Are there various benefits anymore. Isn’t it just universal credit now? State pension aside?
1.8m people get attendance allowance, 1.4m get carers allowance, PIP is 3.5m. Its interesting to look at the changes, number of pension claims increasing, pension credit increasing dramatically, huge increases in bereavement support payments (basically the old widows pension), PIP increasing as DLA tails off, housing benefit decreasing, ESA decreasing, income support and JSA being phased out.
there's 9.9 million people of working age in receipt of some type of benefit in the most recent stats available. but you have to caveat that with the fact that we have record numbers of people in work on benefits, yet nobody seems to be concerned that people in work need that kind of assistance due to poverty wages.
but this is the problem with trying to make a meaningful assessment. how the fuck do you know what reasons people are on universal credit for. so we just default back to immigrants and the work shy on benefits as the cause of all the countries ills.
not sure it really stacks up. most people want to be an active part of society, you can pretty easily establish that by speaking to the people affected but if you don't believe them you can look to UBI trials. strikes me we spend years ignoring experts warning that cuts, in recent times under the umbrella of austerity and balancing the books, are going to have a negative impact. then when those negatives arrive everyone stands around wondering how we ended up in this mess and goes back to blaming the same old people.
fact of the matter if you can't get issues with your physical health treated, if mental health services are decimated, if you have record levels of child poverty and malnutrition and so on and so on its a ticking time bomb for benefits. thats before you even factor in a pandemic and an aging population.
everyone always seems to know people who are living a life of luxury on benefits but when you ask how they are achieving it you get no answer. meanwhile if you look at what you would be entitled to if you lost you job or became ill its pretty much fuck all. You'd struggle to not be on the streets within a couple of months if you didn't have savings to fall back on.