to ask how you will be affected by the budget announcements?

[manicinsomniac]

Sorry if there's another thread about this, I can only see lots of speculative ones.

Now that it's announced ... I admit I'm struggling to get my head around it. I don't think it's as bad as I thought? I don't think it can be that good though? I don't think there's a single thing in it that affects me. I'm not sure about any of that though because I find it all quite confusing!

So, ordinary people from ordinary families/households - how are you going to be affected, if at all?

The blame always seems to be placed at the claimant by certain sources, the reality was the more benefit was given the more the cost of living went up. The landlords could increase rent followed by gas/fuel/food. The government created a society where people needed this money whilst others got rich especially some employers who kept wages artificially low knowing people would apply because of tax credits. Some people take the piss just as the rich take the piss with tax evasion and tax avoidance. To pull the rug without seriously tackling the cost of living seriously is morally wrong.

If you're disabled then spending money on having a pleasant home and home entertainment will probably come before spending money on skiing trips, going out clubbing etc.

Same with people with children and little money. A TV is much cheaper than day trips or pursuing hobbies.

I'm not sure how your friend not being able to buy a flat is the fault of people on benefits. And yes you are lucky. I was lucky to buy when I did too. Luck.

Superflyhigh

Before tax credits there was family credit as well as child benefit.

My DS was born just as tax credits were introduced but the form I filled in was for Family Credit.

When my Dad was on a low paid job they got Supplementary Benefit.

I think tax credits replaced most of that.

And as for the couple your friend saw with lovely house and flat screen...hhas it occurred to her or you that this night have been paid for by family or while the couple were in work.

I get disability benefits but couldn't afford to go out and buy a flat screen TV. The only reason I have one is that my parents bought it for me.

It's lazy thinking to believe that disability benefits paid for it all.

But perhaps your friend would like to have their disability ....I am sure they would swap it willingly.

And no....she doesn't pay for their lifestyle. ...they probably did while in work.

£316 better off. DH and I have good index linked public sector pensions and some buy-to-lets. Three of the BTLs have mortgages, but they are mine not DH's and as I am a standard rate tax payer, they are not affected by the cutback in tax relief on interest payments, fortunately.

We were just about to buy two more in his name, but after the announcement, we pulled out. Though the reduction in interest relief is fair, the effect will be to make rental properties scarcer and dearer for tenants.

Superfly ... so your friend was irked that someone who was registered disabled and in receipt of disability benefit had a nice home? Seriously? Where is the outrage about people like Iain Duncan Smith claiming £39 of tax payers money for a breakfast when he already earns a huge wage? People are so quick to jump on those who are on the lowest wages needing help but there is very little outrage in the general media about those at the top taking and taking.

If you are disabled you live at the mercy of the state. You have no chance of improving your income like "normal" people - if you are unable to work that is. Why shouldn't those who have no choices in their life have a home as nice as someone who does? At its very basic that's what the welfare state is supposed to be - to provide a standard of life that isn't just existing, but living.

We receive high rate dla for our youngest son. Having a disabled child is expensive- he doesn't play with toys so needs special sensory toys, he needs a special needs buggy that costs £300 plus (nhs can't always help with the cost of these), he has a lot of trouble with textures and foods so we spend more on clothes and food, he has a lot of appointments which are a 60 mile round trip away so lots of petrol and wear to our car (which isn't covered by mobility) and so on. We never go out, ever. No one can cope with ds. So yes whatever spare money we have (ha!) we spend on the home, a lot of it from eBay and we do have a nice home. (Which we bought before we had ds and I was a high earner not claiming any benefits at all)..so what? Do people re begrudge a family with a disability having a nice life?

Perhaps we should all become like Rome and chuck our disabled out on the streets to beg on skateboards and cardboard boxes.

None of us brings up children without the help of the state. I earn a good salary and have never been in receipt of means-tested benefits. However the idea that my children have grown up with no state support is plainly nonsense. They were born in a hospital funded by the state. They receive a state-funded education. The eldest travels to school on state-subsidised buses on state-funded roads.

Of course we've decided that we are going to build public roads (building your own would be very inefficient) and public schools and a national health. This is basic public infrastructure, and it's quite separate from means-tested cash benefits. This is why there's net-givers and net-takers, also quite separate from means-tested benefits.

