The Budget

Of course it makes sense to take the low paid out of the tax system and reducing their benefits would mean less work for benefit office workers, leaving them free to help the unemployed and give the low paid control over their finances. I believe the ultimate aim is for the tax payer to no longer subsidise companies who fail to pay their employees a proper wage.

Almost all those in receipt of working tax credits have children. The minimum wage is £212 after tax and £232 before for an 8hr day and 5 days a week. So taking these folk out of tax will save them £1040 pa. The average working tax credit is £6340 pa giving them salary of £17395.

I have been trying to do a budget for a family of say 4 .children under 5. Mum and Dad on minimum wage payingno tax as Cameron suggests would earn between them. 24230 I.e. 2019 per month
Budget per month
Rent @ 500
Gas/electric 100
Rates 140
Food 650
Travel -bus for parents 130
Childcare guess at 400 I think this is conservative side
Water 40
TV 50
Phone 40
Insurance 20
Christmas/gifts 150
Clothes 20
Repairs 30
Replacement items 20
Total £2093
The family has no holiday, car,or entertainment of anykind.
Undoubtedly Grand will dispute some of the figures and perhaps the addition but I am doing this on a tablet as computer has packed up.

fullfact.org/live/2015/cuts_welfare_budget_220_billion_includes_pensions-45829

Cameron's promise of taking those on minimum pay out of tax only applied to those working 30 hours a week. Those who work 30 hours a week on minimum pay do not pay tax now, so it's a false promise.

I agree with Richard Murphy on this.

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2015/06/23/getting-priorities-wrong/

This is the third try big swear word inserted here

dj I so agree but I was trying to see what life would be like on the minimum wage. I think impossible. You would only have to buy new shoes for the children one week and your budget would be completely thrown. They will do better on tax credits.

dj - your quote says among other things, instead of decreasing benefits, "increase wages first".
But there's not much for employers to gain from doing this. Evidently "you're exempt from PAYE if none of your employees is paid £112 or more per week, gets expenses and benefits......"
From a Gov.uk website.

Hope you get your computer working again whitewave. Otherwise we might be missing a lot of sense.

That's where food banks come in. In Durham now there are two clothes banks for parents who cannot afford clothes or shoes for their kids.

And if they are living in run-down accommodation, they will not be able to afford to move because there will be no money for a deposit.

Exactly, TriciaF. Definitely a government on the side of the employer.

"He wants opportunities, he wants to encourage aspiration, he wants social mobility but he wants to get it by cutting benefits and the services that help people make a success of their lives. He wants to do it by making poor people poorer.

Cameron says his government will work tirelessly to deliver opportunity over the next five years. He has his work cut out since his last government has worked tirelessly over the past five years to make more children poor. An independent report published in April 2015 found that, since 2012, government welfare cuts pushed hundreds of thousands, including more than 300,000 children, into poverty. Government statistics to be published by the end of June are also expected to reveal a reversal of the years of progress tackling both relative and absolute child poverty."

I have just been watching last night's Dispatches about housing.
There was an interview with someone from Wensleydale Creamery. Despite paying £1 per hour more than the minimum wage, he cannot get enough workers because there is no affordable housing for them to buy or rent.

Would it even bother Cameron if this really was a zero-saving solution, DJ?

Taking the scenario that you gave in your first post, whereby people are taken out of tax but have their benefits reduced by the same amount, we know Cameron well enough by now to know that he would claim the benefit reduction as a saving (to the hard-working tax-payer). The corresponding loss of tax revenue would be conveniently forgotten about.

I actually find it quite frightening just how willing the general public are to believe whatever this government says regarding savings, and how readily they have bought into the rhetoric that portrays anyone in receipt of any type of benefit as a workshy scrounger, when in reality many of them are hard working people earning a pittance. Divide and rule is bad enough, but when a government is prepared to use the poorest, the most vulnerable and the most powerless people in society like this, it worries me.

Now I've said that, I will probably get all the usual comments about 'lefties', and how a Labour is no different.
For the record, I don't have strong leanings towards either left or right. I actually voted Conservative in 2010, though I certainly regretted it when I became aware of their lies and deceit surrounding the so-called benefit reforms (which don't affect me personally, btw). Yes, I am criticising the Tory government now, but I would be equally critical of any party that was governing us in this way!

