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!!

Which is exactly why socialism has never worked. Kills productivity until there's nothing left to be distributed. Might cling on a little longer if you rule with an iron fist.

Why do you think it doesn't work, even in principle, in the UK.
Can you explain?

I am talking about raising taxes, not just on income but also on wealth (i.e. assets and investments), to re-distribute this not only in the form of cash payments (benefits and pensions) but also public services like social housing and state-owned childcare.

As for where the re-distribution should end, or what a base-line state funded income should be, that is a matter for national debate.

Decades ago, company bosses used to earn about 20 times the salary of the average worker. Now it is about 100 times. And that is just for ordinary UK companies, it doesn't include the global billionaire class.

So if the average (median) worker - not even the lowest paid - used to earn £30k, the boss was on £600k (i.e. 20x), but now he would be on £3,000,000, that is 3 million, for essentially doing the same job.
That is what I am talking about.

I've explained why it wouldn't work. Because it hasn't. Ever. Perhaps you could explain why you think it would work.
What describing isn't socialism or everyone having the same spending money. So perhaps your initial comments were misleading and this debate is moot. I'm all for wealth taxes. But socialism won't work.

Because some people, particularly some kinds of men, love that world. They thrive on the conflict and adrenaline.
And they don't "hand over all their salary". They pay a % in tax, and keep the rest.

Yes, there are a few people in society that can't be arsed to work. That is human nature. Let them survive on a pittance of a state handout and get their rent paid for them, because I don't actually want them cluttering up the pavements.

But most people on UC are working, and working damn hard, and it is not their fault that society does not pay them properly.

And on about 42k assuming that she is making minimum pension contributions and has no student loan to pay back.

If the person earning much less is not entitled to UC, there is a reason.
Maybe they have a mortgage instead of renting, or their rent is lower. Maybe they have savings over the limit. Maybe they don't have the same childcare costs.

If everything is the same, then the person earning should claim too.

This is why the housing issue is such a biggie , and especially acute in south east and in demand parts here of south west ( not much cheaper than London) paying out silly amounts just to house in what is actually unacceptable housing on crowding issues really isn’t sustainable - and maybe disallowing for people like Thea to live centrally in a non key worker job might make the lifestyle a bit less appealing if she had to live in Chatham ( example) she can live where she likes if she’s paying!!

Yes wages should be enough.
Maybe she should move somewhere cheaper as that's what people keep telling pensioners to do as if it's that easy.
Time for people to take some responsibility for themselves. If your budget is stretched why carry on having babies?

But all this relates to where people live and their rental costs, the cost of their childcare and whether or not they have a child or children who have a disability.

Ruth may have a mortgage, no childcare costs, £20k savings and no children with disabilities. In which case, she doesn't qualify for any top ups. That's not to suggest she won't still struggle - because so many of us are - but it is person and circumstances dependent. I don't know why people find that so hard to understand. One size isn't fitting all. By a long shot.

urgh. yes, move somewhere cheaper. Away from your job, your established support networks when you're a single parent. Erm....no.

Why not? It might not be easy, but people do it all the time. It's not as though she's a born and bred Londoner. She has made a series of choices to live an unaffordable lifestyle in an expensive city.

London would not function without what are traditionally low paid workers.
London needs cleaners, retail workers, etc. etc.
As people cannot be expected to commute in daily (due to both time and cost), and as you would have to go several hours out to find cheap housing, we need to pay UC to low paid people who live in London.

And of course it is completely unfair to tell these essential workers, on low pay in London, that they should not have any children because they are on UC and can't afford them.

Her salary WOULD be enough if she took family planning seriously.

Yes but it is so much easier to demonise thinking people with a sense of fairness for even to dare to ask these questions when their faces are being rubbed in it by people like Thea.

Just looked it up - a hospital consultant gets the same salary full-time having done a 6 year degree, years as a junior doctor, post graduate exams, specialised training, night shifts etc. They will pay tax and lose all benefits (child benefit, childcare etc).
No wonder they are leaving (friend’s son has emigrated to Australia to work).

Something is really not right.

As soon as Thea doesn't need childcare any more, her UC will drop.

It is temporary.

As soon as Thea's UC drops, she'll be pregnant again.

This is happening. People are being sent hundreds of miles up north to deprived areas where there is very little infrastructure to fill the gaps that the lack of support networks will leave. If they do not go, they will be considered to be making themselves intentionally homeless.

www.mylondon.news/news/west-london-news/london-homeless-refused-housing-offer-31407464?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=Iwb21leAOWXFBleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAwzNTA2ODU1MzE3MjgAAR6cesLTgDof5QHETDh7eZ3mvO9cwVhfzmkR70WWTygeWPICY9dK7ylV1DFIVA_aem_nWghheo8ljnLVPcBxRwZXQ&brid=CDW2lZphadN_tFvBSLVN-Q

Following the second article that I shared, there was a second article that reads like an advert for moving up north.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mylondon.news/news/east-london-news/london-mum-moved-220-miles-29285373.amp

She's currently 40. I think that's unlikely.

What's the alternative though? Endless funding to keep people in crowded expensive areas?

There are a few families where I am in the West Midlands who have been re housed here from London.

As a Londoner myself, you make a beeline when you hear the accent in the school playground, it sticks out a mile from the local accent!

The ones I know say they have a much better way of life here. They didn’t feel like they were forced to leave. the local estates aren’t the best (and that’s being very kind), but not much difference to the ones I lived near in west London.

I have so many friends still in London. Doing what dh and I were going, slogging away just to pay horrific rent, never going out, never going on holidays, no hope of ever buying a house in London.

Two have moved within ten miles of me in the last 18 months. When they visited and saw the house we bought here, that’s so different from the tiny, rented shitholes we lived in for years, seen that I can be a SAHM, we had another child with no worries, they wanted that too.

A lot don’t want to move though but they are in the loop of working to pay rent and nothing else. I actually enjoy London now that I can actually afford to visit and do stuff there. I didn’t leave my immediate area for the last few years I lived there as we had no money to go out.

Oh shut up 😂
Earning a shit wage has literally nothing to do with how hard you work.

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

I only said that because it's what us pensioners are told to do.
Sell your house that you've paid for and lived in for 40 years but now it's time for you to move into a flat away from everything you know.
Not nice is it?