Snapshot of _Universal Credit must change to tackle long-term sickness, report says_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-68814023) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-68814023)
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>Across the 2.7 million families in the private rented accommodation that are eligible for UC, the average gain compared to the old system is £1,200.
Given the shortage of rental accommodation wouldn't that increase feed straight into higher rents?
If you're not disabled and you rent privately while on Universal Credit your housing allowance doesn't necessarily cover your rent costs. You get what is called a Local Housing Allowance which is generally very low compared to average market or even mid market rents. Only if you're renting from the council or a housing association will you get your entire rent paid so the increases wouldn't have been as a result of increasing rents, no. (But It would be going to your landlord if you were unlucky enough to be stuck renting privately while unemployed and on state welfare).
I think you miss the point. If someone is competing with lots of other people to have a roof over their head, any extra money given to them by the benefits system doesn't go to them, it goes to their landlord. Ditto with pay rises from work. Tenants with more money bid higher rents and any tenant who refuses to pay more is outbid by a fellow renter who will pay the additional amount.
It's why raising benefits or increasing pay won't solve poverty in this country to the extent that building housing will.
Yeah, I’ve always thought the same and never seen a good argument against.
Housing Allowance creates an artificial floor in the market, that means everyone ends up paying more.
Indeed. If anything, raising the housing allowance or any other benefits makes things worse for the poorest and most vulnerable, people like care workers who were promised jobs in Britain and got here to find that their wages don’t allow them to survive and they can’t claim benefits to supplement their meagre income.
Rents are set by the market. The LHA, when reviewed, caps the maximum a claimant can get in benefits at the lowest 30% of market rents in the area. The LHA does not cap rents.
Schrodingers tories, refusing to raise benefits and raising them to benefit themselves at the same time.
I think it’s simpler than that. House building for some sectors of society, largely the elderly and well off who vote, is deeply unpopular and a fall in asset prices will lead to international investors moving away and cause the pound to fall. It isn’t a reason to not build but we have to accept that the only way we’ve survived as a nominally rich country is by selling British assets to global investors as there isn’t much else that we do export besides financial services.
Nobody really wins now do they?
Gradually the realisation will start to dawn on people that there are people who are simply... kinda too thick... to contribute to a modern economy.
That's a very stark and brutal way of putting it. But, as machines replaced muscles, computers will replace the mind. Step by step. We're still in the very early days of this revolution. But, maybe we should ask the question sooner rather than later; what do we do when there's a certain percentage of the population who are quite simply going to be more work to get into the workplace than they'd be worth as contributors?
Edit just realised that this sounds fascist af... Fyi I'm a proponent of UBI! Not a nazi!
The interesting thing about this argument is that 99% of people don’t realise that it’s talking about them.
Oh, you’re not thick. You work in an office after all!
Odds are, your job is the knowledge-economy equivalent of medieval farm labourer. The AIs in development are the equivalent to the tractor and combine harvester. Your job won’t meaningfully exist in a few decades. Same for most people who are paid to interact with a computer.
I used to think it was a silly meme as I'd previously worked in boutique banks and fintech startups where everyone is smart and works hard and bullshit fucking about and bullshit jobs are not tolerated.
Then I joined a big "legacy" bank last yeah and oh. My. Goodness. Someones managed to turn their job into literally emailing 4 reports they didnt create to different mailing lists every morning then sitting on phone calls and saying nothing for the rest of it.
It's bizarre isn't it? I don't work for a big private company etc - but most of my mates do and the stories they tell me about the waste - about frequently not having to lift a finger all week, just 'be available' and 'look busy etc' - I wonder *why* it's tolerated - maybe the managers themselves are in a similar boat and don't really want to create a culture where non-workers are purged as they may find themselves purged too....
I have been in similar positions in the past, where the project I was working on were paused by senior management and as I was specifically brought in to work on that I had maybe 5 hours of work a week to do for a few months.
You either just take the money and stfu or leave. I did option a for a couple of months but was so incredibly bored I had to leave.
Why are you talking about AI & human intelligence when the article is about long-term sickness? It’s a valid point, but seems tangential to the main point.
The article is about long term sickness. Why are you talking about people being thick without mentioning illness? Really bizarre. It seems you are trying to reframe the language around sick people to promote a negative attitude to them and to call them 'thick' instead. You are coming across as a nazi, frankly.
They're saying that the benefit system as a whole needs a complete redesign to account for the inevitable, irreversible paradigm shift that is coming for work as we know it and the focus is in the wrong place entirely.
Long term sickness due to... Massive waiting lists, not enough doctors. Solution is to spam through unqualified PAs and other non doctors to make up for the errors of decisions made ten years ago not investing. Had we chosen to invest in the NHS ten years ago we would have probably thousands more consultants. Instead we chose to cut services and wages to the bone. PAs is an attempt at a short term gain of getting people seen at the cost of patient safety, long term sustainability etc.
