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.

I look at it rather differently. Subsidising low wages with public money has allowed employers to increase their profits by paying their workforce less. It’s not the workers we’re all subsidising, it’s the employers. The minimum wage should be raised as high as possible and subsidy through benefits removed.

No it was a typo sorry. I meant that public services should not be limited by what you pay - whether that is a lot or a little.

I did wonder.🙂

Registration as a charity, in many cases, is purely a tax dodge.

Beveridge guiding principle for the creation of the welfare state was based on a contributory system and full employment. The erosion of the principle of contribution ( by both the left and the right for there own purposes) are the driving force behind many of today political and social ills.

Having only 43% of the population employed ( and many of those part time) is not a recipe for a happy or healthy society. This plays into the hands of populism and scapegoat politics.

If contribution and entitlement are linked then self interest and public interest are better aligned. Moving the state pension entitlement to defined contribution for example would motivate payment of taxes, as well as more realism in expectations. It would be better for those that start work earlier and don't spend until 30 at university.

Removing entitlement to those that pay the most tax will see further divisions in society.

Yeah I agree. There was a typo in the post I couldn’t change.

You could say the same about housing associations being registered charities. May be we should remove there charitable / social enterprise status?

Set principles on what is and isn't taxed and stick to them. If education or housing is taxed, fine let's do that across the sector.

Coming up with ideological arguments against a social good is very much a backwards step.

I agree with the idea of reducing the role of long term "working age benefits". But the idea of a minimum wage creates distortion, you have to remember the difference between London and the north east and the associated cost of living.

Reducing housing benefit and promoting relocation to lower cost areas would address much of the market distortion. This would drive up wages in high cost areas. Just putting up minimum wage disadvantages the North, creating further exodus to the south east.

If we are to grow the economy we need competitive labour and energy costs.

Very good point @ThinkingForward. Maybe employers could be offered tax incentives to move businesses to areas that need the stimulus. I’m sure between us we could come up with a policy that works far better than anything our politicians have devised!

Surely if only one income there is no need for childcare as one parent should be available to look after the child if not working

Surely it depends whether or not she is a single parent.

Of course it does. Single parents are totally shafted and always have been. Nothing’s changed since I became a single parent in the late 70s.

I’m sorry but if you earn £100k a year you can afford a nice life including childcare. My joint income is around that and we are extremely comfortable. I think she’s has a right cheek.

You’re extremely comfortable because she is subsidising you even though you have the same household income - you get tax free childcare and she doesn’t. Quite frankly, you should be saying thank you to her instead of saying she has a cheek whilst accepting the tax benefits that she pays for but is not entitled to. Bloody cheek!

Your joint income. Exactly. I see the point has evaded you.

The point is that those who are better off will still be better off after tax. Tax is applied pro rata. People on low incomes pay a greater proportion of their salaries on rent, food and gas/electricity than high earners. The people who should be disparaged are those with Off-Shore Accounts and Trusts, and Multinational Companies who have arrangements to avoid tax. If they paid their fair share of tax, childcare could probably be free for everyone. Scandinavian countries had very inclusive social, medical care and training opportunities in return for higher taxes, but this is rapidly changing (I know because my partner worked in Sweden for 16 years and we have Swedish friends). However the problem is here, not Scandinavia, and less fortunate people make great targets for every well-heeled whinger don’t they?

'I’m sorry but if you earn £100k a year you can afford a nice life including childcare. My joint income is around that and we are extremely comfortable. I think she’s has a right cheek.'

She is paying substantially more in tax on her single £100,000 than you are on your joint £100,000 as she doesn't get two lots of tax free allowance.

She will take him a maximum of £67803. Two people each earning £50,000 will take home a maximum of £38771 each which is nearly £10k per year more and potentially also be entitled to child benefit and tax free childcare.

I actually doubt that because nursery fees are cheaper outside London, but minimum wage is the same. At my nursery, more than two thirds of the income goes on staff wages and on costs. That wouldn’t change if it was located in Hull or a market town in Norfolk.

I made a comment further up the thread that the Swedish model wouldn’t work in the UK because the adult/child ratios are too high. In countries where childcare is heavily subsidised by the government, the ratios are more like 12:1. In the UK, that wouldn’t work for several reasons. First of all, parents here would never accept their children being in groups of that size. Secondly, the majority of children are too badly behaved (or too badly parented) to be able to be managed in groups of that size. Thirdly, it’s barely possible to meet the expectations of Ofsted at ratios of 3:1, so 12:1 would be unthinkable without serious reform and without observations and learning journeys being done away with completely. Parents here wouldn’t go for that. They want a service with all the frills. They just resent paying for it.

Yet it works in those countries @User8646382. What’s so special about British kids? They move from nursery to school with class sizes of 30, does some kind of miraculous change occur overnight?

Parents here campaigned long and hard to prevent the 2 year old ratios increasing from 4 to 5:1. I really can’t see them going for 12:1.

I'm sure you'll argue otherwise, but it doesn’t read as if you really understand what you're arguing about.

Have you seen the cost of dental care and prescriptions? Roads, police, refuse collection parks libraries are paid for from Council Tax - they are not free!
I can understand people working because they have to, but have never understood the point of having children to hand them over full time for other people to bring up. Parenthood is a very special and difficult job, much harder day to day than dropping children off in the morning and picking them up at the end of the day.

Read @Coco1379's post @BIossomtoes.

When women are being told that there isn't any point in them having children if they're going to hand them over to childcare (and by inference are bad parents if they do so) there is huge pressure for childcare to be as close to that ratio of a SAHP as possible.

In Scandinavia there is a fundamental difference in that almost all parents work and both parents are very involved in childcare rather than the sort of 1970s ideal we seem to have of mum at home and dad working.

This is utter bollocks. There are many jobs more difficult than parenting.

I've never quite understood why prescriptions are free once you turn 60. My dh turns 60 next month and has a couple of chronic conditions, one of which he gets injections costing £1000 a month from the hospital which keep his condition under control. He works, earns a decent salary yet now won't even have to pay £100 a year for his pre-paid certificate to cover his other meds. Just seems daft when he can and would pay.