To be amazed by the amount of people who think the state shouldnt help people?

[malificent7]

I mean with job creation, welfare, regulation of private employers etc.
I hear so many times...its not the state's job to do x, y and z.

So what is the point of gaving a state if it cannot produce conditions for people to thrive?

Of course some take the piss but the state shouldctry to peovide more jobs and less zero hour contracts, they should regulate how the private sector treats employees, they should moderate wages anf provide housing.

Of course, some take the piss but most have a genuine need and the state dosnt want to know.

It's funny how it's so socially unacceptable to claim benefits to provide for children you live with, yet it's also socially acceptable to dodge paying maintenance for your kids if you don't.

Lets fine people for having kids they can't afford - when was the last time you heard of a non-payer being fined or having their driving license removed? Or heard of someone walking away from a partner in disgust because of their neglect of their children? That's as likely as someone being sent to prison for it.

*what can you really do about people having children they can’t afford the basics for

Make it punishable by law for failure to financially provide. Harsh penalties would soon correct the situation.*

How do you determine between those who fecklessly had children they can't afford or those of us who had children we could afford when we made the decision to have them and ended up a single parent due to leaving an abusive husband who has had no contact or financial involvement in the children's lives since then - I can't get CMS out of him & he works for the bastarding DWP so how the fuck would these harsh penalties be administered... or will I be the only one punished for being unable to financially provide for my kids without state assistance because they live with me & I'm technically the only parent?

I don't think it matters whether resident or non resident parent, both should be providing.

Punishment doesn't have to include fining or imprisonment. As others have said community service, remove driving licences, passports etc.

It wouldn't be instant but it may make many think before choosing to have children knowing there would be no money forthcoming and that penalties were in place. They have to think about their current circumstances and those of the future. It should be the absolute starting point to look at finances deeply before even considering a child.

Punishable by law for not financially supporting your children ? Great well ex owes me £5,000 in CSM ... they apparently cannot trace him ... took me less than 10 seconds to find him on fucking google,
Email and mobile number. If we are truly reliant on the state and it’s systems and employees we are frankly fucked.

£45K is more than enough to live on in most parts of the UK!

So why pay doctors more then?

Reality is that wages need to be higher for people doing jobs that require more skills, ability, experience etc.

Otherwise just pay everyone the same average wage and see how long the country would last.

Icecream Do you realise the CSA/CMS have all those powers already, but don't use them?

They are so impotent that a change had to be made between my childhood and now whereby maintenance payments ordered by CSA/CMS don't count as income for benefits purposes.

There would be no forward thinking or fear of sanctions like that because it's already been shown that they don't work.

Although perhaps the government of the day would be more into using said powers against resident parents than they are NRP's.

We could offer young, healthy immigrants a 10 year working visa, after which they have to leave.
If they had married and had children then presumably they would have the right to remain based on the human rights law of a right to family life.

If you have 3 kids and can't afford 3 bed property, that's your problem. Kids will have to share room, or parents sleep in living room, like mine did. It was 4 of us in 1 bed flat. And it wasn't horrible. We weren't even "that poor".
Same here, only we had a 2 bed flat for 2 kids + 2 parents + granny. My childhood was still very happy (although would probably qualify as extreme poverty / overcrowding by the UK standards). All my friends had similar living conditions, many went on to become world-renowned in their field (research, medicine etc) now that we are in mid-30s, even though no state money was thrown at them in the early years.

1.5% of benefit expenditure is lost to fraud. It's much less than people want to believe.

Easy to be glib and use percentages. How many hundreds of million pounds or even billions is that 1.5%? How many more doctors, nurses and teachers would it pay for?

In reality, it's a nonsense to use the entire benefit total - some benefits like state pension make up an enormous part of the total and aren't easy to defraud. How about a different percentage, i.e. percent of disability fraud as a total of disability payments? Percent of unemployment benefit fraud out of total unemployment benefits. The figures would be far, far, higher than the measly 1.5%. You can scew statistics however you want.

Enforcing punishments on people who can't provide for their children would surely cost more

Less money is lost to benefit fraud than the amount retained in unclaimed benefits by those entitled to them, eg attendance allowance. Inconvenient, huh?

I don't think you want a state interfering in people's lives too much. However there is and should be a huge role for the charity sector.

@silvercuckoo exactly. My brother has masters, so has his girlfriend. Only 2 of my friends never finished Level 3 education (which pretty much means no chance of proper job). I did have a good laugh when I told once to friends here about how I grew up and they were HORRIFIED. It made me laugh a bit, because it seriously didn't do any harm to any of us and it's still quite common with the prices of property. But in here that's like an ultimate poverty I guess🤷‍♀️. I think people have bit high expectations of living standard. Not everyone can have 4bed house🤷‍♀️

In reality, it's a nonsense to use the entire benefit total - some benefits like state pension make up an enormous part of the total and aren't easy to defraud. How about a different percentage, i.e. percent of disability fraud as a total of disability payments? Percent of unemployment benefit fraud out of total unemployment benefits. The figures would be far, far, higher than the measly 1.5%. You can scew statistics however you want.

