in the bank to pay for the loss and then give the money to someone who hasnt given them any money because otherwise that person would go without?

We dont have a choice about paying NI and it really sticks in your throat that you have to pay it with little chance of getting any benefit should you need it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3
HOLA444

I'd also like to add NI is a REALLY lot higher than income tax. (It is for employees anyway, I don't know about the self-employed.) The employers' NI contribution is 13% and the employees' NI contribution is 11%. So adding the two makes 24%, ie 4% more than the standard rate of income tax (OK I know the arithmetic is not QUITE right but it's near enough).

I think a lot of people are not fully aware of that employers' contribution, but if the employer did not have to pay it, there would be more money in the kitty for pay.

Another thing that galls me is access to NHS dentists. A lot of them are advertised as only taking benefit claimants and children. But we workers were promised NHS dental treatment as part of the national insurance scheme.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...
4
HOLA445

The difficulty with this argument is that NI is not insurance. It is simply an income tax. The NI fund as originally envisaged by Beveridge was supposed to be self-financing but it never was. The only true insurance type benefit - based simply on premiums paid - was unemployment benefit, which was scrapped by the Tories and replaced by JSA.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.




×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information