Can we all take a moment to pray for Thea, living life on the brink of poverty at £6k a month (£3.2k of which is UC).

[BananaramaDefence]

In a good month when UC gives full entitlement, Thea has a total of £6,142.00, from £2,800 in take-home pay and £3,342 in universal credit plus child benefit. Her monthly expenses such as childcare, rent, council tax, energy and food etc are usually around £6000. She says: "So it’s living very much on the edge."

And now the cap is removed she will get more!!

From this: Pregnant mum-of-four: 'Budget benefit change saved our Christmas' - The Mirror https://share.google/QGbNeuIKPAmg1qNG5

No wonder people get pissed of with welfare in this country. I work 40 hours plus a week, have children, have to pay a mortgage, childcare and I earn way less than this!!!

No child should live in poverty but at the same time no family should get this muxh in benefits.

Before people say, yes but it's to pay rent and collate, I also have to pay all that and my mortgage is half my wage!!

Just to answer one point:
If one is on welfare, the first thing to be knocked on the head is the choice of living in an expensive area.

By this reasoning, there would be no low-paid people living in London. They would all have to move out.
Then who would do the cleaning, stock the shop shelves, make the coffees, etc?

A functioning city in a functioning society needs to have people of all incomes and jobs living there, not commuting for hours and spending a massive proportion of their measly pay on commuting.

everyone has the choice to work to buy an asset even if that is a bedsit in Burnley. If you choose to live on benefits, then you choose -actually choose- not to buy an asset.
In the eyes of most people, that is perfectly reasonable. You should not expect to own a home if you do not work. You may choose to buy even the mst modest bedsit if you do work.
Is that unreasonable?

Perfectly reasonable.
I don't think we disagree on this.

It's interesting how posters are bending over backwards to justify the largesse, but when someone is on the same money that they're all earned themselves, suddenly they have the "broadest shoulders" and should have as much as possible taken off them to redistribute, regardless of what their own circumstances may look like.

The government should not be paying the accommodation bill of anyone who can work. Why would this be expected?

Because rents are high and wages low.
It is that simple.

If you choose to live on benefits, then you choose -actually choose- not to buy an asset.In the eyes of most people, that is perfectly reasonable. You should not expect to own a home if you do not work

But people on benefits do work. And plenty of them own their own homes. How hard is it?

Why do they have that right and I, a worker, don't.

You have the right to take a lower paid job and rent in an expensive area, then claim UC and have children.
You may find that UC doesn't pay all your rent, just part of it, and that bringing up kids on UC is actually quite a miserable lifestyle, especially if you are working and putting them in childcare.
Plus you will be foregoing the ability to get a mortgage, or build up savings over the UC limit.

Thea doesn't sound as if she has a miserable lifestyle though does she?😂

I and millions like me have something called self respect and that's why we don't do what you suggest.

You say children are a public good and society should pay for them.
[...] Why? If a child is a public good and society should pay for them, that is every child -Bertie the billionaire's son and Walter the Welfare claimant son.

When child benefit was introduced (to replace child/family tax allowances), it was a substantial amount compared to costs, and was a universal benefit.
Yes, millionaire's children were recognised as a public good that the state should subsidise.
Of course, the millionaire paid more in tax than the family got in child benefit, but the principle of universal benefits was important.

If a teenager ceases to be a public good, should the money doled out be paid back? Why not? They will have broken the agreement of every child being a public good.
Not workable. Same as re-possessing a degree-loan that has 'gone to waste' on a criminal - you could only do this by sucking his brain out.

No problem, I may not always agree politically with someone on everything or them me, but I am open minded and I think far more collaborative working cross parties would be a good thing - get the best ideas out of everyone-that’s why I totally disagree with the political system we have - lol!! Even once in awhile I agree with Farage on something but equally will agree with greens or Lib Dem’s on something else - I think it comes from having grown up in a midlands mining town but live in Bath - I see things from lots of angles- the elderly care house thing though really pisses me off - ironically Ed Davey is originally from my home town and it’s one of his big issues too

This is exactly what should happen, especially when we have so many people on here saying "but that's for childcare" as if people earning £6k a month don't have the same expenses. I don't understand why people find it so hard to comprehend that even high earners have these expenses.

