Child poverty would reach a record high in 2023-24 under the Tories

GagaJo yes, the wealthy are avoiding/evading paying their tax, that is why I cannot see how Labour will fund all the proposals in their manifesto. The wealthy will either leave or move their money elsewhere.

Sure Start centres helped break the cycle that some children find themselves trapped in.

GGMK3 's post was stating facts, why does it show everything that is wrong with society today? I feel quite insulted, I am a Labour member and don't believe I fit your profile Opal. Although I do feel for those less fortunate than myself and aim not to be too judgemental, particularly about those who do not agree with me.

Opal I think your post will in all probability be ignored.

Labour has always played the rich are evil card!!!! Owning your own home, working your way out of poverty are things they do not like to see/know about.

What they want is for us all to be reliant on the State, the thought of state owned internet is horrific, real “big brother” territory.

Everything privatised, nothing working, unions holding the country to ransom........KEEP CORBYN/LABOUR OUT

Still victim blaming I see! Try to imagine being brought up in poverty by parents who don't cope well and aren't 'sensible', add a few learning difficulties, being bullied, maybe abused, then being an easy target for the gangs and drug dealers. Are you beginning to see how fortunate you are?

Taxation doesn't fund spending, Callistomen. We've been over this before...

Government spending comes first, then the money is returned via taxation. The real economy can only grow if the government spends into it. The reason that austerity was such a bad idea was that cutting the amount of money in the economy by cutting public services has actually shrunk the economy. If the government cuts back on buying goods and services from the private sector (and it buys all of them from the private sector) and cuts back on paying wages & salaries, (all formerly spent in the private sector) the economy shrinks.

One of the prime factors keeping the economy afloat at the moment is record levels of consumer debt. And, ironically, government spending on 'Brexit preparations'.

Government 'borrowing' is usually in the form of bonds, for which there is apparently a big demand. They are safe (though not exciting) investments with a guaranteed return. It can also issue as much money as it wants so long as it doesn't cause inflation.

I am not making this up.

Labour has always played the rich are evil card!!!!

It's not so much that the rich are evil, GG13 as the fact that this world holds finite (i.e. not a limitless supply) resources and there is no reason whatsoever for a small section of the population to hold the greater part of them.

Why do you think I am envious Opal. Can you only insult people? quizqueen's parents did alright. They were not in poverty at all they were typical working-class of the time and like most of our parents, they did better than those who came before them setting quizqueen off on a route to do the same. That is not the world of today for far too many.

If there is no job to get then what do you do? If you are too ill to work, what then. As I said people are working two or three jobs with poverty and insecurity their only reward.

There is no envy. I do not want what you have I just want each and every one of us to contribute enough to look after those who are in a bad place. If anything is "EVERYTHING that is wrong with society today" (I can hear the pearls being clutched) it is the greed and avarice from those who have used what others have paid for in the past but don't want to do so now they are comfortable.

I’m one who could tick most of those boxes Hetty58 and I know exactly how fortunate I am - but then I always did know that there were others much worse off than me as well and I never saw myself as a victim.

I wasn’t blessed with the brilliant intellect of so many on these threads but I always had the common sense and good health to know that it was down to me to make the right choices and not expect the state to look after me cradle to the grave.

I learned by watching folks who had more than us spend their money more wisely and thought, so that’s how they do it! A revelation!

The wealthy will either leave or move their money elsewhere.

They will not leave. If they go anywhere that feels familiar they will pay what we are paying here. The tax will not be exceptional, it's just the Tories making you think it will be Callistemon. Find the facts, not the propaganda.

Labour has always played the rich are evil card!!!! Owning your own home, working your way out of poverty are things they do not like to see/know about.

Don't be rediculous GG13. Owning your own home, working your way out of being working-class - not poverty. For heaven's sake that is not rich. Unless you are very rich, and that will be very few on here, you will lose little and gain more. You are certainly either very full of what you have achieved or I have misread what you completely. You do seem to have a very high opinion of all the millions of people who had great advantages when we were young and have come out, for the most part, ahead of what they could have otherwise expected. Talk about inverted snobbery. Poverty indeed. I expect one or two on here have experienced it but most just got a bit better off and a bit more secure than our parents. But please, nothing out of the ordinary.

