Quote:
Originally Posted by Escapee
But wasn't that the aim of the last government, they encouraged single women with children to work 16 hrs minimum wage and married couples to work on minimum wage topped up with tax credits. This made the unemployment figures look good and the 16 hours was also a bit of a job share in many cases, their approach with single people was that they could just rot in hell.
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Well it also means that they won't be claiming as much benefit and they have some path back into work, it's much harder for the long term unemployed to find work than those whose spells in unemployment have been short. No policy is perfect but regardless of the perceived motivations of the last government the policy itself wasn't a bad idea and hasn't led, to my knowledge, to the problems people foresee with increasing it to be more in-line with the living wage. People being below what they need to live isn't a good system and will lead to people needing their benefits to be topped up with tax credits.