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Rather than (once again) 'cracking down' on benefits cheats (who as research has shown again & again are actually a pretty small group), perhaps the Govt. might find it more cost effective to encourage the HMRC to find ways to get Roman Abramovic to pay the £1bn in taxes he owes....
Oh wait minute, he's rich & therefore someone to be treated carefully (and asked politely) while people on benefits, well they're just scammers, aren't they.... /s
@ChrisMayLA6
I have no doubt there are some people getting benefits who shouldn't.
They are few and I never lose sleep over it.
What is important is that 100% of people who do need benefits receive them.
and that to access those benefits they are not made to jump through hoops that harm their conditions.
the one thing no one in need of help needs is stress, and the UK benefits regime is deliberately stressful.
that 17billion in unclaimed, that is deliberate, not an accident.
exactly right!
@leighms @ChrisMayLA6 And statistics continually show that the amount of unclaimed benefits greatly exceed those lost to fraud.
Universal Basic Income for all.
Cheap and efficient to implement and it ensures that the safety net really works.
Any excess income (whether via earning or investments) would be repaid via taxation.
Unless I’m missing something, this would be fair, humane, and efficient and it would reduce the risks of harm through the pressures on mental health and malnutrition which would also save on the UK’s NHS.
Simples 
@TCMuffin @ChrisMayLA6
I first heard about that idea in the middle 80s.
I'm no economist so unable to judge on that.
I could see the main barrier being political.
Some judging that too many people were getting something for nothing. Others feeling that the brutal whip of poverty and the threat of deprivation would be denied to capitalists who use it to drive low wage employment.
#FBPE @ChrisMayLA6 @TCMuffin @leighms That's less of an issue in my view because I think there's a few myths there about how motivation really works, but also it shifts the emphasis onto employers to make more attractive places to work - like how the free market's supposed to work - and free workers from being a captive audience. How much longer would toxic cultures exist for if everyone has, excuse my English quoting The Gambler, "Fuck you money"?
https://youtu.be/XamC7-Pt8N0?si=7nAw83bzY4EMtbGw
@freequaybuoy @TCMuffin @leighms
I don't disagree on one level, provided one accepts that motivation is a toggle switch - you're either at work or not.... however, having seen at first hand how promotions work (from both sides), I'm not so sure that this covers the more fine-grained motivations & incentives within a workplace.
@ChrisMayLA6 @TCMuffin @leighms Well, starting with innovation and risk taking, consider somewhere it's notoriously absent - the public sector. Why? It's all risk and no reward. But with UBI, there's *less* risk taking risks because you have the F You Money. And this feeds into incentive to work - work gives you more disposable income or Walking Around Money but also is more likely something you're doing because you want to, and so innovation or the desire to innovate is probably part of that.
@ChrisMayLA6 @TCMuffin @leighms And it's far from clear that people only want to work for the financial incentive. Yes we *have* to to survive, but that is *not* what defines employee motivation - salary is *not* a motivating factor, at least according to Herzberg. Yes, we're talking about more fulfilling kinds of roles rather than the menial. But UBI appears to be hand in hand with increasing automation in the zeitgeist.
https://www.businessballs.com/improving-workplace-performance/to-what-extent-is-money-a-motivator/
@freequaybuoy @TCMuffin @leighms
I should add that I like the idea of UBI, just having some difficulty trying to see how it copes with some aspect of economic organisation - these are not impossible issues to resolve but may not also be easily solved by just a basic UBI
@freequaybuoy @TCMuffin @leighms
I'll go with the freedom to innovate, but I'm less convinced that UBI would support the commercialisation/massification of any new innovation... i.e. the had, but often less interesting work of 'bringing it to market'
@ChrisMayLA6 @TCMuffin
I have been very lucky in my working life to mostly have had jobs that I have enjoyed and been interested in.
This is not the case for most people.
There have been times when I have done rubbish jobs purely for the money. There were people in those workplaces who had been there many years.
Back then the hot topic was automation taking over people's jobs. Increasing automation driven by AI replacing more unskilled roles; warehouse, delivery, self-,checkout and many more are going to limit the opportunities for unskilled folk. Even more skilled sectors are being replaced by AI.
Maybe the idea of this basic universal benefit could be revisited.
A brutalist approach might be that there needs to be a driver to push the population trend downward. With fewer people able to find employment there is going to be less tax income to support benefits.
Perhaps we are at or close to this point.
