to be fed up of George sodding Osbourne and his Knobbish Ideas

[avivabeaver]

The economy is proving harder to fix than he first thought

Solution- suggest cutting £10bn from the benefits budget and "limit the number of children people can claim for". So- are you supposed to choose your 2 favourite and just feed them then? Or what?

Socialism and communism have hardly been great successes have they - you just end up with a population with no incentive to improve itself.

Sweden appears to being doing alright for itself and is riding out this global recession better than most other countries apparantly.

greeneyed

Okay bowing out now before I blow a gasket and I need to make a sensible choice about maybe doing a bit of work before I make the dinner for my boy (fortunate not to be born into poverty, there by the grace of god goes him) the comment about deciding whether to continue the pregnancy is frankly just scary!! Yes my choice is terminate or bring a baby into the world I can't feed, fucking hell really? Women back in the dark ages again.

But your alternative appears to be 'I'm going to have lots of babies because I know someone else will pay for their upbringing'.

Is that really empowerment? State dependency is a noble leap forward, but acting responsibility to raise the number of children you can afford is the 'dark ages'?

I think its still generous at two, that means those who have no intentions of working to provide for the children they chose to have can still take from the system. It would have been better to cap to two children based on past contributions but no child related benefits if choosing to conceive with no household income regardless of first child or more. People need to take responibility for their own actions.

It is very easy to prevent pregnancy, contraceptions is widely available and multiple methods can be used together plus morning after actions. If no benefits were paid the number of "accidental" pregnancies would significantly drop knowing others wont pay for their lifestyle choice.

Working paents have to be sensible and work out if they can afford a child, why should others be handed extra money on a plate.

Education, support and opportunities don't come by giving parents free money.

But surely, OutragedAtThePriceOfFreddos, child poverty will undermine the effectiveness of any measures to provide these?

I can't believe so may people fall for the 'Taxpayers' vs 'claimants' divide.

Everyone pays taxes They might not pay income tax but they certainly have to pay VAT on fuel and adult clothes.

"others who have never worked a day in their lives should be given more than enough to live on."

There you go, David Cameron, George Osborne, and Sun/Mail editors - your job is done. Just need to keep on plugging this message.

Lutheran work ethic

Haha, you've clearly never lived in Sweden :o I'm honestly not being argumentative at all but I lived there for 15 years so find that really funny. Anyone who's spent time there will tell you that at best their attitude to work is 'meh'. They wouldn't know hard work if it came up and bit them on the arse.

But there wouldn't be child poverty if people didn't have too many children when they can barely afford the first one or two.

Like I said, I'm not advocating getting rid of all benefits, I just want rid of benefits that are too generous and actively encourage people to absolve themselves of financial responsibility.

wrote a big long post and then mn logged me out...can someone clarify, when we say benefit...what benefit/s are we talking about?

"Everyone pays taxes They might not pay income tax but they certainly have to pay VAT on fuel and adult clothes"

Technically if they arent working then they are not paying any tax at all as anything they spend they had from the state in the first instance.

I would say if on benefits then fuel vat wouldnt be applicable but the system is very generous and most people on them run a car.

charleybarley a right wing think tank (Adam Smith Institute) is hardly going to be saying anything else really.

'Like I said, I'm not advocating getting rid of all benefits, I just want rid of benefits that are too generous and actively encourage people to absolve themselves of financial responsibility. '

Then why not target first and foremost, non-resident parents, most are male, who do not pay to support children they create and often take up with a new person and procreate some more?

Really flatpack really, how many people do you think actually think that (I'm not denying there are some). This government is happy for us to beleve that is the profile of a benefits claimant, actually usually it's not is it. You all make "taking responsibily" sound so easy, and agains the question remains unanswered as to what happens to the families who can't or won't? We're polarising this issue to two extremes when there is so much in-between. People who don't know how, don't have the family peers etc to show them how etc etc to take responsibily then as a civilised society we have to take care of them and their children. If we take the money away there are lots of people who won't or can't just make sensible choices all of a sudden because they have to, they'll just slide further under and their children and children's children.

Also that blog is factually incorrect. It says companies like IKEA predate socialism and arose due to capitalism, but that's not true. Sweden became a socialist country in 1932. Ikea was founded in 1943.

The welfare system is totally impractical and needs complete restructuring. We can't possibly go on as we are, with over 50% of households depending on taxes from the other half.

It's not the genuinely poor who are benefiting.

What about abolishing all top-up benefits to all people in work, BUT doing it together with a big hike in the minimum wage, and a big cut in income tax?

(Yes, yes, I know. The housing market would fall (good!), and yes, small businesses might struggle - there might have to be a transitional period with government top ups to the employer).

Make government far smaller. Currently we have the crazy sight of one govt lot taking tax money with one hand while another is employed to give it back.

Then nationalise all independent schools and private hospitals, and set up a sliding scale of user-pays at point of delivery for health care and education? So unwaged people would pay nothing, and the waged would pay what was feasible.

Have I alienated everyone? Tory and Labour alike? Bet I have

Swedes also pay a hell of a lot more tax and, seemingly, quite willingly too

Happy, your comments about tax are really daft. VAT is still VAT never mind whether the person paying it is a millionaire or struggling for every penny. Petrol duty is still petrol duty. Council tax is still council tax.

It's really very simple. People pay taxes when they earn or receive money and are charged tax when they save it or spend it (except on those few occasions when you spend it on something that is free of VAT and duties or stick money into an ISA or other tax-exempt savings). We all pay tax, whether or not we earn enough to pay income tax. Except the filthy rich who manage to avoid quite a lot of it.

Ok so i'll piss in the wind.

I think niceguy had a point, if someone who had three kids lost their job, then those kids should be supported.

If someone who has never worked keeps popping them out then no.

And I say this as someone who currently claims benefit.

greeneyed

Really flatpack really, how many people do you think actually think that (I'm not denying there are some). This government is happy for us to beleve that is the profile of a benefits claimant, actually usually it's not is it. You all make "taking responsibily" sound so easy, and agains the question remains unanswered as to what happens to the families who can't or won't? We're polarising this issue to two extremes when there is so much in-between. People who don't know how, don't have the family peers etc to show them how etc etc to take responsibily then as a civilised society we have to take care of them and their children. If we take the money away there are lots of people who won't or can't just make sensible choices all of a sudden because they have to, they'll just slide further under and their children and children's children.

Your argument for maintaining high levels of benefit appears to be 'People might make the wrong decisions'.

I would argue that unless you give them the chance to make mistakes, they aren't really people at all. That's what life involves - decisions, some difficult, and making mistakes. Some people will get hurt in the process. But if failure had no cost then success wouldn't be a reward, would it?

Your nanny-statism simply infantilises people.

Taking responsibility is hard. The easy way is to keep shovelling money at people and pretending that's the solution.

expatinscotland

Then why not target first and foremost, non-resident parents, most are male, who do not pay to support children they create and often take up with a new person and procreate some more?

How many non-resident males claim child benefit?

The DWP's impact assessment predicts that 190,000 children and 80,000 adults will be affected by the benefit cap in April 2013.

www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/benefit-cap-wr2011-ia.pdf

These figures show that the 'average' affected family has less than three children. The vast majority of the families affected live in Greater London, where spiralling rents have meant that housing benefit paid to private landlords has reached very high levels.

The net effect of the benefit cap will not be to reduce the number of children to people on benefits. It will be to force benefit claimants to live in cheaper areas.