To ask if universal credit should take into account what your living expenses are?

[Cheeseandlobster]

I have a family member who had a baby dd this year. She lives with her mum and dad in a granny annexe and pays no bills, rent or food. She sends me screenshots every time she gets a payment saying she is amazed at how much she is being paid (around £750 every 4 weeks). She also sends me screenshots of what she is buying and it's often urban decay makeup, Michael Kors designer clothing, etc. She has openly said she has no intention of ever leaving home or working as she has never been so well off and had such nice things.

She is a great mum to her dd and her dd has everything she needs but this isn't what benefits are for and she is now making a lifestyle choice of staying on uc for as long as she can. I have explained that once her dd is older she will have to find a job and tried to encourage her to think about what she would like to do when that time comes but she is adamant she won't be working again.

This isn't her fault in a way as the system has allowed her to do this and her mum and dad are choosing not to charge housekeep. I also know people on the other end of the spectrum on uc who have large bills and are really struggling to make ends meet

So should uc take into account what your outgoings are too? I don't know how much it would cost to administer but the differences in living styles between those living at home and those living independently seem huge and it doesn't seem fair to me

I don’t think it’s fair that they have to support a child they never wanted.

If a man doesn't want a child he shouldn't have sex. Contraception is pretty good but it's not 100%. I am an "accident when it comes to contraception fails". And my father managed to duck paying the maintenance since I was about eight.

So no, losing out on 120 hours of seeing my child grow for the sake of £70 (if I'm lucky) a month isn't worth it
But can't you appreciate that it is a luxury to be in the situation to pick whether to work or enjoy your time with your child that many mothers not eligible for benefits don't have.

Ultimately a number of mums will return to work when their child start school but very much because they don't have a choice any longer. Before the chance in tax credits, single mums could claim without needing to look for work until the youngest child was 12yo and too many opted to never get back to work leaving them in very precarious situations once all the children had left home and they had no or very little work experience.

Very often we read about single mums claiming they could only get nmw jobs, why? Don't they have any previous work experience? Do they just opted to have children before they had at least got up one stage on the ladder?

Ultimately if all you can hope to earn is nmw, every year not worked or studied is a further year away from being able to earn more and therefore enjoy a better lifestyle.

The longer one stay away from work, the harder it becomes to go back psychologically. When you get to the point when your child is at nursery all paid by tax payers whilst single mums get some time for themselves every day, where is the incentive to work and go back to having no or very little free time whilst dealing with work.

£750 a month isn't exactly the lap of luxury! It's not great she doesn't want to work ever again, but her attitude may change.

Op uc is paid Per calendar month. At present claimants are receiving an extra £20 per week roughly because of clovid 19 afterwards she would be receiving 650 pcm.

What’s this preciousness about being a SAHP, it’s not some unachievable feat that takes extra special effort which workers cannot bring themselves to perform. There’s no contest between workers and SAHP. However the latter is definitely a luxury because those in work pay to enable SAHP on benefits to spend quality time with their children while they can’t do the same.
Either way, the feckless sperm donors need to be rinsed for every penny rather than the taxpayer. Too many men out there breeding and abandoning their kids safe in the knowledge that others will pick up the tab.

And if a woman can’t support a child should she not have sex either ? Or is it only the man who should abstain? In fact I think your idea is perfect . No more sex for men or woman if they don’t want to / can’t support a possible child .
I think the world would be a much better place if lots of people stopped having sex and procreating before they are ready to support / want a child .

It may not be luxurious but that £750 came from someone else’s wage packet .

No it wouldn't work. But this girl sounds like a c.f.. so I see where you are coming from.

I’m not sure how I feel if he didn’t want the child in the first place and would have preferred the mother to have an abortion . I don’t think it’s fair that they have to support a child they never wanted. I don’t think there are as many accidents when it comes to contraception fails as we are led to believe .

Ah, there's your angle - misogyny. Gotcha.

It may not be luxurious but that £750 came from someone else’s wage packet

No, it didn't.

I can't believe that it's acceptable for the nrp's maintenance not to be taken into account. I mean, I completely understand why but the fact that it is accepted that soooo many absent fathers cannot be trusted to pay honestly and regularly or might want to spend their money on new kids with a fresh woman is disgraceful.

Give the CSA some real teeth and the benefit bill will fall. A single mother should not be having to claim hundreds because her and her kids will suffer if they had to rely on support from the father.

@PurpleTigerLove

Safari - she shouldn’t have the choice not to live with family anymore. It should be assumed that she will stay at home until she can support herself . I agree with not providing hb for those under 25 .

By 25 I had been living away from home a fair while. I’d had an abusive marriage (was actually a handfasting so much easier legally but much of a muchness) I was on my second pregnancy and living on my own with a disabled partner. Working min wage to keep us afloat

Would you suggest I was denied the meagre HB I got when I was 23 & 24 working 50 hours a week and providing full time care to my disabled partner just because I was under 25?!

Hardly misogyny. If a woman doesn’t have to have a baby she doesn’t want them neither should a man . It’s equal rights .
Is the £750 delivered by fairies then ?

