When £35000 a year is not enough.

[Kanaric]

40-60k sure but 100k is laughable.

I know complete near downs syndrome idiots who make 40-60k. Not ripping on anyone who makes that just saying there are opportunities for anyone to do it.

[Denny Crane!]

40-60k sure but 100k is laughable.

I know complete near downs syndrome idiots who make 40-60k. Not ripping on anyone who makes that just saying there are opportunities for anyone to do it.

Dollars or £? Because I am smarter than your average bear and I can't make that.

[bushbush]

what kind of life can you live in UK with 35000 pounds? can someone give me a description? you can be more specific with 35000 living in London or other cities.

I am asking this because I met a US lawyer working for one of the big UK law firms. He makes about 100,000 pounds a year now but he is complaining that life is pretty tough in London with that kind of money actually given how expensive everything is there. I ask myself if 100,000 pounds a year is rough life, is 35000 pounds almost below poverty line?

[Phier]

If a city is very expensive to live in which London is, does it make sense for the government to pay people to live in that city? All that does is artificially keep expenses high. If you have no work, then you can't complain if you have to move to survive on the dole.

[gaunty14]

How is £35k a year, not enough? If the area you live in is too expensive then move like every other family has to when they try to find work.

Often the parents can't keep their legs together and have four children etc
Obviously that is a generalisation but you get the point

[Robin de Bodemloze]

Often the parents can't keep their legs together and have four children etc
Obviously that is a generalisation but you get the point

All the more reason to relocate elsewhere where they can afford all those kids?

[Poach]

what kind of life can you live in UK with 35000 pounds? can someone give me a description? you can be more specific with 35000 living in London or other cities.

I am asking this because I met a US lawyer working for one of the big UK law firms. He makes about 100,000 pounds a year now but he is complaining that life is pretty tough in London with that kind of money actually given how expensive everything is there. I ask myself if 100,000 pounds a year is rough life, is 35000 pounds almost below poverty line?

While London is rather an exception to the rest of the UK in terms of living costs, £100,000 shouldn't be "rough", unless your standard of "comfortable" is unreasonably high.

According to this, you're looking at around £30,000/year before tax to "comfortably" live with 2 children.

According to this couple, their cost of living is around £20,000/year, without children.

According to here, £31,600/year before tax will pay for a 2-child family.

As such, £36,000 before tax will comfortably house a 2-child family.

[Denny Crane!]

what kind of life can you live in UK with 35000 pounds? can someone give me a description? you can be more specific with 35000 living in London or other cities.

I am asking this because I met a US lawyer working for one of the big UK law firms. He makes about 100,000 pounds a year now but he is complaining that life is pretty tough in London with that kind of money actually given how expensive everything is there. I ask myself if 100,000 pounds a year is rough life, is 35000 pounds almost below poverty line?

Well bearing in mind this is for people who do no work at all but in this country you could rent a 3 bed semi and pay all the bills and food shopping, run a car and still be left with enough to save up for a decent holiday every year and still treat yourself to the odd expense like an xbox every few months, I'm assuming this is two adults surviving on this wage by the way.

Pretty high standard of living not many who work can afford. I'm earning about that and I'm doing about 80 hours a week to get it.

If a city is very expensive to live in which London is, does it make sense for the government to pay people to live in that city? All that does is artificially keep expenses high. If you have no work, then you can't complain if you have to move to survive on the dole.

exactly.

[bushbush]

Well bearing in mind this is for people who do no work at all but in this country you could rent a 3 bed semi and pay all the bills and food shopping, run a car and still be left with enough to save up for a decent holiday every year and still treat yourself to the odd expense like an xbox every few months, I'm assuming this is two adults surviving on this wage by the way.

Pretty high standard of living not many who work can afford. I'm earning about that and I'm doing about 80 hours a week to get it.

Thanks for the clarification.

that US lawyer makes 100,000 pounds while working 80 hours a week too (albeit a lot of international traveling). Remind me to tell him quit whining about his "tough" life next time I see him.

[Derbiean]

Unless you have a local connection to an area (either you have lived in said for a certain of time or you have family in the area) you will end up very low on the housing list, so again simply getting up and moving to another area is far from as simple as some of you would like to believe.

