Would You Get Out Of Bed For £22,000?

Last night i was invited to attend a discussion group, i go to many discussion groups and i run a few myself, they're more like think tanks, discuss a few issues and have a mini debate.

Something keeps nagging at me everytime i go to a discussion group, you always get a question to debate about welfare and welfare reform.

To me reform is about actually reforming a service or policy to make it better, more efficient.

Back to my question in the title, would you get out of bed for £22,000 knowing that the welfare cap is £26,000. Why would anyone want to get out of bed, when claiming welfare pays more?

It makes me think back to friends who i have who are teachers, some of them when they graduated earned far less than someone who claims a range of benefits, has a number of kids, i could never understand why they would want to work, put in a lot of effort to train to just be rated as second class citizens.

Are the current welfare reforms adequate to make people want to go to work, join the Labour Market? Clearly not and it doesn't help we don't have politicians who are conviction politicians, we seem to have populist leaders who are easily swayed to go with the easy options.

To put it into perspective, if teachers were given more incentives, i.e; more basic salary we might see our education system start to pick up. Look at the psychology, would you give 110% for basically peanuts? Of course you wouldn't.

This doesn't just apply to teachers, many other people who train for a long period end up graduating to work for next to nothing, the cost/benefit doesn't sway toward benefit, it sways to cost.

There are a high proportion of teachers though that do give 110% when it costs them more in the long run.