To be irritated by this £100k a year whiner

[Viviennemary]

On Question Time tonight they were talking about subsidised childcare and the new benefits for younger children. Then a woman came on with a boo hoo sad face and said she wouldn't be getting it. So I think Fiona Bruce said because your income is £100k a year plus Then she said that it wasnt fair as there was only one wage. And their household only had one earner.

Well tough. Folk on just over £12k a year are paying tax and this cheeky woman thinks her child care should be subsidised. It made me mad.

@Garlicnaan A tax system that incentivises people to work less is a crap tax system!

I’m thinking more of parents earning over £50k and losing child benefit after the death of their child’s mother or father.

Critical illness cover and generous life insurance are not affordable for all, and many people are self employed so don’t get death in service benefits.

I don’t know if you think that failure to benefit from an insurance pay out is also a moral failing, but 2 x salaries of £49k doesn’t reveal anything about the interior workings of a household except that they earn 2 x £49k. They could be splitting the rewards of selling diet tea 1 day a week* and spending the rest of the week at the pub. It’s also mysterious that in other circumstances whole household income IS taken into account.

The point is these tax and benefit structures are a blunt instrument that isn’t designed to be fair, and assumptions about what people should and shouldn’t be doing don’t make it less blunt or more fair.

*I concede it’s unlikely that this fictional couple would complete a tax return.

yeah but a nurse working 22hours because that’s all they can do with the cost of childcare is still working hard isn’t she? Working hard at work and then doing childcare. Bit judgemental calling it sedentary tbh

It isn’t fair, she’s right -it should be on household income as minimum or, even better, free for all.

Early years education can be of huge benefit to children so it’s an investment in society as a whole. It’s not just childcare so people can make money.

It's wildly incorrect.

On a plan 2 loan, they will have borrowed £60k+. They won't even be making a dent in the capital yet, and only repaying interest (e.g. £60k loan at 7.5% will attract £4,500 of interest and their repayment is more like £3,000).

@Emeraldrings yes but as a society we want her to earn more because this allows her to pay more taxes that keeps our public services running. It is in our best interest not to use arbitrary tax thresholds to modify behaviour in a way that causes people to work less.

It is the same with those who work max 16 hours and then top-up with state benefit because full time work works out as the same overall income. Good for the person but net loss to society since we lose on the additional tax income in addition to paying out the top-up. There is no magic money tree for anything - government is either borrowing it (and storing up trouble for our kids) or generating it via taxes and some other services.

I’m happy to do it. I’m an average earner. I’m not a net contributor. I am medically exempt and on a lifetime of meds for a physical condition. I’m grateful that it’s being subsidised by higher earners, and more than happy for them to ‘get something back’. I don’t want them to buy cheap houses half the price of something they could easily afford, because then what would we all buy? I don’t want them to move out of London because that would push prices up elsewhere, plus why should they have to.

The bitterness and loathing on here toward higher earners, coupled with a refusal to understand just how high their living expenses/mortgages are now, is why they’re getting so fed up of paying their sky high taxes and look for ways to evade this. It’s one thing investing a society which is pleasant and where the people being helped are trying to help themselves, it’s another funding people who actively loathe you while wallowing in self pity and, in some cases, have zero intention of even trying to fund themselves in some way.

we cannot keep expecting people to pay higher tax rates and not see any benefits

Are having essentially the pick of the crop when it comes to jobs, an excellent wage and a home of your own no considered 'benefits' anymore?

Or are we just talking about the security net for low-skilled low-paid positions that get a government benefit that high earners think they should get a bite of?

As many people have mentioned, high earners can manipulate their salaries to dip just under the threshold and therefore claim what they're 'entitled' to.

And as for the person paying £150k in tax saying if they quit then three people lose their jobs - so what? You think you're a saint for staying in a job you hate that is stressful? Because you have employees? You posted about this 'years ago' to a chorus of 'don't do it then' but still haven't done anything about it - more fool you I say.

@CutthroatDruTheViolent theyre not benefits because they’re earned.

Yes it's holidays and takeaways that are the problem.

Maybe I missed it.

But if she's not working, why would she need childcare?

A lot of posts seem to forget that the salary which different jobs bring in is just as much the result of political decisions as how much tax we each pay and not a sign of how hard a person works or how virtuous they are. There are a lot of people doing necessary jobs on a very low wage who are ‘subsidising’ society with overtime, poor living conditions and often their health, far more than someone with a socially useless (or harmful) high paid job who is muttering bitterly about how much tax they pay on the salary that is somehow rightfully mystically theirs.

