If you can't afford children you shouldn't have them.

[MrsArchieTheInventor]

"If you can't afford children you shouldn't have them" [and] "child benefit and tax credits should be abolished" with the mantra that if she choses to be childless she should not be forced to pay for the 'breeding' choices of others.

A Facebook friend of mine. I didn't retaliate.

Yeah, just explain it to the unlucky little sods that nobody's going to buy them any dinner because their parents don't work and they should.

This thread is like an echo chamber of idiocy.

This thread is like an echo chamber of idiocy.

As opposed to your view tethers, which is that there is an infinite open checkbook?

Absolutely, Whatmeworry.

The French taxation model is quite effective in encouraging responsible parents to breed. I think that the UK could learn something there.

There are major structural issues here, in this country, I guess.

1. In-Work Poverty is a massive problem in the UK. We have too many people working who cannot make ends meet - a system whereby the employers too (yes, let's be honest) are subsidised through tax credits and benefit payments;

1. Our 'Benefit budget' includes pensions, which thereby skews it in crass visual terms as a lumbering creaking giant when the benefit part of it really isn't;

1. The amount of child support required to be paid by non-resident parents, even those in well-paying jobs, is frequently less than other taxpayers' contribution towards those same chidren. (E.g. £200 pcm from NRP with good job; £300 pcm from state; towards RP and children where resident parent is in employment. )

1. Much of this country's work is done by the unwaged and unacknowledged.

It's not a recipe for economic harmony.

We are, as ever, targeting the wrong people for disapproval.

The French taxation model is quite effective in encouraging responsible parents to breed. I think that the UK could learn something there.

I agree, that's the way I think the UK will have to go. Be nice if we could also use their health service model.

Do you know what, it's not other people's children that I mind paying for. I'd rather pay so that children didn't starve or go barefoot. I don't want to take a time machine back to the Victorian era. You think that by punishing the parents you'll sort it out? Well, then the children will be the ones that ultimately end up paying the biggest price.

wheredoesmymoneygo.org/dailybread.html

In fact, many of you with children and who are lucky enough to have full time work probably don't pay enough tax from your incomes to cover what you cost the country anyway, and so in no position to judge others.

Is this thread really worth bothering with?

LineRunner you are very right, and we absolutely have to go after all the people the Tories are featherbedding too, but we also can't put our head in the sand about uncapped spending on areas like this.

Fwiw Pensions are about £ 70bn of a total benefits budget of c £160 bn, That's bigger than Education. There are going to have to be some very hard calls in the future.

I don't think it's about contributing enough to cover yourself. It's about contributing something.

Garlic, I should have hidden it yesterday but I've been too busy writing blank cheques and handing them out down the Jobcentre. And then the pub.

No!!! I hate the French health care model - expensive and not very effective at all!

That's not even the whole pensions story, is it?

The local government element of it is an uncosted, unaffordable scary figure waiting in the wings - so are the police pensions - etc etc. Up-to-two-thirds salary promises to millions of people retiring at 57-60 over the past thirty-five years, people who were expected to what, just die at 65?

Pensions is the shit this country is in, and decently paid young-to-middling workforce is the only way out.

In order to save the government money, I propose that anyone who agrees with limiting benefits in this way; receive no cb or NHS funded treatment or state schooling or anything. Afterall we do want to avoid breeding any more, how did secondcoming put it? Oh yes.... cunts

I think it's scary that if you have a country where maybe 1% of your over-spending problem is with certain benefit claimants, that rational people will still pretend that it's the major issue of the day.

You just have to look at the lack of effort the government is really putting into the 'Troubled Families' programme. They know it's shit. But it plays to the Daily Mail reader.

If you can't afford children then of course you shouldn't have them. When is anyone going to realise that "austerity" is simply another word for "living within our means?". Why the hell should I pay for other women to breed like farrowing sows while I work my arse off bringing up my child at my own expense?

Right, so now anyone who has an opinion that disagrees with yours on the benefits system they contribute to is a cunt who doesn't deserve healthcare or education?

Really?

What a pathetic way to make your point.

Why should I pay for a man who retires at 55 to live on a state-provided pension of £40k a year, and if he fathers a child to pay just 10% of that net, whose own first family has picked up tax breaks since the 1960s and whose grown-up children may be living on tax credits and benefits?

I just think that these debates always focus on women, not men. Men who have children do very nicely indeed out of the state, by default, and indirectly, including those who work.

"Why the hell should I pay for other women to breed like farrowing sows while I work my arse off bringing up my child at my own expense?"

Women can breed on their own?

LitttleTeddy, I think it's marvellous that you give back your child benefit and pay for private healthcare and education for your child. You do, right?

Yes, theres, my point is that men who are fathers benefit, a lot, out of these structures.

And a previous generation (in work) have benefited hugely.

tethers, I am so sorry you became mangled into 'theres' for some reason.

@thethersend. Yep, that's right, Ido.

Good-oh, Teddy. Who do you give your CB back to, out of interest?

Do you see the double standard there?

It's ok to call the unemployed feckless chavs and talk about letting their children sink into destitution

Quite another thing altogether to insult you and your political views, and god forbid your children should be denied basic care- because you're lucky enough to be in employment? Because you pay tax?

(i don't mean you as in YOU personally, I mean as in 'one')

I think it's scary that if you have a country where maybe 1% of your over-spending problem is with certain benefit claimants, that rational people will still pretend that it's the major issue of the day.

IMO that's sleight of mind though.

You have 1/4 of the government's money going into benefits, which is a very large amount - you have to go after it. And of course it's it's not all in one place, so you have to look at savings across a range of areas, so there will clearly be many areas with 1% here, 1% there, but the sum of them all is a very much larger number.

And bear in mind that the money that can be clawed back in tax evasion, 45% back to 50% tax rates, bankers bonus windfall taxes, Trident cancellations etc are not huge either in comparison to total spending, so the whole rebalancing is on the margin.

Pensions is the shit this country is in, and decently paid young-to-middling workforce is the only way out.

I agree with that, and I am sure that there is quite a lot that can be done inherently, that the Tories are featherbedding - but big picture I don't think you can really make a difference while still spending more than you can tax, because then all the money you can borrow from the capital markets just goes down the plughole, your debt to earning rate (or whatever its called) rises until no one will lend you any more at an affordable rate.

IMO you have to get spending below tax take before you can start to improve things by borrowing to invest in productive infrastructure.