Cheap foreign Labour

[Ifwecouldjust.......]

So get them off benefits and in to work.

So 5 kids requiring Childcare @ £200 per week each = £1000 after tax and NI so earnings would have to be iro £1500 per week so £6000 a month or £72k per annum ...... then lets add rent / Council tax / power / travel costs and the money required to feed all 6 ....before deductions we are now knocking on the door of £105k .

Ain't many jobs in Wallasey paying £105k per annum


See the problem yet? If you can please drop a line to the Daily Mail / Express.

 

[MCFC Wirral]

So 5 kids requiring Childcare @ £200 per week each = £1000 after tax and NI so earnings would have to be iro £1500 per week so £6000 a month or £72k per annum ...... then lets add rent / Council tax / power / travel costs and the money required to feed all 6 ....before deductions we are now knocking on the door of £105k .

Ain't many jobs in Wallasey paying £105k per annum


See the problem yet? If you can please drop a line to the Daily Mail / Express.

So have five children and be rewarded with benefits galore? Goodness…

 

[TinFoilHat]

So 5 kids requiring Childcare @ £200 per week each = £1000 after tax and NI so earnings would have to be iro £1500 per week so £6000 a month or £72k per annum ...... then lets add rent / Council tax / power / travel costs and the money required to feed all 6 ....before deductions we are now knocking on the door of £105k .

Ain't many jobs in Wallasey paying £105k per annum


See the problem yet? If you can please drop a line to the Daily Mail / Express.

What a pile of bullshit straight out of the Daily Mail book of incredible bollocks.

 

[Rascal]

So have five children and be rewarded with benefits galore? Goodness…

We do not have a benefit system, we have a welfare state.

Can you please explain what "welfare" a person receives when they have 5 kids?

Below are official Government figures taken from www.gov.uk

When the benefit cap affects your Universal Credit payments​

The benefit cap might not affect your Universal Credit payments for up to 9 months. This is called the ‘grace period’.
You’ll get the grace period if all of the following are true:

• you’re claiming Universal Credit because you stopped working or your earnings went down
• you’re now earning less than £722 a month
• in each of the 12 months before your earnings went down or you stopped working, you earned the same as or more than the earnings threshold (this was £658 up to 10 April 2023 and is £722 from 12 April 2023)

After the 9 month grace period ends, the amount of Universal Credit you get will usually go down.

Benefit cap outside Greater London​

	Per week	Per month
If you’re in a couple	£423.46	£1,835
If you’re a single parent and your children live with you	£423.46	£1,835
If you’re a single adult	£283.71	£1,229.42

The benefit cap is the maximum you can receive under UC , out of this you have to pay your rent.
Average monthly rent outside London now more than £1,000 per month. The average monthly rent outside London has now risen to more than £1,000 per calendar month (pcm) according to research by Hamptons with tenants typically paying 25% on top of what they were paying at start of pandemic.

So a renting family with 5 kids on welfare has *£835 at best per month to live on.

Therefore your statement of "benefits galore" is fucking idiotic.

 

[BrianW]

The underlying problem, which no one will address, is that housing is ridiculously expensive.
One consequence of this is that ordinary families pay out a huge proportion of their wages to have a roof over their heads and/or Housing Benefit is subsidising them.

The problem is, a very large proportion of the country, including all the most powerful and influential people, has a vested interest in high house prices. Can you imagine: Vote for me and I'll slash the value of your house by 25%?

Most of the benefits paid are either subsidising employers (low wages) or landlords (high rents.)

We need more children, not fewer, if we are to reduce immigration in the long term. (Forget the short term, that's a lost battle.)

It is politically impossible to do what is needed. Hence, we are fucked.

 

[inbetween]

The underlying problem, which no one will address, is that housing is ridiculously expensive.
One consequence of this is that ordinary families pay out a huge proportion of their wages to have a roof over their heads and/or Housing Benefit is subsidising them.

The problem is, a very large proportion of the country, including all the most powerful and influential people, has a vested interest in high house prices. Can you imagine: Vote for me and I'll slash the value of your house by 25%?

Most of the benefits paid are either subsidising employers (low wages) or landlords (high rents.)

We need more children, not fewer, if we are to reduce immigration in the long term. (Forget the short term, that's a lost battle.)

It is politically impossible to do what is needed. Hence, we are fucked.

But what can you do about housing beyond building more? Supply is a problem purely because we aren't building enough fast enough where it's needed most. I live on a new estate which took 4 years to complete and there's another new one going up nearby but that's 5 years from completion. It takes at least 1-2 years just to get planning permission for example as well.

Just about anything we do today won't make any difference tomorrow because it was probably needed yesterday. Housing needs a building revolution just as we need with everything else. The idea that we can control price alone to manage this problem is lunacy. 60% of the country owns a house and less than 1% of them are millionaires so of course they won't vote for it (me included).

All of our friends send their kids to the same schools that we went to, their kids were born in the same hospital that we were born in. Those schools and hospitals aren't double in size though and they haven't built new hospitals. In reality our infrastructure is no different really to what it was 30 years ago and that's the problem. It's no different in housing, we haven't done enough if we have done anything at all.

What we really need is an infrastructure revolution but no government can see beyond their 5 years to bother proposing it. Expensive projects like HS2 sum up the total lack of foresight from successive governments. They could of future proofed rail for generations and used that money to make it cheaper but instead they chose a faster train which nobody will use and doesn't even solve the capacity problem which drives up ticket prices. The money will go to that whilst the railways everyone uses are left to rot and cost the earth to use.

 

[BrianW]

You can't control price without increasing the supply. That's the point. No one wants to increase the supply of affordable homes, that's the issue, and it would take a National Resolution. To do what it takes to build them and (you are quite right) the associated infrastructure.

But, lacking this resolution, it's no use people banging on about how much the state spends on benefits because effectively a large chunk of the population (mostly working despite the propaganda) has to be subsidised. Many jobs are (objectively) financially unsustainable, so, therefore, the government has to make up the difference to enable people to live.

While our industry is generally below ideal levels of productivity, this is a long-standing problem. I remember Mr Heath banging on about it while I was still at school. No government has sorted it since and I doubt any will in the foreseeable future. Again, huge investment would be needed, but it's more likely we shall remain a low-wage, low-investment economy. Real wages are, if anything, declining rather than increasing for most people.

That being the case, the only way to square the circle is to fundamentally reduce the cost of housing, which means vastly increasing the supply. Alternatively, just accept that many people will always be propped up by benefits paid for out of tax.

I am not sanguine about anything happening BTW as this country is not very good at grasping nettles. We are much more likely to woman and whine about certain people 'living off the state' while ignoring the truth that many wealthier people are 'living off the state' thanks to their companies and properties being indirectly subsidised.

 

[blueinsa]

Some superb posts of late that get to the crux of what’s wrong.

 

[hilts]

Some superb posts of late that get to the crux of what’s wrong.

At some point(long after we have gone) people will finally have to act to change how the world operates. A system of ever increasing populations, infrastructure, consumption and growth will collapse.

The problem is no one currently in power needs to get off the ride. They are benefitting from it too much.

 

[blueinsa]

The problem is no one currently in power needs to get off the ride. They are benefitting from it too much.

Even if we did, the markets, the real power brokers wouldn’t allow it and that another huge issue.

We are allowed an illusion we live in and operate a democracy only.