Okay so say your argument is correct and all of these people are actively making choices to be in this situation. It’s the children that are suffering. But that’s okay is it? Kids not being fed or clothed to a decent standard or worse because their parents made the ‘wrong choices’
I can tell by your posts that you have literally zero clue about how others live. I hope you never find yourself in that situation. Oh no, of course you won’t as you’ve made ‘all the right choices’ . It truly is astonishing to realise how many people live in utterly self centred and self righteous bubbles. Enjoy your evening.

@OneBookTooMany I'm curious about this utopian plan of yours. Do you envision a London in which there are no teachers in schools, no nurses in hospitals, no shop workers or waste collection operatives or any of the other ordinary jobs that pay less than £80,000 pa working anywhere in London? Or do you expect the schools and hospitals and shops of London to start paying these roles at £80,000pa so that people performing them in London can afford to live there? Or do you expect people earning £30,000pa in a London based job (which would be £24,200 after standard tax, ni and pension deductions) to pay the £5000-£8000 for the annual commuting cost into Central London from somewhere far enough away to be cheaper to live (plus the approx £4000pa extra per year per child for the additional hours of childcare they would need to cover a lengthy commute) to be paid out of that £24,200? Or perhaps you'd prefer that instead of expecting to be able to pay a reasonable rent for a reasonable home within reasonable reach of their employment, we should expect Favela-type slums to arise with tiny one-room corrugated iron shelters where all the family live and eat and sleep within the same 6ft x 6ft cell, sharing a single tap between 50 such families, that could be provided at a fraction of the cost of the homes that better-paid people can afford, somewhere not too far away from the centre of london for commuting purposes?

Personally I can see the benefit of forcing employers who want people to do jobs in an expensive city to pay their staff at sufficient rates to allow their staff a dignified level of affordable lifestyle, rather than paying a pittance and then the government topping up with benefits. However as the taxpayer is ultimately the source of the wages for the vast majority of these low-paid roles, I am not convinced there would be any savings.

But I'm genuinely curious about how you'd approach this. Different cities have tried these various approaches, in various ways, over the centuries.

You’ve turned a simple point about shared responsibility into a full melodrama, and still avoided addressing the actual issue.

Questioning how a system is funded isn’t cruelty, it’s basic adult thinking.

I haven’t made “all the right choices,” but I’m accountable for them, hopefully you will find that less astonishing. That’s the difference. And you haven't explained how anyone is supposed to trust that extra funding will reach the children who genuinely need it. I wonder how "real life" works in that respect.

This mother is raising 4 children who will one day pay our pensions and care costs.

She is working, but capitalism dictates that it won’t pay her a living wage, and the state needs to step in.

A massive hike in wages - truly fair pay - like they have in proper, developed non-feudal countries - which take care of their citizens - would bring far more into work. The argument here is not for stopping or reducing benefits, it’s for increasing pay.

The odds of all, if any, of her kids being net contributors or "paying our pensions" are very slim.

Why do you say that? The mum is working full time. Why do you think her kids wont go on to also work?
Yes, they might not earn enough to be net contributors, but the people who do the lower paid jobs are essential for society to run smoothly.

Says she unemployed. However, how much is going to a landlord?

"Claire-Marie Bray, 27, unemployed, Nuneaton: Mum-of-four Claire-Marie and her partner Kieran receive Universal Credit and have struggled to make ends meet with £200 a month for her family of six with another child on the way. Labour's scrapping of the child benefit cap from April next year means "absolutely the world" for Claire-Marie's family who top up food shops with visits to the food bank."

People really just need to stop having kids they can’t afford. Contraception exists.

My mistake, they talk about more than one person.

The thread one is

"In a good month when UC gives full entitlement, Thea has a total of £6,142.00, from £2,800 in take-home pay and £3,342 in universal credit plus child benefit. Her monthly expenses such as childcare, rent, council tax, energy and food etc are usually around £6000. She says: "So it’s living very much on the edge."

No, this thread is about Thea, who is mentioned in the article further down.

Yes, I noticed my mistake, I quoted the first person.

I'm assuming her childcare and rent is really high then????

We should be demonising the fact that it could cost 6k a month to survive in some parts of the UK.
And no, people whose families, homes, jobs and support networks are in major cities shouldn't have to relocate to survive.

It is easy done. A few people have got them mixed up.

Yes, I would assume that is the case too. High childcare costs as she is working, and high rent due to where she lives.

I totally agree with you.

Why? Having 3 children with no planning isn't "surviving". London is expensive, but that doesn't mean salaries there should be enough to fund whatever lifestyle people fancy.