Fed up of my cousins comments about benefits and UC

[glassor2]

I’m a single mum of two kids, ages 13 and 5. My older son has a relationship with his dad, but my younger son’s dad moved away a couple of years ago and doesn’t see him often-usually once or twice a year. He doesn’t provide any financial support, and since he moves around for work (he used to live in Canada and now lives in Australia), it has been challenging to get child maintenance to chase him.

I work 3-4 days a week (sometimes more if there’s overtime available) and receive a top up from UC. My mum occasionally helps with child care, but she also has a full time job. It can be difficult handling everything on my own, but I manage.

Anyway, I have a family member I'm quite close to, and she often makes comments, not aimed at me, but towards people who claim UC. For example, she mentioned that it's unfair for her to pay almost £300 a month in tax while others can work part time and avoid paying anything (I don’t earn enough to pay tax) and that she has to pay more to subsidise the people that don't. She even told the entire family that she pays almost £400 a month, including national insurance, which made things awkward and nobody knew what to say.

From what I know, she doesn't earn a huge wage, so I can see why it would be frustrating for her to have to pay that much. It's a lot of money. However, it's not our fault, and if she's upset, her anger should be directed at the government, not at those who are rightfully claiming.

Everyone’s situation is different, and some people need help. I never chose to be a single parent, and I can't control the fact that my ex chose to leave and decided not to support his child financially. I'm doing my best, just like many others on UC are.

I don't think she's intentionally trying to upset me, but she is.

AIBU? How do I tackle this?

You are misinformed. In the time period you're talking about, people were having more children. There was a lack of reproductive freedom for women who really had no choice, as not only was there no birth control, they weren't even allowed to refuse to have sex with their husbands. That's changed, which is a big part of why there's currently low to no population growth except through immigration in the developed world.

Your post is contradictory. You claim the welfare state is unsustainable and unfair, but at the same time you say we shouldn't go back to the way it was before it existed. What exactly do you want?

The government's "free hours" do not provide childcare settings with the amount it actually costs to care for one child. This is part of the reason childcare settings must charge "top up" fees and costs are astronomical for anyone who does not qualify for those hours for whatever reason. Nothing is ever "free" as the funds have to come from somewhere. It's not complicated.

Why can't ambitious people on low incomes strive for better paying jobs...?

Does it occur to you that people with the means and the smarts to structure their taxes aren't all evil baddy meanies but actually have family, even children, who they wish to take care of, ahead of giving money to other people's kids via welfare and subsidies?

@MuckFusk I think that's what I said? People largely didn't have a choice before to have that many kids. And also that they were cheaper to raise. Are you saying they weren't? Kids didn't need all the tech they need now and that costs £££ for a start.

I don't know what the answer is that's the point? But the tax payer can't prop up millions of people indefinitely.

Good god, this is like playing chess with a pigeon.

To argue that there should be no welfare for families in poverty is also to argue for kids being malnourished and in inadequate housing. One is a direct consequence of the other. Parents who don’t have enough money are unlikely to be able to magic up a job with sufficient salary out of nowhere. Unless you’re actually saying people should go back in time and not have their children or float them up the sodding river in a basket like Moses.

The reason yours IS a straw man is because you responded to suggestions that welfare has a role in a just and fair society with a statement that I don’t think people should have to look after their own kids, which to my knowledge is a far broader concept than just having enough money. You know, there’s all of that having to love and nurture them stuff too which ironically you can only outsource to someone else if you’re very wealthy. If all ‘taking care’ of kids involved was financial, I’m pretty certain the royal family would be better adjusted and Boris Johnson’s several thousand children would have smaller therapy bills.

Some people would like to go back to the early "poor law" days, where only the "deserving" poor got help and the "undeserving" poor had to beg, resort to crime or prostitute themselves.

No but what about all the people who are having to limit their family sizes because they can't afford another kid? Or foregoing having children completely? How is that fair? What does someone get for being responsible? Absolutely bugger all.

This, dh and I saved and waited for years to have dc. According to many mnetters we'd have been better off, no further education and debt, not working but getting pregnant any way and beginning the UC gravy train!

You’re jumping all over the place tieing yourself in knots over a very simple concept: parental responsibility. You seem to want someone to blame for malnourished kids living in poverty, I suggest you take it up with the people who put them in that situation by having kids they can’t look after. I can’t really make this any simpler for you.

There’s some judgement bitches on here!

I was a single parent when I split up from my ex-H, when DS was nearly 3. I still worked full time (average salary) and got some help for childcare in the form of tax credits. Probably what would be UC now. I didn’t have a lot of spare money, but as DS got older, I was able to do further qualifications and get promotions and better paid jobs.

If it wasn’t for the top up I got to help with childcare, I wouldn’t have been able to continue working and not able to pay my mortgage. I could have ended up out of work and on benefits full time.

