We all know if Thatcher and major had carried on, JSA would now be £130 a week, IB would be £145. New Labour changed the way benefits were paid and cut the increases to the bone, not the Tories.

We all remember the 75p Blair decided to give the pensioners, well he gave that to everyone, my council tax went up that year by 20% which was £4.75 my rent went up by £2 as we know Gas and water electric had to make bigger profits for Labour, yet I had to cover these rises by cutting back, every single year Labour ensured the rent and council tax alone was never ever covered by the rise.

Again at a meeting my MP talking the new Labour line stated it’s time people understood no more free hand outs, then of course we had the expenses scandal and we saw what the hand out really came from, plus labour 60% pay rise for MP’s and I believe a 29% increases in expenses.

I suspect in fact I know when I go over to the ESA benefit, I’m going to lose £37 off benefits, this was always Labour plan to reduce the benefits this way.

Like it or not New Labour did not care a shit about people except those it believed would keep it in power.

I saw the headline and thought, “Wonder if this will include housing?”. Clearly my cynicism is getting more accurate.

Off topic, but why do we need a list of twitter accounts that link to this piece? Two people (and now a third) have made comments on this, yet we have “29 comments” showing.

What information am I getting from a link to a twitter page showing a link to this page?

“The Minimum Income Standard of living in the UK is estimated to be around £161 per week, excluding rent and council tax, for a single person.”

Excellent, now go away and do your numbers again including tax. For that JRF number is “pre-tax”.

Take off the tax and NI that have to be paid and it’s more like £130 a week. Which brings all those benefit numbers into a little more perspective, doesn’t it?

What #3 said

No mention of housing/council tax benefit then (which dwarfs the others)? That is the real benefits trap. Until this is tackled the system will never be reformed.

And Rumbold has an excellent point as well. Let’s see what the difference is when we include those two shall we?

No the min wage is after tax and NI £170:00 to £165:00 a week after stoppages if your on the min wage.

I get IB £130 which will be reduced once i go onto ESA Labour wanted to cut this benefit to get it down to £65 the same as JSA but they could only do it in dribs and drabs. Of Course brown wanted to stop DLA which would have been a massive loss to the most disabled.

never mind after watching PMQ’s Labours got a long hard journey… making jokes and laughing about it, not a bit funny to those who are worried sick, and if Miliband does not stop the play acting he will find a lot of people moving on from labour again….

“What information am I getting from a link to a twitter page showing a link to this page?”

It reinforces the author’s and the site editor’s sense of “achievement” by showing how many people have promoted this article.

Of course, it also helps highlight those who have linked to it in order to debunk it – look at link 33. http://timworstall.com/2010/10/13/yes-we-knew-the-joseph-rowntree-trust-got-this-wrong/

“No the min wage is after tax and NI £170:00 to £165:00 a week after stoppages if your on the min wage.”

I agree that that sum works, roughly, but that’s not what they’re doing. It’s before tax and NI stoppages but after housing and council tax.

The figure quoted of £161 a week is the net not the gross wage figure, as it would be daft to compare that with benefits, as rightly suggested in some of the comments. The gross wage required to meet MIS for a single adult is £14,400. The £161 figure is the net budget stripped down to be directly comparable to JSA and the other benefits.

Fuller details in the 2010 report: http://www.jrf.org.uk/mis

In the 2010 MIS report, we also analysed the impact of raising the income tax threshold in the June Budget but – on balance with other changes to the benefits system – this did not appreciably improve the situation of MIS-level low earning families.

Apologies to right-wingers if the figures above don’t match what you want to see so it reinforces your view that people on welfare have it easy.

Though I suppose if you want something truly looking at govt handouts, then we should also look at tax breaks and subsidies and tax avoidance schemes etc to truly gauge how people are ‘ripping off the system’.

It’s isn’t left wingers vs. right wingers, Sunny, it’s irrational vs. rational.

What is the point of comparing an income number that you don’t receive with an income number that you do receive? It’s money in your pocket that defines poverty, unless you want to include in the definition of poverty the absence of the warm cuddly feeling the working poor get when they know a chunk of their hard earned money has been taken by the government to spend on essential public services.

Sunny,

Apologies to right-wingers if the figures above don’t match what you want to see so it reinforces your view that people on welfare have it easy.

Well, having been on welfare before, I don’t think it is easy. Having been on the minimum wage (and that was a pay increase when it was brought in) I don’t think that is easy either – perhaps less so (I got to play Civilisation a lot less). But the general concern is that the differential between the two is not actually enough to make it clearly beneficial to take a minimum-wage job if you are on benefits.

