Fed up of my cousins comments about benefits and UC

Shriek and froth, no. Shriek with laughter that you think we're 'pre-communist', yes. 😂Are you honing a satirical stand-up comedy show or something?

Either way, I'd hazard a guess that you weren't around (in Britain, anyway) in the 1970s...

I was going to reply, but you said it much better. My only additional points are 1. many people can't work for disability reasons, yet are told "get a job" when actually health doesn't work that way and they need real finacial support and a workforce that isn't at it's core ableist 2. The current welfare system penalises people with virtually any savings, so poverty becomes multigenererational - the stories you hear of children brought up in poverty who've gone on to massive success are the outliers. 3. It's only ever UC, PIP, single parents who don't fit the strict criteria (e.g. not widows) or mums with 'too many' children who are slammed. What do you think pensions, SMP, childcare benefit are, if not benefits? Stop attacking the lowest hanging fruit, it's cruel. When people are living hand-to-mouth, in a rented home with no savings or pension they cannot be savvy with their investments or taxes even if you can. Sure, enjoy your privilege, but don't be naive about it. A laissez faire attitude to society benefits a core group and leaves another core group vulnerable.

@MuckFusk I’m social minded, I’m not a Reform or Tory voter . I know what you are saying but I’m afraid life isn’t always fair - people resent working long hours and paying out for others to do in many cases as little as they can getaway with - or kids over 8 as an excuse why they can’t do much work forgetting that many of us used paid care , paid holiday clubs , - a mix of all sorts and effectively earned very little for quite a few years in order to keep jobs and careers going, I do think though that @PixiePuffBall hasn’t factored in quite a few on the right are more than this way minded themselves too - do as I say not do as I do .

This response is characteristic of why the "be kind" Left will continue to lose to more and more extreme versions of the Right. "Everyone who doesn't think their tax contributions should go to funding people who choose to work part time is selfish, anti- social and without empathy" isn't a winning pitch I'm afraid. Most people agree with me.

None of that explains why it is not a subsidy or why subsidies shouldn't exist.

Ambitious people can strive for whatever they want. Nobody said otherwise. The problem is you seem to think higher paying jobs magically appear out of the ether. A person without much education or much experience, for example, doesn't have a prayer of finding a good paying job. Not everyone is an ambitious go-getter, that's a hardwired personality trait that many people just don't have and there's nothing wrong with that. Learn to accept that everyone is different.

I do not think being well off makes somebody a "baddie." I'm fairly comfortable myself, not wealthy by any means, but I'm able to support my family. I do think that if somebody is well to do, with plenty of means to care for her own family and then some, being a resentful and whiny when it comes to her tax dollars going to support people who are in need means that person is selfish. She's the sort who takes benefits but does not want to contribute for benefits which help others. Think about it. To even get to her high paying job you she needs infrastructure, paid for by taxes. As a child, her education was funded by taxes. To run her household she needs sewer, water and other essential services, all which were set up through tax funding. The list of entitlements she receives without recognizing them as such goes on and on. So our hypothetical well to do, resentful individual is happy to take those things which give her a comfortable life, things she thinks she deserves just for existing, but does not want to give others the means to even survive. So yeah, I do think that's pretty awful, because in all objectivity, selfishness, self-entitlement, lack of empathy and concern for the lives of others are anti-social traits.

There’s some judgement bitches on here!

I was a single parent when I split up from my ex-H, when DS was nearly 3. I still worked full time (average salary) and got some help for childcare in the form of tax credits. Probably what would be UC now. I didn’t have a lot of spare money, but as DS got older, I was able to do further qualifications and get promotions and better paid jobs.

If it wasn’t for the top up I got to help with childcare, I wouldn’t have been able to continue working and not able to pay my mortgage. I could have ended up out of work and on benefits full time.

I am extremely grateful for the assistance I got at the time.

I now pay around £18k a year in tax and if this contributes towards someone else, to help keep them in work whilst their children are young (or pays back some of the tax credits I got) then that’s fine by me.

Without that help all those years ago, I would have been massively worse off, cost tax payers even more and not be contributing 5 times more than OP’s cousin.

I consider myself very, very lucky and privileged to earn what I do and not have to worry about bills and what I spend and I don’t begrudge the tax I pay (which is probably a lot more than some of the judgemental bitches on here).

OP, next time your Cousin moans about paying a measly £300, just roll your eyes and say ‘is that all’

You’re jumping all over the place tieing yourself in knots over a very simple concept: parental responsibility. You seem to want someone to blame for malnourished kids living in poverty, I suggest you take it up with the people who put them in that situation by having kids they can’t look after. I can’t really make this any simpler for you.

This, dh and I saved and waited for years to have dc. According to many mnetters we'd have been better off, no further education and debt, not working but getting pregnant any way and beginning the UC gravy train!

No but what about all the people who are having to limit their family sizes because they can't afford another kid? Or foregoing having children completely? How is that fair? What does someone get for being responsible? Absolutely bugger all.

Some people would like to go back to the early "poor law" days, where only the "deserving" poor got help and the "undeserving" poor had to beg, resort to crime or prostitute themselves.

Good god, this is like playing chess with a pigeon.

To argue that there should be no welfare for families in poverty is also to argue for kids being malnourished and in inadequate housing. One is a direct consequence of the other. Parents who don’t have enough money are unlikely to be able to magic up a job with sufficient salary out of nowhere. Unless you’re actually saying people should go back in time and not have their children or float them up the sodding river in a basket like Moses.

The reason yours IS a straw man is because you responded to suggestions that welfare has a role in a just and fair society with a statement that I don’t think people should have to look after their own kids, which to my knowledge is a far broader concept than just having enough money. You know, there’s all of that having to love and nurture them stuff too which ironically you can only outsource to someone else if you’re very wealthy. If all ‘taking care’ of kids involved was financial, I’m pretty certain the royal family would be better adjusted and Boris Johnson’s several thousand children would have smaller therapy bills.

