Is this really what people want?

6 in 10 children living in poverty live in homes where parents work. Hell, I would borrow myself if I could, to alleviate the poverty of just one more family. niceguy you are very good at trumpeting things you hear in the media or read in the mail, your understanding of economics isn't great and Ttosca has explained dozens of times, some very basic facts which you wilfully ignore.

Vicar, I respect what you have been through and personally I am against the idea that there should be a blanket withdrawal of HB support for young people because of the exact experiences you went through. Tighten up, yes. Total remove. No.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not against a welfare state. I want one. Just not the current one which is far too big, traps people in a lifecycle of claiming and unaffordable. You think I don't care? Is it uncaring to point out we can't afford the status quo? Is it uncaring to ask where the money comes from and point out 'tax the rich' isn't a realistic solution? Is it uncaring to point out that if we continue blindly down this path, we'll end up like Greece? If so then yes I am guilty. Those who shout me down are usually the ones who want to carry on regardless and whose solution entails taxing 'someone else'.

I volunteer for our local foodbank, collecting donations of food to later be made up into food parcels. My fiancee works in the care sector who deal with vulnerable people. Both my parents have disabilities, my brother too. In fact he will need full time care once my parents cannot do it anymore. So it's not like I live in some middle class bubble quaffing down champagne every night.

But we are not helping anyone by treading down the path we were on. It was a stupid path which would only lead to ruin.

the less well off, the disabled, the elderley, the nhs, the police, public services were all better cared for under labour, yes.

Firstly things were hardly perfect under Labour. The gap between rich and poor widened despite all their efforts. And secondly I'd argue that they were only 'better cared for' because they borrowed the money to fund their schemes. Right at a time during which they should have been tucking some money aside to help us during a recession. Worse still there was in my opinion a real lack of focusing that money. It was just chucked out there.

I can take out a loan today and give my family the illusion of being better off. But that's all it is. An illusion. And when the time comes to repay that debt, we'd all be worse off. Rather like the situation we're all in today really.

just seen xenia comments re servants. i have a horrifying feeling that they are not tongue in cheek.

and im sorry i knocked this discussion away from JSA and the current benefit system, but i would refuse to care for my abusive parent. i have no contact and nor do i want any. i will care for my children, and my autistic adult son for as long as he needs it ( i am currently skinting myself to put him through university)

(awaits with annoying familiarity for some fuckwit to come along and tell me that if he can do uni he can care for himself blah blah)

my step father beat me, almost daily, for 8 years, (he broke my fingers using a garden cane) the last thing i would have ever done, after getting out, would have been to go back there. Had it not been for 2 people, i would have been on the streets. being homeless at 15 is no fun, there is nothing you can claim, and there was no help available. i turned 16 soon after leaving. i had to give up my A level studies and get a job that paid £55 a week. i was offered a room in a shared house that cost £46 per week. at 16 i could not claim anything at all.

that is some peoples reality.

to dismiss this and flippantly say there must be parents or relatives you can live with is astonishing.

if it were all as easy as that there would be no homeless people, yet, there are, im sure given the option, they would rather not be.

it shows a kind of thinking that is so blinkered as to be useless when debating the issues that people enduring any hardship in life face.

i am very lucky, and have been very lucky since the day i was made homeless at 15, but i remember what that feeling of absolute desperation felt like, i really do, and i would never wish it on anyone.

Now i work as a police officer, and i have a disabled adult son. i see and feel the changes markedly. i have friends who have disabled children or young adults, my eldest sister claims JSA now for the first time in her 54 years.

the realities are shit. The only people to say otherwise would be those safe and sound in their ivory towers.

Xenia, I hate your values and think you are the personification of what is wrong with our compassionate country.

Xenia 'everyone has parents and some relatives' my dh's mum died when he was 17 and his fathers a sex offender who for obvious reasons he has had no contact with for years as soon as he found out. He lost all contact with his relatives on his mums side after get death so literally had no family. He is now 30 and has myself, our children and family through me, but where do you propose someone in the situation he was in as a young adult should turn to if there is no financial support available from the state. He always worked apart from brief periods between jobs, but even when he was unemployed he did full time voluntary work for a charity while looking for work and still remained working for them whilst employed as well. To be honest I think the 3 years he spent working/volunteering for Bethany had a major part to play in how he managed to grow up to be such an amazing and well adjusted adult after his upbringing. Today he would be penalised for doing voluntary work while unemployed

The more I read the more I conclude he has the repeat button switched to go.

niceguy ive read several of your posts recently and can only conclude your mumsnet nickname is an oxymoron.

the less well off, the disabled, the elderley, the nhs, the police, public services were all better cared for under labour, yes.

