Do you think we should life the two child benefit cap?

[Marshmallow4545]

I believe that the majority of people think that the cap should remain and child poverty should be tackled in different ways.

Personally I would like to see children on FSMs allowed free access to after school extracurricular clubs and activities. I would also provide more poor families with access to food banks and would look to stock these with a range of healthy and nutritious options either through donation or state funding if required. I would also look to recruit volunteers to offer advice on health and diet in these places. I would provide clothing and school uniform banks with high quality, second hand clothing that kids would actually want to wear. I have some branded 'fashionable' stuff my kids have grown out of that's still in great condition that I would happily donate.

All of the above in my view is preferable to lifting the cap and would be more effective in tackling the impact that child poverty has on the child.

So AIBU that the two child cap should remain and we should look at other more direct ways to tackle child poverty?

Oh dear Lord is it? So this isn’t a ‘every family will receive CB for every child’; just those on benefits will? Recipe for financial suicide

Can you please link to the trial that was comparable with SNAP? I don't think Scotland has ever done this.

There is a much much easier way of not having children be in poverty. It just seems that for some reason it's a bad thing to suggest it 🤣

No, that is incorrect!

Private pensions are literally pots of money that a person pays into and invests into different assets. They DO NOT rely on the current workforce!

Just trying to read in-between the lines. Don't have them?

Go ahead, say it unlike those skirting around it on this thread ..?

It makes future parents think twice about having more babies they can’t afford!!

As pointed out before its the child allowance of UC that's capped. Thats £300 pound a month per child. Not to be sniffed at.

My kids didn't cost that per month each

I actually voted YABU as I thought that to mean we SHOULD NOT pay benefits beyond two children. Perhaps me (and others) voted incorrectly in that case 🤔

It is an awful lot of money. For a family of seven that would be an additional £1,500 a month. All tax free of course. This is the equivalent of a FT minimum wage added to their 'income' with absolutely no obligation to spend the money on the kids.

Add in child benefit too and the UC they will already be claiming for two kids and a family will be entitled to £30k a year in child related benefits alone a year. That's an awful lot of tax some poor bugger is paying to fund all of this.

Depending on the age of the children, the parents may not get benefits for all of them

True, but the kids then may be entitled to claim in their own right for benefits of their own so the household benefit claim might not reduce a lot.

I'm glad your mask has slipped and revealed your toxic combination of snobbery and jealousy, instead of pretending you give a fuck about the kids.

Oh, come on! I have literally gone around the houses working through options that would directly help children in poverty. Paying parents £30k a year in benefits with no obligation to spend it all or even most of it on the actual children just isn't the right way to go about it. It is tax payer money and we need any spending to be as efficient and effective as possible.

Do you think handing parents £30k to spend however they want is going to help children with irresponsible and reckless parents? What about parents that just don't know any better?

I have seen and been around a lot of poverty in my life. I won't be persuaded by those that are convinced that parents always do the right thing by their children, especially parents that knowingly bring more and more children into this world in abject poverty knowing that this is also detrimental to the existing children. This isn't the decision making of a responsible parent that is putting their kids first and yet we supposed to believe that this £30k will be spent responsibly and in the interests of the child. I was not born yesterday and neither were most of this country's population.

Just to add, as a very real example of how parents can make decisions that go against the interests of their kids.

I know at least three families with five plus kids where they also have lots of animals. I'm talking numerous dogs, cats, fish and rabbits. These animals are hugely expensive and need to be fed, walked, recieve veterinary care and generally take up space in the house and yet I hear just this week that one of the families had procured yet another puppy. Some people really do put their own selfish desires before the needs of their kids.

What a strange conclusion?

Can you not see that for those of us working hard to keep a roof over our heads this is a huge amount of money being handed to some families?

Why to that post in particular?

Depends on whether it's a defined contribution or defined benefit pension

And he also promised not to raise taxes but they’ve pretty much said they’re going to anyway in the budget.

Many extra-curricular clubs at school are already free: we don’t charge unless the students need new equipment. However, the funding for fsm/pp students has been drastically chopped. It used to be that we’d paid over £300 per year per child towards trips, this has disappeared this year and we’ve had to say that for non-curriculum based trips, there is no financial assistance available.

They should just cut foreign aid completely then they can lift the 2 child cap and not raise taxes either

Private pensions DO rely on current workforce to fund them. They invest money in companies and pay returns from profits. Those profits are generated by a workforce producing whatever it is they produce. If its a property company renting out buildings, it relies on people working to earn the money to pay the rent. Even just money left in the bank and earning interest is loaned out to other people, who will be working to pay back the loan.
How exactly did you think pensions are paid? Did you think it's just kept as a big pile of cash in a bank vault and dripped out to you?

This far too simplistic.

Pensions funds will have have diversified portfolios of investment involving commodities, bonds and shares. Much of this investment will be suceptible to global trends rather than the UK specifically. Frankly as long as these investments are profitable then the pension fund is doing fine.

If they think birth rates are a problem here they can invest elsewhere

What about when they need to buy clothes or shoes or birthday or christmas or other presents for their children?

Defined benefit pensions tend to be workplace pensions. Very few are open to new members now.
The vast majority of private pensions are defined contribution and do NOT depend on anything other than the member’s own financial commitment.

State pensions are completely different and are paid out of the current tax take.
These will become unsustainable (already are, really) and won’t last for much further into the future. These government that will need to anniunce this fact is going to be in big trouble, that’s why they keep putting it off.

They don’t depend on a single nation’s working population. And some companies can make more profits by reducing their workforce, especially as technology moves on.

State pensions are directly dependent on the number of people engaged in work and paying tax IN THAT STATE, since they are paid out of the current tax take.