When I say “on my own” I mean away from parents

Is the £750 delivered by fairies then?

By the DWP who are funded by central government, the money comes from the government budget not from peoples pay packets.

If a woman doesn’t have to have a baby she doesn’t want them neither should a man

And he has the right to have no involvement with the child, morally questionable though that may be, but it doesn't absolve him of financial responsibility.

The money comes from the government budget and not from people's pay packets? Is that the magic money tree then. The government grows money.

The point was that it's not taken directly from someone's wages and handed over to someone who is unemployed.

And even unemployed people pay taxes, some benefits are taxable as are goods bought so unless they're never making any purchases or paying for any services then they are paying taxes.

The hypocrisy would be hilarious if it wasn't for the fact some people genuinely seem to believe the shit they chat. I've been a lone parent and worked full time from the start, but not being a complete knob I've always been aware I was in a privileged position, with choices that simply aren't available to the majority. And it was still significantly harder than raising two dc with a partner that worked away.

Of course, it probably helps that I've never needed to perpetuate the myth benefit claimants are inferior to me or anyone else in a misguided attempt to push myself up the social ladder and prove I've made it in the middle classes. Fyi, it isn't working as you imagine, it just proves that income, or lack of, has nothing to do with class.

I have an acquaintance that chooses not to work, an above average earning partner, a few dc, all of which have been pregnancies and births with heavy nhs involvement. If I started a thread to judge her, I would be quite rightly lynched. I wouldn't receive replies suggesting she is lazy, or a scrounger. Nobody would make ridiculous comments about their taxes paying for her choice to be an older mother, or bang on about their wages footing the bill for 3 lots of state education or paying her future pension. But a single mother costing far less in state support for a few years is the lowest of the low.

Most ridiculous of all is that single parents have been made to seek employment when dc start school for many years if they want to claim benefits, and even with the age rolled back to 3 they are still being stereotyped as lazy scroungers. Yet the benefit system still bankrolling a sahp for a couple till dc leave education is considered by many to be perfectly acceptable, and it's astonishingly rare for anyone to object to 'their taxes' paying for all the other state support a sahp with a higher earning dp is entitled to.

But one single mother with circumstances that mean she can afford a few items from low end designer brands and it's time to bring back the workhouse.

@KittyFantastico

The point was that it's not taken directly from someone's wages and handed over to someone who is unemployed.

You do know how taxation works, right? Or are you being deliberately obtuse?

@TrainspottingWelsh

The hypocrisy would be hilarious if it wasn't for the fact some people genuinely seem to believe the shit they chat. I've been a lone parent and worked full time from the start, but not being a complete knob I've always been aware I was in a privileged position, with choices that simply aren't available to the majority. And it was still significantly harder than raising two dc with a partner that worked away.

Of course, it probably helps that I've never needed to perpetuate the myth benefit claimants are inferior to me or anyone else in a misguided attempt to push myself up the social ladder and prove I've made it in the middle classes. Fyi, it isn't working as you imagine, it just proves that income, or lack of, has nothing to do with class.

I have an acquaintance that chooses not to work, an above average earning partner, a few dc, all of which have been pregnancies and births with heavy nhs involvement. If I started a thread to judge her, I would be quite rightly lynched. I wouldn't receive replies suggesting she is lazy, or a scrounger. Nobody would make ridiculous comments about their taxes paying for her choice to be an older mother, or bang on about their wages footing the bill for 3 lots of state education or paying her future pension. But a single mother costing far less in state support for a few years is the lowest of the low.

Most ridiculous of all is that single parents have been made to seek employment when dc start school for many years if they want to claim benefits, and even with the age rolled back to 3 they are still being stereotyped as lazy scroungers. Yet the benefit system still bankrolling a sahp for a couple till dc leave education is considered by many to be perfectly acceptable, and it's astonishingly rare for anyone to object to 'their taxes' paying for all the other state support a sahp with a higher earning dp is entitled to.

But one single mother with circumstances that mean she can afford a few items from low end designer brands and it's time to bring back the workhouse.

This!

@sst1234 You do know most benefits claimants are working and by extension paying tax right?

If somebody is bankrolled by a rich partner or parent then that's their business. When they choose to be non earning and live off the public purse it is a different matter altogether.

You do know how taxation works, right?

No. I learned absolutely nothing about taxation in all the time I worked at HMRC. Do you know it's not as simplistic as "my wages pay your benefits?" there are many layers of process between wages and benefits, it is not a direct system, and as I pointed out in my earlier post everyone pays taxes of some sort.

And as Boomclaps says, the majority of benefit claimants are in employment.

@Purpletigers

Hardly misogyny. If a woman doesn’t have to have a baby she doesn’t want them neither should a man . It’s equal rights . Is the £750 delivered by fairies then ?

If a man doesn't want to be a father he shouldn't fucking fuck.

(Barring the exceptional cases of a woman becoming pregnant by sexually assaulting a man. Which are miniscule compared to the epidemic of men raping women.)

I get working tax credits, I also pay tax. Go figure.