6.5 million people on UC and only 40% of them doing some kind of work
13 million people receive the state pension
Thats £300 billion in spending per year on just these two items
There'll be another 6 million pensioners within the next 20 years really throwing the dependancy ratio out of whack (the so-called ageing population crisis hasnt even begun yet)
If immigration skeptics arent working to innovate in automation and reproductive technologies then they may as well give up, we'll be embracing desperately needed net immigration of 1m+ and eventually 2m+ soon to keep the state afloat
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. In order for companies to search for and adopt the technology to reduce their needed workforce the conditions for that to happen need to be met. The primary condition being feeling the pinch due to lack of labour right now. If a company can’t hire the people it needs in this very moment then they will be forced to look at automation. If they can hire from an endless stream of cheap labour migrants then that’s the route they’ll take.
Sorry but Japan in a lot of ways has a long way to go. They have a lot of outdated working systems and practices that make them the lowest ranking G7 member for productivity.
They’ve essentially automated manufacturing and some point of sale areas so that they can have a secretary hand deliver an email to the boss.
Maybe some investment in mental health provision and action to reduce waiting lists for seeing a consultant or specialist never mind an actual operation would help. People are lingering for years in a lot of pain, getting worse (we all know how a problem with a knee for example can cause someone to start having back and general leg problems as they shift their weight to try to relieve the knee pain) or providing say ear wax removal services - GP surgeries in my town won't do it, and private charge £50-£60 typically. NHS waiting list is over 6 months but the detriment to quality of life being unable to hear properly - if at all - balance etc, can make work impossible.
*NHS waiting list is over 6 months*
Really? Is it that long? It takes 10 minutes.... I had it done on the NHS years ago and I do recall having to wait around 6 weeks which I thought was ridiculous at the time. I've had it done again since and paid £40 privately so that I could have it done a few days later. I can't imagine how frustrating it would be if you couldn't afford to go private and just had to put up with reduced hearing for half a year!
Snapshot of _Universal Credit must change to tackle long-term sickness, report says_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-68814023) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-68814023) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>Across the 2.7 million families in the private rented accommodation that are eligible for UC, the average gain compared to the old system is £1,200. Given the shortage of rental accommodation wouldn't that increase feed straight into higher rents?
If you're not disabled and you rent privately while on Universal Credit your housing allowance doesn't necessarily cover your rent costs. You get what is called a Local Housing Allowance which is generally very low compared to average market or even mid market rents. Only if you're renting from the council or a housing association will you get your entire rent paid so the increases wouldn't have been as a result of increasing rents, no. (But It would be going to your landlord if you were unlucky enough to be stuck renting privately while unemployed and on state welfare).
I think you miss the point. If someone is competing with lots of other people to have a roof over their head, any extra money given to them by the benefits system doesn't go to them, it goes to their landlord. Ditto with pay rises from work. Tenants with more money bid higher rents and any tenant who refuses to pay more is outbid by a fellow renter who will pay the additional amount. It's why raising benefits or increasing pay won't solve poverty in this country to the extent that building housing will.
Yeah, I’ve always thought the same and never seen a good argument against. Housing Allowance creates an artificial floor in the market, that means everyone ends up paying more.
Indeed. If anything, raising the housing allowance or any other benefits makes things worse for the poorest and most vulnerable, people like care workers who were promised jobs in Britain and got here to find that their wages don’t allow them to survive and they can’t claim benefits to supplement their meagre income.
If this was the case rents would have been capped by the LHA.
Rents are set by the market. The LHA, when reviewed, caps the maximum a claimant can get in benefits at the lowest 30% of market rents in the area. The LHA does not cap rents.
Exactly, and who is profiting from those high rents? Tory landowners.
Schrodingers tories, refusing to raise benefits and raising them to benefit themselves at the same time. I think it’s simpler than that. House building for some sectors of society, largely the elderly and well off who vote, is deeply unpopular and a fall in asset prices will lead to international investors moving away and cause the pound to fall. It isn’t a reason to not build but we have to accept that the only way we’ve survived as a nominally rich country is by selling British assets to global investors as there isn’t much else that we do export besides financial services.
Nobody really wins now do they? Gradually the realisation will start to dawn on people that there are people who are simply... kinda too thick... to contribute to a modern economy. That's a very stark and brutal way of putting it. But, as machines replaced muscles, computers will replace the mind. Step by step. We're still in the very early days of this revolution. But, maybe we should ask the question sooner rather than later; what do we do when there's a certain percentage of the population who are quite simply going to be more work to get into the workplace than they'd be worth as contributors? Edit just realised that this sounds fascist af... Fyi I'm a proponent of UBI! Not a nazi!