Local councils can only provide housing for people who are eligible. Most people who are living in the UK permanently are eligible, but there are some exceptions.
Being eligible for council housing doesn't mean that you are guaranteed to be offered a place. It means that you are entitled to be considered for a home. In many areas, there is very little housing available, so there is often a very long wait and some people may never get an offer. http://england.shelter.org.uk/get_ad...gible_to_apply

The number of people joining waiting lists for social housing rose last year, councils in England say. More than 11,000 people joined the lists from July to September last year, 12% more than the previous quarter.
Richard Kemp, vice-chair of the Local Government Association, said there was "no long-term solution to this problem".
The government says it is working to find a solution to what it admits is a housing crisis.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12198429

[Robin de Bodemloze]

Unless you have a local connection to an area (either you have lived in said for a certain of time or you have family in the area) you will end up very low on the housing list, so again simply getting up and moving to another area is far from as simple as some of you would like to believe.

Thus the government should spend on increasing labour mobility instead of using benefits as a crutch.

[Derbiean]

Thus the government should spend on increasing labour mobility instead of using benefits as a crutch.

Or perhaps the governments should have built enough housing to begin with.

[Rolling Thunder]

Thus the government should spend on increasing labour mobility instead of using benefits as a crutch.

Actually, the problem with our benefit's system is that it becomes stingy the moment people find work. Working at all get your benefits cut. Working past 16 hours a week gets most of them removed, but in reality, you're probably earning less than or equal to what you were on benefits.

[Robin de Bodemloze]

Actually, the problem with our benefit's system is that it becomes stingy the moment people find work. Working at all get your benefits cut. Working past 16 hours a week gets most of them removed, but in reality, you're probably earning less than or equal to what you were on benefits.

Hence why benefits should be lower, and not offer a "good" standard of living. This whole "the unemployed should be entitled to a fair standard of living on par with working individuals" thing is utter and complete bollocks. People who don't work deserve to survive. They also deserve to be poor.

[Rolling Thunder]

Hence why benefits should be lower, and not offer a "good" standard of living. This whole "the unemployed should be entitled to a fair standard of living on par with working individuals" thing is utter and complete bollocks. People who don't work deserve to survive. They also deserve to be poor.

You know who doesn't deserve a standard of living? Lawyers. Now there's a parasitic class if there ever was one. Get into power, make relative simple concepts (justice, equity, equality) into hideously complex matters of case law requiring hours of reading and learning various concepts, use pretentious latin words and suddenly you're entitled to a heft wedge of money for providing a wholly superfluous service. But since they can afford suits, expensive wine and the dinner-party pontification such things bring, they immediately become a far superior class to the unemployed. I happen to like my unemployed standard of living - being able to eat things like fresh vegetables, and not have my property repossessed, and maybe even have a pint of beer once a week, and electricity and even internet. Much as I would like a job, getting one so far has proven problematic.

[Caelifer_1991]

The job center will bend over backwards to get you skills training to get you a job hell they will even pay for driving lessons.

Dunno where you heard this Denny but that's either a lie or only applies to some very lucky individuals that are in the extreme minority - I received JSA (albeit for just 10 weeks altogether, 6 weeks then 4 weeks a few months later) and yet there was never any option to get driving lessons funded by the government...

If a city is very expensive to live in which London is, does it make sense for the government to pay people to live in that city? All that does is artificially keep expenses high. If you have no work, then you can't complain if you have to move to survive on the dole.

... and you Phier, this is perhaps one of the first times I agree with you on anything - although only to an extent. While that reasoning is fine in theory, it doesn't quite take housing concerns into consideration - no one can ever rely on getting social-housing, and private housing may simply not be available or be prohibitively expensive for anyone relying on benefits (though anyone single should have that freedom, anyone with a family would be unlikely to find anything they could afford that would also be reasonably suitable). There's also the fact that a person may be more likely to find a job in the area they are already in, which they would need to consider; and somewhat linked to this, the person involved may be in full-time education - half way through A Levels for instance, and would thus need to sacrifice a lot to move.

Aside from all this however, I'd like to say that £26000 benefits is way too much for anyone in my opinion, I'll also say that I've never met anyone, in any circumstances, that have ever received anything even close to that... the most I've seen is about £11000 and that was shared between a family of 3...