And I agree that we are all subsidised by low-cost goods. We're paying far less than the true market cost of our goods, and we'll be met with our reckoning should the living wage or environmental mandates ever gain traction (I hope they do).

And of course a below-market council house is a subsidy.

But taxpayers fund the state. Therefore some people do bring up their children without subsidy from the state even if those children are born in NHS hospitals and use public libraries and are driven to school on the roads that are publicly funded. Those who earn a lot of money and pay very high levels of tax, and I am thinking here of those who pay in excess of six figures annually, do not actually receive subsidies. They receive services which they subsidise for the benefit of all. Those people are often the ones who don't elect to use state education but still subsidise it for the benefit of others.

Wow. I'm normally quite good at arguing for 'me and my people' but i'm speechless at that. Occupational therapist too? Fuck me

Howcan, the tax change combined with possible/probable increase in interest rates next year were enough to make us hold off for the time being. I guess many landlords will try to bung up the rent. As far as HB goes we rely on our agents to vet tenants and HB clients seem to get weeded out very quickly, what with deposits and references.

I understand your point about more houses possibly being available for purchase, but the problem of getting hold of a big deposit will remain for very many people.

There are clearly some people who don't take from the state. I pay massively more in tax than I could ever use each year in my share of public services. Yes I might take from the state for example I drive on the roads and benefit from street lighting, police, clean streets etc but the level of tax I pay as a top rate tax payer is absolutely massive.

This is however part of being a well functioning society.

Goodbye i agree charging below market rent is a subsidy - but in this case it's not a true market rent because it's distorted upwards by hb. Sorry if I may be repeating myself here - i've said this on one of the many threads but can't remember which! So you have the strange situation that taxpayers push up house prices and rents by paying hb, which then means the 'apparent' market rent goes up, and then govt requires better paid social housing tenants to pay the 'artificially created' difference. In so doing creating huge disincentives to increase earnings.

And I agree with you. Unfortunately this distortion results in London, and to a smaller extent the SE, as an option for the rich or poor. Not the middle. It's all terribly distorted.

There are clearly some people who don't take from the state. I pay massively more in tax than I could ever use each year in my share of public services. Yes I might take from the state for example I drive on the roads and benefit from street lighting, police, clean streets etc but the level of tax I pay as a top rate tax payer is absolutely massive.

Yes. And with the strain on services you have higher-rate taxpayers opting out, fed up with the lack of provision within the NHS or local schools and paying privately whilst still paying taxes, and this leads to a two-tier society, and so on.

The UK government is doing a terrible job of everything right now, it seems. I have no earthly idea how they've managed to make such a mess.

BeaufortBelle...Those who earn a lot of money and pay very high levels of tax, and I am thinking here of those who pay in excess of six figures annually, do not actually receive subsidies. They receive services which they subsidise for the benefit of all.

The fact that this statement can be made is indicative of the way our economy fails to serve society properly. It is incapable of properly valuing each individual. CTCs and other redistributive mechanisms went some small way to trying to redress the balance. The fact is that the rich have been getting richer and the poor poorer. To pretend that anyone deserves a salary large enough to result in tax in excess of six figures when we pay the pittance we do to the toilet cleaners and care workers of this world - (not to mention completely not valuing the care given in the home to elderly/disabled/children) - is beyond outrageous. Do those people on 6 figure salaries really work hundreds of times harder than those at the bottom of the social pyramid? I think not. We live in a seriously sick society that needs to be rebalanced in favour of all individuals - at the moment the rebalancing seems yet again to be skewed in favour of the few....counting the days until the social revolution (if the mob isn't dead in the gutter before then!).

I've not read the replies yet and will do only read last page (yes shame on me) but my friend OHT said that the newly decorated house and items in it looked new and that the people there had been on benefits for a few years.

I did point out to her that they could have saved etc… in fact they needed a new bed and couldn't afford it and I did ask 'doesn't the council supply that then?' i also pointed out to her 'what happens if they inherited money, that could have paid for items' she said 'well they don't have to declare it for tax reasons or can get past that' and she'd do that same too if she were in their position and inherited money.

My mum when we were kids well she worked but was a single mother (1970's/80's) and in receipt of child benefit, grant when she went back to college to retrain as a teacher and then she worked. we were shit poor for years, no mod cons there, despite her DM being very wealthy. I remember my mum buying our clothes from jumble sales, being veggie as it was cheaper and toys from 2nd hand toy shops. It was only when her uncle died and left a considerable amount of money did my DM finally have some security. she paid off her mortgage all by herself, let rooms and got a guarantor mortgage when she divorced to alcoholic DH (my Dad) when I was 5. I've said this before somewhere else recently.

