AIBU to want spending cuts rather than more tax rises?

Define poverty. As I mentioned on this thread and several others, the current definition of child poverty in UK makes it statistically impossible to eradicate poverty.

It's going on for ages - I don't think anyone here ever said that we should remove benefits altogether. What many people say is that welfare state, and benefits for working age people in particular, require drastic review and that tax system needs to be redesigned to maximise incentives to work and remove all incentives to stay on benefits.

https://cpag.org.uk/child-poverty/poverty-facts-and-figures

Love your user name btw. It’s perfect!

I think "shit life syndrome" (nearly an official term now) is absolutely real, very tragic, and probably sits behind a significant proportion of mental health related disabikity claims. The much harder question is what on earth you can actually do about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shit_life_syndrome

I didn’t realise Mumsnet allowed parody accounts. 😂😂😂

If my oncologist didn't want to work, I'd expect they'd employ another oncologist.

Is this seriously your way of thinking? where would that another oncologist come from? Nigeria? what will happen when they get their ILR or passport and have the same tax problem as the first one?

I hate to break it to you - the level of energy that person has stays roughly the same between 25 and 45-50, maybe just slight decline towards 50. All assuming average health of course. Then you hit 50, menopause if you're woman, and your brain and energy decline drastically. There are very few people who can be very productive in late 60s. There is a reason why employers prefer younger workforce. So keep this thread and reopen it in 10 years and tell us how you're doing and what your expectations are about state pension.

Same. It’s frightening.

There's a poster who hasn't and "can't work" for 20 years due to "MH" but frequently comments on posts on MN

Housing benefit recipients don’t get to live where they want. They're completely reliant on landlord accepting them and most won’t.

Steal? Are you actually for real?

Do you have any understanding whatsoever of the fact that there are not enough jobs to go around? That many jobs don’t pay enough to live on? That there are many many people with illnesses and disabilities who, even if well enough to work, will be discriminated against by employers nonetheless and thus potentially unable to find a job? In other words, huge numbers of people who want to ‘pay their own way’, are striving to ‘pay their own way’, and are literally unable to do so. What do you suggest they do? Would you like to see a return to the workhouses?

No one, presumably, would dispute that genuine benefit fraud should be cracked down on, but if you don’t like being in a society that at least attempts to cushion genuinely vulnerable citizens, other countries are available. Disgusting levels of prejudice and ignorance in your posts and those of others on this thread.

Poland does pay disability benefits for mental health conditions, by the way, so people wouldn't laugh. The threshold is considerably higher, though. If anything, needing state support would generally be taken as evidence that something is genuinely seriously wrong.

What shocked me was discovering just how many people in the UK receive disability related support for mental health conditions (as primary / only condition). If you'd asked me to guess the number beforehand, I'd probably have estimated something an order of magnitude lower.

If my oncologist didn't want to work, I'd expect they'd employ another oncologist.

Where will this replacement oncologist be found when there is already a shortage of oncologists?

Did you miss the brain tumour?

So don't means test it. Drastically increase the age it starts. If people want to retire earlier, they can fund that with private savings.
If my oncologist didn't want to work, I'd expect they'd employ another oncologist.
I'm mid-40s I know in the nexr decade the system us going to collapse, I'm simply planning not to retire. I'm slowly building my career in a "remote working whatever hours I want from anywhere with an internet connection" direction and have been for a number of years.

But they won’t get the same.

The UK taxes not only wealth made in the UK, but also wealth made overseas by UK residents. Pretty outrageous really! There is sometimes a double tax agreement - but the UK takes any difference, since the UK invariably taxes more!

If people move overseas, you lose all that tax, on assets which were never in the UK.

Very supportive of offsetting any money sent overseas from benefits though: if people don't need the money themselves to live then the taxpayer shouldn't be giving it to them.

There are plenty of countries in the world with solid welfare state providing support to those who genuinely need it but don't subsidies millions of parazites.

In Poland, with average quality of life now being higher than here, people would laugh at you if you expected state benefits for anxiety. And you're expected to do some community work, e.g. litter picking, whilst looking for a job and receiving state support.

It's not either UK model or wild jungle capitalism, there is a middle ground.

Labour will have to rein in spending anyway.

This is a very popular view, so let's try to think just for a moment.

Let's assume that state pension pays for about 20 years (87-67, or whatever is life expectancy) at 12.5k pa. This is 250k over lifetime, inflation linked.

Let's assume we make it means tested. This immediately means that if you save you're 250k worse off over lifetime. Also if you save and have something left over, you're subject to 40% IHT. Unless you're really wealthy and this amount doesn't matter, what will you do? will you save?

Now, if you're over 50k or 100k threshold, you now try to put some more into pension to maximise tax efficiency. This doesn't make sense anymore, especially for over 100k so wouldn't you rather work less? Will you appreciate if your oncology consultant will reduce their hours because whatever more they earn will be taken from them?

It started with austerity then continued with Brexit. Hence we struggled with covid.

This is basically a way to gradually make the state pension means-tested over the course of about 40 years.

I do always find it weird that it's young people who seem to want to remove the triple lock/add means-testing. It's almost as if they don't realise that the loss of provision will fall most heavily on those who are currently under about 50.

Of course, it will fall on everyone eventually, as staying in the UK becomes ever less attractive for net-contributors.

In what way?

Or we can be strict with who and what we approve

I actually wonder if there is any other country in the world that will give you the benefits you get here without first paying anything in at all? Housing benefit, uc, child benefit, free health, free education etc etc and you get more the less you have paid in or have to start with.

And yes if you own billions of assets in this country then you should be happy to contribute your fair share but equally if the working people of this country are funding your entire life then you should be contributing too in whatever way you can.