Benefits...Again!

1246

Comments

  • mamba80
    mamba80 Posts: 5,032
    With our densely populated island, they ll be no real long term collapse in housing or land prices.
    again Vtech is absolutely right, aside from Spain and Ireland, its still a winner but that doesnt make buy to let good for our country does it? its a total disaster, a few get rich - secures their pensions, costs the rest of us a fortune and limits the supply of first time buy housing stock, meaning more hb, more demand, higher prices, higher rents an so it goes on.

    Where are their rent caps then Vtech ? HB is linked to avg regional rents but that doesnt really limit what landowners can charge (that is limited by the tenants ability to afford) and rents in real and actual terms are way higher.
    http://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2 ... ing-crisis
  • VTech
    VTech Posts: 4,736
    mamba80 wrote:
    With our densely populated island, they ll be no real long term collapse in housing or land prices.
    again Vtech is absolutely right, aside from Spain and Ireland, its still a winner but that doesnt make buy to let good for our country does it? its a total disaster, a few get rich - secures their pensions, costs the rest of us a fortune and limits the supply of first time buy housing stock, meaning more hb, more demand, higher prices, higher rents an so it goes on.

    Where are their rent caps then Vtech ? HB is linked to avg regional rents but that doesnt really limit what landowners can charge (that is limited by the tenants ability to afford) and rents in real and actual terms are way higher.
    http://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2 ... ing-crisis

    If your receiving DSS or income support you get free housing rent paid either to the landlord or direct to the tenant and then passed onto the landlord. This is capped based on rooms needed and other factors which I dont fully understand but it means that I can charge whatever rent I like but the government will pay only the amount set by the fair rent scheme.

    An example is a house In Bewdley, Worcestershire where a particular house holds an average rental of £950-£1200 per month yet the DSS will pay only £316 in rental so its not all about the landlord being able to make a killing. The mortgage is far greater than the monthly income.
    I am in favour of this, the state shouldn't pay for people to get rich and it isn't right that tenants should pay through the nose but it is the way it is. I cant think of a way around this as once it started there was never going to be a way to stop it. They already charge 40% tax on second homes so charge more ? Who knows.
    Living MY dream.
  • 964Cup wrote:
    The government focus on benefits because there's not much else they can do. There's a limit (pace Mr Keynes) to what they can do to encourage genuine growth; we have an ageing population with ever greater health expectations but cutting NHS funding or pensions would be political suicide. Laffer et al have shown that after a certain point increasing the tax rate reduces the amount of tax collected, but in any case ultimately there simply isn't enough potential tax revenue to carry on funding the present level of state expenditure, That's not to say that they shouldn't be chasing tax evaders; of course they should. Unless, though, you support communist-style forced redistribution of capital wealth, the only way to narrow the wealth gap is for more people to become (more) productive.
    This (in bold) is the elephant in the room that no-one dare speak of. We know the elderly as a proportion of the population is set to grow and are already by far the greatest cost to welfare and health and yet little or nothing is being done to curb their entitlement.

    Many of the arguments defending the elderly's entitlements are weak; they've worked hard all their lives (not everyone has worked and not many worked hard), they've paid their contributions (into a Ponzi scheme where all their original money has long been spent), means testing of universal benefits for the elderly is costly (yet they do it for most other benefits).

    Maybe when we look at entitlement for the elderly there needs to be an element of cost/benefit analysis as to why they should stay alive. Supporting and treating someone to stay alive to 100 may be laudable but if 40 of those years are lived in sickness without any economic benefit it's a net cost to society by both keeping non-productive people alive whilst limiting benefits and health treatment to people who could be economically active.
  • verylonglegs
    verylonglegs Posts: 3,949
    VTech wrote:

    An example is a house In Bewdley, Worcestershire where a particular house holds an average rental of £950-£1200 per month yet the DSS will pay only £316 in rental so its not all about the landlord being able to make a killing. The mortgage is far greater than the monthly income.
    I am in favour of this, the state shouldn't pay for people to get rich and it isn't right that tenants should pay through the nose but it is the way it is. I cant think of a way around this as once it started there was never going to be a way to stop it. They already charge 40% tax on second homes so charge more ? Who knows.