[Robin de Bodemloze]

Oh get ed.

Thanks for that constructive response

You know who doesn't deserve a standard of living? Lawyers. Now there's a parasitic class if there ever was one. Get into power, make relative simple concepts (justice, equity, equality) into hideously complex matters of case law requiring hours of reading and learning various concepts, use pretentious latin words and suddenly you're entitled to a heft wedge of money for providing a wholly superfluous service. But since they can afford suits, expensive wine and the dinner-party pontification such things bring, they immediately become a far superior class to the unemployed. I happen to like my unemployed standard of living - being able to eat things like fresh vegetables, and not have my property repossessed, and maybe even have a pint of beer once a week, and electricity and even internet. Much as I would like a job, getting one so far has proven problematic.

Lawyers do a job that's valued by society, if not by you. If you are unemployed due to a bad system then my sympathies, and it's one of the perks of living in an advanced economy that the state doesn't let you starve, but in general the unemployed do not deserve to be supported by the state to the same level of living standard as someone who works - "same" being the operative word.

[Rolling Thunder]

Lawyers do a job that's valued by society, if not by you. If you are unemployed due to a bad system then my sympathies, and it's one of the perks of living in an advanced economy that the state doesn't let you starve, but in general the unemployed do not deserve to be supported by the state to the same level of living standard as someone who works - "same" being the operative word.

They do a job - provide a service - created by legislative fiat, as the legal system is so densely incomprehensible, so liable to change and interpretation and principle that they are needed by the citizenry. You might as well argue that any other form of racket provides a service - one you have little choice in agreeing to or not!

I would agree, but the vast majority of people on benefits do not experience the kind of lifestyle employed people do. I know I don't. I know most unemployed people don't. These people in Wales have their tabs, and their booze, and the like, but that's because they've gimped the system to maximize economies of scale and return. Those are the only people who live better than those working (with the exception of people who are working between 16-20 hours, and receive exactly as much as they would on benefits.

[Robin de Bodemloze]

They do a job - provide a service - created by legislative fiat, as the legal system is so densely incomprehensible, so liable to change and interpretation and principle that they are needed by the citizenry. You might as well argue that any other form of racket provides a service - one you have little choice in agreeing to or not!

I would agree, but the vast majority of people on benefits do not experience the kind of lifestyle employed people do. I know I don't. I know most unemployed people don't. These people in Wales have their tabs, and their booze, and the like, but that's because they've gimped the system to maximize economies of scale and return. Those are the only people who live better than those working (with the exception of people who are working between 16-20 hours, and receive exactly as much as they would on benefits.

A common language of contract and legality sounds pretty necessary to me - the fact that legislature is complicated and case law is onerously long is mostly due to natural accumulation over time, not because a small group of people decided it would be smart to say stuff in ways nobody else understood. There's a lot more to lawyers than just interpreting difficult language in any case.

Regarding your second point, I'm glad we do agree - yet, and I quote the OP - the British government does not.

3. The Government has announced that in order to promote fairness between those in work and those receiving benefits, from 2013, benefit payments for individual households will be capped at around the average earned income after tax and National Insurance for working households. We estimate that the cap will be set at £350 a week for households of a single adult with no children; and at £500 a week for couple and lone parent households.

Regarding the bit in bold, no such fairness should exist.

[Astaroth]

They do a job - provide a service - created by legislative fiat, as the legal system is so densely incomprehensible, so liable to change and interpretation and principle that they are needed by the citizenry. You might as well argue that any other form of racket provides a service - one you have little choice in agreeing to or not!

Lawyers are just as much needed in Civil Law systems, despite there being a lot more codified laws/less case law. And legal specialists are needed to know, understand and interpret the huge system of laws -- which btw doesn't exist because the legislative is bored or wants to annoy people.

A modern state requires all areas of life to be organized and regulated to a degree, otherwise there would be chaos (heck, people already complain when someone else's apples end up on their property -- humans just love quarreling). A country of many million people with countless possible situations necessarily needs a complicated and large legal system, hence lawyers, judges and the likes aren't just some sort of "parasites".