Two new dole rules? Would you agree?

[Andy Wainwright]

1) We should pay state benefit regardless of income, savings or
employmment status.

Means testing inhibits social mobilty to a massive extent. Like
incentive-destroying super tax for those on lower incomes and in receipt
of state aid.

2) Those physically and mentally able to do so and unemployed should
study for a recognised qualification after a year of not working, during
which period they should be paid.

Most of those capable of such a role would be happy to tag along with an
electrican, plumber , administrator, behave well and turn up, and learn
a trade as opposed to watching crap daytime TV. Education is like
potential energy, employment earnings in the future.

I'd like to hear your views on this and why.

[Tired]

Andy Wainwright wrote:
:: 1) We should pay state benefit regardless of income, savings or

:: employmment status.
::
:: Means testing inhibits social mobilty to a massive extent. Like
:: incentive-destroying super tax for those on lower incomes and in
:: receipt of state aid.

If you dont means test you either have to increase taxes to pay everyone the
same, or reduce the amount each person receives to keep within the budget
allowed.



:: Most of those capable of such a role would be happy to tag along

:: with an electrican, plumber , administrator, behave well and turn
:: up, and learn a trade as opposed to watching crap daytime TV.
:: Education is like potential energy, employment earnings in the
:: future.
::
:: I'd like to hear your views on this and why.

Actually many never employed people would actually not be happy to the
above, are functionally unemployable in their current state and no employer
will take them on.

[Andy Walker]

On 03/05/13 00:03, Tired wrote:
> Andy Wainwright wrote:
> :: 1) We should pay state benefit regardless of income, savings or

> :: employmment status. [...]

> If you dont means test you either have to increase taxes to pay everyone the
> same, or reduce the amount each person receives to keep within the budget
> allowed.

Not if the state benefit ["citizen's income"] is paid in the
form of negative income tax, or, equivalently for most taxpayers, by a
change to their PAYE code. Ie, your increased tax is cancelled out by
the receipt of the benefit [on average, of course, in a tax-neutral
change to the system].

--
Andy Walker,
Nottingham.

[Vidcapper]

On 02/05/2013 23:57, Andy Wainwright wrote:
> 1) We should pay state benefit regardless of income, savings or
> employmment status.
>
> Means testing inhibits social mobilty to a massive extent. Like
> incentive-destroying super tax for those on lower incomes and in receipt
> of state aid.
>
> 2) Those physically and mentally able to do so and unemployed should
> study for a recognised qualification after a year of not working, during
> which period they should be paid.
>
> Most of those capable of such a role would be happy to tag along with an
> electrican, plumber , administrator, behave well and turn up, and learn
> a trade as opposed to watching crap daytime TV.

Not so crap yesterday - O'Sullivan v Trump in the snooker... :p


--
Regards,

Paul Hyett

[AC]

Andy Wainwright wrote:
> 1) We should pay state benefit regardless of income, savings or
> employmment status.
>
> Means testing inhibits social mobilty to a massive extent. Like
> incentive-destroying super tax for those on lower incomes and in receipt
> of state aid.

Why not a living wage system? Just do it through the inland revenue.
Would arf save on the bureaucracy. Should really be a flag ship Tory
policy. They could cut loads.

>
> 2) Those physically and mentally able to do so and unemployed should
> study for a recognised qualification after a year of not working, during
> which period they should be paid.
>
> Most of those capable of such a role would be happy to tag along with an
> electrican, plumber , administrator, behave well and turn up, and learn
> a trade as opposed to watching crap daytime TV. Education is like
> potential energy, employment earnings in the future.
>
> I'd like to hear your views on this and why.
>

So, what happens when they still cant get a job? More courses?

If you are uneducated, that's a great incentive for not looking for work
for a year to get the education.

Why not just skip the year and offer education to all, for free....Oh...

--
AC

[Martin Brown]

On 02/05/2013 23:57, Andy Wainwright wrote:

> 1) We should pay state benefit regardless of income, savings or
> employmment status.
>
> Means testing inhibits social mobilty to a massive extent. Like
> incentive-destroying super tax for those on lower incomes and in receipt
> of state aid.

How do you propose to balance the books if everybody gets something for
nothing? Taxes on those in work would have to go up enormously.

There is a strong case for simplifying the tax system to ensure that
working instead of being unemployed never results in being worse off.

> 2) Those physically and mentally able to do so and unemployed should
> study for a recognised qualification after a year of not working, during
> which period they should be paid.

Get real. Some of them are functionally illiterate and innumerate.
You have to teach them to read and write first before anything else.
(this is especially true of the even more expensive prison population).

> Most of those capable of such a role would be happy to tag along with an
> electrican, plumber , administrator, behave well and turn up, and learn
> a trade as opposed to watching crap daytime TV. Education is like
> potential energy, employment earnings in the future.
>
> I'd like to hear your views on this and why.

Teaching them a trade like painting and decorating is one thing that the
justice system tries to do via the community payback scheme.

This government has already done its damndest to totally scupper Remploy
which offers gainful paid employment to disabled people.

But most of the other workfare programmes they have bought into mainly
result in some millionaire mates of Cameron pocketing loadsamoney and
providing precious little to show for it in return.