Fucking Fucking CUNTSERVATIVES.

I keep on asking myself how the hell can 30% of the population vote Tory when they are destroying the NHS, killing disabled people, wrecking the economy, increasingly poverty and homelessness, and generally making the UK a nastier, more brutish place to live.

Yeah cos the UK was utopia under the 13 years of Labour rule wasn't it? The rich coughed up their taxes and the poor didn't go without. There were no unemployed and pensioners had to wear bikini's at home because their homes were so damn warm. And surely they only left because of some conspiracy. After all, there was plenty of money left yes?

How sad, Vicar. No it isn't working, not at all.

Have a .

....and a friend with an autistic adult son who has just completed a degree in genetics from a top uni has been told to drop his disabilities from his CV....he is severely affected and its obvious on meeting him that he has ASD and Dyspraxia - yet the advisers are saying that his disability on his CV are preventing him from getting hired in lowly paid retail jobs.

how can anyone think this is working?

my other sister is also now claiming JSA despite having been a secondary school teacher (she cannot go back into teaching as she has been out too long) and her bank closed her business account and literally gave her business to her husband....she is now fighting the legal system, the bank and trying to find a solicitor who will help her as she has no income any more.

JSA is a joke. She has had no advice at all in getting back to work, despite being highly qualified and working for herself for the last 20 years. she has been told she has to seek min wage within a 60 mile radius of where she lives - by the time she has paid fuel she would not afford her rent!

how nieve xenia to say we "all have parents and relatives"

No actually.
we dont all.

some people are literally on their own. I was one of them. I know of a plenty young people, who have no one to rely on, one of those is now in prison since the death of both his parents within 8 months of one another.

i cannot actually believe that anyone can think in this way - im gobsmacked tbh. it must be lovely to have come from a stable, loving back ground in which the family all support and look after each other - but there are literally hundreds and hundreds of people for whom this is just not the reality.

i left home at the age of 15 due to abuse in the home that i could not longer stand. At that point, i had no one other than my older sister, who is now also dead.

words really do fail me.

And if that apprenticeship scheme was any good, it would be innundated with applicants. It's probably rubbish.

The sister's decisions were poor though. She borrowed for a deposit. That was bad. She shouldn't have taken out a loan to rent somewhere. Unsecured debt is a bad idea. That's one message I want my kids to learn. Don't debt.

Young Chinese people would find it very difficult indeed to look after elderly parents - plus their childless aunts and uncles, and now grandparents, who are living longer - especially if they are an only child. I expect the State helps out in China, does it?

But most countries are better than us when it comes to looking after old people, imo.

I would find it a huge burden. All my efforts are going into supporting the next two generations - I really wouldn't want to have to choose between aged parents and my children! And my parents, if they were still alive, would hate it even more than I would.

But a lot of people are going to have to make those choices in the near future.

52% is unreasonably high when you add on 8% stamp duty, 20% VAT and all the petrol and air ticket and other taxes we pay.

We don't want to get like those countries where people simply don't pay - the Greeks have a culture of non payment almost and many many more Germans have hidden money abroad than British have.

The Indians and Chinese have a culture where children support parents etc.

Re. Family support in Europe. Indeed Mediterranean countries do rely heavily on family support in their welfare system. Funnily enough, it's not those countries that are weathering the recession well. (And Isnt the obligation to support their children well into adulthood also one reason behind their very low birth rates?) Nordic countries have fairer systems where generous welfare benefits are combined with active support to get people back into employment.

I do agree with Xenia however that tax levels must be 'felt fair' otherwise they encourage large scale avoidance, such as happens in my high tax country of residence. I don't think income tax is unreasonably high in the uk however.

I give you two examples of how a big state capitalist approach strengthens the economy, lowers debt and increases GDP and still your answer is to shrink the state

which they always do better than the state anyway could you give some examples?

I don't think it's helpful to include war debt in figures as it is more of a blip around the times of war.

So we will have a smaller state but I imagine nothing like as small as it has been in most of modern English history and people will provide for themselves which they always do better than the state anyway.

