AIBU to want spending cuts rather than more tax rises?

You can’t be on a benefit. You can be in receipt of benefits.

also 30%?

Only 30% of people on benefits are working.

We absolutely do need to support truly disabled people and their carers.

The issue is that we have too many people who believe that their adhd/anxiety etc make them disabled and the system allows them to get away with this.

As to high earners working no harder than NMW - look, with years of widening access, positive discrimination etc deprived groups had and continue having plenty of opportunities to get education and priority placements. Many very desirable employers don't even consider white middle class males now. These high earners usually work smarter, and yes, much harder in terms of responsibilities, than NMW jobs do. If you take 100 of people in NMW job and 100 of e.g. oncology consultants and measure average IQ of each group, how do you believe they will compare?

Oh bollocks. Have you met every minimum wage worker? Do you seriously think care work is 'unskilled'?

The reason why bankers get paid a lot is that they literally have the hand in the cash till, not that they are more intelligent. Jesus wept

Well OP I've seen poverty in Africa - worked there for years - and it hasn't convinced me that child poverty in the UK is 'made up'.

Newsflash: it is possible to be deprived even without sleeping on a pavement wrapped in a rag. To use the extremes of poverty in poor countries to dismiss child poverty here is incredibly cynical.

Sorry, not sure what you mean? Do you mean did they make a mistake? I had a routine 20 week ultrasound, a follow up US with a consultant, and an in utero MRI of DD's brain. All showed abnormalities, so it wasn't a mistake if that's what you meant?

Being a paediatric health professional, working with children with disabilities, I was aware that the scans don't always tell the whole picture. I have children on my caseload whose brain scans look pretty normal, but are severely disabled. And ones whose scans don't look great, but have quite mild disabilities. So I knew they had a duty to inform us and give us a choice, but also that they could be wrong in their prediction. Without this knowledge, we may have made a very different choice, and my heart goes out to anyone in the same position.

Public sector salaries ARE in line with private sector for low to medium earning jobs.

The only way to grow the economy is by cutting taxes but as Liz Truss found out the hard way it's not possible to fund this by increasing borrowing. So that only leaves cutting Government spending which as Keir Starmer found out the hard way is not possible with the Labour backbenchers.

So that just leaves a slow managed economic decline combined with rising costs on food, fuel, electricity etc means that ordinary are and feel that they are steadily getting poorer and poorer.

The problem that Rachel Reeves discovered is that by increasing taxation she slows the economic growth. This means less overall tax revenue. Her solution to make up this shortfall was to increase taxes further which in turn slowed the economy further and so on.

Labour seem hell bent on reducing inequality by simply making everybody poorer.

I currently work in the charity sector so they actually seem far more generous!

And upped the salaries to be more in line?

Have recently been looking for new jobs and found a few in the civil service - employer contributions to pensions at 28.7%!!!
That would save a fair bit surely if they brought those contributions down to be more in line with the private sector.

Agreed, plus a scan might diagnose a condition without necessarily being able to tell how severely impacted the baby will be until it's born and starts to develop. It also veers towards a slippery slope of eugenics - no one should feel obliged to have an abortion because the baby because may (or may not) be a burden to society.

I honestly feel we are heading back to the 70s with some of the attitudes now seemingly being openly displayed...

Thank goodness you didn't! So scary that it could be so wrong. I can't imagine any parent not having a stomach-lurch hearing your story.

Why did the scan show that

Except for the fact they aren't always right! We were told at 20 weeks that DD2 was severely brain damaged, and suggested we consider abortion as she would likely be severely disabled. That's a horrific decision to have to make, and on top of that needing to consider the financial implications.

She is now 7, thriving, kind, funny, creative and top of her class academically. A scan after birth still showed brain abnormalities. The thought that we might have listened to them and aborted our perfectly healthy daughter haunts me every day.

Do you also plan to apply that logic to any health condition which could be seen as 'self inflicted'. A car accident? Well you chose to drive. A sports injury? Your fault for doing that sport? Skin cancer? Should have stayed out the sun. No, of course we don't, because that would be cruel and ridiculous

How do you suppose I work 30 hours when my sen child is on a reduced timetable?

They are more skilled and intelligent though. That's why they get paid more. They understand economics and finance, something the minimum wage earner doesn't (it's why they make minimum wage).

The fundamental problem is that taxation discourages behaviour whether that be income tax, tobacco tax, alcohol tax or even speeding fines are a form of taxation.

Subsidies encourage behaviour whether that be heat pump subsidies, electric cars, gym memberships or welfare payments or PIP payments.

So if you increase taxes on employment and increase spending on welfare then don't be surprised when more people either choose to stop work and move to welfare (for those at the lower income brackets) or reduce hours, retire early or move abroad (for those at the higher income brackets.

No because of the chronic pain. She takes prescription painkillers but these also knock her out a bit. I'm not saying there aren't some people gaming the system, that there's not problems with the number of young people who haven't found their way but why are we so angry with people at the bottom of our society instead of those at the top?

They are earning it, but my DSis would love to earn it! There's plenty of people who earn hundreds of thousands and more because they were born into privilege and ended up in private equity etc. and they work hard but no harder than some people in minimum wage jobs. Plenty of people on Universal Credit are working.

No because she’s tired.

Can't she just work in her wheelchair and use a laptop?

And being disabled and unable to work is fine. It’s those that can work but lie

If you means test the state pension then you immediately disincentivise people from investing in personal or work place private pensions. People will instead invest the money in assets such as property. And if you include assets as part of the means testing then you will have scenarios such as an elderly widow living in a mortgage free former family home with no private pension being forced to sell up and spend the money before she is eligible for a state pension.

There are two solutions to address the ballooning cost of the state pension:
A) reduce its value for example by scrapping the triple lock. The issue here is that no politician is ever going to get elected by making the entire grey vote less well off, or
B) increase the age at which it can be claimed.

My personal preference would be to simply increase the state pension qualifying age by 3 months every year (= to a 1 year increase every four years) until we get to 70. This provides immediate savings to Government spending.