How do we solve this if people hate benefits?

[is30tooyoungformidlifecrisis]

I've been mulling this over for a while and really trying to avoid a goady post but I'm genuinely interested in what people think.

The reality is in the UK we have a rapidly declining birth rate and an ageing population, so in a decade we're going to be in trouble as a country.

On an individual level, people (that I see online) seem to be very anti-benefits for parents. I always see the line 'if you can't afford kids don't have them' etc. But the reality is that the cost of living is going up, childcare is up, housing is up, and if people literally cannot afford kids they won't have them and that's what we're seeing happen now.

On a wider society level, we need to encourage people to have children to keep our population stable, especially since politicians and the media have stirred up so much hatred towards immigrants so we can't rely on immigration to solve our population problem. The only solution I see is to increase benefits for having children and make it easier - eg. increase maternity pay, subsidise childcare costs, increase child benefit maybe in a means-tested way. But I think all that would go down like a lead balloon with people crying 'the government shouldn't pay for your kids, pay for them yourself' - but really, if the government have got the country to a point where it's a real problem, it's on them to sort it. What do you all think?

I've always thought it mad that we don't have more state/authority run childcare.

That should have come in with tax credits (which were a brilliant original idea implemented terribly!). Money going out for childcare would at least be in part coming back in.

It's the same with housing benefits - we should have been building more council/social housing.

Proper long term planning is never a big focus for so many governments though - they just look at what's going to happen in the next parliament or two and that's far enough.

Human farming is a real scary possibility and I’m sure it already exists for the rich who want organs. I believe I read of a human farm being discovered somewhere (a pregnant lady farm).

I love my DC and I am glad they have reached maturity, had a love, found a purpose and reached many milestones at only 19! Honestly, I hope they don’t have children because the world is not heading in a good direction. However, I would never admit this to them because it is their decision.

I am glad I don’t have small children anymore.

I believe all childcare should be free. Shift workers also need more provision.

@Trumpsgoneloco

No, it won't be a vote winner - and that's a problem - because the retired community who vote aren't going to vote against their own benefit - or at least too few of them will.

But they are a large group who are seemingly happy to watch their children and grandchildren suffer a deterioration in living standards whilst they head off on their next cruise or yoga retreat.

Young people are being stuffed by their elders and they know it. It's partly why they're not enthusiastically entering a workforce where they benefit very little from working whilst others benefit far more.

"The UK had 9.3 million people aged over 65 in 2000, today the number is 12.5 million – the UN predicts this number will reach 18.7 million by 2050. The relative share of old people as a part of the UK’s total population will also leap from 16% in 2000 to over 26% by 2050. This trend is even more dramatic for those aged over 80, who over the same period are predicted to increase from 4% to 10% of the total population."

It's terrifying

@is30tooyoungformidlifecrisis we already have more over 65s than under 15s so it can't be reversed.

@user1471538275 I agree with you, we are asking younger people to work more for less & work longer &'pay more tax to fund things that they are unlikely to see. Not what i would call motivational! But much of the population don't want to hear it.

What do you think is the best way to address the issue?

It's the same with housing benefits - we should have been building more council/social housing.

Yes, why pay taxes straight into the hands of private landlords.

There's a Voyager one as well 😁

However I don't think population is an issue that can be resolved as simply or in isolation. The OP says "in the future we're going to have a problem with population and the workforce". My response would be "Really? Why?" There is an assumption that we need lots of workers doing / producing things and paying taxes. But ever since the Industrial Revolution, improving technology has steadily reduced the demand for human workers - that was what the Luddites were predicting, and they were correct. There was a comment on another thread - the daily benefit bashing thread - that pointed out that there aren't enough jobs for people who want to work, so why force people who don't want to work to do so? That's not an argument I would make, but the poster had a point - we do not have enough jobs for the entire working age population anyway, and with continuing technological improvement, demand for actual bodies in work is likely to continue to fall. And in a global economy (something that even Donald Trump seems to have finally figured out) most labour intensive production is concentrated in countries with the cheapest labour costs.

What this means is that the old answers - increasing population to fulfill economic demand - don't work any more, and will become increasingly redundant. The growth area, if we continue to depend upon prevailing economic models, will be unemployment and and increasing numbers in poverty, and unless we genuinely intend to try to "restructure population" with the risk that entails, then we need to start focusing on new answers.

@is30tooyoungformidlifecrisis I don't think we can. We need more older people to pay towards their care & not just care homes but care in the home (which doesn't include housing) & the NHS. Blanket free prescriptions at 60 is ridiculous & those over the state pension age working should still be paying NI.

