Is your household contributing net tax ?

[Pingufireengine]

Following on from the awful disabled people are a drain on society threads...

For those that have children, have you considered this?

Roughly 55-60% of all households aren't net contributors to tax.

That's not to say the households that don't make a net contribution are in receipt of benefits.

Having children entails the following:

(This is per child)

Maternity care on NHS/midwifes,
Birth/delivery £3000-10000,
Post Delivery Care,
Health Visitors,
Statutory Maternity Leave,
Free prescriptions during pregnancy and after birth for 1 year,
Child gets free eye tests, glasses, prescriptions, dentist until 16/18
Child benefit until 16-20
Free nursery hours £2000-7000 per
Free School Milk £30-40
Free school meals: £400-500
School is £7,690 per
Sixth form/college/higher education £4,843

Student loans for university £30,000-50,000+

Yes the loans are paid back, but the initial offset is footed by taxpayers. And around 27% of full-time undergraduates starting in 2022/23 will repay them in full. They forecast that after the 2022 reforms this would increase to 61% among new students from 2023/24.

So instead of looking to blame those who are disabled for being a drain, look elsewhere, and better yet, instead of the disabled, pensioners, the working poor...we should look towards those are govern us, avoid tax.

The UK pension is the lowest in Europe, our wages are low and have stagnanted, working rights and conditions have eroded.

The UK looks asset rich, but it's only a small number who are generating huge wealth for themselves. There are parts of the UK poorer than the poorest parts of Poland. In fact, Poland is predicted to be wealthier per person than the UK in just a few years.

Maternity care is awful, the NHS is broken and on its knees, social care is non existent.

We've had austerity for 14 years, then Brexit, then COVID. Our country is in desperate need of investment into our creeking infrastructure.

I would target welfare and replace it with mandatory work on things we don't want to fund at cost. E.g. our council doesn't litter pick or adopt the public open space of new builds so you want to claim UC but only working 16hours no problem if you do 21 hours of litter picking.

You then run into a problem with child care. Where I am there’s one afterschool club and limited childminder availability. My DD is 13 but has complex needs which mean she can’t safely be left home alone. There is literally no childcare available for a teenager who can’t be left alone.

Before anyone starts, I work, I luckily don’t need benefits but I have a very flexible job and reached a good place in my career before I had children, that isn’t true for a lot of people. A full time wage for two adults in the home is great, but there are often many complicating factors that mean one or other parent needs to pull back on work for a while.

If you take the ENTIRE cost of welfare, so the payments and the costs of administering the system, and divide it by population, you get a surprising big number.

One issue might be that a lot of people are in employment adminstrating our crazily complicated system!!

These types of threads are insightful when the wealthy pop on and contribute their views. It's interesting to see how they view poor or average people in the population...and why they often don't feel it's necessary to fairly redistribute their wealth. Blame usually falls to those who didn't work hard enough at school, didn't put the hours in etc.

You also get the benefit of living in an educated, generaly lawful society.

This means that us plebs can a) adminstrate and service your life to an adequate standard without you having to pay your own staff and b) aren't outside your door with pitchforks.

I think one of the many problems is what level to set it at as there as so many variables.

Some people rent some own there own home on mortgage. I think you would need so many top ups it would cost just as much to administer as now.

What would happen to inflation as nobody would want to do low paid work that is taxing so wages would I guess need to go up so more inflation?

If we need litter picking we should just pay people to litter pick.

Insurance doesnt pay out for all sorts of things. When i was made redundant i had to claim job seekers under my redundancy insurance policy as part of the claim process.

Education isnt supposed to be a personal pay per use system. I benefit from a well educated workforce, who then go on to do jobs that range from nurses, radiographers, to balancing the chemicals that keep our water clean, to doing all the stuff that makes energy appear in my home, to running the judiciary, financial services etc. A lot of what we have left to generate wealth is creativity and knowledge.

Absolutely, they really don't like to be scrutinised do they? Such scroungers getting rich off the backs of the poor.

Jeez 88 billion on universal credit, I just checked, so 280 billion on pensions and welfare a year. Thats just 7500 per working age person a year unless my maths is wrong.

Yes, many do, their children still have zero responsibility to provide care for them.

They can do litter picking instead then🤪

😂 I do have spare garden tools and I'm willing to share.

Perhaps tax you pay should be linked to how much benefits you receive for pension, children, income support if ever required etc..

@Jellycatspyjamas @Willyoujustbequiet

Family should have first responsibility even when deoendent disabled children become dependent adults. A civilised society will provide some support but the primary responsibility should be the parents. The same for partners and spouses. In sickness and in health...

To ensure that you don't share?

Yes. We have a big society, with a lot of people and a lot of structural inequality to address.

We either pay benefits, or find ways to restructure/improve the economy generally, or we let people die in squalor.

There is no magic solution where we remove benefits and people magically get richer. A civilised society costs money.

I believe Hitler also had public work schemes.

I work night shifts, have kids (including one with special needs) and earn around 22k. Husband earns around the same.

I work to live not live to work. If you started giving me 10k universal basic income the first thing I'm going to do is put in a request to reduce my hours.
🎉🎉

As the UK has a productivity problem - I think it would be counterproductive.

The inflation that giving everyone 10k a year (for example) would cause would probably mean I have to start looking to increase my hours again as costs rocket - but it would be nice while it lasts.

..not to mention exacerbating/causing staffing crises in care, hospitality, transport, health .....

How the hell would that work?!

You don't seem to understand the concept of the welfare state full stop.

Yeah see even with 7.5k extra a year that still wouldn’t be enough for a substantial number of people, if we mothballed pensions for example or single people or people who would require disability payments etc. You would still need to top up some people.

I imagine a chunk of it would end up being clawed back through tax from higher payers and there would be people who would be left destitute without additional entitlements.

My exhusband died recently ( suicide). Our children are adults,are his next of kin and are sorting out his debts etc. They have discovered that he was receiving £538.00 a month in UC. He was claiming for a family he didn't live with and hadn't seen for 2 years. His second exwife knew nothing about this UC claim for him ,her and their teenage daughter. He hadn't paid any maintenance to her so she hadn't gained anything from this claim. I dare say he isn't the only one doing this

That over £12,900 he was not entitled to.

The UK does not have a productivity problem due to benefits. Germany pays far more and has far higher productivity. Our low wage economy is part of why we have a productivity crisis.

As a 30 something I resent paying NI because very sure that, by the time I retire, it'll either have been scrapped, means-tested or the claiming age raised so high that I'll be infirm/dead by the time I get anything.

They could at least NOT have the triple lock - if anything!

Fraud is a different matter, nothing to do with legal benefits claims.

It is dishonest to muddle up benefit fraud with the general discussion.

Do you have any friends or family? Perhaps they use some services?