if you voted for the Tories, you should feel personally responsible when you see homeless people on the streets ...

[aufaniae]

...once their policies start to bite.

They want to removing housing benefit for under 25s, many of whom have children. Just one of their policies which will drive people into homelessness.

I thought this was meant to be a civilised country. If the safety net is removed, many people including children will fall through it, some of them ending up on the streets.

How can anyone support that?

london where are you getting this stuff from, the Daily Fail?

"The welfare need isn't growing, the welfare expectation is."

Can you provide some figures or a respected source to back that up?

of course in the third world they pop them out every second minute of the day. Of course we can manage to overcome "real" poverty, that is why we have children on the ivory coast working for less that $ a day and ours have no work and rely on benefits. But more of the same will deal with these structural problems. are you certain?

Londonone has it spot on.

The welfare expectation is definitely what's growing.

In the 1st world the population rise is also due to people living longer, which brings its own problems.

We don't need children we need workers, workers are available from all over the place.

Nicely reduced, children are not children, they are future workers, there to be taxed. Have you read Brave New World?

Figures aren't available for everything you know.

The figures aren't available for how many mugs I have in my house, but mugs do exist in my house.

No we have inflation, stagnating wages, more unemployment, a shrinking economy sitting beside $50 trillion uninvested capital.

I was talking about how Labour weren't willing to restrict economic migration. That's nothing to do with race.

Their idea being that if enough people are willing to work for very low wages (which many migrant workers are as even a low wage here is a good living compared to many countries) then they can keep wages generally low. That includes not raising the NMW to a point where it's more attractive to welfare claimants than their life of not working.

The benefit is in keeping wage inflation low and hence other inflation, too.

I'm sure I read somewhere that Labour admitted to using the tactic actually but that's baseless unless I can find where I read it.

What's your particular perspective, Toombs?
Genuine Q.

Toombs, I'll give you a full list of reading if you can come up with more than one sentence

Why is that capital uninvested?

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I don't think you understand aufanie. The lifestyle expectations of people today are utterly different from expectations when the welfare state was set up. The idea that people earning well over the average wage should receive state top ups is a relatively recent expectation

S/he managed two sentences above!

london

Right, so in your world, only the rich are allowed to have children - those who aren't rich should abort if they get pregnant.

We will import workers to take the jobs which would have been taken by those aborted children.

Those workers will not be allowed to have children either - unless they become rich.

Over time children will become a rare thing in this country.

Nice one What a lovely vision for the future.

Shelly, you are right. Brown then came up with tax credits to make up the deficit between wages and living costs.

Londonone

How do you think you are going to feel when unemployment rises.
Many part time workers receiving wtc/tc are not going to be able to find extra hours because there aren't that many jobs. They will lose their entitlement (as workers) to tc and become unemployed as it will be more viable. At least the majority of benefit claimants work part time now. Many childcare workers, cleaners etc are part time and have families. It will be interesting to see how many people who employ these services will provide 35 hours at the min mage.

Oh yes aufanie reducing state handouts means the population will just die out! I am willing to stake my life on children not becoming a 'rare thing' ever.

minouminou. Far too many people depend upon the state, this is the result of deliberate policy of the last government. That a family with a higher earning taxpayer should receive benefit is beyond me. We tax far to much to give back to little, the effort consumes money. Better to tax less and restrict benefit to those who really need it. Government needs to do less and spend less.

That anyone should consider Government to be the ideal method of welfare distribution given its woeful record on delivering almost anything really should make anyone think twice.

aufaniae.

Your name is beautiful, but not easy for a dyslexic to spell, lol.

Put like that what a weird way to be. So glad thats not me.

We have a capital absorption problem. As profits are made they need to be invested. As more profit is made there is more to invest. What happens is as the economy grows by say 3% then more opportunities have to be found. At the moment the private sector has it's sights set on welfare because privatising welfare for profit opens up a new area of investment/return.

That is one of the major reasons the IMF is really keen on cutting government spending on welfare. At some point welfare will need to be affordable and it will be privatised.

More than - I am not sure what your point is? How will I feel about unemployment in relation to what?

No london, I am not talking about the effects of government reducing state handouts.

I am talking about your ideas.

You have said you think that people shouldn't have kids if they can't afford them. Given the price of housing, that means only the rich can afford to be sure they will not need to ever rely on state help.

You have said that people should abort their children if they can't afford them.

I am trying to get you to have a think about what the logical conclusion of your ideas would be.

If women did abort their children if they got pregnant when they weren't 100% financially secure, that would mean there would be a massive dent in our birth rate.

You suggested we should to import workers not have children.

The logical conclusion of your ideas is a country where only the rich can have children, and therefore children become a rare thing.

Do you understand what I'm saying now?

I have posted conservative since 1979 and shall continue to do so. I don't feel personally responsible but I think the last Labour Government deserves significant blame for the fact that such cuts are having to be considered.