Think A4e for a concrete example where the chairman has had to step down
after the public accounts committee's scrutiny. I fail to see how this
differs from individuals cheating the benefits system apart from it
being done on a much larger industrial scale.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9104717/A4e-chairman-Emma-Harrison-resigns.html

The alleged fraud may also be very difficult to prove.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[JNugent]

On 02/05/2013 23:57, Andy Wainwright wrote:

> 1) We should pay state benefit regardless of income, savings or
> employmment status.

> Means testing inhibits social mobilty to a massive extent. Like
> incentive-destroying super tax for those on lower incomes and in receipt
> of state aid.

You can only get to the top of society by being on benefits, you say?

> 2) Those physically and mentally able to do so and unemployed should
> study for a recognised qualification after a year of not working, during
> which period they should be paid.
> Most of those capable of such a role would be happy to tag along with an
> electrican, plumber , administrator, behave well and turn up, and learn
> a trade as opposed to watching crap daytime TV. Education is like
> potential energy, employment earnings in the future.

Why would they need a weekly injection of other peoples' money for that?

Everyone who has (to date) learned to be an electrician, plumber or
administrator has managed it whilst living on their wages.

And why wait a year?

What's the purpose of that?

[Mentalguy2k8]

"Andy Wainwright" <andrewricha...@hotmail.co.uk> wrote in message
news:kluqps$nc$1...@dont-email.me...

> Most of those capable of such a role would be happy to tag along with an
> electrican, plumber , administrator, behave well and turn up, and learn a
> trade as opposed to watching crap daytime TV.

Yes, we could even call it by a unique official-sounding name like, oh I
dunno, an "apprenticeship".

>
> I'd like to hear your views on this and why.

My only view is that you should either use dope OR Usenet before bed, not
both.

[Andy Wainwright]

The uneployed get an income from the taxpayer anyway.

Pay it to everyone, and taxpayers get this back. So tax may have to
rise, but after rebates this isn't going to be a big difference.

Citizens income offers two huge advantages. Most effective in fighting
absolute poverty, secondly no poverty trap. If you work or work harder
you are guaranteed to be better off.

As a third incentive, less complicated, less fraud. For instance, the
dole wouldn't have to worry about those signing on, so all their staff
and resources could help the jobless find work.

[JNugent]

On 04/05/2013 19:46, Andy Wainwright wrote:

[ .. ]

> The uneployed get an income from the taxpayer anyway.

Only if they satisfy the conditions of entitlement (or manage to make it
look as though they satisfy them). That doesn't necessarily apply to
everyone who would prefer to be regarded as unemployed.

[Martin Brown]

On 04/05/2013 19:46, Andy Wainwright wrote:

I don't believe you. You haven't worked the numbers through.

> Citizens income offers two huge advantages. Most effective in fighting
> absolute poverty, secondly no poverty trap. If you work or work harder
> you are guaranteed to be better off.

The only way this could work is in some oil rich sheikdom where the
state pays people to be indolent and doss around until the oil runs out.
We did sort of do that after fashion with North Sea oil :(

It is not a good way to invest state assets.

> As a third incentive, less complicated, less fraud. For instance, the
> dole wouldn't have to worry about those signing on, so all their staff
> and resources could help the jobless find work.

A far better solution would be to abandon the age old practice of having
stepped tax bands and hard binary cutoffs of entitlements.

The objective should be to structure the tax system so that it always
pays to work a bit harder or more productively. The present system has
perverse incentives caused by its labyrinthine complexity.

Modern computing power is easily up to working with continuous functions
instead of slavishly following a method based on pages and pages of
manual lookup tables that date from the prehistoric era when computors
were large teams of girls in a room with pencil and paper.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[Andy Walker]

On 05/05/13 10:23, Martin Brown wrote:
> On 04/05/2013 19:46, Andy Wainwright wrote:
>> On 03/05/2013 11:11, Martin Brown wrote:
>>> How do you propose to balance the books if everybody gets something for
>>> nothing? Taxes on those in work would have to go up enormously.

Not so. If the change to CI is made in a revenue-neutral
way [as it can, and should, be], then most people would see little
overall change. Those not on benefits would, on average, see their
overall tax burden [and net income] unchanged, with their income
tax and NI rises offset by their CI.

>> The uneployed get an income from the taxpayer anyway.
>> Pay it to everyone, and taxpayers get this back. So tax may have to
>> rise, but after rebates this isn't going to be a big difference.

Whether tax rises is a matter of nomenclature. Treat CI
as negative income tax [very probably directly, through the PAYE
code, for many/most families], and tax doesn't rise; treat it
as a "benefit", and taxes rise to compensate.

> I don't believe you. You haven't worked the numbers through.

I don't know whether he has; I did, some years ago, when
direct tax and the principal benefits were roughly in balance. At
that time, it would have been relatively easy to replace benefits
by CI. I haven't looked at the numbers recently, and the economic
woes of the past five years may perhaps have changed things a
little, but it should still be possible to introduce CI without
too much upheaval. It would take around a decade to get "there"
from "here", which allows plenty of time for tweaking rates to
get the numbers to match.

--
Andy Walker,
Nottingham.