AIBU to very nervous about what Reeves is doing to the economy?

[ProudAmberTurtle]

The data for the last financial year is out and, for the first time in British history, the benefits bill (£333 billion) was higher than income tax receipts (£331 billion).

This didn't even happen during financial crises like when the banks were bailed out in 2008-09, or during Covid when the government paid private sector staff's wages.

What's worse is that the government did not predict this and the benefits bill is projected to rise significantly over the next three years to about £390 billion.

In fact, from what I can understand, income tax receipts have always been significantly higher than the benefits bill, and there's always been an understanding between the two main parties since the 1940s that that needs to be the case for an economy to function properly.

I've worked very hard for more than a quarter of a century and always plan for the future, ie paying the maximum in NI so that my partner and I will receive the full state pension. For the first time in my life, this year the amount I'm earning in savings is going up at below the rate of inflation, even though I've got the highest interest rate available, because I've hit an income tax threshold (£50k) which means 40% of everything I gain in interest goes to the Treasury. This means my savings are actually depreciating in value.

AIBU to think this is just the start? That it's inevitable that taxes will have to rise even further and the state pension will be cut?

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/04/04/labour-welfare-bill-income-tax-revenue/

My post went over both of your heads. It is a quote from Animal Farm.

Let’s not do the whole ‘they just want us to fight amongst ourselllllllves cos billionaires’ red herring. Our economy is in big trouble, stagnant and with increasing concessions to our massive ‘needy’ population while the cost of living spirals and global affairs squeeze us like lemons. More and more people reducing hours, dropping out of the workforce. We can’t be a country with a couple of highly taxed billionaires propping up a very unemployed population. It literally isn’t possible.

Is it eugenics as well to not want people who are cousins to marry and have kids? It's legal here but there's a push to ban it.

Or that someone with Huntingdon's perhaps shouldn't have kids.

Totally different issues.

And you have no idea of the heartache where someone has an awful genetic condition so chooses not to have kids.

And this is why you and I are very different people. £24k a year wouldn’t keep them afloat. A parent with a child on minimum wage, would also not be surviving on £24k a year, they would be able to access top up benefits. A full time salary of £24k is around £1700 take home a month. It would be nigh on impossible for any parent of one child to survive on that in the current climate. Let alone if that child had severe disabilities (the cost of which has been estimated to be around £1000/month on average (https://www.scope.org.uk/campaigns/disability-price-tag).

if that was your policy, you’d cost the country millions, because all these unpaid familial carers would be off int the workforce to earn money to live on, leaving their children to be cared for at a commercial cost.

Choosing to financially penalise those families who are already struggling with disabilities and caring responsibilities really does say a lot about you as a person.

The issue isn’t that we have “too many dependents”, it’s that each worker, on average, isn’t producing much more than they were 15+ years ago. Since the 2008 financial crisis, UK productivity has pretty much flatlined.

That matters because everything flows from productivity. if output per worker is stagnant, wages stagnate. If wages stagnate, tax income stagnates. If tax income stagnates, public services and finances get squeezed

So you end up feeling like the system is under strain even if the number of people needing support hasn’t exploded because the economy underneath just isn’t growing efficiently.

And the key bit people miss is that countries with higher productivity (like Germany or the Nordics) can afford both higher wages & more generous welfare systems.

Not because they have fewer “needy” people but because each worker generates more economic value.

Until productivity improves (through investment, skills, infrastructure, health), you’ll keep getting this same pressure no matter how much you cut or tighten eligibility.

Reducing people’s access to money doesn’t fix the underlying problem. It just shifts the cost from the welfare system to the NHS, councils and the wider economy.

It absolutely is the problem. We have the equivalent of the entire population of Scotland on disability benefits.

Your assertion that it’s the problem doesn’t change the facts.

And to drill down, are you suggesting we need to stop people being disabled? How? Euthanise them? Bring Jesus back to cure them? People are disabled and need taking care of. We have far more pensioners than we do disabled claimants, are we euthanising them all too?

The last I heard was that it takes two parents to have a child. Two people on NMW FT get 50k take home pay. Assuming 1500 monthly rent it leaves 2.6k per month. It's enough for a family with two kids. Not super luxurious, but enough. Don't forget they have subsidised childcare.
If such family splits there has to be a way to make both parents (usually father) pay.
So no, it's not eugenics. And yes, benefits must not pay more than jobs.
I'd suggest to impose strictest limit on benefits, make them time limited, but increase tax threshold for lowest paid instead.