    Personally I don't think buy to let with a mortgage should be allowed, housing as an investment should only be if it can be bought in full imo.
  • daviesee
    daviesee Posts: 6,386
    964Cup wrote:
    The government focus on benefits because there's not much else they can do. There's a limit (pace Mr Keynes) to what they can do to encourage genuine growth; we have an ageing population with ever greater health expectations but cutting NHS funding or pensions would be political suicide. Laffer et al have shown that after a certain point increasing the tax rate reduces the amount of tax collected, but in any case ultimately there simply isn't enough potential tax revenue to carry on funding the present level of state expenditure, That's not to say that they shouldn't be chasing tax evaders; of course they should. Unless, though, you support communist-style forced redistribution of capital wealth, the only way to narrow the wealth gap is for more people to become (more) productive.
    This (in bold) is the elephant in the room that no-one dare speak of. We know the elderly as a proportion of the population is set to grow and are already by far the greatest cost to welfare and health and yet little or nothing is being done to curb their entitlement.

    Many of the arguments defending the elderly's entitlements are weak; they've worked hard all their lives (not everyone has worked and not many worked hard), they've paid their contributions (into a Ponzi scheme where all their original money has long been spent), means testing of universal benefits for the elderly is costly (yet they do it for most other benefits).

    Maybe when we look at entitlement for the elderly there needs to be an element of cost/benefit analysis as to why they should stay alive. Supporting and treating someone to stay alive to 100 may be laudable but if 40 of those years are lived in sickness without any economic benefit it's a net cost to society by both keeping non-productive people alive whilst limiting benefits and health treatment to people who could be economically active.
    They shoot horses, dont they? :wink:
    Not that I have an answer, but that seems harsh.
    None of the above should be taken seriously, and certainly not personally.
  • daviesee
    daviesee Posts: 6,386
    Personally I don't think buy to let with a mortgage should be allowed, housing as an investment should only be if it can be bought in full imo.
    That way only the rich can get richer. There is no way to jump on the bandwagon.
    None of the above should be taken seriously, and certainly not personally.
  • VTech
    VTech Posts: 4,736
    @BillyMansell, This is key, I mentioned it elsewhere and was slated but people live to long. We are meant to live for 38 years, have done for millenniums then along comes penicillin and the world changes.
    Im in a predicament because I feel we shouldn't throw endless money at sick when the inevitable is that they will or would be better of dying as my mother is ill right now but reality is that people should and must die. overcrowding is a serious issue and apparently we are only 50 years away from the worlds biggest catastrophe of not being able to feed humans on the planet or not being able to produce enough food.

    @verylonglegs, wouldn't that be the same for people who buy or place deposits for their kids ? or even other schemes ?
    Council right to buy started this at a time when people were happy to rent but once it started it was never going to stop.
    Living MY dream.
  • seanoconn
    seanoconn Posts: 11,318
    VTech wrote:
    @BillyMansell, This is key, I mentioned it elsewhere and was slated but people live to long. We are meant to live for 38 years, have done for millenniums then along comes penicillin and the world changes.
    Im in a predicament because I feel we shouldn't throw endless money at sick when the inevitable is that they will or would be better of dying as my mother is ill right now but reality is that people should and must die. overcrowding is a serious issue and apparently we are only 50 years away from the worlds biggest catastrophe of not being able to feed humans on the planet or not being able to produce enough food.

    @verylonglegs, wouldn't that be the same for people who buy or place deposits for their kids ? or even other schemes ?
    Council right to buy started this at a time when people were happy to rent but once it started it was never going to stop.
    The global population is spiralling out of control and will need addressing. Not by means of a cull but by birth control, limiting the number of people born.