Why exactly do we have such a massive welfare need. Forget the cost for one second and ask about the cause. We have huge levels of welfare sat beside uninvested capital, we have rising profits and those profits are not invested into creating jobs, we have rising unemployment, that money is syphoned off out of the "real" economy. As the profits increased and wages fell, so tax receipts have also fallen.

Niceguy and Xenia are right, the government are faced with having to shrink the state, what else can they do? but is it right to do so? Welfare needs are growing so how will these be met?......... Well we have private corporations queuing up to make money out of welfare, education and health. As always unfettered capitalism doesn't just create the goods and entice you to buy, it brilliant at creating the conditions under which you have few options. Which is the real reason why so much HAS to be outsourced (if you subscribe to Tory small brained thinking)

You are always pretty keen to talk about China, a state capitalist economy that is the second largest in the world by GDP. They don't have small state most of their industry is under state control

?big government? was established in the UK after the war when utilities and much of our industry was nationalised and the bulk of the welfare state was set up and expanded. By the mid 70s, government-managed expenditure was almost half of national production, and state spending on investment and services had risen to 27% of GDP by 1975 compared to between 10% and 12.5% during most of the years between WW1 and WW2.

Yet at the same time as this huge growth in ?the state?, the debt was reduced so rapidly that between 1946 and 1975 it fell from 252% to 45% of GDP

So a shrinking state is good for business......private business and nothing else. Because neo-liberalism has created the conditions for businesses to prosper but also for states to fail. What would you suggest.....do you think Serco should take up seats in the commons, Atos should take over treasury funds (well what is left) and Murdoch should run schools?

This gives a lot of information on the debt www.debtbombshell.com/ much racked up by Labour who obviously chose to risk the lives of the poor for their own agenda as ever.

It is well proven that when we reduced UK highest tax rate to 40% tax receipts went up, the economy got going. They had been up to 60 - 99% in my lifetime. If tax feels fair and is not too high people buy into the system. If too much is taken they simply move where they can pay less or structure their affairs legally so as not to pay. Clever rich people can always do that . It is not about illegal evasion just the right to live where you choose. I can work from anywhere. if take got too high I would just move somewhere where it was cheaper as most of my work is over the internet. When tax rates get higher couples decide things like both will earn the single person allowance rather than onl one work or that savings will go in the no earnings spouse's name./ This is tax avoidance although in my view the latter is illegal tax evasion and also encourages women to remain at home as housewives./ That is evasion I would like to see stamped out as there is so much more of it than the very very very few rich people who illegal avild tax. There are far too many housewives sitting with savings in their name they never earned - nasty little tax evaders that they are. Let us imprison them all for tax evasion.

Ttosca, see my other thread for the £120 billion deficit link.

2000 new tax inspectors

I think you are mistaking the idea that reducing funding = less tax inspectors. It may well be that simply less money is spent on areas which are not priorities. Tax inspectors clearly seem to be a priority. And rightly so.

Thankfully i agree that UK is nothing like Greece. But if we don't sort ourselves out then one day we may well end up in the same situation. What's caused their problems? Very simple. Decades of spending more than they take in tax and borrowing the rest from practically anyone willing to lend. Thankfully we have a much larger and stronger economy but all that means is we don't hit our day of reckoning for longer. But mark my words, that day will come unless we change course now.

Lastly I don't see a problem with having a small state which is just big enough for its purpose. I don't see anything good with having a huge state simply for the sake of it.

Xenia-

The more you tax the rich the less is available for the poor they have found so I expect the poor would rather like the rich to be taxed at say 20% so they can enjoy their benefits as now. That is the perverse effect of high tax rates.

What absolutely nonsense. Do you just say any old thing because you want it to be true? Do you have any proof whatsoever that the optimum rate for tax intake would be 20%? Or is it, as per usual, just hatred and contempt for the poor coupled with nasty Tory ideology?

Also most people wouldn't work at all if they didn't have to so simply doling it out like sweets never does those who are choosing not to work but could much good.

There are more unemployed people than there are jobs. Many, many more. The rate of people committing fraud on JSA is less than 1% according the governments own statistics.

Welfare provision in the UK is not particular generous compared with the EU. You should try living on £68 per week and then see whether your statement 'dolling it out like sweets' rings true.