@MuckFusk I think that's what I said? People largely didn't have a choice before to have that many kids. And also that they were cheaper to raise. Are you saying they weren't? Kids didn't need all the tech they need now and that costs £££ for a start.

I don't know what the answer is that's the point? But the tax payer can't prop up millions of people indefinitely.

The government's "free hours" do not provide childcare settings with the amount it actually costs to care for one child. This is part of the reason childcare settings must charge "top up" fees and costs are astronomical for anyone who does not qualify for those hours for whatever reason. Nothing is ever "free" as the funds have to come from somewhere. It's not complicated.

Why can't ambitious people on low incomes strive for better paying jobs...?

Does it occur to you that people with the means and the smarts to structure their taxes aren't all evil baddy meanies but actually have family, even children, who they wish to take care of, ahead of giving money to other people's kids via welfare and subsidies?

You are misinformed. In the time period you're talking about, people were having more children. There was a lack of reproductive freedom for women who really had no choice, as not only was there no birth control, they weren't even allowed to refuse to have sex with their husbands. That's changed, which is a big part of why there's currently low to no population growth except through immigration in the developed world.

Your post is contradictory. You claim the welfare state is unsustainable and unfair, but at the same time you say we shouldn't go back to the way it was before it existed. What exactly do you want?

Just to be clear, the person saying ‘you’re arguing for children to be cold and hungry’ is accusing me of straw man argument? Ok then.

There are plenty of people on this thread saying the tax payer should take care of their kids, the answer is no you should be. If you don’t understand this simple concept of parenting then you’re part of the problem.

Could you give a hint as to what page that's on? I looked back but I could only find flippant advice about getting a "higher paying job" to pay for childcare, which you were justifiably blasted for saying. I'd be interested to know why you think a subsidy is actually something other than a subsidy, and if so, what it is.

The difference in the two examples is that one person is doing it for survival and the other is doing it for increased comfort. You don't seem to want to accept that this difference is meaningful.

She wasn’t even MARRIED! Forsooth! clutches pearls for eternity 😆

Thats a straw man if ever I heard one - nobody is saying people shouldn’t be taking care of their children. The OP of this thread is, I’m completely sure, taking very good care of her children. On her own. And she’s doing so with a small amount of financial support to help her make ends meet and be there for them while they are young. in fact, I think it would be less responsible to not accept the support and end up homeless or having to skip meals.

I think that’s largely because the current benefits system is a sticking plaster and there hasn’t been meaningful investment in the nhs, early years and education more broadly for over a decade. Unfortunately we’re now seeing the cost of this. If we take sure start as an example, these centres were in the heart of communities and offered all sorts from affordable childcare (allowing parents to work/go to college etc), postnatal appointments (meaning mum’s with poor mental health were identified early - and maternal happiness is the single biggest predictor for children’s outcomes), universal and targeted speech and language support and so on. Unfortunately we had a change in government and social mobility has stagnated ever since. Same goes for health - tier 3 services are drowning because primary care has been on its arse for years meaning nothing is done till it’s a crisis. Education has been turned into some weird conveyor belt churning out over assessed, burnt out kids who can pass exams but not think critically. In short, it’s a bin fire.

You shouldn’t be feeling guilty imo, you should be absolutely incandescent that there is MORE than enough money but it’s not being distributed fairly. I honestly can’t see how any of this is fixable without taxing the rich more and closing the tax loopholes. I’ve worked in the public sector for nearly 20 years and never seen anything like this.

I've already said earlier in this thread why "subsidised" childcare is 1) not actually subsidised, 2) shouldn't be.

Why? Both are examples of people navigating a system to do what is in their interests. Tax avoidance is not tax evasion. One is legal the other is not.

I just don't understand how society is supposed to afford it? It doesn't seem sustainable. And posters are guilting the tax payer for letting kids stay in poverty when that's their parents responsibility?

As for before the welfare state-kids didn't cost anything like what they do now to raise! And they'd probably be working themselves from age 13 or 14. Don't think we want to go back to those days. People weren't having that many kids back then out of choice for the most part.

This

My deductions each month are nearly £2k (not just tax admittedly)

I don’t moan at her that I’m helping to subsidise her. But I could if you’d like - she sounds dreadful

Agree just point out she’s not a contributor at that level of wage and tax and then roll your eyes if she mentions it again

@PixiePuffBall But I fail to see how that means you should be able to choose to work part time and claim top ups funded by other people who also have caring responsibilities and go out to work full time.

Because if the person is on a low wage and can't afford child care, the only alternative is funding for child care, which would enable them to work full time. That would come from taxpayers as well, and it would likely cost even more. Would you like to pay more just so you could feel assured people weren't just too lazy to work full time and were getting away with it?

Why the defence of this tax dodging and take behaviour when it is condemned at the other end of the scale – relatively well off people structuring their taxes to pay less of them for instance.

Working part time so you can take care of your kids is not "tax dodging behaviour" and not in the least comparable to a wealthy person evading taxes.

Are you really this confused about it or are you being disingenuous? It's not exactly rocket science. It's like you come from some utopia where genuine hardship doesn't exist.

It's clear that you know absolutely nothing about the causes of poverty.

Some men are deadbeat dads. Sounds like both OP's children's dads are unfortunately. But I fail to see how that means you should be able to choose to work part time and claim top ups funded by other people who also have caring responsibilities and go out to work full time.

Why the defence of this tax dodging and take behaviour when it is condemned at the other end of the scale – relatively well off people structuring their taxes to pay less of them for instance.