    Hopefully I won't live to see a society capable of discarding the sick, or those incapable of being productive for the economy. And certainly not when there's easily enough money in the world to care for these people.
    Pinno, מלך אידיוט וחרא מכונאי
  • morstar
    morstar Posts: 6,190
    Ouch!
    Logans Run actually being proposed as a solution.

    I'm all for euthanasia for terminal illness / permanent vegatative state but we're wandering into eugenics here.

    Aged population is a big issue, housing is a big issue and ultimately democracies biggest failing is that it encourages short termism. Who will make those really uncomfortable decisions that WILL make them unelectable? Absolutely nobody.

    Housing, owning second homes has to be legislated against. Simply has to for the greater good. There is a housing shortage that cannot be resolved, ergo, it cannot remain acceptable to own multiple properties. Not going to happen...

    Retirement, my mum and dad have had a great retirement! I am very jealous of what they have done with their time and for many reasons I will not replicate it. But aside from jealousy, what right do I have to stop working at 67 if I'm still in good health. I will hopefully be in a position to do much less work as I shouldn't be funding kids through school / UNI etc and the mortgage should be long paid by then. But I am quite open to the reality that many years of leisure do not await many/most of my generation. This needs to become policy driven as moving retirement age a year or two at a time isn't enough.

    Ironically, more elderly people working reduces the available jobs even further for younger folk though. So where do all the extra jobs come from? Surely we need to be more self reliant at a national level. I've no idea how we accomplish that in a globalised world but I don't see financial services as the future of Britain.
  • Mikey23
    Mikey23 Posts: 5,306
    Those Dutch mobile euthanasia squads are obviously the answer then... Bring it on baby
  • morstar wrote:
    Ouch!
    Logans Run actually being proposed as a solution.
    I was thinking Soyl.ent Green rather than Logan's Run. That way they'd prove more useful in death than in life.
  • Mikey23
    Mikey23 Posts: 5,306
    Why keep elderly, non productive people alive? I think that's me ...
  • Pross
    Pross Posts: 40,217
    seanoconn wrote:
    VTech wrote:
    @BillyMansell, This is key, I mentioned it elsewhere and was slated but people live to long. We are meant to live for 38 years, have done for millenniums then along comes penicillin and the world changes.
    Im in a predicament because I feel we shouldn't throw endless money at sick when the inevitable is that they will or would be better of dying as my mother is ill right now but reality is that people should and must die. overcrowding is a serious issue and apparently we are only 50 years away from the worlds biggest catastrophe of not being able to feed humans on the planet or not being able to produce enough food.

    @verylonglegs, wouldn't that be the same for people who buy or place deposits for their kids ? or even other schemes ?
    Council right to buy started this at a time when people were happy to rent but once it started it was never going to stop.
    The global population is spiralling out of control and will need addressing. Not by means of a cull but by birth control, limiting the number of people born.

    Hopefully I won't live to see a society capable of discarding the sick, or those incapable of being productive for the economy. And certainly not when there's easily enough money in the world to care for these people.

    The problem is, if you control birth you will eventually end up with too few people of working age to support those in retirement. There is an irony in the fact that we spend billions either directly on keeping people alive for a few extra years or on researching ways to prevent people from dying only to then have to spend even more money to support them being alive. Illness and death are natures way of controlling all populations but we are becoming to successful at fighting it. Obviously no-one is ever going to seriously consider a cull of the sick and elderly (or at least I hope not!) but maybe there'll come a point where it will be necessary to stop looking to prolong life beyond its natural course? I can't see any politician ever coming up with policies along those lines though!!
  • 964cup
    964cup Posts: 1,362
    I don't think euthanasia is anyone's serious suggestion.

    However, I think it's right to look at two things:

    1. What health expectations should we have, and of those, which should be state-funded? At what point should we be expected to live with our conditions (or, more controversially, not live)? Should we have cosmetic procedures on the NHS? Should we provide expensive and invasive treatments with limited effect on the long-term prognosis? When considering yourself, or your loved ones, I suspect that even five minutes' more life even at low quality is desirable; as a society, though, we have to factor in what we can actually afford.