No nurse is on minimum wage. Not even starting at Band 5. And anyone earning £12k gets a lot more help with childcare- in some cases 80% of their bill paid by the state

Are having essentially the pick of the crop when it comes to jobs, an excellent wage and a home of your own no considered 'benefits' anymore?

No, those aren’t benefits and are essentials for EVERY SINGLE PERSON.

Jesus, some of you are SO bitter!

I support universal childcare provision. Such services work best if all are included.

Judgemental? Absolutely. This whole thread is. I see your 22hrs - 2 x 11hr night shifts a week - and raise my 55hrs - 5x 11hr night shifts a week. In a shitty frontline environment (not nursing). With two kids.

I think so many people don’t understand how much they benefit from higher rate tax payers existence, they are literally paying for that £12k earner to have childcare, which is fine but don’t moan when they’re being done over and want to talk about it, because they are being done over and it shouldn’t and needn’t happen. I had to give up my job because my dh earned just over the limit for pretty much everything. I tried to pay for dc care but financially it made no sense we stumbled along both working ft until dc started school and then it really really started to become tough.

By school age the childminders that would have had to collect my dc aged 4 from school, because neither of us would be there by the time school finished even with clubs, said that we would take a ft under 5 place away if we only paid pt and therefore she needed to charge ft prices for effectively a few hours after school care. Even then they finished at 6pm and no other childminder went beyond this. Both of us couldn’t get back from our career jobs by 6 pm regularly. On top of this.

Anyone earning £12k gets to spend wayyyy more time with their little ones that never seems to get mentioned though to me that’s a massive luxury. I really really wanted to see my baby but spent their entire early years working trying to ensure our mortgage got paid. Neither of our jobs allowed us to go pt. I did eventually move jobs to take on a pt role which in itself was sad and then I had to move again because the jobs expected a heavy work load that I couldn’t fit into the hours. Basically I’ve lost a lot. My career. My life. My lovely house as couldn’t afford the mortgage. Seems like that’s what people want in the U.K. though.

so busy being mean to the next person. All parents should support all parents getting help with childcare. Other countries manage it. I’d happily pay more taxes if you could get half what you get in some of the Scandinavian countries for example.

I know - I meant that few hours doesn’t mean you aren’t working hard.

A starting salary for a nurse is now £29k ish? an HCA is more or less on minimum wage though, and IME work bloody hard so if you think of it that way my example still stands.

I just do t think you can say someone working part time doesn’t work hard

do you mean someone earning 12k alone? Because someone earning 12k with a partner earning more doesn’t get any help with nursery fees until the 30 hours kicks in if they are under the £100k threshold surely

I just disagree that working less hours means you don’t work hard tbh.

not working hard is turning up and being a shit employee, not being PT

We’ve reached a point as a country where high earners are sometimes left with less or equal disposable income than people on low salaries due to tax and childcare and the low earners being propped up by various benefits. There is nothing wrong with pointing it out. People don’t like benefit bashing but somehow high-earner bashing is fine.
Civilised societies should encourage and respect high aspiration and doing well, in the UK it seems to be the opposite.

So you are willing to pay triple for all your services and food that you purchase in order to increase the minimum wage so that they can pay more tax into the system? Therefore you pay more……

This.

In my experience my salary was wiped out by bills in the 90s. Childcare was limited and very little was free.

Yes I have seen the cost of University because both me and my husband went as did almost all of our family and friends, and by 60k none of them were/are still repaying their loan but I accept that if you get up to a salary of 60k quite quickly you might not have been paying for enough years to have paid it all off.
But if the person on 60k is paying 5% pension they will still get some child benefit. To get no child benefit they can't be contributing anything at all to a pension.
I was paying childcare in London up until November last year, when I moved away from the city, so very recently.
My childminder was £6 an hour for 40 hours, then I was paying an extra 10 hours on top. So that's £1300 a month not including the TFC discount. Of course nursery would have cost a lot more but we chose the cheaper option and most people also have that choice.

Why are posters comparing between lower and higher salaries situations.

Let's just focus on why she was moaning. Perhaps her not getting free childcare was meaning that she was barely being able to manage financially.

Who knows without the facts, we can't judge.

Step the comparison's. Pointless and irrelevant.

If she is a single mum, she might be stuffed right now. Times are tight for everyone.