I thought the ideal opportunity to introduce UBI was during the pandemic.
The support the government handed out to businesses would have been better deployed providing UBI to everyone.
This would also be much less subject to corruption when already rich people squirreled government money away in off-shore accounts rather than spending it in our communities.
@ChrisMayLA6 @TCMuffin
TBH haven't read any of his.
Will add it to my reading list
Added to mine too…thank you, Chris 
@TCMuffin @leighms @ChrisMayLA6 I love this idea, the only thing is what's to stop landlords and price gouging inflation causing retailers to just put their prices up accordingly?
@ChrisMayLA6
It’s a global problem. How on earth did it get to this without a bloody revolution ?
@ChrisMayLA6 you've left out the bit about the VAT scheme being deliberately complex so he could disguise his (alleged) fraud, whilst most benefits mistakes are simply errors due to the idiotic complexity of the process. My now wife when a single mum, found herself owing thousands as her income rise above the threshold for one day, and she failed to notify them within the very short window, they wanted all her benefits back. The problems of gig work.
@ChrisMayLA6
They can't pursue these people aggressively like they do putative benefits cheats because that would put off the other tax cheats making money here.
Not to mention the £500Million owed by Lord Bamford and his brother Mark.
That would get a few people off the poverty line and pay for some more healthcare... 
@ChrisMayLA6 benefit “cheats” can’t afford expensive lawyers
@John_Loader @ChrisMayLA6 yep & they can't squirrel their money away in off shore accounts.
@ChrisMayLA6 How much did he sell Chelsea for and hasn't he got any property in London to sequester. I suspect a rumble by HMRC might be in order. The Customs branch has more powers I believe, that the IR branch to size things and hold them....
@epistatacadam @ChrisMayLA6 The Chelsea sale money is frozen, also a scandal:
"Following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the British government allowed Roman Abramovich to sell Chelsea FC to Todd Boehly. It did so on the condition that £2.5bn from the proceeds would be donated to charities supporting victims of the war in Ukraine.
Nearly three years later, the money still sits in a frozen Barclays bank account, reportedly due to disagreement over how it should be spent, with Mr Abramovich wanting the money to go to "all the victims" of the war, and the UK government insisting it should be spent solely on humanitarian aid in Ukraine."
So do what they would do for 'mid-level' fraud; pass a 'small' law that allows them to sequestrate that money, take out the back taxes, and send the large balance to Ukraine. Simples.
@marjolica @epistatacadam @ChrisMayLA6
It’s so much easier to go after the small fry than the big fish
@UnholyOrdnance @marjolica @epistatacadam @ChrisMayLA6
small fry can't afford lawyers and accountants.
@Thebratdragon @UnholyOrdnance @epistatacadam @ChrisMayLA6 but if you're up to toughing it out (which HMRC often haven't been) it's so much more cost effective to go after the rich tax evaders than claw back pittances from the poor who have often just made a mistake.
@marjolica @UnholyOrdnance @epistatacadam @ChrisMayLA6
Right up until tye rich bsta4d phones their mp and it goes away.
@marjolica @Thebratdragon @UnholyOrdnance @epistatacadam
but less popular with party donors of your political masters
@UnholyOrdnance @marjolica @epistatacadam @ChrisMayLA6 Easier to punch down at people who cannot defend themselves, doesn't do a thing overall but is a show of strength of power and control to those on the receiving end of the outsized retribution.
"We won't go after tax evaders as we might mess with the wrong person if we do but we will go after the teeny fraction of fraud in benefits, might even spend more than we save but it's just because then all benefit recipients know they live solely at our behest and can take that away in moments."
Even though it was a Tory concept, Labour is still looking to allow the DWP to be able to search and seize people's property and let AI nosy around in people's private bank accounts for excuses to sanction or stop benefits. Don't really see the same rigours applied to tax evaders do you?
@nini @UnholyOrdnance @marjolica @epistatacadam
Yup, that's about it...
@UnholyOrdnance @marjolica @epistatacadam @ChrisMayLA6 Big fry can afford big lawyers
@ChrisMayLA6 And there are plenty of other money laundering, offshoring, tax dodging squillionaires in and around London to go after. Always assuming a lesser amount of their money hasn’t found its way into the pockets of New New Labour and its Cabinet.
Oh, it has? Well la-di-da!
@ChrisMayLA6
The only surprising thing about that story is that for some reason, HMRC seems to think that Roman Abramovich should pay taxes.