    2. Pensions - especially state pensions - made sense when life expectancy was three score years and ten, and retirement was at 65. It's not hard to see that a working life of 47-49 years might fund a modest retirement income for five years. Now that we are all expected to stay in education until our mid-twenties, remain adultescent until our early thirties, retire at 60 and then live until 90, it's not hard to see that a 30-year working life will struggle to fund a further thirty years of golf and rose-growing. Never mind that pensions are actually funded by the present working population; this works less well when there are fewer of them than retirees.

    The welfare state made sense when people put up with anything that wasn't actually killing them, felt a moral compulsion to work for a living and had the decency to die shortly after they retired.

    Perhaps we need to remind ourselves what it was for, and reconstruct it to achieve the same goals in a modern context. We could use the Rules as our guide.

    Healthcare should stop you dying and keep you fit for work; you should also do your part. Otherwise, rule 5.

    Work should be preferable to benefits. So, work should be properly rewarded. Benefits, not so much. Rule 67.

    Retire when you can't work anymore - but really can't work, see rules above. Or when you can afford to stop, without needing the state to bail you out. Rules 55 and 83.
  • Mikey23
    Mikey23 Posts: 5,306
    Hands off matey... Retired at 60 with full pension and lump sum. Now work part time just because I enjoy it. Missus will do the same next year. Free prescriptions, bus pass and winter fuel payment. Mortgage paid and money in the bank. Now for those pesky roses...
  • daviesee
    daviesee Posts: 6,386
    Mikey23 wrote:
    Now for those pesky roses...
    Thought I smelt something. :wink:
    None of the above should be taken seriously, and certainly not personally.
  • fast as fupp
    fast as fupp Posts: 2,277
    if those rich folks paid their taxes we could afford reasonable retirements for all the old folks.

    but the rich types just want more and more of the cake.

    perhaps its them that need culling?
    'dont forget lads, one evertonian is worth twenty kopites'
  • seanoconn
    seanoconn Posts: 11,318
    Mikey23 wrote:
    Hands off matey... Retired at 60 with full pension and lump sum. Now work part time just because I enjoy it. Missus will do the same next year. Free prescriptions, bus pass and winter fuel payment. Mortgage paid and money in the bank. Now for those pesky roses...
    Leave the roses till March, then teach them a lesson with your secateurs.
    Pinno, מלך אידיוט וחרא מכונאי
  • daviesee
    daviesee Posts: 6,386
    seanoconn wrote:
    Mikey23 wrote:
    Hands off matey... Retired at 60 with full pension and lump sum. Now work part time just because I enjoy it. Missus will do the same next year. Free prescriptions, bus pass and winter fuel payment. Mortgage paid and money in the bank. Now for those pesky roses...
    Leave the roses till March, then teach them a lesson with your secateurs.
    I can think of other uses for those. :wink:
    None of the above should be taken seriously, and certainly not personally.
  • VTech
    VTech Posts: 4,736
    if those rich folks paid their taxes we could afford reasonable retirements for all the old folks.

    but the rich types just want more and more of the cake.

    perhaps its them that need culling?


    Who would then pay to support you into old age sir ?
    Living MY dream.
  • VTech
    VTech Posts: 4,736
    Pross wrote:
    seanoconn wrote:
    VTech wrote:
    @BillyMansell, This is key, I mentioned it elsewhere and was slated but people live to long. We are meant to live for 38 years, have done for millenniums then along comes penicillin and the world changes.
    Im in a predicament because I feel we shouldn't throw endless money at sick when the inevitable is that they will or would be better of dying as my mother is ill right now but reality is that people should and must die. overcrowding is a serious issue and apparently we are only 50 years away from the worlds biggest catastrophe of not being able to feed humans on the planet or not being able to produce enough food.

