What would happen to you/your family if there were NO benefits/welfare system?

[Mamajoycewig]

As there's been a lot of talk around benefits in the news and a lot of strong opinions on it I was interested to know what would happen to most people if there were no welfare system in place?

Would your family suffer? Would you be on the streets?

Would you have still had kids knowing if you couldn't work there'd be no government backup?

Would you have made different life choices?

Personally, if all benefits were to be removed tomorrow then we'd be the same financially other than losing child benefit which we use for nappies/wipes etc.

My mum and brother would be screwed as he's disabled. Although if I'm honest I don't think she'd have had as many kids as she did without any top ups (4 kids). She's always worked but needed top ups.

Tax credits helped me massively when DC were little (single parent with zero support). When it switched to UC I wasn't eligible so now have to work 50 hours a week to survive - so the only thing to go would be child benefit, so I'd probably have to work a few more hours.

I've got a reasonable pension and almost mortgage free but I think it would be a miserable retirement with no state pension added in.

Also, a lot of my clients use benefits in some way or other to pay me so my business could be damaged.

I would LOVE to work part time because of my kids! Let’s all ditch our hours and spend more time at home 🎉🎉

At the moment nothing would happen as we don't claims anything other then child benefit.

17 years ago though I had a 3 month old baby, was made homeless and in an abusive relationship without any family to help financially as my mum has severe mental health problems, benefits helped me get on my feet, I was able to leave my abusive relationship, raise my child, begin volunteer work that led me to university and then full time work.

We would be up shit creek in a concrete canoe. my younger son is severely disabled and unfit for work. He gets UC, enhanced pip and direct payments. We simply could not afford to meet his needs. We could manage without my pip and without the carers allowance we get but if he had no money for all the people and everything he needs then that would end very badly for all of us in the household.

I wouldn't have kids if I was relying on benefit. We work so no it wouldn't affect us. Why would you knowingly bring a baby into the world that you can't pay for yourself ?

Right now I'd be about £40 quid a month worse off if I paid the difference between sh rent and private around here. Maybe a bit less if I paid less tax and NI.

Though maybe as a worker in an industry that's low paid and a lot of employees rely on benefits to make ends meet I'd get paid more as the employers have to up their wages to ensure they've got staff available to actually do the jobs and not destitute without a welfare state to prop up the low wages. Or maybe many of those services just won't exist any more.

But I'd then be paying more for the services I use as well as they put their prices up to cover the shortfall, as would everyone else, or they just wouldn't be available because without the workers being available to do the work, the services aren't there.

Although I don't directly financially benefit from the welfare system (sh aside) at this point, if there wasn't one then life would look very different for a lot of people with less available and more expensive services that they want and need to sustain the lifestyle they have now.

I don't think you can divorce welfare/benefits from having a national health service free at the point of use.

So maybe change the question - would it affect you if all benefits/welfare/the NHS were removed?

Because the reality is that the burden on the NHS would increase to unsustainable levels (partly due to not being able to discharge vulnerable people back into unsafe living conditions) were there not to be a decent welfare system. Not having a safe place to live/enough to eat for many people (which tbh is a situation we're in now to some degree even with a welfare system) would be hugely costly in terms of creating healthcare need.

And while not having access to benefits payments wouldn't really affect our family (we don't get child benefit), not having access to the NHS would. My FIL has recently been in hospital with a serious condition and has had thousands of pounds of treatment and much medical expertise spent on his case.

If we're viewing the situation entirely selfishly, we'd have been dismayed if the bed he needed had been "blocked" (for want of a better word) by someone whose ill health was caused purely by lack of food and decent shelter and the other basic necessities of life.

Putting aside the humanitarian and societal arguments, it strikes me as hugely expensive and counter-productive to deny these things.

Good point. I completely expect the NHS to move to a government subsidised insurance system similar to that of Germany or the Netherlands in my lifetime and so I guess I’d just pay that. As it is, my most recent healthcare appointment was private because I’d given up on a waiting list.
As for my state pension - the goalposts have moved twice already in terms of age, I do wonder what the future holds for that.
I suppose I just don’t feel as though I can rely on the state for much despite, ironically, working in the public sector.

It wouldn't effect us as we don't get any support at all
I also made career choices considering risks of ill health.
My parents worked around ill health, difficult situations and a severely ill child so I was aware of all these factors. They always worked and wouldn't have considered other options.
My grandfather came back from ww2 with what would probably now be diagnosed as PTSD and MH problems he still set up his business and worked 6 days a week
They never had benefits.
Nobody in my family has ever had social housing everyone saved and sacrificed to buy small and cheap then climb the housing ladder.

I haven't used the NHS for years. Never been able to get an appointment for my non-serious ailments. Not seen my GP face to face for 5 years. Have got some private healthcare, and also get dental and other treatment in my country of origin ( a developing country btw) when I visit family.

Also have a private pension.

None of this is to say I disagree with the welfare state!

People used to die in their 60s and that was accepted..medical treatments have skyrocketed in cost for that reason. Far more intervention. Cost of insurance also reflects many would live into their 90s..

If you are comparing between parents in the 1950s and 2024 you are comparing apples and oranges. My mum had fully private births when she had me in the 90s and so did my MIL in London (she was living in a 1 bed flat and that time they were dual income so went private for the first birth). I know hardly anyone doing it today.

We get child benefit and the tax free childcare thing. Without child benefit, life would be less comfortable, but we wouldn't starve.

Before benefits children did regularly starve to death though. It's one of the two central plot points for Les Miserables, among other literature. Dickens made a career writing about the poverty that existed with no safety net. Really not a mindset or world I would like to go back to.

