Is this fair?

Iam64

Thanks Allira. I don’t see myself as a virtue signaller, I expect to be put in the fascist gang by many posters.

My memory is Gordon Brown introduced working tax credits, pips etc. with the aim of ensuring working people benefitted financially. It means we subsidise employers ? Pip and motability cars for people with addictions surely give no incentive to use them to access services to support abstinence. Of course we used to have such services.
Just as we used to own manage and build social housing

We need root and branch reform .

I expect to be put in the fascist gang by many posters.
You can join me, a right-wing extremist, peddling my views all over social media, apparently 😁 even though I dislike Farage.
Is that because I voted Labour and they're not far Left enough?

To be honest I don't actually think those who cheer this on with no examination of what is happening gives two hoots about those children.

Thanks Allira. I don’t see myself as a virtue signaller, I expect to be put in the fascist gang by many posters.

My memory is Gordon Brown introduced working tax credits, pips etc. with the aim of ensuring working people benefitted financially. It means we subsidise employers ? Pip and motability cars for people with addictions surely give no incentive to use them to access services to support abstinence. Of course we used to have such services.
Just as we used to own manage and build social housing

We need root and branch reform .

MaizieD

NotSpaghetti

...but where is the evidence of having children just for the benefits please?

No good asking questions, NotSpaghetti. I asked one too. Is there any evidence that the 2 child cap stopped people having more than 2 children?

They'd rather go on with their virtue signalling and separating out the deserving and undeserving poor.

There are several posters who have experience of this through years of work and calling them virtue signallers is very wrong.

Iam64

I don’t know about having children solely to get benefits but, work meant I met many women/families where no one worked. I was told more than once “I’ll never work again, it’s a mugs game”. These were families who knew what words they needed to use on forms when claiming various benefits. Some had more cash each month than I earned, despite I was working full time

Yes definitely to a welfare state with a good safety net. No to exploiting it (and of course to tax evasion)

Yes definitely to a welfare state with a good safety net. No to exploiting it (and of course to tax evasion)

Absolutely. Well said.

As for spending the £70billion on private rentals over the next five years, that is just pouring money down the drains.
Let's build more housing (apparently that was an idea!) but not on flood plains but build the infrastructure needed to support communities too.

Galaxy

I have endless evidence like iam64 of families where no one works for generations, endless issues and chaos, there children stand very little chance, giving 'extra' money will make very very little difference to those children. We are failing them.

I agree with you and Iam64 and if we really want to help children this isn’t the way to do it.
This was done by RR to appease socialist ideology from the far left of the Party who seem to believe that this will magically make a huge difference to children.Any child who goes to school hungry or to bed hungry will continue that way in my view.

Their not there. . I may change my mind about an edit button.

I have endless evidence like iam64 of families where no one works for generations, endless issues and chaos, there children stand very little chance, giving 'extra' money will make very very little difference to those children. We are failing them.

You’d think it would make sense to use that 70 billion to build some good quality family homes available at a reasonable rent, wouldn’t you?

Oh hold on………

I’m not defending people who milk the system but I would just point out the highest percentage of the universal credit paid to families goes to private landlords.
The government is projected to spend £70 billion over the next 5 years to private landlords.

I expect if you Google both questions you will come up with some official research results.

NotSpaghetti

...but where is the evidence of having children just for the benefits please?

No good asking questions, NotSpaghetti. I asked one too. Is there any evidence that the 2 child cap stopped people having more than 2 children?

They'd rather go on with their virtue signalling and separating out the deserving and undeserving poor.

I don’t know about having children solely to get benefits but, work meant I met many women/families where no one worked. I was told more than once “I’ll never work again, it’s a mugs game”. These were families who knew what words they needed to use on forms when claiming various benefits. Some had more cash each month than I earned, despite I was working full time

Yes definitely to a welfare state with a good safety net. No to exploiting it (and of course to tax evasion)

...but where is the evidence of having children just for the benefits please?

Or more soon maybe.

It makes sense financially and in quality of life not to keep going out to work .

Benefits above what can be earned enable people to continue having as many children as they want, whilst those in work have to limit their families to what they can support.

So if you want a large family a benefits lifestyle makes perfect sense and this is now available as an option.

It’s hardly surprising that 5 million people have decided it’s a viable option.

Does anyone have actual evidence of people having children just for state benefits please?

It doesn’t really matter how many jobs there are if you’re better off not having one though.

Safety nets yes.

But going back to the is this fair question. If the assumption is that people earning over a certain level can manage and over that can pay tax then that should be the level of benefit.

Set at the number of children in the family when benefit is claimed but not for any future children to cover that question of misfortune after children are born.

Nobody wants children in poverty but neither should they be created as a source of income. Money in doesn’t always mean money spent on children’s needs.

We need safety nets. No-one knows if their circumstances might suddenly change. We certainly don't want to go back to Victorian times when we had Poor Houses and people's description on the Census was Pauper because they were too old or ill to work and had no income or children were begging in the streets. I have witnessed that (not in this country).
We're a more civilised country than that.

Creating jobs by Government spending might be a start.

Let's face it - state benefits have always been a political football and I have been saying for around fifty years that the government (whichever party runs it) needs to invest in a complete re-think of the entire system. Years ago the technology wasn't there but it is now. We need to start from scratch and get it right. I think the Libdems once had a plan for "negative income tax" that seemed a damn good idea to me, but of course they have only ever had one real shot at government in that time and David Cameron saw to it that they only got to influence the things he fancied - and made a complete miscalculation of the Brexit vote. Nick Clegg's book about his 5-year experience as deputy PM is an eye-opener.

Why do people have more children than they can care for?

If you decide to have a benefits lifestyle then it makes sense to continue to have children. There are benefits of scale and it also ensures continuity of payment until almost pension age.

It makes more sense than working in one of the lower pad jobs or even the lower moderate range because benefits attract no tax or work expenses.

It’s more a question of what on earth drives people to go out to work when they don’t need to. What motivates the 38%?

Around 40 million people in the UK pay income tax.
That includes many pensioners.

Prejudice and resentment are, sadly, much easier to spread.
That is so obvious when you see the amount of prejudice and resentment against old people by younger generations. It really is quite alarming.

Every child matters Of course they do and you're right, they do not ask to be born but the question is not about the children who deserve our help, but why do some people have more children than they can properly care for?
Most young people don't in fact.

Did the two child cap stop people on benefits having three or more children?

You are all so gung ho for being cruel to children by leaving them in poverty, and punitive towards their parents and, frankly, it is horrible to read.

No punitive treatment has ever stopped poor people reproducing, the Victorians tried very hard with their dreadful poor law, but it didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now.

Of course, what would be helpful would be to have a government which prioritised investing for growth and full employment, and which actively worked to ensure that the money it spent into the economy was more equably distributed by preventing the wealthy from sucking it all in their direction by way of excessive wages and profits and a much lighter tax regime.

But that would also need a population who abandoned the household budget myth, stopped fixating on government ‘debt’ and had at least a rudimentary understanding of how money actually works in the national economy. Because it is the public’s ‘beliefs’ which hold government back as much as it is poor economics.

68% of 8.3 million on Universal Credit.

That’s just over 5 million people who can live without having to work just on this benefit.