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!!

It doesn't matter that one woman earns £40k and the other £80k (both having the same number of children), but they both end up with the same 'spending' money.
Because the salary you earn bears very little relationship to how hard you actually work, or your value to society.

To simplify the calculations, if the one earning £80k gets no UC and the one earning £40k gets £40k UC, and both then pay rent and childcare, that is fine, they both end up in the same position. (I am talking after-tax here, to keep it simple).

Of course real-world calculations are never as neat and tidy, but the principle stands. Children are essential to society, and as a society we should pay for them.

Do you seriously believe that you are making a difference by inciting an us versus them war between single mothers and others?

The household benefit cap (a George Osbourne austerity measure) hasn’t been abolished.

So lots of children living in poverty, who would’ve benefitted from the two-child limit being lifted, won’t because of the HBC.

For families in London, the cap amount is £2,110k pcm and outside London £1,800. That’s for rent on a family home, bills, food, clothes, travel etc. Trying renting a family home for those amounts and see what you have left for bills and food.

It prevents women and children leaving abusive relationships, as they know they’ll be capped and homeless.

OP, do you have any thoughts on tax avoidance schemes?

It's not between single mothers and others, it's between one single mother and another!

Why should the high earning single mum be expected to survive on less than her UC claiming neighbour?

I think it's important for this case to be discussed, but not demonising the person getting the UC - she's not actually any wealthier in reality than a full time mum of 3 who works full time in elsewhere in the country and similarly gets UC topups for rent and childcare but because rent and childcare are so much cheaper there she moght only get a couple of hundred topup rarher than thousands. For both women there's not much left at the end of th month and they struggle. The headline figures of how much each gets in UC are meaningless - those are the sums that are added to the turnover of the landlord and the nursery, the UC recipient doesn't see that money.

The important point to learnfrom this case is that the huge disparity in the cost of living in different parts of the country has got so out of control that our systems for decidingwho is too wealthy to need state support is completely broken. It's ridiculous that one arm of state support - UC - can determine that £6000 is the reasonable bare-minimum to make ends meet and keep the children out of a level of poverty that could endanger their health so tops up the low income of an ordinary single mum to that level, whereas another higher-paid single mum living in the very same block of flats with the same rent and childcare cost but a higher salary is deemed to be so wealthy with a take-home pay of £6000 that she isn't entitled to child benefit and has reduced access to state-funded nursery hours. It's become a schroedinger's income that is simultaneously only just enough to get by on and also unimaginable wealth.

It's clear that having a universal fixed amount of cutoff salary for child benefit and state funded childcare that is the same all over the country has to be reformed. It's fine for it to be at around the £100k mark for parts of the country where it's possible to survive on £50k but it cannot be the same cutoff in regions where £50k doesn't go anywhere near covering basic expenses.

The system should be revised so that for each family's living situation, a calculation is made for "and what would your income be topped up to if you were working full time in a minimum wage job?" and the threshold for whether you get child benefit and state-funded nursery should be set for whether your salary exceeds 150% of that figure - so the thresholds would remain the same or lower in Leeds or Coventry but would be significantly higher in London.

If they ended up with be same that would be one thing.
But the mum on 80k would have less. Much less. And that's something different altogether

And I disagree that everyone works the same amount of hard. Plus it's a huge disincentive to hard work if it won't result in even a slightly different lifestyle

So you're pro socialism? You think we should all have the same spending money no matter what? How stupid.

Exactly. All of this. Noone is demonising anyone but the approach at the moment leads to mind boggling unfairness and is driving our 80-150k workers out of the country

We need something along these lines

The system should be revised so that for each family's living situation, a calculation is made for "and what would your income be topped up to if you were working full time in a minimum wage job?" and the threshold for whether you get child benefit and state-funded nursery should be set for whether your salary exceeds 150% of that figure - so the thresholds would remain the same or lower in Leeds or Coventry but would be significantly higher in London.

Because people are pissed off about the government relinquishing the 2 child benefit cap when they are struggling to make ends meet. BTW, she's not a single parent, the children will have father.

