Have you heard of social mobility? - do you think moving costs nothing?.
Have you not considered that a student has less expenses & isn't protected by the minimum wage (which is why you see so many young people in restaurants/cafes).
Government Benifit Cap
- Thread starter TrixiBuG
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Have you not considered that a student has less expenses & isn't protected by the minimum wage (which is why you see so many young people in restaurants/cafes).
you do realise that none of those countries have a high enough % of gdp tax rate to support the government spending we have currently, dont you?
PHP:
Students are protected by minimum wage as I understand it, nigh on £5 ph for 18 to 20 year olds and £3.68 ph for under 18 with the exception of apprentices which is £2.65
£98 is mainly for people who have a disability that can work or looking for work, higher than that is for people who are severe disabled.
All the while, a living wage is around £8 in most places these days. Lovely.
Without a doubt, nmw is not an adequate wage.
The problem with upping national minimum wage is it'll likely just resulting in everything slowly becoming more expensive. What you need to do is deal with issues such as why are things so much more expensive? One of those things are because the Government have been supporting raising accommodation costs.
Average earner is on £26500 per year. In the coming year that's going to be £400 a week after tax. The fact you can sit on your bum and spit out a few sprogs, live in an expensive area, and net more the average, is frankly ridiculous.
Lets stop propping up the BTL market with free money and directly tax any accommodation you're not living in and we'll see things return to some type of sensible levels.
Theres no need for social housing, nor to throw money at the problem. Manipulate the market so rich folks can't sit on property and much of the problems will solve themselves.
Oh dear, Dolph, not another occasion where you simply haven't bothered to check your facts. This really is getting tiresome.
According to figures here from the Heritage Foundation (other figures differ but not in favour of your position) the UK takes 39% of GDP in tax. According to figures here public spending in the UK will be 43.1% of GDP in 12/13. That puts the costs behind Norway, Finland, France, Sweden, Denmark and Belgium. Also, I note as well that unless we're running a deficit we will be paying off debt each year instead of balancing the books.
(Oh, and as I noted earlier I'm not entirely opposed to cuts)
Also as an sside: why do your posts always include spurious open, and close, tags? php in this case.
Yes, and part of social mobility is the ability to move to somewhere better to get a job. I've benefitted a lot from it, or I'd be doing manual labour on a building site or similar.
So what is the solution? Force companies to provide jobs for those people living in areas rather than those people moving to find jobs and feeling sorry for themselves until the opportunity comes to them? But then again that does seem to be the excuse so many use for people who don't get far, there are always excuses (some legitimate, others not), its no surprise some people get all the "luck" and others get "none".
Why should a single non employed person have more expenses than a student? (Talking Long term unemployed here, not short term, between jobbers who have the leftovers of contracts etc.). NMW is not affected by whether you are a student or not, and considering a lot are mid 20s or older that's a rather weak argument. Either way minimum wage should be preferable to benefits.
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That's actually something I was wondering. What benefits exactly does an unemployed single person get? Then we can compare it to what others get.
So AFAIK they get housing benefit and don't have to pay council tax, alongside that they get JSA. Anything else? Do those long term unemployed have to pay utilities?
So AFAIK they get housing benefit and don't have to pay council tax, alongside that they get JSA. Anything else? Do those long term unemployed have to pay utilities?
And bam, you've just shown how you don't have a clue!
They do have to pay council tax and that pay rate is now set by individual councils
Not down here they don't. I've been on JSA for a time, and I was completely exempt from council tax (as are students).
Herne Bay, Canterbury, Margate e.t.c Have to pay though not all of it!
FoxEye, do you live with parents or on your own?
Saying UK tax isn't high because it's lower than other European neighbors is pretty meaningless considering how high tax rates are in Europe. Europe is a very small sample size, how about comparing tax levels to other countries in the world like the USA where some states have no VAT or state income tax?
If you have a salary of say £25k, you pay £5068.5 income tax, £1-2k council tax, and say an average of 15% vat on the remainder, that's nearly 40% tax! That's not even taking into account other special taxes, like insurance tax and stamp duty.
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The NMW for a start should apply to all workers & should be significantly higher - it's nowhere near a living wage.
The point about social mobility is that the government should support people who are trying to move to different parts of the UK to find work, currently it doesn't.
But even taking that into account we still have a jobs deficit.
I had to move myself for work, but not everybody has the opportunity, the job offer, the income or the savings/support to move (it wasn't cheap).
I can understand wanting to get people into productive work - really.. I really can - but then let's have a frank & honest evidence based discussion on the barriers to work & reasons behind long term unemployment (outside of simply calling them lazy & suggesting punitive measures which will most likely cost more in the long-term due to reduced social cohesion or increased crime).
Currently we get right wing ideological sound-bites to support changes to our welfare state - I'm sorry but that's not good enough - I want to see some evidence to back these assertions up, more so when they are likely to cause the opposite of the desired intention (if you take into account various studies on human behaviour).