Benefits system is skewed to staying on benefits and not working

I WAS interested to see Mr Mike Baldwin’s recent letter. There is no proposed ‘cut’ in Universal Credit. The special extra £20pw to cover the excesses of the pandemic is stopping, now that the worst is in the past.

What is shameful is that in our affluent country somehow we have created a benefit monster where six million in work have Universal Credit somehow (and yes, perhaps a third of those in work).

Yes, this is all well-intended but it also stifles employment and progression and the whole system discourages the incentive of adequate work as we look at all those professions desperate for workers and unable to find them, very often because the system is too generous and skewed to staying on the benefit rather than going into the world of work.

I am not saying this judgementally but simply factually and over the last few decades we have spawned a society whose people do not seem to have a primary work ethic with independence and the pride and selfesteem of working for one’s own reward as the first objective.

Can anyone blame the single parent with more limited time availability (though I know many working hard and having children they manage well) and skills, who would find it impossible to earn, say, £30,000 to match the benefits lost?

We are told there are twice as many on UC now as when the pandemic began, so why are there so many jobs unfilled too, especially in hospitality which can be so flexible?

Sadly too, it does nothing to encourage people to make wise decisions in life and the ‘system’ rewards foolish and frivolous choices, as well as uncommitted relationships (especially in the having and raising of children – is it any surprise the ‘poorest’ in our society are single parent families where the poor children are the innocent victims in this) and the inability of taking responsibility for those decisions (or even extended families bothering to care about the situations in which their close relatives may find themselves).

Indeed, the ‘system’ is not allowed to suggest counselling for relationships, or indeed the responsibility of having children and even their basic finances, as simply ‘give them more money’ is the Socialist’s answer. I’d love to see benefit qualification and food bank access linked to obligatory, basic financial management and budgeting courses to really help people, because we do care as a society.

We ignore how well-off we are too, compared with billions across the world in real and abject poverty. We don’t consider ‘absolute poverty’ definitions which we should – so that we can tick-off targets of base line universal comfort, so that anything above that is a gain and success for society (and the world) generally and of course still goals for which we aspire. Instead, all the statistics baying ‘one in four on the poverty line’ constantly look at comparative poverty, so the wealthier a nation’s inhabitants become, oddly enough 25% or whatever of those are still in ‘comparative poverty’ and always will be. Indeed, it also encourages a permanent state of discontentment, hard-done-by-ness and envy of others – ‘enough is never enough’ and the definitions keep widening in terms of what being ‘poor’ means today in the UK.

Instead, we seem to have created a system which says being on benefits and having Netflix as a necessity and not a discretionary spend is fine, as 52% of all households now have a subscription (no doubt on top of the TV licence) – have we gone really mad?

Unless we are prepared to face these issues properly then we shall continue to apply sticking plaster to the wrong side of the leaky dam.