    @verylonglegs, wouldn't that be the same for people who buy or place deposits for their kids ? or even other schemes ?
    Council right to buy started this at a time when people were happy to rent but once it started it was never going to stop.
    The global population is spiralling out of control and will need addressing. Not by means of a cull but by birth control, limiting the number of people born.


    Hopefully I won't live to see a society capable of discarding the sick, or those incapable of being productive for the economy. And certainly not when there's easily enough money in the world to care for these people.

    The problem is, if you control birth you will eventually end up with too few people of working age to support those in retirement. There is an irony in the fact that we spend billions either directly on keeping people alive for a few extra years or on researching ways to prevent people from dying only to then have to spend even more money to support them being alive. Illness and death are natures way of controlling all populations but we are becoming to successful at fighting it. Obviously no-one is ever going to seriously consider a cull of the sick and elderly (or at least I hope not!) but maybe there'll come a point where it will be necessary to stop looking to prolong life beyond its natural course? I can't see any politician ever coming up with policies along those lines though!!


    ^This^

    Wait till they master the hip replacement, I have read that the human can live to a theoretical 250 years and that the first 150 year old has already been born !
    Living MY dream.
  • Mikey23
    Mikey23 Posts: 5,306
    It is tiresome to have to employ armies of accountants to keep up with all my tax avoidance schemes
  • fast as fupp
    fast as fupp Posts: 2,277
    VTech wrote:
    if those rich folks paid their taxes we could afford reasonable retirements for all the old folks.

    but the rich types just want more and more of the cake.

    perhaps its them that need culling?


    Who would then pay to support you into old age sir ?


    dont worry-ive got a gold plated pension.
    'dont forget lads, one evertonian is worth twenty kopites'
  • VTech
    VTech Posts: 4,736
    VTech wrote:
    if those rich folks paid their taxes we could afford reasonable retirements for all the old folks.

    but the rich types just want more and more of the cake.

    perhaps its them that need culling?


    Who would then pay to support you into old age sir ?


    dont worry-ive got a gold plated pension.


    I hope so, it certainly looks like its every man for himself !
    Living MY dream.
  • 964cup
    964cup Posts: 1,362
    if those rich folks paid their taxes we could afford reasonable retirements for all the old folks.

    but the rich types just want more and more of the cake.

    perhaps its them that need culling?
    B*ll*cks.

    Just look up the numbers. Tax 'em all you like; there isn't enough money. And remember, the more you tax them, the less they spend elsewhere. So you have to tax 'em some more to make up for it, and the vicious spiral continues.

    The state in the UK already accounts for more than 46% of GDP. However much "austerity" (=reduction in real-terms increase in spending) we have, it won't bridge the gap. Our real national debt, including so-called unfunded liabilities (=future pension costs), is somewhere between 200% (Treasury estimate) and 400% (IEA estimate) of GDP.

    We need fewer benefits and more workers. This means immigration, 'cos we aren't breeding (UK birth rate = 1.98, which is below "replacement rate"). Which means, ironically, that the kind of older white person who fulminates about 'ruddy immigrants' is complaining about the only possible source of future tax revenues to pay his pension. Ha bloody ha.
  • morstar
    morstar Posts: 6,190
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24553611

    Apolgies for resurrecting this again but the above is interesting context to the topic.
  • daviesee
    daviesee Posts: 6,386
    Can somebody please define poverty in this context.

    I see places around the world where genuine poverty is obvious. Less so here.
    I dont doubt that poverty exists here, just not to the extent made out in that report.
    None of the above should be taken seriously, and certainly not personally.
  • Pross
    Pross Posts: 40,217
    Pretty sure it means only being able to afford the basic Sky package - no HD, multiroom, movies or sport. :shock: In extreme cases it's even no foreign holidays!!!
  • Mikey23
    Mikey23 Posts: 5,306
    And only one mobile phone contract for each member of the household...
  • Mikey23
    Mikey23 Posts: 5,306
    @d... 60% of median income is the "poverty line" ... Something like £256 pw I believe