Disability benefit fraud as a whole the DWP says is around 0.5%

For PIP in 2017 fraud was 1.4%. Underpayment was 3.6%. Errors accounted for 1.8% of payments.

Less money is lost to benefit fraud than the amount retained in unclaimed benefits by those entitled to them

Perhaps some people have a moral compass and don't claim all the benefits they're entitled to because they don't actually need them? That would explain why some benefits are unclaimed.

I like to see a balance, whilst it's great the state helps out with things and pays money for things, you must remember that everything that we ask them for help for gives them more power. If you're asking them to take responsibility for more and more then you're giving them more and more control over everyone's daily lives

Very well put

I'm another who fully supports the essentials - and I include an effective safety net in that - but too much state interference isn't essential and is just empire-building for the sake of power and status

Instead of just whinging about 'people having kids who can't afford them' you might want to look at why they can't afford them. As pp said, we are not reproducing our own population overmuch. There are a few large families, but they are rare.

It's also a fact, however much some people don't want to hear it, that wages are falling through the floor. We are expected to have far more skills nowadays while being paid less for them: while employee rights are reducing and legal fees unaffordable people have no choice but to conform to requirements.

Also those people who whinge about 'people having kids who can't afford them' are often the same people who support immigration. Odd that. Could it be that some people want a cheap endless supply of labour with no options of protest?

I think people need to start looking at getting off the grid more seriously. I’m a long way from it personally but that’s my long term plan

That is our goal too, to remove ourselves from society as much as possible.

I think the number of people who say the state shouldn't provide ANY support is infinitessimally small. It's a balance that's needed. Enough help is needed to provide a basic standard of living for all, combined with education and training to get all of those who can, back into the workplace to undertaken useful/productive work. The state should never provide a similar level of lifestyle to the average worker - it should never be "comfortable" to live on benefits. Obviously, for those genuinely unable to work, it's a completely different matter, but even for those, there should be help/incentives for those who can do some work to actually do it, in whatever way is possible. Working has been proved to be good for people, reducing MH issues, social aspects, self-worth etc. Unfortunately, as with everything to do with short term politics, it swings from one extreme to the other.

I get what you're saying OP, but really state intrusion is getting a bit much. As an immigrant of nearly a generation, I find the British nanny state suffocating.

Yep that’s why we left, I wanted my kids to be independent and have freedom.

I think we all agree that there has to be a balance between expecting people to take personal responsibility for themselves and their families, and a safety net for those who cannot do that. The difficulty is that we cannot agree where to draw the line.

Some employers are taking advantage by offering low wages, in the knowledge that they will be topped up by benefits. But not everyone needs wages to be topped up as obviously what is needed by a family of 5 is very different from what is needed by a young single person living at home with parents, or an older couple who have paid off their mortgage.

On the whole employers have to offer a single rate for a job (I know the NMW has different rates for different ages for young people). They can't say 'person x has 3 children so we'll pay them more than person y who doesn't have any) or 'we'd better pay person x more than person y because their rent is more'. That's more or less what used to happen years ago, when jobs predominantly done by men paid a lot more than jobs predominantly done by women. Built into the pay system was an assumption that the man was supporting a family, so needed a decent wage, and the woman was working for pin money, so didn't. But quite rightly that should not be happening now. It's the welfare state's job to help where the parents' wages are not enough for a family's needs.

The problem is compounded by the number of single parent families. I don't have any stats to hand, but they must have increased in the last 30 years or so. Most families cannot afford a second home, yet many families are living in two houses: one for one parent and the children part of the week, and one for the other parent and the children part of the week. Obviously parents should be supporting their children, but supporting them in two houses is clearly more expensive than supporting them in only one, especially when both houses have to be big enough to allow the children to sleep there.

I'm not making any value judgements about single parents, by the way. Just making the point that they are more expensive model, because the same number of people need 2 houses, not just one.

Of course some take the piss but the state shouldctry to peovide more jobs and less zero hour contracts, they should regulate how the private sector treats employees, they should moderate wages anf provide housing.

OP how do you thinkall this ^^^ should be achieved?

Dragongirl10 - local councils used to employ hundreds of people that had secure jobs for life if they behaved themselves... now those jobs are done more cheaply by contractors because job security has been removed.

A friend of mine showed me a Universal Credit support group on Facebook while I was over there yesterday. While most posters seem to have valid points there was a rant about losing benefits because of an inheritance and also a 21 year old woman complaining she didn’t have enough to rent her council tax etc and she’s 24 weeks pregnant. I’m sorry but why go getting pregnant when you clearly can’t support a child?

IRL I know a couple, he’s about 23, she’s a little older (28 , I think) . She already has four children (pre tax credits cap ages) and in less than a year of being together she’s just given birth to another child in the last week. They both work 16 hours on minimum wage.

I’m all for benefits for the ill and disabled but blatant piss taking like this is crazy.

Bungalowbeth - I was abroad when I was pregnant with my first and it was literally no workie no eatie and so you manage, found a job at 7 months pregnant too which literally tidied me over until the end but yet again I keep thinking about this .... that was paying $72,000 in 2000 and the same role us paying $75,000 now. Things are going backwards