The benefits are easy line is employed by the Daily Mail, not the commentators on this thread (most of whom are, like you and me, contemptous of the ignorance this paper promotes). The issue here is that you tangentially address by trying to show benefits are not that high and which Tim has pointed out is based on comparing gross and net figures.

It is actually worth asking what you are targetting here anyway? There is no indication there will be a cut in welfare payments – Iain Duncan-Smith was arguing for a rise in the budget – rather than a change in the system. A flawed attempt to show that benefits are lower than thought is hardly going to work does not seem likely to achieve much in a fight that is probably going to be about how the money is targetted, not about blanket payments.

The cut for me is changing from IB to ESA, I’m now getting £130 a week due to the highest rate working 30 years paying full stamp. It is also higher because my life out look is poor. But labour decided when a claim goes from IB to ESA it will be reduced.

I’m now on £130

ESA £98

Loss of £32 which may not seem much it is it’s a massive cut for me, since I have to pay my rent and council tax.

Labour has ended income support those on income support have been told they will claim JSA.

people claiming for caring have been told the caring £55 will end, and everyone will need to claim JSA.

Now i know people so disabled they cannot live without somebody with them all day from tubes, breathing tubes, these people have been told they can do this and claim JSa so long as they meet the JSA requirements which means seeking work. So these people will not claim JSA they cannot claim income support so boy thats a cut in benefits for you.

All this is Labours plans and to day Miliband said he backed the Tory plans, which are in fact labours plans.

I think an issue here is teasing out housing benefit & council tax benefit from JSA etc. The first two are utterly reliant on an over-inflated housing market and the problem is amplified by a disgraceful lack of council homes.
Sort that out and the situation would be more managable (poverty trap, I mean). As well as the LD policy of increasing the tax free allowance and my policy ( ) of increasing the NMW. Oh and more secure employment, while we’re at it. Raise benefits too so it’s easier for the unemployed to be mobile and look for work. Maybe subsidise public transport for those on low incomes.. (think TFL have something similar? Not a London resident myself…)…

OH and replace council tax with a local income tax. I liked that idea.

There’s no doubt that, as a % of welfare spending, the media and politicians vastly overstate how much money is spent on unemployment benefits (or income replacement.)

Ask a person on the street about what % of welfare goes on JSA, income support, IB and ESA combined and I bet most of them would put the figure far higher than 14%.

However, it is fair to ask about housing benefit and council tax benefit to get a more complete picture of unemployment spending.

Although, aren’t most people who claim housing benefit in work?

What is the point of comparing an income number that you don’t receive with an income number that you do receive? It’s money in your pocket that defines poverty,

Sorry, what? Could you explain your outrage in more coherent terms? This does actually point out how much money people receive ‘in their pockets’ without going into housing – which is complicated much further thanks to various factors (people can receive social housing for various reasons).

The only argument ‘against’ this seems to be that it doesn’t cover enough of a range that right-wingers want. I’m afraid that’s not good enough because nothing really will.

From the RSS feed I get this from Chris Goulden:

“The figure quoted of £161 a week is the net not the gross wage figure, as it would be daft to compare that with benefits, as rightly suggested in some of the comments. The gross wage required to meet MIS for a single adult is £14,400. The £161 figure is the net budget stripped down to be directly comparable to JSA and the other benefits.”

Dunno why the comment hasn’t appeared here.

But, umm, no, sadly, it isn’t.

From the site Chris links to:

http://www.jrf.org.uk/mis

“According to what people said, in order to maintain a minimum, socially acceptable quality of life in April 2010: ”

Well, no, that’s not what you actually asked them all. What you asked them is “what do people need in order not to be considered poor”.

We of course need to hear everyone’s answer to the next question: “should you be poor if you’re living on benefits?”

More importantly, your site says you’ve deducted income tax. But what about NI?

Tim

Hold on, that is a different point.

Going back to the original issue, could you confirm that your comment here and blog made an incorrect assumption? It would be helpful to clear that up for the sake of other posters if nothing else. And of course we do take into account NI. To see full breakdowns of budgets gross/net, try using our handy calculator:

http://www.minimumincome.org.uk/

Happy to then discuss the second point about what was asked and what it implies for benefits and poverty more generally. (NB They weren’t asked “what do people need in order not to be considered poor” but that kind of thinking may lie behind some of the decisions people in the groups made.)

Chris, the calculations behind your calculator are not made clear.

Let’s go through this again, talking about total income.

£14,400, pre tax, is the £7.60, £7.80 an hour (based on a 37.5 hour week and full year working) that the living wage campaigners use. You are where they got that number from.

Excellent.

The current minimum wage of £5.91 an hour, if it was not subject to income tax and NI, would lead to (almost) exactly the same disposable income.

