To think benefits need to be cut to fund increased spending on defence

[Viviennemary]

This is absolutely necessary. Keir Starmer shouldnt have backed down the last time. But now with the current situation with Russia drastic steps need to be taken. We simply can't afford to sustain the current benefits bill with the armed forces so depleted. The money is needed to increase defence.

People have been conditioned to constantly punch down, in one form, or another. The rich at the top of the tree, can sleep easy, knowing that the poorer people will continue to fight each other for scraps, whilst having a complete blind spot.

I think the level of state pension is reasonable it's all the add ons that many get that's the problem. Get even £1 of pension credit Guarantee and you get all your rent and council tax free etc, along with the crazy generous disability premiums and this crazy loophole of pensioners claiming pension credit carers element for each other despite both being disabled themselves. The issue is no-one wants to upset the pensioners. I've been working in this area ( thankfully stopped now ) and the amounts that some were getting well i think many would be really shocked if they knew.

You’re totally right @Viviennemary

We need to cut benefits of all of those scroungers.
The MPs and the Lords that get subsidised food and alcohol (at work!!). I mean theyre earning way above the MW, why are we paying fur their food?
The MPs that get free accommodation and subsidised support/transport. I mean again, theyre vey well paid, well above MW. No one else is gettimg housing benefits with that sort of wage.

And all that with no need to clock in or even attend work if they don’t feel like it

Total scroungers.

That would save us quite a few £millions. Plenty for our defence right?

Or sorry, maybe you didn’t mean THOSE benefit cheats but the poor people who struggle to feed themselves. Silly me

But I don't think you understand your own remark about taxing wealth.

Wealth is basically stored up money. But that money will already have been taxed when it was earned as income. Or if it came as a capital gain it will have been taxed then.

Or if it was inherited it will have had a tax rate applied at 40pc!

Usually when I hear people demanding wealth taxes I find firstly that they don't understand the above and secondly that they do not expect to be affected by them personally!

If you know that if you make it in this world then you are going to get taxed still more heavily where is the incentive to grow your business.

It's this anti-business sentiment that is the reason we have no economic growth in the UK. To afford benefits and defence we need a thriving economy. We don't have one.

In a non-thriving economy defence is more important than benefits so cuts are needed.

@Pickledonion1999 you mean the state pension that is half of the MW that most people struggle to live on?

This thread is for simplistics who didn't notice a trillionaire being created this week ...let's fight amongst ourselves whilst wealth is stolen from our societies for the benefit of the very few and let's fund their resources wars too 🤦‍♀️

Pathetic

If the social contract worked we wouldn’t be having this conversation about benefits!

Not true. I noticed it, find it abhorrent and have long been convinced we need to get a grip on Musk like yesterday.

tax avoidance is just following the rules. Tax evasion is not paying what you should . If you means test pension -yes the present pensioners would be affected but future pensioners would just make sure they kept below the threshold by blowing their money or giving g it away.
Taxing wealth - there is capital gains tax so when you sell a house you pay tax on the increase in value. And there is inheritance tax.

I think you’re wrong. The state pension is about 44% which is nowhere like nearly all.

There’s a vast amount of untaxed wealth. Profits from money invested on the stock market don’t attract tax unless or until the shares are converted to cash. The same goes for property investment.

The pension bill will also be retired public servants - teachers, doctors etcetcetc

I think they’ll be fine. They just need to cut back on the Bingo and garden gnomes. And cars. Some pensioners DRIVE! Cars paid for by taxpayers’ hard earned money. Getting the bus was good
enough for my Grandma.

What good are defences if the population starves?

90 minutes in and the OP never came back.

Perhaps all those dodgy fuckers who were paid millions to supply PPE during Covid and failed to deliver, could pay the tax payer back for a start.

It does, I’d agree with a playscheme type of thing where the child would still get social interaction but the parents would need to attend. Why should people who don’t work get mon-Fri free childcare, while those who work pay basically an entire wage?
i know this will bring the “whhhhyyy don’t you care about these children?! Do you want them to be excluded and staaarve?!?” But completely ignoring the fact that their own parents don’t give a shit about them…

She's a regular poster on every benefits thread.

I think it's only 15 hours a week they get.

I'd like to see the armed forces look at their own spending first.

Perhaps they could start by not having 500 horses which are not going to be a lot of use in defending our Country in 2026. Plus of course the massive costs associated with them - stabling, saddles, feed, vets bills etc.

Yes, I realise it might not buy many battleships, but, really, why is it even a thing?
You can't be asking benefits, or NHS, or Education, or Social Care, or transport, or Mental Health services to be taking cuts when you are chucking £££ at keeping horses which are not going to be of any use defending our Country.

But the value of shares goes up and down - Im not sure you could demand money if there’s a risk they’re worth nothing a week later.
And people pay tax on their pension once it’s above the individual. Allowance so rich pensioners are coughing up

I don’t know enough about the benefits system to know what should change or why it should change, but there is clearly something wrong because I qualify for benefits and we absolutely, without a doubt don’t need them.

one of my children has a disability. His paediatrician has been on at me for years to apply for DLA but I always just thought that was ludicrous - at the moment, my experience parenting him is not vastly different to my other non-disabled children. Due to his condition no one knows what his future holds, so of course one day that might be very different. He may grow up to be very high functioning, or he may need lifelong care. They cannot tell yet. But for now, he’s really no bother. He attends mainstream school very happily with a one to one. Eventually I did apply for DLA to appease the paediatrician, entirely expecting to be rejected. But we have been awarded several hundred pounds a month. I do not doubt that many families desperately need this money, but I don’t see why we do. I feel uncomfortable about it and considered seeing if I could cancel the claim, but went back and forth in my head about whether I cared more about benefiting my child(ren) or my own conscience. Currently, the money each month is going into investments - if my child needs care when older, that money will be a small help towards it, but if it transpires that he doesn’t then I imagine we will just split it between our children.

I also then spoke with a DWP lady who went through our finances and told me that due to the age of my youngest, I could pack in my job and get over £1K of universal credit a month until youngest turns 3!! I forget the exact amount now but it was more than £1K but less than £1.5K. Which is really not very much less than what I earn - I get about £1.6K a month after tax. I will of course not be quitting my job - it’s hard work and I can no longer do what I qualified for at uni due to wanting to be around for my children in the daytimes (I work nights), but it’s entirely doable. How can it be right that the taxpayer foots the bill for me to not work when I am perfectly able to? We have anywhere between £700 and £1K spare at the end of each month. So even though the UC would be less than what I’m earning now, we’d still have money left over at the end of the month. The only reason we don’t currently have over the savings limit for UC is that we just spent it all (perhaps foolishly but whatever) on an ambitious house move. How can it be right that us spending our money on a nice house means that we now can get government support if I quit my job?! Surely we should be expected to at least attempt to downsize to release equity and use our own assets before getting funded by the taxpayer?

I just cannot understand it. Someone in my position should not get benefits for simply deciding to pack my job in.

Regular on this one too. Once every 90 minutes.

Yup but remove the triple lock before the money that goes to topping up wages because companies don't pay their workers enough to live.
Maybe if corporations earning millions on our shores paid in we wouldn't be in this mess. Look up not down at the people who have least

Let me guess op, you’re not on benefits? People always want someone else to pay!