Aibu it's not the Government's role to bail people out?

[Katypp]

The UK is massively in debt and money is short.
AIBU to think that families should be expected to manage their own household budgets instead of constant calls for Government subsidies every time prices go up?
It's coming up to summer. Surely it's not unreasonable to expect householders to manage their own bills by cutting back their energy use?
Surely adults could be expected to manage their own grocery bills? Obviouly covid was exceptional, but oil prices rising have happened many times before with no expectation of bailouts.
My question is, given the state of the economy, do we need to wean ourselves off expecting the Government to step in every time prices go up and learn resilience again?

Exactly! The government has frozen fuel duty for YEARS. It’s part of the reason why we’re so skint.

If your income stays the same but prices suddenly go up what are you supposed to do, they could put a cap on energy bills, use our own north sea oil, stop exporting food we can grow in the UK. The govt could stop wasting money on endless public enquiries into fuck ups where the only outcome us millions of pounds spent on "lessons learnt". If you don't want your £200 I'm sure someone will happily take it off your hands.

That would be fair had the banks not repaid the government - but they did.

And how much money would such education programmes cost? Half the time they cost as much as just doling out the cash.

Banks can act irresponsible to enrich themselves then be given tax payers cash to not learn their lesson, but tax payers cant bail out tax payers? Maybe we could all lick boots when we're hungry?

Very easy to say if you are not on the breadline

But it would mean less money spent in the future. It would be a long term solution.

Exactly. We have paid a very big price as a society for the poor economic policies of the 1980s.

No it wouldn’t’ because there are always new people becoming adults and needing to learn how to budget etc. The population isn’t a stable group. Immigration, ageing etc happen constantly so there would always be new groups that need such assistance.

And that’s assuming that those it targets are ABLE to learn or put into action what they’ve learnt.

how about furlough?
those who claimed it should not have?

Eon is a German company and EDF is French.

The EU sets limits which prevents their bills from rising too much. Post Brexit, we are no longer subject to the same protections from this and so our prices rise whilst more and more sharply than theirs. Basically, we are subsidising European customers. That's why our costs are higher than theirs.

I don't see this as any form of rage bait (though, of course, I don't know OP's specific intentions).

I think that COVID marked or created a real shift in the expectations of government. Because of the unprecedented levels of government intervention and support, we became much more attuned to the idea that 'the government' would step in to help out.

I'm personally worried that this has gone too far. As a general principle, I consider that its better for people to bear individual responsibility for managing their affairs so as to cover their essential needs.

There will, of course, be many exceptions. But I fear that we are seeing expectation creep, where 'government' (which is, after all, a pool of other peoples' money) is being expected to fix too many problems, rather than to act as a form of backup of 'last resort'.

I also fear that government 'help' just masks the real problem. If the cost of living is such that a basic standard of living is genuinely unaffordable, then the issue needs to be tackled at source, rather than 'papering over' the issue by a series of complex handouts.

It's complex, and I'm certainly not advocating for a withdrawal of all forms of government support, but I do think there is a sensible discussion to be had about where the precise limits should be.

Only because it wasn't monitored properly and massive fraud was allowed to happen

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn05748/
no, they didn’t get it all back and it was spread over such a period of time that if they’ve been charged correctly in terms of interest and loss opportunity compensated for they’d still be paying it back now
Like me lending you a tenner in 1975 and you giving me £10 back now might as well wipe my arse with it

Do not even get me started on Bounce Back Loan’s
I know we have at least two people that had over 50 grand haven’t paid back a penny and bought a car with it

So did you take a hand out during COVID? Could you not have just saved for a rainy day and used that?

@Katypp what £200 bung from the government??? I've not seen anything

Why is that? Maybe people should start lobbying their MP's for an answer to that question, seeing as it affects us all.

I’d argue that it could be, because normal people having money to spend is an important part of the economy. People don’t have the money to spend, businesses fail, more people are in a worse financial state because of that, earnings and therefore taxes are reduced…I think people can be very short-sighted in thinking that money goes out and that’s it, poof, gone.

About 30% of children in this country are living in poverty. There’s plenty wrong with how our economy is operating and I don’t think it comes down to individuals not budgeting properly. I’m not even getting into the huge costs (financial and otherwise) of an increasingly poorer society and what that that means for crime, healthcare, policing, and so on.

There’s talk here of bailing tax payers out. They aren’t bailing tax payers out, the tax payers are paying more and more. They are giving more money to those on benefits, more untaxed income along with their ‘pay’ rise in April. Before any one quotes the ‘but those on UC are working’ that’s rubbish about 30% of them are working and that’s any work not necessarily full time.

These extra benefits and handouts are getting out of hand. Every time there’s a blip more money thrown out. Whilst I do agree with the poster about stopping people getting ill, we are coming into summer so it should ease with the warmer weather.

Or, you know, accept that your comment was unreasonable and rage baiting for a reason. People disagree with you.

It is also our government's responsibility to create a society that is secure and stable enough in all aspects needed for a good quality life that they don't have to bail us out of anything.

The interest on our national debt costs more than the education budget. The cost of fuel is mostly down to tax.

The cost of electricity and gas is where the main problem is. We pay 2x Germany's prices and 4x the US.

I’m in Ireland and what I don’t understand is our Government giving people credit towards their electricity / gas bills from taxpayers money to give to the energy providing companies who then post huge profits.
So the government use our money to help those companies to make even more money instead of calling out companies for price increases.
It’s nuts.

Maybe if things were more affordable the government wouldn't need to keep 'bailing people out'.