To think that this woman is a greedy bitch?

[TheHairyDieter]

Greedy Bitch here

I believe that state handouts should be for people who genuinely need them. There is just not enough money to go around without giving them to people who are well-off. If Child Benefit was means tested, people on low incomes could be given more. That might be enough to get them off the dole and into work.

Honestly, this article had me seething. I hate greed

I have a choice I'd be interested on opinions on.

As of this year we will be on a 60k house hold income.

If you had the oppurtunity to have £54'000 pa with yourself working from home and your oh working 40 hours a week.

Or

You have to be a SAHP and your Oh works a minimum of 60 hours a week and is away from the family a lot, and has to work from home in the evenings for a take home of nearly £60'000

Which would you choose?

honey is this a trick question? is there a prize involved?

I'd go for the first option. Your OH less likely to be irritable for one thing. More quality family time. Sure the child(ren) would love seeing more of BOTH parents rather than mostly the one.

Thought this might be a link to that 4m benefit fraud case. Oh well.

The real greediness lies with people on benefits who take for granted that the State will just keep on paying them more than they have or ever will contribute to the pot. I don't think they give any thought to the fact that the money they are receiving was earned by someone else. They just expect it to be there....and then have the audacity to whine when people who through CB were just getting back a small amount of the tax they had paid dare to complain about having it withdrawn.

Its not a trick question

It's just in light of the ops article. On that sort of money you can afford to not have 6k iyswim?

We are not earning that yet, but ironically this year will be the first we might.

Our mortgage is massive, due to our location and finances when we had to buy the house.

However we had the above choices last year only a really cool twist.

We pick option a) at least 83 people will lose their jobs

We pick option b) those 83 people keep their jobs and over the next 18 months probably will create ft work for another 20-25 people.

Perversely, we are worse off as a family on the 60k earnings, but we get to sleep at night.

honey that would have been a tough dilemma. But if there are that number of employees around, why can't some work be delegated downwards so that OH doesn't have to work quite so many hours every single week? Always very dangerous to make a business that dependent on one person.

Have not read the original article or most of the thread, launching straight into heart-felt rant...

The governments child benefit changes are an aesthetic and administrative abomination. Either have a universal benefit that goes to everyone, or abolish it and add a corresponding child-allowance back in for people who depend on means-tested benefits.

It's not a problem that rich people get universal benefits, it's negative taxation that just makes a miniscule reduction in their large tax bill. They are paying in full for what they get back, in addition to paying for several other families.

I would actually prefer all benefits to be universal rather than means-tested. This wouldn't necessarily alter the net income of either the rich or the poor, but it would get rid of many problems that means-testing creates.

The argument that it doesn't make sense for the state to take with one hand and give with the other is wrong. By doing so they would create a redistributive framework with zero administrative effort spent examining and keeping track of peoples circumstances, virtually no incentive/opportunity for fraud, no incentives not to work, no incentive to exaggerate disability, no incentive to form single-adult households.

My design for tax and benefits system:

1. Every adult in the country gets a basic income from benefits.
2. All income is taxed at the same rate. (No personal allowance - for tax payers the basic income more than replaces that.)
3. A independent government agency calculates the level of basic income and the rate of tax according to the following constraints

3a. Richest 50% of voters must be net contributors to the state (so poorest 50% are net recipients) 3b. Tax collected must balance government books over the cycle, once all government spending and other taxes are taken into account.

Governments would only be ably to affect tax rate by altering spending or changing what other taxes raise.

Political balance is achieved by having precisely half of voters potentially benefiting from lower tax rates and half from higher.

1. Every adult in the country gets a basic income from benefits.

How's that paid for?

I think yanbu. It makes a change from the usual of making the rich richer and the poor poorer. Not everybody is fortunate enough to be able to go through university and get in a 'high paid' job. The case is usually that having a child whilst being stuck working in a low paid job once the child is born it no longer makes it financially viable to go back to work. It's alright sitting on your pedestal and judging but without these people working in low paid jobs and claiming extra benefits to support them and their families who will be looking after you in your old age if you ever need to be cared for in a nursing home? Who looks after your child in a day nursery whilst you are out working in your 'high paid job? What do you think they earn? She is lucky she can afford clarks shoes for her children, some families have to use this money just to get by and rely on hand me downs or shoes from shops that aren't properly fitted it is a harsh reality.

DP and I both work and bring in £25K between us.

We often worry about money and are surprised at how we manage BUT we only have one DC (all we can afford) and feel very grateful indeed that we have a home to call our own - many don't.

I can't help feeling really resentful and angry about all this though - people on 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100K all moaning about how hard up they are

How can I sort this out in my own head so it doesn't piss me off so much?

Or is it supposed to piss me off, like some of you have said - divide & rule and all that?

Voice dh has just been insured for a LOT of money. , he's rather unique.

I like that this thread bar exceptions has been more measured, than the other.

The "if your skint on over 50k than you're a cunt" comments on the other thread were harsh. Admittedly dh and I don't work any harder than someone on 15k, but what we do, can only be done in the UK. We could do it else where and not pay any taxes though .

We have struggled to get here and things aren't rosy now. But I refuse to be called an entitled cunt when I say we often struggle on a 45k income.

