DM: Woman spends £3k of benefit money on Xmas

[Joshy]

Always will I'm afraid. Vouchers will always be easily converted to cash. Lets take food vouchers for example. I'm an entrepreneur, I sell the customer say sugar using the food vouchers and then buy the sugar back at a reduced price. Benefit recipient gets cash and I make a margin. Unless you're going to start making it illegal for benefit recipients to sell stuff, this will happen. You may as well put the cash in the hands of the benefit recipient than me the entrepreneur.

But the fact remains clear that it is harder to exchange Food vouchers for Xboxs/Apple products/drugs than it is to exchange cash for such items. The harder it is for these people to waste their money on junk the better.

Of course you're going to have people who are going to fiddle the system. That doesn't mean you should make it easy and just give them the cash in hand.

The fact is, you can't compare situations to single adults. Single adults on benefits get pittance.

I didn't and I know.

This quite simply is empirically false. Childhood income has a bearing on life outcomes (that's not to say the marginal returns from having more generous benefits don't decline). Where studies tell us, society is failing is in education.

And growing up in an environment where mummy doesn't work but yet is able to live a perfectly good and relativity prosperous life is really going to inspire a fantastic work ethic into these kids.

I don't buy the education nonsense either. If you want to work/learn you can. No ifs, No buts.

The problem is that so many people don't want to. Why work when you can knock up a bird and get more money than you would working an entry level job for minimum wage?

The benefit system can encourage large families. However, it also benefits people. There is a cost benefit analysis to perform here, and the causation between benefits -> large families has been shown to be weak. Other factors more easily explain large families.

Do you not agree that the current system makes it far too easy for people to "decide" to have these large families?

I understand that the cases highlighted in the Daily Mail are usually one offs, but even then on the whole the benefit system is a bit of a mess.

 

[Fr0dders]

Thing is vouchers won't work.

They will just get sold for money on the black market instead.

 

[Morba]

Hmmm.

We are and we aren't.

We are funding people to do all sorts of stuff with benefits no doubt, from illegitimate claims to legitmate claims that go on things like drugs and alcohol etc. The rest of the people will genuinely use it as intended.

You either do, or do not, accept that subsistance needs to be paid for those out of unemployment from the state.

If you do and payment is made, your commitment as a society or state is over. You are then down to the claiments personal priorities, which isn't a case for direct involvement [citation - level/can of worms]

What they in effect do with the money is trivial, society has met the basic requirements.

Should they want to secure a loan against future payments, and do so legally, to help themself in whatever situation is of no real concern to myself.

If you don't think the state should provide aid, then well I can see where this thinking comes from.

I don't necessarily think that state aid should be only money, but the practicalities of changing it to something like a voucher system or soup kitchen scheme also has its own benefits and pitfalls.

Not least upon cost.

This is all a lot of scope and focus on a very small minority in this country though, it's a shame that the tax dodgers who arguably cost the UK far more are let off in such an easy manner.

Although, I'll stop before my socialist green shoots start to sprout up in yet another thread..

I've purposely ignored most of what the article was about because, as others have said, she gets what she gets and can do what she wants with it. However, to allow a loan based on payment from benefits is too much imo. She is legally allowed to get into debt that we, the tax payer, pay off for her.
I cannot see how that is even thought of as ok tbh.

 

[Psycho Sonny]

i am afraid there is.
my sister is a single parent and on benefits.
she also got a loan of a doorstep loan company.
she borrowes £300 and had to pay £20 a week for 32 weeks ( WTF £640)
i couldn't believe it,
there should be a law against it, as companies like shopacheck or provident are preying on the weak

maybe you should teach your sister some maths, its not the companies fault your sister signed up for the loan now is it? oh i forgot she was held at gunpoint and told to sign

 

[Morba]

Yes, and why are you shocked, its very very simple.

Risk VS Reward, charge people with poor credit rating 30%-40% APR and if 20% of them dont pay back you still make profit.

I understand that, but that wasn't what my question was about.

