to think dual person 'full time' worker family households should never have become the norm?

[workingdilemma]

Was thinking about the other thread talking about tax credits etc.

Around 40 years ago, as a society we'd reached a point where one person working in a household was enough to support a young family.

Now we've ended up where it's pretty much required to have both working full time to be able to afford the same lifestyle - mainly due to the insane 'cost' of housing.

It would have been far better to have had both people in a couple working perhaps part time to allow engagement with the world of work, and also a healthier work/life balance.

Why did we end up like this? Was it all an orchestrated plan to keep the debt cycle going - after all, you can lend on two incomes now for a mortgage. Lovely jubbly for the debt pushers. Is that why the banks and governments encourage this?

I dunno, but I do yearn for a better way to deal with the problems we're having now then everyone demonising each other.

Doesn't mean we shouldn't try though don'trun.

Nobody is arguing for the dream of household's living off one wage. The problem is with both parents having to leave the home to do long hours of stressful work in order to make ends meet.

Like it or not, by working full time you are depriving someone else of working part-time.

I beg to differ. The main difference I see between my Mum and myself is that she was able to step out of the workplace when her dc were small and return to it FT when her circumstances changed. I think that jobs being kept open for those on long maternity leaves and PT working have closed down this option for many in my generation. I therefore feel the workplace is less flexible than it was or could be. So many women are "grateful" for their PT roles they put up with all sorts of discriminatory stuff which hampers the cause of gender equality in the workplace.

workingdilemma the issue with raising the living wage or the personal allowance as you suggest is that most households are not raising families for their entire working life. The living wage for a single person or a child free couple is considerably lower than for a couple or single person raising children

Perhaps I wasn't clear. That wasn't what I was saying.

The living wage should be calculated on the unit annually.

Single person, no dependents - single person living wage tax allowance.

Single person, with kids - living wage tax allowance for that family unit.

Two person family, one worker - living wage tax allowance for the worker to cover whole family.

Two person family, two workers - the same as above, except the allowance is split over two individuals.

Each year everyone declares to HMRC what the size of the family unit is, and what the likely earnings are going to be. HMRC calculates a tax code, and gives it to the employer.

At the end of the year, if you one of you did end up out of work, you would get a rebate or you could tell them immediately about the circumstance change, and the tax allowance is transferred to the working partner.

Pretty straightforward, and easily automatable.

That's interesting. So partly a problem of employers wanting only full-time workers and not being flexible. Again, if more dads were willing to work part time, part-time work would be more 'normalised'. Very complex situation.

Each year everyone declares to HMRC what the size of the family unit is

So, the return of 1980s-style married woman taxation, which meant that people had to declare their incomes to each other in order to fill in tax returns, and spreading the current benefits problem of precisely what constitutes "living together" or "family unit" over not just benefits claimants but the entire population. Perfect!

Pretty straightforward, and easily automatable.

Would you like to define "family unit", please?

We women fought very very long for separate taxation of husband and wife (which the child benefit changes in retrograde and sexist fashion cut back upon recently).

Transferring allowances keeps women chained to kitchens and normalises domestic servitude for women and sexist roles.

Lotus - not if some women WANT to. People shod be able to choose whether to work, not to work, work less hours or any combination regardless of gender. If you're saying women MUST work, how is that any different to saying women aren't allowed to? You're still forcing someone to do something solely on their gender!

Sure.

A family unit typically would be people co-habiting, with children.

(Two people without children living together would keep their living wage allowance as if single - I appreciate that's an advantage, but hey)

In the event that someone doesn't live with the other parent of their child, then that would be a matter for the child support agency to deal with to decide the level of support. Child support would form part of the living wage for that person. The payment of it to the party looking after the child would either be tax free (if earnings were under the allowance), or taxable (if their earnings were over it).

I really don't see the problem with two people who have children and living together knowing what each other earn. You've bigger problems to deal with if you have to keep that a secret from your partner.

