People shouldn't be surprised. A couple both working full time and with 3 kids living in rented accommodation could be entitled to nearly £900 a month of universal credit. And that's with zero child care expenses. Interestingly, if they had a mortgage instead of renting they'd only be entitled to £250 a month. I wonder how many people are deterred from home ownership because they'd lose all their housing benefit and have to pay the mortgage unaided? It's hardly an incentive is it. And it must be costing the state a huge amount in benefits, whilst it's ultimately lining the pockets of private landlords. The disincentive for those is social housing to get on the property ownership ladder is even larger, which is why we have so many people clogging up social housing stock despite having progressed to a stronger financial position. All we're doing is enabling them to sustain a luxury lifestyle while other, more needy families are homeless.
This is a part of the real 'Broken Britain' - we have ended up with an economy where so many people are reliant on benefits to survive. This isn't a criticism of people on 'low' incomes (I'm a relatively low earner myself, and a single parent in receipt of child tax credits, which a lot of people who know me would never guess).
Rather, it's an observation of the problem that the cost of living is so far above the lower/average incomes that people can't survive on their wages alone. It shouldn't be the case, it's not sustainable long term.
I don't really know what the solution is, but I do think that it's artificially caused an inflation because people at the lower end have more disposable income to spend more, and that creates more demand and drives up prices. People seem to have been conditioned to a debt culture (go to uni, pay huge fees, graduate with a massive millstone of a loan to repay). Then everything is on a monthly payment/finance plan - cars, mobile phones etc. Hardly anyone used to have a new car, you'd save up and buy what you could afford. But now it's almost a norm that people have something new/almost new on an 'affordable' monthly
plan. When in reality they're just paying the depreciation on an asset that they don't even own. The irony is that cars are better built/more reliable than ever - 30 years ago a 10 year old car was a rust bucket (but a common one), now a 10 year old car is almost as good as new. Yet hardly anyone wants to be seen driving one, mainly because all their neighbours have something newer.
Another part of the equation is that domestic situations have changed - there are far more single parent families than there were 30 years ago. That has led to more demand for housing since each separated couple now needs two homes, especially if shared care is occurring. In the past, couples simply couldn't afford to split, so (rightly or wrongly) more people made their relationships work. We also traditionally had families with a main 'breadwinner' which kept the other parent free to do the domestic stuff and childcare. Now we have a massive childcare industry and which is so expensive that a lot of people spend their entire wages on childcare. If there wasn't such a generous amount of childcare benefits there, would child care have gotten so expensive (supply and demand)? Does it make sense for a parent to put their own kids into someone else's care so that they can go out to work themselves, simply to pay for that care? Society (primarily women) have been conditioned that they can (and should) have it all - maintain a high flying career whilst simultaneously raising a family. That's fucking hard to achieve in reality, there simply aren't enough hours in the day to juggle it all. I don't think it's right to put that much pressure on people, yet it's become a societal norm. You're almost made to feel like a failure if you don't do both at the same time.
This is a modern creation, over the last 25 years. It's all a bit chicken and egg, and trying to fix it is like trying to put the genie back in the bottle. As I said, I don't know what the solution is, but it's going to be painful to tighten our belts. People need to get off the hamster wheel of life - live to work, not work to live, and lower their sense of entitlement (again easier said than done when we've all been conditioned into it).
And the bigger economic picture of the UK is pretty bleak too I feel. We've got rid of nearly all of our industry - undervalued and driven out/sold of by governments over the last 50 years. We barely make anything any more, what we have left is all tertiary. And however fashionable it is, the country cannot survive long term on just service/financial 'industries'.
In conclusion, we're fucked and it's looking very bleak for our children. The only option for many is to ride the system and be a good little citizen.