7 Reasons Why You Should Stop Bitching About People On Benefits

[Quixote1818]

1. One day, it could be you.

The welfare state is a safety net. It is there to catch anyone who falls on hard times, including you. Say you got hit by a car and were tragically paralyzed from the waist down; the welfare state would pay you a Mobility Allowance so that you could still leave the house. It would pay for any special equipment you needed and a personal assistant to help you go to the loo, bathe and perform household chores. If you lost your job and were unable to find a new one, the state would support you until you were able to find another one. Sounds pretty fair now, doesn’t it?


2. What do you think the other options are?


Let’s be totally selfish here; the other option is that anyone without a significant safety net is made homeless. Two summers ago I worked out that if I took my family out of the picture, I was one month away from homelessness. Two if my landlord felt like being lenient with the rent. Would you seriously prefer that millions of people had to live on the streets (your streets) if it meant that you would have to pay a couple of pence less tax?

As attractive as it is to bluster on about how we should kick everyone off benefits and into paid employment, the jobs situation now is rather like the time my local library gave me an extension on my library books because if I were to bring them all back at once, they would not have room on the shelves. There simply are not enough jobs and due to 'austerity measures', more and more jobs are being lost. The more impoverished the area, the worse the situation.

Job hunting is a soul destroying process. I have been unemployed twice and both times I was spending around four hours a day, five or six days a week job hunting. I had an excellent CV, a whole bunch of qualifications and lots of voluntary work but the fact was that every entry level job on the system was attracting around 150 applications; jobs at places like MacDonalds and Tesco were attracting over 500. It really isn't that simple.

3. Seriously, the amount of tax you pay into the welfare state is a pittance.

Every time I ‘talk’ to people having a winge about their tax going to ‘scroungers’, they seem to have run away with the idea that they, personally are paying for that flatscreen TV they have heard so much about. Your tax goes to pay for many, many things including schools, hospitals, bin collections, roads, the legal system, the royal family, streetlights, the military and right now, for massive corporations like Tesco to get free labor when they should be actually employing people who need jobs. If you earn £20,000 a year, you pay 0.00003066 pence a year to each individual person on unemployment benefit. I don’t imagine you have paid for even 1% of someone’s flatscreen.
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[Live and Learn]

1. I usually stop people dead in their tracks by

suggesting that if the benefits are so good, they should make use of them. "Quit your job and go get yourself some of those great benefits", I say. That usually shuts them up (at least they don't bring it up to me anymore).

It is a myth that most of these benefits are great. Most of the benefits they moan about aren't even enough to survive on. I can't stand people that bemoan the benefits that those less fortunate than themselves are getting. Geez, some of the complainers are even "reaping" the benefits they grouse about.

[freshwest]

2. I find writers in the UK to be clearer thinkers, who 'get it' about social justice. n/t

[democratisphere]

3. Good Points! Thank you!

The majority of people that receive benefits are very thankful for those benefits and many hold one or more jobs that does not begin to pay them a living wage.

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

4. This is my favorite one:

"3. Seriously, the amount of tax you pay into the welfare state is a pittance. "

I'd rather shell out more money to help everyone down on their luck than have my taxes go to a corporation who doesn't need it and will most likely move a bunch of jobs off-shore anyways.

[athena]

5. Why are you posting this here?

Who on DU has complained about people on benefits? How dare you suggest that I'm against people on benefits! What an outrageous generalization! How offensive! Boo hoo, etc.



Sorry for the interruption, but I couldn't resist. You may continue now with the scheduled programming.