As a middle earner I like to think we are doing good things for our economy

It's divide and rule @Higgs. Its hard I know. But there will always be someone better off than us and letting go of being angry abotuthat will make us happier. I'm readign Affluenza at the mo!

Plus, people have shown here how variations in costs/sudden changes to situation (see mum) can make a difference to your outgoings making them 2/3/4 times higher than others. And with lack of choices ina recession many people are stuck with that.

I think it's supposed to piss you off.

I'm not sure that the people losing CB are genuinely moaning about being hard up - just that a chunk of household income is being taken away somewhat unfairly when other families with higher incomes will still keep theirs.

It's designed to make the majority of the country say what most people on this thread have said - that the country can't afford it and what are they moaning for?

Once it's been accepted then the cut off point will move ever downwards.

Better that some people get it that don't need it than some people who need it don't get it in my opinion.

Honey.

Just out of interest, how do you struggle on 45K. I'm not being judgy just interested and certainly won't call you names.
What is it that costs people so much? We are a family of 5 and have no mortgage now and I know that is a big cost for some, but even when we did have it we still mamaged on one min wage/tax credits.
Never had childcare though, as it seemed silly to work for minus money.

getting to an extent, you are right, BUT the country is now in a VERY different place today than it was when the welfare state was introduced. The country has many millions more residents, people are living longer, technology has advanced. The country and world have moved on and we have to revisit how things are done to ensure we can meet future needs.

Because things have changed, pension/retirement dates have had to change. No one likes it, but appreciates we are living longer so this needs to be done.

Personally, I have a problem with IVF being available on the NHS (and if it is, it should be standardised throughout the UK - to one go each) because that is not what it was designed for, but times changes, so perhaps now it should be included.

Indeed, the whole point behind the introduction of child benefit is no longer valid but it still exists. It must, as with other things, be revisited from time to time. Whether the Govt proposals are right (I don't believe they are) is another argument but the OPs question of whether THAT particular woman who earns such a huge amount of money is greedy based on some of her ridiculous statements is yes.

When I was working at the DHSS years ago, we had visitors from Germany and they were shocked that our Supplementary Benefits were not refundable as theirs were!!

ps. Not child benefit though.

getting - I find this whole thread fascinating, and a lot of it is not at all black and white and I think almost all of us have a particular take on it that is, for the most part, understandable.

I guess the whole thing is "where (not just how) do you draw the line?" Inevitably, there will always be people who put their bit in and don't get much out. I'm one of them. I won't ever claim child benefit. There are probably other credits or benefits that I may never claim. Such is life. Then there are others who will claim continually even though they don't need it. Again, such is life. It's about making it as FAIR as we can.

We all benefit to some extent from our taxes paying for roads, fire service, NHS, police, rubbish collections etc etc. Should hrt payers who opt to send their kids to private school get a rebate because they aren't benefiting from state schools? Maybe. Should I get a rebate because I won't ever claim child benefit? Maybe. I think dig is right, that if you don't claim things in Germany you DO get a rebate.

It seems to me that there are some things that must always be sacrosanct as part of our society. I think providing state education until the age of 18 is a given. Universities, I am not convinced on. I think that if someone opts to study, say nursing or medicine, there is an argument that the state should fund that in return for a commitment to spend X years in the NHS to 'pay it back'.

I think the problem for some of us is where there seems to be a disparity in attitudes. We make choices. If someone who pays hrt can afford to send their child to private schools, their choice, if they can afford it. Sadly, some hrt payers have an unfortunate attitude and sense of entitlement which puts people's backs up. I'm not sure you can really compared the two - one is a definite CASH benefit, the other has no 'perceived' value (not sure that's right word, but hopefully you'll know what I'm getting at).

As I said before, I think it might be better to scrap child benefit completely and introduce something else that is more tangible - free creche/nursery facilities for all children between 1 and 4 (to enable parents to get back to work if they so wish). I think there is an argument to say that if you are JOINTLY earning £70K+ you should not receive child benefit, certainly not after a second child.

morethan

Massive mortgage from moving for work, combined with loss of income. When the Twin Towers went the ramifications of the fall of the Twin Towers affected our industry. Lots of us went tits up in a big way. Credit became a neccessity for food.

I couldn't've fallen pg at a worse time.

We could've written all the debts off, but we didn't. I had a parade of shit jobs to get us through.

Usual story really, shit happened

But when people infer you are a cunt because you earn that kind of money and you are not screwing the system, and paying your way, and you have the audacity to say that the loss of cb will affect you, than a teeny tiny spiteful worm rears it's head. But, I do believe in the welfare state and paying ones dues. It's not my place to criticise people who don't and I don't have to answer to people who have 20:20 vision and tell me what I should have done, and believe me I've met plenty of both over the years

It's nearly always shades of grey, when someone tells me they are skint I just believe them, not ask their income. I am also inclined to agree that I'd rather the minority that did not need the money got it, so that the people who do need continue to receive it.

The problem with looking at joint earnings is it is a disincentive to work. And we have an economy where a duel income is expected/needed.

Plus 2x people at work means 2x all the costs of working, which includes travel, clothes, personal grooming, having somehting quick to cook in the fridge (more expensive than cooking from scratch all the time), childcare, having time to do other time saving things. There has to be some kind of reward for people chooisn ga higher level of personal financial security. .