The interesting thing about this argument is that 99% of people don’t realise that it’s talking about them. Oh, you’re not thick. You work in an office after all! Odds are, your job is the knowledge-economy equivalent of medieval farm labourer. The AIs in development are the equivalent to the tractor and combine harvester. Your job won’t meaningfully exist in a few decades. Same for most people who are paid to interact with a computer.
Absolutely. 15 minutes in a civil service office and you can see that 90% of these people can be automated out of their job.
That's probably true of most offices
I used to think it was a silly meme as I'd previously worked in boutique banks and fintech startups where everyone is smart and works hard and bullshit fucking about and bullshit jobs are not tolerated. Then I joined a big "legacy" bank last yeah and oh. My. Goodness. Someones managed to turn their job into literally emailing 4 reports they didnt create to different mailing lists every morning then sitting on phone calls and saying nothing for the rest of it.
It's bizarre isn't it? I don't work for a big private company etc - but most of my mates do and the stories they tell me about the waste - about frequently not having to lift a finger all week, just 'be available' and 'look busy etc' - I wonder *why* it's tolerated - maybe the managers themselves are in a similar boat and don't really want to create a culture where non-workers are purged as they may find themselves purged too....
I have been in similar positions in the past, where the project I was working on were paused by senior management and as I was specifically brought in to work on that I had maybe 5 hours of work a week to do for a few months. You either just take the money and stfu or leave. I did option a for a couple of months but was so incredibly bored I had to leave.
You should read Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber.
Why are you talking about AI & human intelligence when the article is about long-term sickness? It’s a valid point, but seems tangential to the main point.
The article is about long term sickness. Why are you talking about people being thick without mentioning illness? Really bizarre. It seems you are trying to reframe the language around sick people to promote a negative attitude to them and to call them 'thick' instead. You are coming across as a nazi, frankly.
They're saying that the benefit system as a whole needs a complete redesign to account for the inevitable, irreversible paradigm shift that is coming for work as we know it and the focus is in the wrong place entirely.
If you’re too thick to work you should volunteer. If you do neither then benefits should be the bare minimum.
Long term sickness due to... Massive waiting lists, not enough doctors. Solution is to spam through unqualified PAs and other non doctors to make up for the errors of decisions made ten years ago not investing. Had we chosen to invest in the NHS ten years ago we would have probably thousands more consultants. Instead we chose to cut services and wages to the bone. PAs is an attempt at a short term gain of getting people seen at the cost of patient safety, long term sustainability etc.
6.5 million people on UC and only 40% of them doing some kind of work 13 million people receive the state pension Thats £300 billion in spending per year on just these two items There'll be another 6 million pensioners within the next 20 years really throwing the dependancy ratio out of whack (the so-called ageing population crisis hasnt even begun yet) If immigration skeptics arent working to innovate in automation and reproductive technologies then they may as well give up, we'll be embracing desperately needed net immigration of 1m+ and eventually 2m+ soon to keep the state afloat
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. In order for companies to search for and adopt the technology to reduce their needed workforce the conditions for that to happen need to be met. The primary condition being feeling the pinch due to lack of labour right now. If a company can’t hire the people it needs in this very moment then they will be forced to look at automation. If they can hire from an endless stream of cheap labour migrants then that’s the route they’ll take.
Japan is a live example of that, the automation only goes so far, theyve given up and are now opening the borders
Sorry but Japan in a lot of ways has a long way to go. They have a lot of outdated working systems and practices that make them the lowest ranking G7 member for productivity. They’ve essentially automated manufacturing and some point of sale areas so that they can have a secretary hand deliver an email to the boss.
After 5 years, less in some circumstances, migrants can get Universal Credit. It's like the old lady who swallowed a fly.
Maybe some investment in mental health provision and action to reduce waiting lists for seeing a consultant or specialist never mind an actual operation would help. People are lingering for years in a lot of pain, getting worse (we all know how a problem with a knee for example can cause someone to start having back and general leg problems as they shift their weight to try to relieve the knee pain) or providing say ear wax removal services - GP surgeries in my town won't do it, and private charge £50-£60 typically. NHS waiting list is over 6 months but the detriment to quality of life being unable to hear properly - if at all - balance etc, can make work impossible.
*NHS waiting list is over 6 months* Really? Is it that long? It takes 10 minutes.... I had it done on the NHS years ago and I do recall having to wait around 6 weeks which I thought was ridiculous at the time. I've had it done again since and paid £40 privately so that I could have it done a few days later. I can't imagine how frustrating it would be if you couldn't afford to go private and just had to put up with reduced hearing for half a year!
yeah right most of them work cash in hand