I don't begrudge by any means people who get benefits and in some cases (friend who's single dad alcoholic and drugs DP who he chucked out and they had 3 DDs, youngest 18 months who he brought up alone and he has maisonette and HB paid interest on mortgage but he's now back in work and always wanted to work… that is amazing. I watched Benefits Street and was and in equal measure at the main man (openly smoking a bong) and the woman with the disabled child and other women who were upset that the centre helping young men/women with CVs etc had been shut down - well the latter people of course I feel for but why should my taxes support a healthy bong smoking man and another man who had just left school there who openly said 'oh i'll go on benefits when I leave school, it's easier than working'.

You can see from last sentence why it riles otherwise healthy single or even married no kids or with kids who work and don't claim off the state.

raggety 'Do those people on 6 figure salaries really work hundreds of times harder than those at the bottom of the social pyramid? I think not.'

Sorry, that's just ridiculous. Yes, there are some very well paid and not too hard jobs out there. But a doctor that has studied for years and all the responsibility that comes with that should indeed be earning more than say an office administration person, barmaid or cleaner. I use these example as I've been all three, and there's no way I should be paid anywhere that of a doctor.

A doctor doesn't earn hundreds of times more than a office admin though. It's much much less then that, and that is fair enough . I think raggety is referring to the people whose salaries are in excess of £1,000,000 - supermarket chief executives and the like. You could say that theirs is a high responsibility job, but so is the head of Oxfam and they earn much less then that and don't get dividends.

Yes i agree...a healthy young man saying "oh I'll go on benefits, it's easier than working" isn't right.

I'd also wonder why he had so little aspiration though as that remark alone is rather sad, like he's given up before he's begun.

It also ties into education as well. For example my son is autistic and struggling in mainstream. It irritates me that if I wasn't proactive in saying " no...you are NOT abandoning my child and just accepting the lowest possible outcome" he'd be left to flounder like so many others with additional needs. How many are there like my DS just absorbing that they are not that clever? What does that do to self esteem?

No, people who pay six figure income tax sums don't work physically harder than those who earn a pittance but they generally have skills that are in very short supply, often honed after many years of study and experience. It's about supply and demand and there are people out there who can pretty much name their price because of their skill level.

Personally I don't want to live in a society where there is centralised wage fixing. That would be dictatorial and would curtail freedom - the next step would be when a person wanted to leave the country, they would be prevented from doing so.

The main payers of minimum wage in my experience are organisations like the NHS. I pay my cleaner £12 ph just outside London. I think that's fair. I also have ensured that everyone in my organisation is paid the London Living Wage.

Alfie according to the programme he was from a good family and went off the rails... Petty crime etc. but he certainly didn't seem stupid at all from the footage of him.

Funny you say that about autism my friend and neighbour has a son who's on the spectrum but autistic and though he's been educated well he can barely read and write. However he's been selling RSPCA items for profit to charity but now stopped due to complaints. Anyway he was volunteering in a pet shop and now he's left school he's been taken on there 3 days a week and reviewing when he goes to college in September, doing dog grooming etc. it's a step in the right direction really and I think his DM helped him find the work.

And I do agree with you re education and it not being stepped up for the not so clever etc. I think there should be far more of encouraging into work or pushing them in somehow to a career. Another example DS of a colleague, he was accepted on internship at our company at 20, very good deal, benefits after a year, 13K starting salary, good hours, he buggers this up by being late and and by 30 mins at least 2-3 times a week and taking extended lunches and unauthorised time off and "taking the piss" he was warned once or twice and fired this week just gone. Clever man with good education but according to another colleague before he did this he was a dosser who sat at home playing Xbox. Bit of a mummy's boy though and single child so I think spoiled - not saying all boys are like latter part of that sentence or only children!

Why do people say they were "shit poor" at kids and their parents had to really scrimp like this is a good thing. Are you pleased there will be a return to this or something?

This is a very wealthy country and no one needs to be "shit poor".

I really really hope the budget calculators are wrong, because they're telling me that my family will be nearly £1400 with DH full time and me PT, £1000 with me not working and DH working full time, and if I go full time then we'll be worse off by a cracking £2000. That's insane!