Germany/france both considered welfare systems so uk would still be a welfare state. Just different.

We would have to tighten our belt as we wouldn't get child benefit and would need to save significantly more into our pensions as there wouldn't be state pension. But we would be ok.

Countries that use the welfare state concept include: the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, Findland, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Austria, Greece, Japan, Netherlands, Switzerland, Iceland, Kuwait, Israel, Slovenia, Australia, South Korea, Estonia, Latvia, Israel, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States.

Can anyone think of rich countries who don't have the welfare state.

Just off the top of my head (due to my general knowledge), I know some rich countries/cities who don't technically have welfare states but intervene hugely I.e. Singapore- subsidized government housing for citizens which frees up money for healthcare (still subsidised by up to 80% for hospital treatments , universal insurance scheme and 100% help for the poorest, Taiwan which has unemployment and social insurance and subsidized healthcare, HK who has government housing and also subsidised healthcare..I

Singapore doesn't call itself a welfare state because the government doesn't like the idea but they 100% do intervene, there is money given to the poorest by government backed charities but it's on case by case basis. So it sorta is a welfare state without calling itself 1. 85% of the population living in government housing is pretty radical..

We would 100% be global outlier in the rich world without a welfare system

@breadandroses1992 we will very probably be living just off of our work pensions soon due to DH taking voluntary severance and are a decade off state pension. We would however not find it easy to live without the NHS if we needed certain types of care such as cancer treatment or long term medication. I know two other couples like us who have all retired by late fifties, all with very good pensions. Many people of our generation which is older Gen X didn’t bother taking out pensions at such young ages, I was only 21. It is pushed now but wasn’t back then. It’s also true we benefitted from house price rises but you need to liquidate that asset to actually benefit. So on an individual level it would not affect us directly.

Society overall however would be harder due to increased crime and civil disobedience The welfare system does need a huge overhaul though and is a mess.

My mother lived on a small state pension (she never worked) and state benefits. My dad never earned enough to build up savings. We had to help her out financially including paying towards carers. Frankly, I don’t know what would have happened if there was no welfare state. She would have had to live with us and lose her independence and we would have had to use our savings to pay for carers. I don’t know why it is so hard for those people with money and well paid jobs (or family money) to understand how much of a struggle life can be for the majority of people in this country.

Great question!
My career is in welfare rights so I'd have to have a different job for a start. Maybe landlord and tenant or criminal defence?
Except.......Are we counting legal aid as part of the welfare state? Because, without that, very few people could afford legal advice of any sort. Id have to work on rich people's problems.
Except.....My working life was facilitated by Tax Credits (especially childcare element) when the kids were small. Without that maybe I'd have had to give up work and be a housewife. Id be just picking up my career now and starting at the bottom. If anyone wanted me, at my age.
The worst effected would be my son, who has ASD.
DLA, Carers Allowance and the associated UC premiums allowed me to home educate him when school wasn't right for his needs.
Assuming I was able to go back to work when he started school- it would be much harder to give that up without a safety net. His confidence and academic skills would be much lower than they are. And he might be negatively effected by that for life.

The benefits I have received include Child Benefit and Widowed Parents Benefit. The latter, as my husband passed away before the changes, meant I received payments for 14 years, adding up to quite a lot. I certainly miss it now. It will be six years between the WPB stopping and my state pension starting and they are on par.
The other benefit is the NHS. As I have Type 1 diabetes and my teenage DD has MS that would be a huge difference if it didn't exist. My insulin is about £400/month if I use US figures - it's a tenth of that price here but unsure if that would increase without the NHS (plus the annual eye, foot exam etc). I know my DD's meds are £1500/month here, it's $10,000/month in the US. The NHS has a deal with the manufacturer so again I'm not sure what the price would be without that, plus the blood tests, MRIs and consultants appointments? Private insurance for my US resident sister with a disabled child is $2000 plus/month, plus she still pays $$$ for medicine. So without the NHS it would mean a hugely significant lifestyle change if I had to come up with the money myself. My son had an accident and broke his collar bone and hand. He had six X-rays in total and four doctor appointments- how much would that have cost?
Also childbirth - the cost of that!! £7,000 is the average charge for an uncomplicated birth here (if you are classed as not being a 'normal resident'). And I had two sections with one child ending up in NICU for three days. My sister said she paid slightly less than that in the States, again she has insurance but you still have to pay part of it. I wonder how that would affect population numbers here?

Interesting question. Sad to see it descend into some bashing of someone who has the audacity to have her wage topped up and go to Starbucks.

Anyway, I am on UC, I would be pretty fucked as I would have no income at all. I would no longer be able to get my medication (would cost me over £30pw if I had to pay), so I would rapidly end up in hospital or the criminal justice system, but most likely dead. My dog would also starve.

I think anyone saying it would not affect them is deluded. Those low paid people who rely on top ups/childcare, or disabled who rely on PIP to enable to them to work, will no longer be there to deliver your shopping or look after your loved ones in nursery/hospital/care home.

It would have massive and far reaching consequences for everyone.

Yes, we could find a way.

No impact. Get a tiny amount in child benefit only, if I lost that wouldn't even notice.

Even the USA is considered a welfare state as it has some benefits- medicaid and food stamps and even childcare support etc. it just doesnt work very well

Not having a welfare state would make us worst than the USA.

Yes @XenoBitch I don't get benefits bit I rely heavily on delivery services, bus drivers, and maybe carers or A and E in the future. So it would affect everyone to.some extent, I am sure.

Have you read the thread? Are you aware that circumstances can change in the blink of an eye? I suggest that you open your mind a bit more, and understand that anything can change, for any of us, good, or bad, no matter what we think we can control.