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.

No impact for us now really, apart from child benefit , which I use to pay school dinners ( nearly covers it ) . Kids would likely have to go onto packed lunch.

however we used to get a good amount of tax credits, which really helped us out. I don’t know if we would have been ok without them. ( I seem to think it was about £100 a week)

I worked part time and hubby full time, and we sort of did shifts so we didn’t need childcare. (I worked 7–12 and he did 1-11 in a supermarket) If we hadn’t had tax credits we both would have needed to be full time , and one would have had to work the night and the other the day I suppose. It would have been awful.

Thinking about it , we will probably be fairly dependent on the state pension in years to come .

we have very small private ones but I can’t imagine they would ever grow to be more the a small top up

Women and children would die.

In a society where there is no safety net you cannot risk falling out with anyone in your extended family.
That means thinking outside the box is very risky, no new ideas, no new ways of thinking society stagnates, progress stops.

My family going back generations are British so this isn't coming from a different cultural perspective but I agree with some previous posters that expecting extended family to help would be better for everyone.

I've known people to get benefits (which I'm not against, we all need a good safety net) when their parents are millionaires!

It seems a bit off to me that taxpayers on the minimum wage are paying tax to provide for families whose wider families have the means to support them. I dont just mean those who have money tied up in the family homes but those with lots of disposable income/assets. Eg buying a car/house/very expensive gifts/hobbies for DGC.

This also applies to absent parents who don't pay child maintenance- they should be made to pay!

I have cost in benefits but I've cost hardly anything re NHS/social housing/education/social services.

I think a lot of people here are forgetting their families probably benefitted from the purchase of discounted council houses.

We have quite an inefficient system of housing people in the uk. Extended families in big houses is a much more cost effective use of resources than having so many single person households. (I think we have the most in the world?)

I don't know if it's still the case but it used to be that young people could get points to be allocated council houses if they were 'sharing facilities with people they didn't want in their future household' ie young adults wanting to move out of the parental home! They were (are?) given priority over people struggling in private rentals.

Then when parents kick out their young adult DCs they are put in homeless accommodation that costs us all an absolute fortune. Hostel landlords are multi millionaires!

We received tax credits when DD was young and we were retraining, they were invaluable. No longer eligible, which is fine. We do get CB.

My sister and her husband have a severely disabled child and also cares for her MIL. Even without the MIL her caring responsibilities means she can only work short hours and my BIL salary isn't good enough for them to manage well.

I'm having to work til I'm 67 as it is - and please don't call the pension a benefit or welfare because it bloody well is not - not having worked 40-odd years for it.

So if men go away for long periods of time that gives women an opportunity to flourish and organize things for the good of society as a whole?
But don't the men just clamp down even harder when they get back and want to get everything back under their control?

I'm glad we've moved on from such pathetic excuses for work along with those god awful three wheel mobility cars.

While they were better than nothing, times have moved on, and thank god equality is improving.

This. It would go back to how it used to be. Families looking out for each other. These days the parents buy a second home, rent it out to the kids who claim housing benefit/ Universal credit to pay the rent. It's unbelievable really. no one wants to support family, it's just all left to the tax payer.

Then when parents kick out their young adult DCs they are put in homeless accommodation that costs us all an absolute fortune. Hostel landlords are multi millionaires!
@Carebearsonmybed
We definitely need a way to disrupt the business model of these rappacious hostel landlords!
This is down to the housing crisis, the lack of affordable and secure accommodation which makes it very hard for young adults to leave home and make their way in the world.
It's not good to be still living with your mum and Dad much past your early 20s. It stunts your growth, it means you don't have an opportunity to have a family of your own and feel properly independent.

I might well have felt driven to leave disabled husband/resort to murder.

My children and I would be much poorer in every way possible.

I do not qualify for carers allowance as work/earn too much, and is an insulting £81.90 a week anyway for a minimum 35 hrs care. This means I work about 90 hours a week providing care/maintaining my career and never sleep for more than 4hrs at a time.

But at least my earnings won’t evaporate when he dies.

My dh works full time in a pub, I’m a teaching assistant, we do pay taxes obviously but we get a top up from universal credit. We have two young children (1 and 8 year old)
We would be screwed, we’re struggling financially as it is.
i know we have ‘low level’ jobs but we try our best, and someone has to work those type of jobs!
Enployers should have to pay their staff enough so that the welfare system doesn’t have to top us up.

I don't know really, I'm merely musing. But just casually looking at counties with more equal holding of power (or historically equal in the case of Wales), they do seem to often be countries where men have been away working for periods of time (Scandinavia, central Asian countries with a mining or mountain herding tradition). Look at England for example - WW1 (and to a lesser extent WW2) led to more societal power for women. It would be interesting to do a proper study (if not already done). I wonder about places with a culture of men on extended fishing/voyaging expeditions rather than raiding as well. But it seems likely to me that women would have to participate more in the ex-home realm when men were away. Young boys would be raised in a more matriarchal environment. Women would make decisions and would need to cooperate with other households. Men returning on leave would be wise to support their womenfolk rather than risk rebellion in their absence. I expect there would still be abuses of male power, but easier for women to support each other when they have a life outside of the home and the male gaze. Harder to have a southern-asian style oppression of women (and particulary daughters-in-law) when the men are so often away and the women have a bit more agency. Just thoughts really.

The post wasn't referring to paid work. It was in relation to a post where they were discussing cultures where you have more widespread family support, young and old, and where family members who had health issues were still able to assist with the household (I imagine entertaining children and food prep main things)

In cultures like that there is often very little acceptance of anyone outside the norm. If you are LGBT you just have to hide it for example.

My brother would very much suffer. He lives in a supported living type home with a couple of other adults, all of them suffering from quite signifiant special needs. He is supported to go to a work scheme and to live his life to the best of his potential.