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£100 a month, eh?

Britons with long-term sickness risk being up to £1,200 worse off if they come off incapacity benefits and work part-time, a leading think tank has said.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said discouragingly high taxes on working people were making it difficult to entice welfare claimants back into the labour market.

Someone on incapacity benefits deciding to re-enter the workforce for 16 hours per week would be as much as £1,200 worse off a year than if they did not work at all, analysis by the IFS found.

Yes, some would still go back to work just for the joy of it – getting out and about etc. Others wouldn’t – everything happens at the margin, see?

But here’s our difficulty. Sure, we want to be all warm and welcoming to those afflicted by the bad luck of ill health. Why should they – for it could be us – have a less than acceptable lifestyle just through bad luck? Therefore incapacity bennies must be at least above the poverty line and so on.

But at that point those bennie levels are going to be up above entry level wages – which, given that we do define the poverty line as 60% of median wages is pretty much nailed on.

Which is where we’ve got a problem. The ill shouldn’t be poor. But that then means for a lot on the margin that work has no benefit. So, some will, perfectly logically, mooch.

One answer to which is be fierce about who gets bennies. But we’re not allowed to do that either – in fact, deliberate policy has been to hide substantial unemployment in the bennies for decades now. #

So, what do we do?

13 thoughts on “£100 a month, eh?”

  1. Each time I read one of your complaints about this sort of thing, I immediately think of slavery.

    But of course if I succeeded in pushing this through, they might cancel my pension and enslave ME!!!!

  2. Bloke in North Dorset

    What do we do? It depends on the sickness.

    If a man looks 10 months pregnant and is on the sick because of a bad back put him on a starvation diet.

    A lot of people with the likes of bad backs will also benefit from getting out and about. I’m sure I’m not the only commenter here who has a bad back and knows that it gets worse when I’m moping around for days on end, which is partly why I do so much exercise and do palates and other back exercises every day.

    It appears, though, that mental health has become the new bad back and I’m not sure what to do about that, other than tell them to get a grip and grow a pair.

  3. BiND, for a lot of the ‘new sick’ the fact they can’t just ‘grow a pair’ (or have the pair they’ve been born with disappear) is the very reason they are on the bennies…

  4. “But at that point those bennie levels are going to be up above entry level wages – which, given that we do define the poverty line as 60% of median wages is pretty much nailed on.”

    So long as we define poverty in relative terms the poor will always be with us.

    Redefine the poverty line as 40 or 50% and see what happens.

  5. Judging by the tsunami of mental health seminars that my employer sends round on a monthly basis, I think we’re being encouraged to become mentally ill and, even if we’re not, to develop or accept we are afflicted by this or that syndrome du jour. It’s like me acknowledging that as a white man I’m ipso facto a racist, which they are also seeking to provoke.

  6. Well, since the premise is cherry-picking of the highest order:

    deciding to re-enter the workforce for 16 hours per week

    Why did they choose 16 hours? Well, from gov.uk:

    Your Incapacity Benefit is not usually affected if you:

    […]
    work for less than 16 hours a week on average and earn no more than £183.50 a week

    So the answer is to not work 16 hours a week or more, then that loss won’t happen.

    Or for those who aren’t actually sick/disabled and are faking it, go full-time.

  7. There are plenty of jobs that can still be done with a bad back, or even with poor mental health. The problem is that the worker is often less productive, on account of their disability; yet it’s illegal to pay them less on account of that.

    The solution therefore is to exclusively hire disabled people, like the old Remploy factories. But it would take a brave businessman to embark on such a venture, given the legal minefield.

  8. @John Galt,

    Spot on. The way to empty so-called Black Holes is to spend less.

    Maybe the slimming drug could be tried out on Diane Abbott?

  9. More clear proof that the benefits system is a complete shambles. It frequently discourages what it should incentivise.
    Blank piece of paper, start again. Apply that to all new claimiants and transition everyone else onto it over a 5 year period.

  10. Bloke in North Dorset

    Julia,

    They’re no use to man nor beast, so might as well leave them on bennies, nobody in their right minds would employ them anyway.

  11. But the problem is if you shy or weird then you get discriminated against in the job market.
    If you are a bully you will be given chance after chance.
    If you are shy or mentally ill or weird then you are told to F OFF by employers.
    And the bad guys get the best jobs.
    And the good guys get thrown on the scrap heap.

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