I am extremely grateful for the assistance I got at the time.

I now pay around £18k a year in tax and if this contributes towards someone else, to help keep them in work whilst their children are young (or pays back some of the tax credits I got) then that’s fine by me.

Without that help all those years ago, I would have been massively worse off, cost tax payers even more and not be contributing 5 times more than OP’s cousin.

I consider myself very, very lucky and privileged to earn what I do and not have to worry about bills and what I spend and I don’t begrudge the tax I pay (which is probably a lot more than some of the judgemental bitches on here).

OP, next time your Cousin moans about paying a measly £300, just roll your eyes and say ‘is that all’

None of that explains why it is not a subsidy or why subsidies shouldn't exist.

Ambitious people can strive for whatever they want. Nobody said otherwise. The problem is you seem to think higher paying jobs magically appear out of the ether. A person without much education or much experience, for example, doesn't have a prayer of finding a good paying job. Not everyone is an ambitious go-getter, that's a hardwired personality trait that many people just don't have and there's nothing wrong with that. Learn to accept that everyone is different.

I do not think being well off makes somebody a "baddie." I'm fairly comfortable myself, not wealthy by any means, but I'm able to support my family. I do think that if somebody is well to do, with plenty of means to care for her own family and then some, being a resentful and whiny when it comes to her tax dollars going to support people who are in need means that person is selfish. She's the sort who takes benefits but does not want to contribute for benefits which help others. Think about it. To even get to her high paying job you she needs infrastructure, paid for by taxes. As a child, her education was funded by taxes. To run her household she needs sewer, water and other essential services, all which were set up through tax funding. The list of entitlements she receives without recognizing them as such goes on and on. So our hypothetical well to do, resentful individual is happy to take those things which give her a comfortable life, things she thinks she deserves just for existing, but does not want to give others the means to even survive. So yeah, I do think that's pretty awful, because in all objectivity, selfishness, self-entitlement, lack of empathy and concern for the lives of others are anti-social traits.

This response is characteristic of why the "be kind" Left will continue to lose to more and more extreme versions of the Right. "Everyone who doesn't think their tax contributions should go to funding people who choose to work part time is selfish, anti- social and without empathy" isn't a winning pitch I'm afraid. Most people agree with me.

@MuckFusk I’m social minded, I’m not a Reform or Tory voter . I know what you are saying but I’m afraid life isn’t always fair - people resent working long hours and paying out for others to do in many cases as little as they can getaway with - or kids over 8 as an excuse why they can’t do much work forgetting that many of us used paid care , paid holiday clubs , - a mix of all sorts and effectively earned very little for quite a few years in order to keep jobs and careers going, I do think though that @PixiePuffBall hasn’t factored in quite a few on the right are more than this way minded themselves too - do as I say not do as I do .

I was going to reply, but you said it much better. My only additional points are 1. many people can't work for disability reasons, yet are told "get a job" when actually health doesn't work that way and they need real finacial support and a workforce that isn't at it's core ableist 2. The current welfare system penalises people with virtually any savings, so poverty becomes multigenererational - the stories you hear of children brought up in poverty who've gone on to massive success are the outliers. 3. It's only ever UC, PIP, single parents who don't fit the strict criteria (e.g. not widows) or mums with 'too many' children who are slammed. What do you think pensions, SMP, childcare benefit are, if not benefits? Stop attacking the lowest hanging fruit, it's cruel. When people are living hand-to-mouth, in a rented home with no savings or pension they cannot be savvy with their investments or taxes even if you can. Sure, enjoy your privilege, but don't be naive about it. A laissez faire attitude to society benefits a core group and leaves another core group vulnerable.

Shriek and froth, no. Shriek with laughter that you think we're 'pre-communist', yes. 😂Are you honing a satirical stand-up comedy show or something?

Either way, I'd hazard a guess that you weren't around (in Britain, anyway) in the 1970s...

But none of what you're saying there conveys any anger that wages are so low. Does that mean you think the low pay culture in this country is acceptable?

@ruethewhirl I’ve already said previously that certainly at the minimum wage level, it wasn’t that much different on the numbers in Denmark or Sweden wages wise and much higher tax , the issue in the uk is ‘costs- ‘ housing costs for many are far too high particularly so in the southern half of the country , we have council tax, which they didn’t, utility costs aren’t controlled as we sold it all off and there is quite a strong expectation too that women with young children expect to be able to work part time, if at all- that expectation is not there in those country’s, and they have cheap and good childcare in place too to fit that expectation , from babyhood upwards.