No Thea is a very arrogant single mum, who has become a single mum to the same man three times over now and repeatedly gets on her soapbox (since she was a “single mum of one back in 2021, then she was magically a single mum of two then ooops! There was a “difficult decision” to become a single mum of three!) to tell the media how hard up she is and how cruel it is that the U.K. has children in poverty. Apparently hasn’t been in a relationship with and doesn’t live with said man (who may or may not be in Brazil) at any point when these three children were conceived.
The reason she’s being pilloried isn't because she’s a “nasty single mum”, it’s because most people can see she’s taking the piss. And she taking the piss out of a system that allows this. Have a look at the interview she did with CNN. And the BBC. And a whole range of other news outlets.

The Conservative government had 14 years to address:
the every increasing welfare state
the issue of state pension which is becoming completely unaffordable
the spiralling cost of living
the huge cost of care for the elderly
and lastly, feckless fathers not stepping up and paying for their children.

What steps did they take? None. Zero. Zilch.

This country, under successive governments, has been enthralled with capitalism and where has that got us? We have private equity companies owning everything from care homes for children (some charging as much as £100k per year per child), through to our water companies, and owning vast amounts of rental property.

I did not vote Labour. However, laying the blame at their feet is positively ridiculous. No matter, the media (owned by very wealthy non dom individuals) is presenting a narrative that will ensure a Reform Government at the next general election. I’m sure Reform will sort all society’s issues in the first 30 days, they seem to be doing such a wonderful job at local government…..

And more so, pissed off at the government squeezing those on 50k plus harder. When many of them in the SE will have much less disposable income than their neighbour on a low income who gets UC top-ups

But in this scenario, if both mothers are going to end up with the same, what is to stop the £80k mother from reducing her hours? She'll still work above the minimum requirement to get UC top-up, and will end up with the exact money each month. £80k mum now on reduced hours, gets to spend more time with her children too, less hours at work/stress, less commute, less travel costs etc, and pays less tax.
People will be in uproar that she is making the 'lifestyle' choice to only be part-time, but the system would allow her to do so. So why not? She would be just as entitled as anyone else.
However, she's now paying less tax, and taking more from UC - the country should be encouraging full time work, and sensible choices, as this would be unsustainable.

Because we are upset at the Labour Government for rewarding parents to have more children than they can afford, while we work hard, limit the number of children we have to two and have to pay more in taxes!

Demonstrating perfectly here that you have no clue about real life. The idea that people make ‘life choices’ to be stuck in cycles of inter-generational deprivation is incredibly naive.

If they ended up with be same that would be one thing.
But the mum on 80k would have less. Much less. And that's something different altogether.

If that is the case, then yes the system is dysfunctional. I would have to see detailed figures to be convinced it is true.
They should end up with the same - assuming both are renting (no mortgages) and both have savings of less than the UC limit.
Why isn't the one on £80k also claiming UC?

I know there is particular stupid set of rules at £100k, causing a cliff edge and a situation whereby an increase in salary actually does mean you are worse off - that is just bad legislation and needs to be reformed ASAP.

I have absolutely no problem with a mother choosing to reduce her hours when her children are young and then claiming UC.
That is a perfectly valid choice that society should support.

However, if she stays part time for too many years, she should be aware that she is damaging her longer term career prospects, damaging her chance of getting a mortgage, be unable to keep savings over the UC limit, and when the children have grown in 20 years and she is still in poverty on UC in rented accommodation, she may regret her choice.

Please can you explain why you think that is stupid?

Because it has never worked well. Ever. Anywhere in the world, at any point in history. It doesn't work. It's a daft idea.

This is my thought exactly. You have to make sensible decisions not just get the state to pay.

Yes, but why is it stupid in principle, for the UK?

Why should the UK, a stable mature democracy, not implement legislation that re-distributes wealth and income, making a fairer society, one that doesn't have the obscene differences between rich and poor that we currently see.
Such extreme differences are damaging the very fabric of society.

Of course it is hyperbole to suggest that everyone in the country should have exactly the same disposable income - it would be impossible to make it happen. Real life is just not like that.
But we could still go a long, long way from where we are now towards more equality and fairness.

So when people have made these sensible decisions, who's going to do the low paid full time jobs where people need UC top ups to survive?

Because it doesn't work. Even in principle.
What do you consider to be extremes in income, and where do you think the baseline should be?

That is the same reality of people who don't get UC though. How do you not see that it is galling to see some people get UC above that which someone earning much less is entitled to?

But then why should any one bother to do the kind of job that involves immense stress and pressure if they have to hand over all their salary to someone else who can't be arsed to work that hard?