I don’t believe we suddenly have that many truly disabled people. I just don’t, sorry. I think there are a lot of people massaging the facts or insisting they can’t do XYZ when if they were offered a million pounds to do it, they would suddenly be able to.

How would time limited work if we're also including disabled people/carers?

Well done you.

Children aren't to blame for parental failure or if they have disabilities. Also the widespread use of disposable nappies that are really good at keeping damp from children in nappies means the usual discomfort from feeling wet is not felt. It's multifaceted. Easy to sit and judge though.

Education needed for a range of reasons including education of those who don't appear to understand some children are disabled and attend mainstream school now. Seventy years ago many with disability were excluded from wider society and adults locked away in asylum, nothing to be proud of, back in the day. My ex's grandmother made a comment to her grandchild who had a child with autism 'are you going to keep her', sign of the times back then. Too many rose tinted glasses fail to consider other reasons.

You don’t need to believe something for it to be a fact.

what’s your suggestion? Doctors are pretending people are sick becuase….what? What’s the pay off for them?

we’ve had a pandemic which has affected peoples long term physical & mental health and the cost of living means that people are having to work longer to survive. Someone suggested working 80 hours at NMW if you need to to survive on another thread. What effect do you think that would have on someone’s health? Of course that’s going to lead to worse health outcomes in the population, coupled with long nhs wait times which mean we can’t get people back to work as quickly as we’d like.

if you look at things in a vacuum it’s hard to understand them but with context it starts to make more sense.

Labou have already acknowledged that they agree with you in a way as they’ve restricted LCW & LCWRA for new claimants. So as a result of popular opinion, people who really do need support now won’t get it. That’s barely registered on the news though because it wouldn’t work people up in the same way that the child benefit cap does. I also don’t think it’s going to have much of an impact on the benefits bill, given that around half is on pensions.

I currently work 0.5 FT and earn 1200 a month, I get UC top up.

I've applied for a job that is full time and takes me just over the 50k. By the time my student loan repayments kick in, tax increases, pension increases, UC lost and child benefit lost im about £150 a month better off. That's before the cost of childcare I may need. It makes no sense to take this job, even though I'd love it.

Having done some research recently on Sweden's welfare state, it looks as though early investment (maternity/paternity leave entitlement, universal child payments, excellent early years provision) pays off in adulthood. Sweden, like other EU countries has also committed to tackling child poverty whereas the UK, until very recently hasn't had a specific policy designed to do that.
Obviously the type of welfare state a country has makes a difference to outcomes and the UK's isn't the best. But previous posters, instead of looking for improvements, seem to advocate abolishing any system whatsoever. That doesn't make logical sense.

TBF this poster described disabled children as "difficult and defective" on another thread while advocating for there to just be fewer of them. I reckon that's a good reason not to take much notice of anything they have to say.

I think loving a job is an excellent reason to take it, if it's at all financially viable. There are so many reasons to work, on top of the purely remunerative.

It does take two to have a child, but if the family separates, the incomes aren't going to remain pooled are they. CMS is at the very maximum 19% of a NRP gross income (and that's if they have 3 or more children that you don't have any overnight care of).

If the family splits, they then have two houses to run, not one.

Because means testing = euthanasia?

Dramatic, much?

This idea that benefits must not, under any circumstances, pay more than work is flawed. In fact it's unworkable. It's an easy sounding yet overly simplistic response not only to the cost of living and the problem of running an economy but actually the entire fabric of our society. Questions of what we can afford, and what we can afford not to afford aren't going to be solved with facile slogans. They underpin our welfare state, our views of community, the way we see ourselves and each other. Unfortunately they're also too easily manipulated by ideological agendas.

(ahem)
I'm autistic. I enjoy life, thank you very much.

Simply going on the information given on this thread, we have no idea whether these children are profoundly autistic with learning difficulties and will never live independently, or whether they need a lot of extra support now but will go on to have lucrative careers, paying taxes to subsidise the old age of the moaning bigots who think they should never have been born 🙄

If you can get more money not working than not working, why on earth would anyone bother? Far too much reliance on handouts in this country. The system is in such a mess that tax from people working doesn't cover the handouts given to those that don't! It is absolutely ludicrous. Also, I don't buy into the idea that the ones fiddling the system are few and far between. I know of loads. Well enough to go to the pub but can't work. Eh?

and this is prime example of what is so wrong with the system and why it has to be changed.

How mumsnet continues to allow the disgusting ableism on this thread and others is beyond me.

Because if you're not medically unfit for work, you can't get more money by not working. Despite what the daily mail would have you believe. If you could, everyone would give up work - people are not as altruistic as they claim.