But then you will get moaning about the boat people and how Steve next door has never worked and gets it all free so we will end up
with more immigration, more division, more inequality.
More healthcare will go like dentistry eg you need that op well it's a 2 yr wait so pay privately or wait.
Assisted dying will become legal. I don't want to be elderly in this scenario with substandard care & left to rot but 🤷🏻‍♀️

Not sure what the answer is, but you couldn't pay my adult children to have babies, they don't want to be tied down, and I don't blame them. They're in their thirties and very unlikely to change their minds, which is fine by me, I would worry about grandchildren far too much in this world.
I suspect for some people it's a choice not to have children, rather than an affordability issue.

" The elderly generally require substantially more healthcare expenditure than the young, with the Nuffield Trustcalculating that the average 85-year-old costs the NHS roughly eight times more than the average 25 to 30-year-old. On top of that, more retired people means more state pension costs for the government to fund. In 2023 the government spent £141bn on state pensions, substantially more than all government spending on defence, transport and overseas aid for that year combined."

Where do people think the money will come from?

I actually disagree with this - there are people talking about this phenomenon at the moment where with all of our technology we should have really reached a point where people no longer need to be working 9-5 Mon-Fri as machines and tech can be doing many of our jobs but it hasn't happened. (Eg. Aaron Bastani's book or After Work by Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek).

I think that we have reached a point where really, we should have some kind of Universal Basic Income and many people can be working part time, splitting the essential work we need humans to do between us, things like caring and education. But that kind of societal shift is huge, and at the moment, new tech arrives and then new jobs follow, and the cogs just keep turning

The cost of childcare is a short-term obstacle that parents have long figured out strategies to deal with. The bigger issues are housing and the costs associated with raising your children from birth to adulthood.

Parents don’t just think about getting through the years of raising their children, they think about what how to raise children who will lead comfortable lives as adults. Focusing limited resources on fewer children can be one way to give your children the best odds of success as adults.

We could start by forcing all companies to pay a living wage so we aren’t subsidising their profits by paying their employees benefits so they can afford to live.

I suspect for some people it's a choice not to have children, rather than an affordability issue.

Affordability is definitely an issue & of course as more of your peers chose not to do so it's a more of a desired choice.

Parents don’t just think about getting through the years of raising their children, they think about what how to raise children who will lead comfortable lives as adults. Focusing limited resources on fewer children can be one way to give your children the best odds of success as adults.

Yes, I save for my dcs uni costs and housing deposits. What your parents can help you with probably determines your future security more so than your income/job now. I couldn't do this for multiple dc.

Main reason apparently is fall in the number of couples and more singles. Married couples still having kids even if it's later.

As someone who is child free by choice, it’s sites like this that reinforce my choice.

There are too many expectations on women, we are expected to have a good career, maintain a clean and welcoming home, and raise children.

There isn’t a fair division of labour when it comes to raising children either.

The cost of living, needing two incomes to manage an average household, that’s an issue.

I agree we need UBI, and then people can work less, volunteer more, grow food, look after their communities. It would be a big shift, and I don't think people realise it wouldn't come from taxes, but from the profits/shares of UK companies, or so I believe, I'm sure it's more nuanced than that.

I do believe it will come eventually, and replace benefits, pensions etc but not until things get worse, so the government can then say it's time to trial it.

Hope I'm around to see it.

The second solution is just going to store up more problems for the future and bring us to our doom even quicker. We have to think globally as climate change is an issue for everyone and an even bigger problem than this.

Also more and more children appear to be born with special needs. We may just be creating yet another problem by encouraging people to have children and a considerable percentage of those children with special needs will grow up requiring care themselves and unable to work.(I know that some can work. I’m autistic and disabled and do but it’s true that many can’t)

The company I worked for a few years ago made one large department redundant due to council cuts. It was care related and the majority of the customers whom the council paid for were not elderly. Most were young to middle aged people with special needs who had never been able to work so couldn’t even offset some of the costs as pensioners have. It isn’t just elderly people who require care.

People who say “if you can’t afford kids don’t have them” usually don’t react so well when you use it as a response to “we lived on 2 shillings with no heating etc”, they’re usually the same people.

People seem to also not realise that a declining birth rate brings a whole new problem which no money for pensions for the current population in the work force when we get to retire.

The day will come when they will say sorry you got to keep on working as there is money in the pot to give you.

Many don’t realise that the money we all contribute now is not being held in a pot, it goes straight out to pay off other people’s pension. But when our turn comes, there will be less people in the workforce becomes of the decline in population. So expect to work till you die and expect no pension.

Help support young families by creating free nurseries, allowing immigrants in would also help this solve problem but it’s an emotive subject.

Many young people are also holding off having children because of climate change which is pretty serious.

I get it…

Having said all that, with the rise of AI, who knows what anyone will be working in in the next decade or where the source of income will be…
lots of ifs buts and unknowns…

I think that you’re right. It’s about much more than money.

France has a lot of child related benefits & consistently have had higher birth rates but culturally they have quite a different view of dc.