 

[Psycho Sonny]

I've purposely ignored most of what the article was about because, as others have said, she gets what she gets and can do what she wants with it. However, to allow a loan based on payment from benefits is too much imo. She is legally allowed to get into debt that we, the tax payer, pay off for her.
I cannot see how that is even thought of as ok tbh.

tbh its probably better the loan company gets her money than her, by the looks of it she has to pay over double back.

therefore she actually loses quite a lot of her benefit and it goes towards paying the wages of people working for the loan company.

its a win win situation.

 

[Joshy]

Thing is vouchers won't work.

They will just get sold for money on the black market instead.

Hopefully for such a low cash value that it isn't worth them selling them.

 

[muon]

tbh its probably better the loan company gets her money than her, by the looks of it she has to pay over double back.

therefore she actually loses quite a lot of her benefit and it goes towards paying the wages of people working for the loan company.

its a win win situation.

Yeh, but a rubbish mother(in aspects relevant to this thread) like her screws over her children. Hopefully an experience of a frugal year prevents her doing this in the future. After all people do learn.

Hopefully for such a low cash value that it isn't worth them selling them.

Why would they be low cash value though. In the food voucher example I gave, the costs of the actual transaction are pretty low. The only cost is having to claim the cash value of vouchers by the retailers. If you deal with a large enough volume you might be able to offer pretty decent rates.

The US still does food vouchers. What are the black market rates there?

 

[Fr0dders]

Hopefully for such a low cash value that it isn't worth them selling them.

I've seen what drug users in a homeless hostel will trade and what for. You'd be surprised.

 

[Morba]

tbh its probably better the loan company gets her money than her, by the looks of it she has to pay over double back.

therefore she actually loses quite a lot of her benefit and it goes towards paying the wages of people working for the loan company.

its a win win situation.

Lol, good thinking

 

[Sinny]

2 Xbox's?

I think she's taking the Giraffe, but I'm not paying Tax so I can't be angry yet, I can only reserve it .

 

[Semiskimmed]

Do you honestly think the story is a one off, the benefits system is a disgrace.

indeed, i still cant get that story of a woman getting her boobs done with her 6 kids' benefit money..

 

[ProOrWhat]

This woman makes me sick.

 

[Roadkillv1]

the kid on the left looks like dobby

 

[ElectroBlaster]

Why do these people want to be in the paper? Its the same for that crusading prat jeremy kyle! He is like a massive pile of dog poo attracting flys. All manner of people go on that show and air everything to millions of people but why?

This lass could possibly get sanctioned and have to pay the money back and for what? 15seconds of fame in some rag and vented anger from people all over britain lol... it just dont understand why somebody would boast about being on the dole! crazy crazy world

 

[Amleto]

2 Xbox's?

I think she's taking the Giraffe, but I'm not paying Tax so I can't be angry yet, I can only reserve it .

taking the what?

 

[Danthus]

It should be "having a giraffe."

 

[ajf]

What confuses me with some of these cases is how the person concerned can avoid having to work for so long?!
As the article says she is obviously intelligent enough to get a job but appears to 'chooses' not to?
I thought ALL benefits were paid on the basis you had to find work where practical/possible?

I was made redundant 6 months ago so am claiming JSA and they really do lean on you to find work, as should be expected.

 

[Mr Jack]

So a woman is choosing to spend a ridiculous amount of her income (15-20%) on Christmas? So what.

1. If anyone else was willing to put that much of their income into a single day they can have a grand blowout too. It's a stupid thing to do though.

2. A goodly chunk of the benefits she's getting are child support benefits, which either don't depend on income (yet! The ConDems are coming...) or taper with income.

3. I love the way the article nicely skims over what this must mean for the rest of her year. You can't spend that much of your income on a single event without paying for it the rest of your time.

I thought ALL benefits were paid on the basis you had to find work where practical/possible?

Women with young children are exempted from that, IIRC.

 

[div0]

I thought ALL benefits were paid on the basis you had to find work where practical/possible?

I was made redundant 6 months ago so am claiming JSA and they really do lean on you to find work, as should be expected.

AFAIK only JSA is affected by your willingness to work, at least for single mothers. But as she's not claiming JSA, then she can chose not to work for as long as she likes.

The problem here is not the woman herself, as she's quite right - she shouldn't be in a situation where if she chooses to go back to work, it makes her worse off.

The system is at fault, but how can you fix it? Especially when children are involved.