It is nice to see some figures whitewave.

Personally I think that food is too high, and also christmas/gifts.

And clothes too low.

I dont know about some of the other figures. TV looks high too.

i think one of the reasons the public believes what they are told is that not enough public bodies will challenge them.
Another problem is that they are going to change FOI requests so that they can say that they cannot afford to do them.

www.google.com/url?q=http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2015/06/22/gove-offensive-reveals-behind-the-scenes-tory-freedom-of-inf&sa=U&ei=JsWJVc3_HIb7ygO0hp3wDw&ved=0CAUQFjAA&client=internal-uds-cse&usg=AFQjCNEeohfe7Klf8bdFBgdeTdRH-0PLEg

Then we will not be able to get much information at all.
Who voted this devious lot in?

I agree, soon. And wouldn't the rent be subsidised by housing benefit?

Swings and roundabouts, soon. Take £50 off the food and add it to the clothes. It does not matter. A family of four cannot live on the minimum wage. That's what whitewave is saying.
In many parts of the country,£500 per month is too low for rent. Five years ago we were paying £650 a month in the North East.

I suppose it would be too much to ask for people to wait until the details of the actual budget are announced?

It's all speculation and hyperbole at the moment.

Isn't it always Ana ?

Interesting figures Whitewave. I have been hearing quite a bit about the new class they say is forming - the "precariat" - and I think your figures show a really good example of this. It only takes one thing to go wrong and the precarious balance is lost.

I remember feeling very humbled once when seeing a programme which was saying "the poor" could be helped by learning to cook from scratch; something it would be easy to agree with. Then we learned that one family, keeping ahead of debt on a day to day basis, could not afford to switch the electricity on so no cooking from scratch for them. Another programme I remember showed one poor lady, with her spread sheets to keep her on track, reaching a desperate point because a bill about to go out of her bank account would put her in debit and she could not see how she would escape the knock on effects. In the end it just meant moving the date of the direct debit and it made all the difference. She was intelligent and knowledgeable but so overwhelmed by fear and anxiety she could not think it through.

I have just seen the front page of one of the newspapers saying that the Conservatives are going to change how they measure child poverty. I do feel very worried about how families, well not just families, will cope.

Sorry Whitewave

www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jun/23/child-poverty-measures-figures-first-rise-in-decade

I think it is too much to ask Ana; people's lives may be affected. It is the government that tends to leak things in order to manage expectations so it is reasonable to discuss the possibilities.

I saw it as well, Gracesgran.

News24 at 11.30 will be interesting, Gracesgran. Will they calm down over the next hour, or really have an argument?

"The prime minister’s point about Britons earning a living through good jobs rather than relying on benefits is fair. So fair that it was made repeatedly at the last election – by the man whom Mr Cameron lambasted as Red Ed.
It’s unfair for billion-pound companies – spraying millions at directors and shareholders – to rely on the state to top up the poverty wages they pay their workers. So the Conservatives might justify a cut in tax credits if they were also to drive private sector businesses to pay the living wage. But they show no inclination to do so. Indeed, as the Child Poverty Action Group points out, the government’s draft child poverty strategy last year didn’t even mention the living wage – until campaigners intervened."

I heard yet another repeat of the Conservative mantra that we mustn't leave debt for our children, which again sounds quite reasonable. However, (go away Gove) if the alterative is to put our children currently into poverty I am not sure they understand how protecting our children works.

Yes I take peoples point about the figures in my family budget but I tried to be as realistic as possible and hopefully it shows how difficult it is for Mum and Dad to manage. You can see how the fear of something going wrong must be overwhelming at times. The really sad thing is that it absolutely impossible for the family to take part in stuff the rest of us take for granted, things like the theatre, trips to the countryside, zoos etc. This means that by the official poverty figures of 60%, of the average our family isn't amongst the poor I think (hopefully someone will correct me), so it seems to me that anything less say for example Mum works partime than life is dreadful.