That a single parent having her salary topped up to over £6k shows how unaffordable family life now is

Birth rates per IMD show that the most deprived have higher birth rates than the least deprived. It would be interesting to see a household income bracket to birth rate analysis (not including benefits). There’s likely a tipping point of wealth where it does not impact on family size. In my (limited) experience families with 4 or more children are either super wealthy or the opposite. There’s also a correlation between age gaps between generations and income. Higher income becoming parents at similar ages to when people in deprived areas become grandparents.

No one should want children to be living in poverty but how are governments going to achieve that without it being funded by taxes?

They don’t. The same way on my £100k salary I don’t live in London and have three kids - because I can’t afford to…

It’s like saying, how does someone on minimum wage afford a private jet. Some people can’t afford some things and should make life decisions accordingly.

The government won’t help me with childcare costs at all so I can’t have three children. Why is that fair, when she gets help to go to work to earn £24k and pay much less tax than I do. There’s a fiscally better argument that she should be encouraged to stay at home and not have childcare funded, and I should have mine funded so that I can go to work and pay lots of tax.

If the other parent paid for his children and they lived somewhere which wasn’t the most expensive city in the U.K. she could still work - the difference would be that this family would have to pay far more of their own money to fund their own children and life, rather than expecting other people to fund it.

She‘s got one hell of a sense of entitlement and no respect for her children’s right to a private life. I wonder if in a year’s time she’ll pop up again with 4 kids and her overdone narrative

I dunno I'm just posing the question. I guess she wouldn't be able to work full time or at all? She would have to move, maybe. I think it's all a bit of a mess tbh. Childcare and rent have become insanely expensive. If they weren't so expensive, the benefit bill would be much less.

Are you suggesting that multiple media outlets have printed this same story, over a number of years with no due diligence?

Absolute nonsense.

Anyone who believes it is a moron.

So? She made her choices. We've all got bills, I don't get the argument that UC somehow doesn't count if it's going on rent and childcare. She'd have to make some lifestyle changes. So be it.

I don’t understand how she gets this much UC. My son-in-law is in the army and takes home just under £3000 a month. My daughter doesn’t work. They have four children, 5 and under, and a £125k mortgage. Most months they don’t get any UC and are quite happy to accept that.

I guess the question is, how does someone on £2400 take home living in London pay rent and full time childcare for three kids? It would wipe out her entire salary.

This is how I feel nowadays. Used to be annoyed but not any more

Money doesn't give them a better chance.
Good parenting does that.

She must literally scrape into the universal credit system. On a £2400 take home with £600 ISH not counted, it leaves £1800 of her salary to be counted. She will get about £900 in UC but most of this will be taken off due to the 55p thing. So she might have a UC of like, £5, but because she does, she is automatically entitled to rent and childcare help, which will be a lot in London (I think) with three children full time.

Aren’t we all being inched towards communism anyway? The population seem to hanker for it so we may as well capitulate and accept Musk’s offer of a monthly wage to be idle.

@Kilot because that doesn’t apply here either - and zilch has changed , presumably you were busy trying to get the Tory’s out too -

We're in a very similar position. I don't feel hard done by, we're alright, but it boils my piss reading that people like her need so much free money to pay for childcare and bills as though we don't all have to pay for childcare and bills.

As PPs have pointed out, the costs of living are rocketing and nobody seems to be asking why or how. The true insanity of the world we live in is indeed the rank profiteering from the corporations in control of the costs of the basics - housing, food, utilities, transport and child care.

The people who work at the coalface in those sectors get the minimum wage, and it's just accepted that it's in the jolly good cause of ensuring shareholders get the best return on their investments and those at the top who run things get astronomical bonuses even when they are continually cutting back on quality and efficiency and barely providing their advertised services. Then we have the ridiculous situation of the bottom end workers being taxed with one hand, and needing the state to subsidise them to meet basic living costs. Yet nobody seens willing to examine this ludicrous siruation.

On another thread, the OP got a sneery pasting for asking why can't the government just print money to alleviate poverty, and was of course told about the lessons of history, because the system wouldn't work that way. But if you look at the increase in all costs of living over the last few decades it would indeed seem that money is being magicked out of thin air and is not the finite resource that it is claimed for some.

The majority of those who have oodles of money didn't all "work hard" for it, it came from successive inheritance, often from moralky dubious sources such as war and slavery - blood money perhaps? and having the wherewithal to "invest" - it is literally money for doing nothing.

If you think thongs are bad and unfair now, just wait and see what the exponentially fast increase in technology / AI is going to do to the job market, when whole sections of people are rendered obsolete from previously safe "professional" jobs and entry level positions to them become a thing of the past.

Devotees of the next iteration of such progress scoff and just tell us all to adapt to survive, without considering the knock on effects which could easily lead to a surge in homelessness and people becoming demoralised and resentful.

If we end up with a society of extremely poor serving the extremely rich with little to no hope of improving one's situation we're back to 1917 and an unfortunate Russian replay.

And another thing, while I'm on a roll, alarms are already sounding that birth rates are dropping, which will have a knock on effect as to how economies are structured as well, so castigating and oenalising those who you think are taking the piss by "breeding" because of the creeping eugenecist undertones being implanted into the psyche may well come back to bite you, rather hard.

She works full time, hence the childcare element being so much. You could argue that without the rent and childcare element she wouldn't be able to work full time.

I wonder if I just decided to rock up in New York, Paris or Tokyo and become a single mum by choice to three, whether I’d receive benefits to put me into the top 5% of that country’s earners? Doubt it…

How can we get Labour out?

Thea Jaffe is an embarrassment to herself. How entitled.

This.

I earn £100K+. No funded hours for either child. Never had child benefit (wasn't always on this much, but CB threshold used to be less). No tax free childcare scheme available. Mortgage on 3bed standard semi eats a huge chunk. DH is a teacher. We are comfortable - we are NOT rolling in it, or wealthy in the slightest.

I can't afford to live in London (despite working there) with DH and 2 kids, so we had to move out of London well before we married or had kids.

Other than the VPs in my workplace or those with inherited generational wealth, everyone else lives outside of London for this very reason. So I don't see why those on UC need to either?

She must rent rather than have a mortgage so gets full housing amount and also have several children as well as disabilities (her or children) to make her entitlement high because you lose 55p for every £1 you earn so usually wages wipe out entitlement if you are a high earner.

The childcare costs are the main impact - those are the biggest driver.

Child benefit is child benefit, Not Universal Credit so maybe they've added that too.

I think the numbers are large because of the rent element and the childcare. Otherwise, it just doesn't add up. For UC, you can earn £600 that doesn't get taken into account, then after that 55p for every pound is taken off. So on a £2400 take home, she wouldn't actually get much actual UC. But then you add the housing support element and the 85% childcare rebate and maybe it does add up to those numbers.

UC in some ways pays landlords which is a bit odd. Rents have rocketed and govt pays. (Tory policy). The childcare I don't know what to do about - you could say she's working and paying tax so some of her tax money is getting refunded in childcare rebate.

Like the rest of the working population, not receiving benefits (I know…it’s difficult to find any but they are out there!) - you have to live to your means. A smaller property, a different area.
I’m not sure I know the answer but the tax payer can not be expected to foot the bill to this extent - can they?
What are we teaching our children about responsibility, independence and accountability if someone else picks up the tab for your bad decisions?