I remember you from earlier in the thread, part of the little gang btw who were determined to prove i was some sort of sociopath. Nice to see ya again.

We women fought very very long for separate taxation of husband and wife (which the child benefit changes in retrograde and sexist fashion cut back upon recently).

It also seriously penalises single earner families.

Why would dual incomes not be the norm?

Buying and preparing food and doing laundry are not full time jobs in the way that they would have been 50 years ago. On average people have no more than 2 children.

Most people have a working life of 40-50 years.

I don't think people are being cynically manipulated into work. It's just that for a large proportion of people, for most of the time, there isn't really a compelling reason not to work, and money and financial independence bring many advantages.

"Take on fewer projects! Nobody's indispensable. leedy"

But that's not the point - it's not that I have loads of projects (though sometimes I do), it's that when I am working on that project, I own my bit of the project. I often can't just work on it for a couple of days a week, particularly when we're coming up to a deadline, because other people are relying on me to do my part of the job, and, as I said above, trying to share that kind of work between two people would take more time than just one of me doing it. Obviously I take holidays and stuff but I do flag those well in advance.

I think people are being cynically manipulated into work. What else is subsidised childcare for?

A family unit typically would be people co-habiting, with children.

How charmingly circular.

Does that include people with lodgers? How are you planning to distinguish between houses in multiple occupancy and "family units"? What about siblings sharing houses: family unit, or not? What about people whose adult children are living with them? How many family units are there in a house containing a grandparent, two of their children and four of their grandchildren? If I have a lodger who has a child, and sleep with them once, have we become a family unit? Twice? Three times?

The DSS have incredibly complex rules to define "co-habiting" which are a complete minefield. Now you want to extend it.

I really don't see the problem with two people who have children and living together knowing what each other earn.

Well, aside from the massive outcry it caused until it was ended in the 1980s, are you saying that, say, a couple who marry later in life should have to declare not only their income but also their savings (because it yields an income) to each other? Should parents have to declare their income to their adult children (or are you not making those "family units"?) If my elderly father moves in, will he need to tell me how much he's got in savings?

Anybody working is 'depriving someone else of a job'
the theory that people should not have more money and stuff than they absolutely need has been tried before, doesn't work.

"What else is subsidised childcare for?"

Helping people to go to work who want to but otherwise couldn't afford childcare?

Yes, but it's obviously intended to encourage working. Otherwise benefits could be increased.

Hazle the point remains though.

I think people are being cynically manipulated into work. What else is subsidised childcare for?

The electorate who indicated that it would be a vote winner.

That's not relevant - increased child benefit would probably have been even more popular.

Otherwise benefits could be increased.

Not without people working.

Arguably subsidised childcare is self funding because it enables people to pay more tax. Whatever your opinion on the rights and wrongs of benefits and taxation, benefits are funded by taxation.

And how can subsidised childcare manipulate anybody into anything? If you don't want it, don't use it.

The point is you only get that particular benefit if you work. Of course it comes out of revenue from taxation - including households where the parents have chosen - sometimes for selfless reasons - not to both work full time.

When I was in the US 15 years ago (not sure about current situation) couples could choose to be taxed as individuals or as a couple with shared allowances. This seems a good compromise between individual taxation and "family unit" taxation as you suggest workingdilemma? Of course the US tax system and various reliefs are not as straightforward as this and my US friends used to refer to the "marriage penalty" within the tax system.

Lotus I think our current situation is socially regressive as within the tax system people are treated as individuals but within the benefits system people are coupled up at the merest hint of more than casual sleepovers. Women relying on benefits are far more likely to be shackled by financial circumstances than those being taxed imo.

Lotus, sometimes I wonder why you had children because you appear to find their company annoying, almost akin to slavery and best outsourced to anyone else other than Mum. Although I know you've mentioned previously that you're fine with stay at home dads. You just dislike stay at home mums.