Correct?

Good. Now, I have looked at your calculator and perhaps I haven’t looked hard enough but this point is not clearly made.

Here, with this post, we have yet more layers of obfuscation. For of course the levels of HB, council tax relief and so on will be different for people on JSA than they will be for people making the higher, post tax, amount from min wage employment.

Which is why, right from the start, that I have argued that you should be giving a post tax and post NI figure…..so that we can indeed directly compare disposable incomes.

Just to be clear here. I really do think that your basic idea, the estimation of what peeps think is poverty, is a good approach. I just think you’ve entirely fucked it up by being coy about the interaction of the tax and benefits systems.

Let’s have all our numbers expressed on exactly the same basis.

What is the disposable income required not to be in poverty?

What is the disposable income on the various benefits?

Then, as you say, we can start asking more interesting questions like “is it OK that people not working are in poverty”?

It doesn’t matter what figures are quoted the fact is that the DM reading right wingers think everybody on benefits lives a life of riley. Truth is most live a miserly existence just getting by doing without what us middle classes take for granted.

I am talking from experience having spent an unfortunate time many years ago unemployed before I was fortunate enough to break out of the overt trap so before you cast your judgement on others try living their lives for a short time and then see how it feels to live on the bare minimum?

Tim

Ok let me try to be as clear as possible: the £161 figure quoted in this blog and our paper is net of all taxes and NI, and does not include rent or council tax. That is not the gross figure. This is the mistake that is in your post and on your blog that it would be helpful for you to correct. The budgets are built from the ground up and then a ‘gross wage required’ is generated, not the other way around.

Also, the paper and the blog are about working-age benefits not living wages. But the MIS figures (needs & income required) in the calculator are laid out in full detail if you click on the ‘breakdown’ buttons.

I’m not disagreeing with your point about income tax at all – it’s an objective fact, which is one of the reasons why we did fund the Demos research looking at exactly that issue; and I’m sure we will return to it. The fact remains however that people on low earnings *are* paying tax, so until that changes, it will necessarily be reflected in the actual wages required to meet MIS.

“Apologies to right-wingers if the figures above don’t match what you want to see so it reinforces your view that people on welfare have it easy.”
The figures above don’t match what we want to see firstly because they contradict official government figures from New Labour that when they left office over 7.5 million people were on unemployment-related benefits and we don’t believe that David Cameron has a magic wand that can take over 2.5 million people off benefit and into employment just like that. Secondly because right-wingers believe that we have duties that include looking after the ill and injured (such as #1 Robert), which includes a higher rate of benefit for those who need extra help because they have extra costs e.g. because they can’t drive or walk as far as the bus stop. Thirdly because Income Support for those with dependents is a multiple of contributions-based JSA, Fourthly because a lot of self-employed are expected to manage on a lot less than the “Minimum Income Standard” and still pay tax and NI, Fifthly because you say that the 50% on IB are not unemployed (actually it’s a bit over 33% of a total greater by one-half than the numbers you give). Sixthly because we want to see unemployment back to the sub-2% that we remember during the so-called “13 wasted years” of Tory government when income *per head* was rising at 3% pa.

Walking to the bus stop is of course OK, going in a wheelchair is OK, so long as the bus is willing to take you. In my area the bus drivers are told not to stop for people in wheelchair if the bus is close to full as they have no spaces for the wheelchair or lifts, hence Blair and Brown did not allow the DDA on public transport. When it first started the access group tried it out I was sent out to different bus stops on different routes, not once did a driver offer to help me into the bus, the only way I can enter if I get out and walk onto the bus carrying my wheelchair.

Brown helped the low paid by stopping the tax band remember the 10p so called tax fiasco.

It’s a fact if your single on the min wage your life is stuffed.

If your married with two kids your life is a lot better by claiming tax credits or if your not working child credits.

But it’s a long way from being cushy

Hi Tim,

“£14,400, pre tax, is the £7.60, £7.80 an hour (based on a 37.5 hour week and full year working) that the living wage campaigners use. You are where they got that number from.”

The figure is £7.85 per hour, not £7.80. It has been calculated by GLA Economics for the Mayor of London since 2005, and is not based on the JRF research, which was first published in 2008.

I would put it to you that you don’t, in fact, know as much about this subject as you think you do. Maybe if you paid a little bit more attention to what Chris has been explaining to you, you would actually learn something.

Can I ask where us carer’s are on that list please? Have we ceased to exist and I have not noticed <>

Mrs Peach

Not at all, above it says: “20% are claiming because they are a lone parent *or a carer*” and see table 1 in the original JRF report. There is not much of a focus on care issues, I agree, but the emphasis is more on the benefit types.

Chris.