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.

Me too.

I'm not in receipt of any benefits at all.

At 61, I have never claimed benefits apart from Child benefit during the first half of ds' life. We would have coped without but life would have been a little thinner.

We'd be completely screwed - DS gets DLA, I claim carer's and PIP. Between caring for DS who has been out of school for two years, and managing my own health, there's no way I can work at the moment. I miss working and would love to go back - but am very thankful for the support of the welfare state while we need it.

I went to a state school and I used the nhs and public health extensively as I have all my innoculations and gave birth twice, plus had surgery for another condition. I also have children in state school or paid for by the state.

I will rely heavily on the state pension. Despite making my own provision, I would realistically have to have been putting by much more money if I was going to live entirely off my personal pension. Like 30%.

I assume there'd be much more pressure to support extended family if there were no welfare state too. So if your sibling was disabled, there'd be a social expectation that you wouldn't just let them starve plus you presumably love them and don't want them to starve either. So that would be another expense for me.

I hadn't thought of that!

I would struggle to get by. I’m a single mum of 4 dc and their father barely pays any child maintenance. I work full time but on a minimal wage. Without top ups from tax credits / universal credit and child benefit I would barely cover the basic bills.

Never been entitled to any benefits at all (no child benefit, never claimed job seekers or anything, no housing benefit or anything at all) so personally for my immediate family it wouldn't make a difference to finances. My parents claimed child benefit/family allowance when we were small but that's it.

We would loose child benefit but could cope ok without it.

That would also depend on the t & cs. In my home country there is a state health insurance option and government subsides but the regular package only covers 50 types of cancer. If you got a rare form of cancer, then that's really bad luck. You are on your own.

Unless you have a million in the bank and you have zero idea on the exact form of this insurance option, I don't know how you can say you would be fine.

We would be fine. Hopefully we'd pay less tax! 😂

It wouldn’t have any impact right now, but I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in if I hadn’t claimed benefits in the past. When I was made redundant 6 years ago I was entitled to unemployment benefits, which I claimed while setting up as self-employed (although of course they deduct any earnings from the benefits). I’m not in the UK and you are allowed to do this where I am, before anyone jumps on me! The benefits were a safety net while getting started, and I would never in a million years have dared become self-employed without that safety net.

My ex-ILs live in a country where the benefits system is much less extensive than in the UK/Western Europe and have a very different view to me of what « family money » is, because family is who you turn to if you have a problem in your life.

It wouldn't make any difference - neither of us have ever claimed any kind of benefit and we don't have children (nor do we ever plan on having them).

No, but 38% of them do. 2.4 Million people in December 2023 on Universal Credit were in employment, that figure hadn't changed the entire year.

People who work shouldn't need to claim benefits at all. So many "I'm all right Jack" posters on here, if there was no welfare system, most of you probably wouldn't be all right either.

i would be richer as we would pay less tax

No impact on me today. However I grew up with parents on benefits, in social housing, in care and later getting hardship grants, housing benefit, income support and a council hostel place then council flat when i was homeless at 16 (in the 90's.)

There's already a delta between the safety net for me then and the equivalent for young people now (you can't claim housing benefit at 16, you're seen to be dependant until 23? 25? And social housing is a pipe dream) hence the rise in young homeless kids.

I pay a reasonable about of tax now and don't begrudge any of it. It's what society is about.

I'd be screwed. Lone parent, health issues and a DD with SEN. I've been able to work part time to keep myself healthy and deal with DD until she leaves school next year.

Mind you (ungrateful whinge alert) if the NHS had treated me better after my first child and they'd diagnosed DD with ASD.a decade ago I wouldn't have required so much in tax credits / universal credit.

There is no one who would not be impacted. If you remove the welfare state you suddenly:

-prices of goods and services increase including childcare as low wages in almost every goods and services sector are propped up by the state

we all have to pay for private health care because the NHS goes bust

crime rises to such levels anyone with any wealth has to pay for private security and people increasingly live in slums or gated communities

the slums become rife with organised crime and terrorism

companies all pull out and investment becomes very difficult so the economy tanks

Bribery and corruption become normalised

welcome to the developing world.

If you think you are someone isolated because you don’t claim universal credit you are totally deluded.

I'm a single parent so no tax credits/universal credit would mean we'd be struggling on just my wage. Cost of living is now set at two incomes into a household.

We would personally be OK in our current circumstances. But I wouldn't have had kids with no welfare state. Even though we both had good jobs when we started our family and have never needed to claim unemployment benefits, I wouldn't have had children knowing we were always going to be a handful of paychecks away from destitution and starvation with absolutely no safety net.

Without welfare, society would be akin to Dickensian times. Extreme wealth at one end and widespread abject poverty at the other. Real poverty, with people starving to death in the streets, selling their children, sky high levels of prostitution, disease due to lack of sanitation for extreme numbers of people living on the streets and scavenging for food and dirty water. It would be horrific and the knock on effects would ripple through society, with a massive increase in organised crime for a start. I don't think anyone other than the very well off would be unaffected. It would be harrowing to watch.

Can you pay for 100k cancer treatment.

Would you also be richer if you get a 50k bill because you had a difficult pregnancy and there were complications.

If you tell me that's what insurance is for, we don't know the exact shape of this insurance system and what it covers. Most countries with comprehensive affordable health insurance have welfare states.

And the rest! It can be millions. I read a horrific story years ago from the US which has stayed with me ever since from someone who heard their uncle begging and pleading with his insurance company on the phone because they were refusing to pay out any more money for his son, who had reached the insurer's lifetime limit for coverage. He was 19 and battling cancer.

Lol at the people who qualify for child benefit but think they would be fine without the nhs or state pensions.

Child benefit threshold is low. We basically stopped qualifying for it in our 20s even as childless squatters in MIL's home, saving every penny to buy a 2 bed flat.

We could not afford private healthcare without company healthcare at that stage let alone in the future when we are no longer working.

I still don't envision a future where I can pay 100k in cancer treatment and be fine with it.

Well I’d have to move my mum in so that would be quite the financial (and everything else) hit. My closest friends have 3 adopted disabled children so I guess we’d have to pitch in there too. And then there’s the potential impact of what happens when the people in town without friends and family who can help get desperate. I expect at least some of them would take matters into their own hands.

It wouldn’t impact us at the moment. However, knowing there was no safety net would make us more cautious with our money. I’d want a much bigger emergency fund, more comprehensive insurance and may have bought a smaller house so our payments were lower.