I’m absolutely not, it’s not my fault you can’t follow an argument that’s more nuanced than ‘stupid lazy scroungers sponging off the state’. It is absolutely more nuanced than that. Parents who are struggling financially can still be responsible for their kids. This isn’t about someone going and spending their dole money on fags and scratch cards, it’s about a society that has made the gap between the rich and the poor so ridiculously huge and people needing help with the cost of living is always going to part of that in a civilised society. I put a link somewhere further up thread that looks at the myth of the welfare state in more detail if you’re in any way interested in understanding why your opinions make mine and many others’ blood boil. You’ll notice that these tend to be people who either have personal lived experience or work in sectors where people who require financial support are actual human beings we connect with rather than judge from atop our lovely high horses. I also come from a family where my widowed grandmother raised three young children who often had to choose between hearing their house and eating and can see the impact that had on my mum and her siblings in terms of their access to education and life chances. In fact, I was afforded better educational opportunities because my parents were able to claim some benefits for my disabled brother when this meant my mum couldn’t work anymore and I used this to build a career which involves compassionately helping others. I owe so much to the welfare state and guess what? I pay SHIT LOADS of tax. So tell me again that it doesn’t work.

@Frazzled83 Again you’re jumping all over the place. You’ve accused me of arguing children should be cold and hungry, calling people scroungers, riding a Shetland pony across a car park (???), saying benefits are used for scratch cards. I’ve not said any of these things. All I’ve said in response to another of your straw man posts to someone else saying ‘so poor people can’t have children’ is that people can have as many children as they want as long as they take responsibility and pay for them. It seems a sensible way to conduct ourselves, having children you expect other people to take care of would result in…..well a deteriorating society like we have.

I’m happy to continue to discuss this with you, but can you calm down a little bit with the theatrics and accusations. It’s a little OTT.

Any nursery we have ever used don’t charge top ups for fully paid days. IE funded hours incur extra fees per day (for example our current nursery would charge £16.50 per day of govt funded hours). The daily rate stays the same for self funding without additional top ups. Our previous nursery charged double rate per hour over the govt hours so again, it was only those using the hours that paid extra. Obviously not sure where you live but if you are being charged more for not using subsidised hours, it might be worth scoping out what local nurseries do. We viewed 5 a few months ago and they all had different set ups. Im a big supporter of the subsidised hours getting lower paid workers back into work but if you are being disadvantaged you could look into other options!

What @Frazzled83 says.

@ThatBoldBear there is not one expert who works in the field of poverty or poverty alleviation that says the answer is for parents to only have children that they can afford. Nor is there one expert that says if that happened (which, quite frankly, would be impossible, as it completely ignores the possibility of a parent dying, becoming disabled, being divorced * losing their job unexpectedly, having to leave their job to care for a disabled child etc etc) then poverty would be eradicated.

The causes of poverty are very complex and made up of far more issues than people having children they can't afford. If you want to eradicate poverty, then providing a basic level of state issued social security is one key element (I don't think anyone on this thread is going to say that our welfare state should be abolished), as is affordable housing, childcare, wages and essentials.

As for parents that have children they can't afford, as you'll know if you were an expert in this area, most parents who are claiming Universal Credit are working (and that includes single parents, where 66% are in work). In work poverty is the fastest growing area of poverty. The solution to in work poverty isn't to remove or reduce benefits.

If you are suggesting that the government should assess each claimant on the basis that it's their fault they are in poverty because they had children they couldn't afford (and this would have to ignore all of the people who died, became disabled, caring for a disabled child etc etc), and therefore only give benefits to those parents it deemed faultless in this regard, I'd wonder what your criteria would be for that? I'd also wonder whether you are happy with the end result of removing benefits from those parents - that THEIR CHILDREN are in poverty and are going without food, warmth, clothing. But maybe that would be alright because you're not rewarding those selfish parents who are having children they can't afford.

*On the feckless father thing - yes, of course it is morally reprehensible for fathers not to pay for their children but there needs to be a huge shift in attitudes for that to trickle down. And we need a working CMS which we don't have at the moment. And even if all the children who were entitled to maintenance got it, it would only lift 66% of those children who are in poverty, out of it. So it doesn't include children who aren't entitled to child maintenance and in any case isn't the complete answer.

I do agree with you there.

Nor was I suggesting they should. I was attempting to counter the pp's use of 'better themselves' as that poster was talking as though work and money were the only ways in which a person can better themselves.

That's a different point than 'knowing would be so much help available' as you said in your previous post. And you seem to be assuming a lot of women make a bee-line for deadbeat dads, which I wouldn't have thought would be the case at all.

No expert suggests to people in poverty to not have anymore children? I guess because of the benefits they can access? Sums up the issue really. It’s obscene to have half the country living within their means by limiting the number of children they have to those they can look after whilst being forever squeezed to pay for the other half who don’t even consider it.

I'm sure the wives of Alan Sugar, James Dyson, Richard Branson, Duncan Bannatyne etc etc aren't exactly crying into their millions...

And yes, obviously these are extreme examples of successful self-employed men, but equally it's insulting to imply self-employed people are mostly deadbeats and failures.