As for evil. I can't say that about anyone I don't know but selfish and judgemental can be clear from someone's posts.

The dispatches programme “Growing up poor” showed a few families who had fallen on hard times because of circumstances beyond their control they weren’t feckless people. But ultimately the state failed to support them when they needed help.

One family had lost a child to cancer, which meant the mother had to borrow to fund the funeral. Then she spiralled into depression. They lost their home. Tragic for both the parents and the children but not the parents’ fault and of course not the children’s fault.

Domestic violence caused one family to flee, they were allocated a three bed flat. They were put on universal credit but it was delayed and they had to take loans out to cover food and heating. They were forced to walk two and a half miles to a food bank, then had to carry the heavy bags home. No money for heating so they applied for a fuel voucher but were turned down. The mum was planning to pawn her mobile phone which was needed to apply for jobs and universal credit. Their housing benefit was cut because the “Bedroom tax” meant they had more bedrooms than allowed. Even though the children were settled at school, the council rehoused them over a hundred miles away.

Marital breakdown meant one hard working family couldn’t afford to keep their family home. They were put in temporary accommodation. The dad had a breakdown and made multiple suicide attempts. The daughter was trying to revise for GCSEs with the family living in one room and worrying about the mental health issues of both her parents. She didn’t achieve well in her exams.

Some of the children in these families became unofficial carers for their parents. They were all lovely and it was difficult to watch the programme without tears in your eyes.

You should really watch this heartbreaking programme before saying “my parents were poor and they brought me up
properly”.

Oh dear GGMK3 if only you knew - our immediate family goes from multi-millionaire through “sickness benefit/carers allowance”(terminal illness) and “scrounges on every benefit going” whilst working cash in hand and putting two fingers up to the world!!!

Opal says what I want to if I dared.

MaizieD "It can also issue as much money as it wants so long as it doesn't cause inflation." I don't claim to be an economist, but surely if it was that easy, every country would be doing it? The problem is, as soon as the Government issues money, it puts upward pressure on inflation, which in turn increases prices and interest rates, and so the cycle starts. Which is surely why Government don't just have a licence to print as much money as it wants? Happy to be corrected, but I think this is the general gist isn't it?

Opal, YOU go try to get benefits. Go on. My daughter applied after having a baby (after 18 years of paying full tax, national insurance, before you assume she is a scrounger). She waited SIX months. What would a poor family with no help available do? HALF a year!

In addition, I am fairly certain I pay around FOUR times as much tax as you. HAPPILY, because I’m a socialist and believe in supporting the less fortunate. Your assumption about Labour Party members is about as wrong as you could possibly be. Most of my Labour friends are professionals. Home owners. Nice car. Foreign hols once or more a year. BUT what they aren’t is selfish and self seeking.

GrannyGravy13 What a pile of absolute MERDE!!!! This is 100% my profile and I’m a long standing Labour member. As are MOST of my friends who fit that profile you fantasied up.

Gracesgran I suppose it depends on your definition of wealthy.
If we are talking about the seriously wealthy then yes, some will be able to make other provisions to avoid paying tax.

If we are, as Jeremy Corbyn is, talking about people earning £80,000 pa, the that is not seriously wealthy. It may be very well off and far in excess of what we - or you - have ever earned, but in London and environs with rents, house prices, travel costs as they are, then it could be just about managing.

It needs a rethink, the manifesto should include what is essential and achievable, not grandiose schemes which people do not actually believe.

Ps the Tories don't make me think anything Gracesgran

I worked that one out for myself

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once called poverty a “personality defect.” She said this in a 1978 interview Though not many politicians would go quite so far, this view that the solution resides with the individual is not exceptional. From Australia to England and from Sweden to the United States there is an entrenched notion that poverty is something people have to overcome on their own. Sure, the government can nudge them in the right direction with incentives –  with policies promoting awareness, with penalties, and, above all, with education. In fact, if there’s a perceived “silver bullet” in the fight against poverty, it’s a high school diploma (or even better, a college degree)."

Margaret Thatcher was, in so many ways, a very silly woman. People are not in poverty because they make bad or short-term decisions. And before you tell me you know a family, or once met someone please think, whatever the challenges that person had, how secure and provided for if they had been born into a wealthy family. We know how this is because we see it. It is not the person we should blame if they fail to rise out of real (not imagined) poverty.

thecorrespondent.com/4664/why-do-the-poor-make-such-poor-decisions/179307480-39a74caf

You are wrong, Opal. Try reading some economics.

