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?

I'm certainly not stupid and very sensible with money! (Batch cook, buy discounted food, shop around for best utility deals, limit central heating charity shop, hand me downs, don't drink/smoke, nights in rather than out, cheap days out, take sandwiches, Tesco voucher restaurant meals) I've had to be frugal due to over a decade of chronic fatigue and not being able to work plus bringing up children! Please don't assume that people struggling with bills are in that position due to a lack of budgeting skills!!! That is so bloody presumptuous and offensive...

Oh shut up, it is etched in law. So unless the law changes, stop yapping.

I say that as someone who is a higher earner too. I don’t get any benefits but I don’t look down on those who do. Such a strange, race for the bottom mentality on here.

Thing is with energy, LNG and oil in particularly supply is massively constrained at the moment - prices aren't just high because BP and and energy suppliers fancied becoming public hate figures for a bit.

Big subsidies and price caps will sustain on increase demand but all the time the Iran war is going on there is no more supply to meet that demand. All the government money in the world doesn't mean much f you can't actually get hold of the stuff.

We can't spend our way out of this shit show.

The government would be better off using money to invest in renewables, EVs and energy efficiency measures.

I really hope they don't panic and do something like the Tories did in response to the Ukraine gas crisis. People like me got bungs we really didn't need - when there was that council tax rebate and monthly rebate on bills EDF were actually crediting money to my account as i am a fairly high income, low energy user - it was madness.

That's crap too

I’m not sure about that, but I believe under that amount is safe. I would expect anything above the guaranteed amount would be at risk so best to split your money (if you have large amounts) between several institutions, making sure that each institution has its own guarantee.

@Theappren Please do quote the over arching statutory duty the government has to bail people out during inflation and supply side crisis. I mean if essentials and supply lines fail most governments will step in under civil contingencies or various emergency duties to do something because people need to be fed and the country needs to keep moving, but there is no one law to rule them all that says the government had a duty to always do this stuff.

Crap as in what I have said is rubbish, or crap as in bad policy?

It was someone else’s presumption not mine. That people needed a bail out because many weren’t capable of budgeting. Made my eyes roll. People on benefits aren’t daft.

Absolutely agree OP. We have to live within our means and if there is a temporary shock in the system, we need to adapt and adjust, not just rely on the government to throw money at the problem, money that they will have a add to the massive pile of government debt. The UK is in so much in debt I really worry about my children future. It’ll be them who the will affect in the long term.

The law changes all the time as do people's 'rights'. Look at university education to see how someone's rights and entitlements can be reduced over time to something almost unrecognisable. Tuition fees were fully funded by the government and a non repayable grant was available to students as recently as the 1990s. People, including my parents, used to leave university with money that they had saved from this time period. Now students leave with an average of £50k plus debt.

You can tell people to shut up and stop yapping all you like. Change will happen anyway. We simply can't afford to take on more and more public debt. The government will make the necessary changes or the IMF bailout will force the changes if we carry on how we are going.

Some are daft though and reckless with their spending. It's not just people on benefits. Three quarters of the population are considered financially illiterate. Of course education is an issue but people need to make an effort to educate themselves too and take some personal responsibility.

Resilience and belt tightening only work if what you mean is cutting back on luxuries and still being able to eat healthily, remain warm and clean, have a secure roof over your head in a property that doesnt make you ill, travel to your job and other essential places, and be able to engage with society at a level to protect your mental health.
For many people the additional costs will prevent them from doing some or all of these things. They won't afford rent and bills, or travel to work, or the modest activities human beings need for stimulation and pleasure that prevent depression. Their situation will worsen and they will need more costly interventions from housing services, the NHS etc to fix their crisis.
By investing in preventing people being tipped into crisis by the costs, the government hopes to save more money down the line. Its a pragmatic not a caring/nannying intervention.

Oil companies profits are taxed at 75%. 50% of what you pay for petrol at the pumps is tax. We have a tax crisis in this country not a cost crisis.

If there weren't so many people not working for no discernible reason, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in. I'm sure some people won't be happy until those not working have the same standard of living that those that do. Let's just keep going after the middle earners - they can give up that one holiday a year they've saved up for.

They bailed out the banks with taxpayers money, so yes they should be helping taxpayers to deal with unprecedented price rises for essential goods. There is a limit to cutbacks, people are already cut back to the bone. There's nothing left to cut for a lot of people. "Budgeting" doesn't reduce the cost of things.

Your Laissez-faire idea would be great for the poor, poorly paid and disabled in our society.
Warms the cockles

They will probably give a bit to the council so people can beg for it. Like the heating oil

I really do think people on benefits think they ought to have the same sort of life as those on the average salary. They’re not. That’s a good thing. It encourages work.

I personally know people that have a better lifestyle than those that work. See them in the pub regularly. I don't know many working people that can afford that.

There is such a cap on profits, and it’s very low, around 2%.

Perhaps if we all earned a true living wage and the govt brought utilities back into public ownership (so they were no longer profit driven) and invested in renewables so that energy was no longer linked to the price of oil, maybe, maybe then we could all be a bit more resilient and not need help from the govt.

However, this isn’t going to happen, so no.

Because @Katypp there are so, so many exceptions to what you talk about.

There are many people on the breadline who work but can’t absorb big increases. Let’s think of an example of key workers - maybe a junior doctor and nurse with small kids. They need a car because they do shift work. They need to pay childcare because they can’t work flexibly. If they pay rent, that is likely to go up with cost of living. Families like this are

Probably their electricity isn’t anywhere near their biggest outgoing so cutting that won’t make a difference really.

And a £150 a week food shop for the family going up to £200 a week thats £200 a month, £2400 a year… you must see many people would struggle.

In my house we’ll adjust and make cutbacks and changes but you must have the mathematical ability or sheer empathy to see that some just can’t?

Government owning utility companies will not open up the straits of Horumz - which is the current issue driving huge price rises.

Switching to renewables would help massively.

I think it's all very well listing the 'essentials' like this but the truth is that all of these things are actually very expensive to provide for people. The average taxpayer pays £2k towards the welfare state every year and more than half of households receive more from the welfare state than they pay out. So are you suggesting the contributing minority pay enough to fund this standard of lifestyle for everyone that can't or simply doesn't want to work to fund it for themselves?

Let's be honest, the National Living Wage is calculated to be around £20k so presumably that's the level you would like to see everyone supported to? Do you really think this is sustainable or affordable?

It reminds me of the Rest is Politics podcast I listened to where Alistair was bemoaning the state of our water infrastructure and quality. Of course it should be better! It is quite literally poisoning our environment, our wildlife and us. A girl died after paddling on a blue flag beach FGS! Terrible! But when you break it down ultimately it all comes down to money. It would cost billions and billions to fix the problems and nobody wants to find this including our debt ridden government. How can it even begin to fund anything like this when you're demanding we spend billions more supporting people with day to day living? There isn't a magic money tree.