(Untitled)

[stainsteelrat]

Background: If you go on unemployment benefit in the UK you are allowed up to £15k of savings* before your benefits are penalised < No doubt an over simplication, but to keep it simple...

*Note that savings can be second properties, or any other form of invesment AFAIK.
Poll

Comments

[ptc24]

The idea that occurred to me in the shower is to consider whether JSA etc. is state-run charity or state-run insurance (or some other model, or a hybrid). If, as a thought experiment, we take the insurance model, then you could consider people with lots of savings to be self-insuring, and let them self-certify in return for a tax break.

That aside, from a purely selfish point of view, my instinctive thing is to say "enough money for a decent deposit on a reasonable house, plus national-median-average post-tax full-time income for the JSA period". Perhaps you could take out the deposit bit for people already on the housing ladder, or count equity on a first home as savings, or equity up to a certain sum as savings.

Then again, you don't know what someone's savings are for, how much they have access to the generosity of SO, friends, family, whether they stand to inherit money or property in the not-too-far distant future, or...

Which makes me think the simplest thing is to follow damerell's suggestion and argue that savings should not be taken into acount.