Inflation would only occur if a) there weren't enough resources available to buy with the money and b) if the government didn't take excess money back through taxation.

And yes, the government has absolute licence to print as much money as it wants. Where do you think it suddenly managed to find £200 billion+ for quantitative easing in 2008, and some £60 billion to shore up the pound after the Brexit vote? It wasn't squirrelled away somewhere in a government rainy day piggy bank.

Try this site:

gimms.org.uk/

OK Maizie, thanks, I'll read your link tomorrow and try to educate myself some more, no need for quite such a cutting response to a genuine question though is there?

I still don't think it can be as easy as you suggest though, or every country would be doing it, surely?

I apologise that I didn't recognise your question as genuine, Opal.

I'd be really pleased to hear what you think about the site. It's not about left or right wing economics; it just describes how government money 'works'.

What makes you think other countries don't "opal*?

Apology gratefully received MaizieD, thank you. I will read it tomorrow and let you know my thoughts. I'll be very happy to read something that is not slanted left or right wing, just factual.

GGMK3 - because it sounds like an easy way to push more money into the system without some kind of downside, and I'm pretty sure life just ain't like that? Rather a simplistic view but it's getting late and my brain's starting to switch off.

Obviously, for every surplus there is a deficit, and printing money can devalue it but what governments should have is a series of checks and balances.

My estimation of what has happened (and I'm happy to learn more) is that sadly, although the whole world went into shock over the banking crisis it was not the banks who reorganised themselves, much of the money that came their way seems to have been swallowed up by salaries. It was the people that paid. Banks merged and cut back on people but the do not seem to have developed and invested. An example of this is that many of them still have systems based on old IT which is very precarious.

At the same time that any money the government could reasonably print (quantitative easing) was not being invested in growth, money was also being pulled out of the system by government in an attempt to pay off that debt. This could not work because the double whammy of government cutbacks and no investment in infrastructure (which includes education) meant the debt had to go somewhere, and that has been into huge personal debt. This could be the cause of the next crisis.

The government acted like the poor person does, the person who has nothing to fall back on. In one direction they squandered on the banks just to relieve some of the fear of what is to come and in the other they skrimped every penny. With no investment in himself or capital assets but a skimping mentality that makes only short-term risk averse to the point of hibernation decisions, the poor person gets poorer and loses more: job home, etc. Our country has been run in this way for the last ten years and we are now, like the poor man, on the precipice of personal debt.

There is one other thing I add into my calculations of which party to vote for (not person, they come and go) and that is that we are at a moment of change. The whole world is looking at how to do capitalism better and taking climate change into account. Capitalism goes in epochs. From the 40s to the eighties was one where the consensus was on invest in people and rebuild. It was far more radical than anything the Labour Party is suggesting and yet there was a consensus, not of every economist but of the vast majority. In the 80s we began to move to neo-liberalist Capitalism, which instead of relying on improvement for the vast majority we relied on phenomenal wealth for some feeding into the whole. Both systems ended in a level of failure.

Now we are looking at two parties and I worry about them both. One wants to take us back to Victorian times where individual debt v great wealth fuelled both great progress and unbelievable poverty. The other looks to the 40s where huge progress was made for many but infighting eventually destroyed progress.

I will happily tell you I will vote for Labour but constantly review that decision. I cannot, in all conscience vote for an economy run on individual debt. I believe the direction of Labour Party economics is basically right and hope that as we move into a new era we will learn from other countries.

Some people on here limit their reasoning. A person arning £80,000 a year may or may not be wealthy but they are earning choice. They will need to pay a little more to help sort things out. Wealth on the other hand makes nothing unless it is used except more individual wealth. It did not bring about the investment in huge projects that the Victorian's did; the will to use it did. So some wealth will be taxed too. I can live with this for a parliament; it is so much better than the alternative. But no one can rely on my vote next time until I see what they do this time.

A person earning £80,000+ pa is in the top five per cent of earners. That was factchecked when some idiot on Question Time claimed that he wasn't even in the top half of earners, despite earning over £80,000.