To be sick of politicians using 'fairness' as justification for tax rises?

[Itchthescratch]

Fairness is completely subjective and I notice that this is often shorthand for giving more money to those that contribute the least.

Of course there will always be those that can't contribute much due to factors outside of their control, but we are kidding ourselves if we pretend that there aren't already lots of people that are scraping by doing the bare minimum (sometimes even less) and making completely irresponsible decisions knowing the state will ultimately insulate them from the consequences.

I personally know people that have had lots of children that they can't afford and can't parent properly simply because they wanted to. They are now on an incredible amount of money as the two child cap has been lifted. I know people that have stopped working because they weren't much better off than being on benefits and they couldn't be bothered with the hassle. I know young people that are already planning to stay on disability benefits their whole lives for mental health issues as they want to stay home and game.

Is it really 'fair' to charge the rest of us more to subsidise all of this?

It means that the aims of providing welfare such as universal credit and child benefit type payments has been expanded over the years to now match a quality of life that used to be achievable to those who worked whilst those who work now find their pay hasn't kept up with inflation and also once they factor in things like commuting costs and childcare costs they are often worse off than those who don't work or only work part time. Make of this what you will but it isn't sustainable long term to make working unattractive to people.

It would have been interesting to hear from the person who originally claimed this but ok. Let's go with it. What are the parallels between a life on benefits and a life on average earnings (as the pp seemed to suggest they were talking about average pay and not minimum wage)?

Firstly, quality of life doesn't match, benefit claimants tend to have much lower standards of living, much higher risk of homelessness, increased problems of other types. If you believe it matches, you've been duped somehow.

Secondly, the fact wages are too low is a separate, but discussion-worthy issue.

Ah there you are. Would you be able to draw your comparison with some explanatory stats?

Unlikely because they are spouting made up stuff...

This is what annoys me. Different opinions are great. Uninformed opinions are an insulting waste of time.

Poverty metrics are complex and not one
and done. I imagine this is why relative poverty data varies from absolute and why people tend to assert things in this way. The data is easy to access and worth a dissertation, but maybe not a copy and paste to MN

Haven't RTFT since last time but I just need to jump on and point out that our high level of debt was caused mostly by the financial crash of 2008 and by Covid followed by a huge rise in interest rates post-Covid caused by world economic events that have nothing to do with welfare spending. There is very little evidence to link our huge debt to welfare spending. In fact, debt repayments were very low before Covid and given that welfare spending has more or less remained the same when measured as a percentage of GDP as it was in 2010 under austerity and as it also was in the 80s under Thatcher it's hard to argue that it's rising. It isn't. And if it isn't rising I don't think we can blame it for our defecit or debt.

“An incredible amount of money now the two child cap has been lifted” 😂 oh yes because that extra £17.90 per week per child is really letting people live the high life.

@paternosteria ,

‘Haven't RTFT since last time but I just need to jump on and point out that our high level of debt was caused mostly by the financial crash of 2008 and by Covid followed by a huge rise in interest rates post-Covid caused by world economic events that have nothing to do with welfare spending. There is very little evidence to link our huge debt to welfare spending. In fact, debt repayments were very low before Covid and given that welfare spending has more or less remained the same when measured as a percentage of GDP as it was in 2010 under austerity and as it also was in the 80s under Thatcher it's hard to argue that it's rising. It isn't. And if it isn't rising I don't think we can blame it for our defecit or debt.’

I think that the 2008 bailout and the zero interest rates and QE was an indirect cause of what many think is rotten in our society today: Brexit, Trump etc.

It showed that capitalism was just a word used to justify pay people ludicrous salaries to create very little (and, in fact, in many ways be a tax on people’s savings) but that word didn’t quite have the same meaning when the risk takers finally came unstuck.

It was not only a huge net cost (estimated at about £120bio assuming the government guarantees had no value and far far higher if you costed them) but an extraordinary transfer of wealth from the middle classes to the rich and from the regions to London.

As I keep reiterating, look at the salary growth in real terms of people who depend on asset values (bankers, city lawyers, estate agents) versus those that don’t (nurses, bankers, normal lawyers) and you will see a huge disparity. People need to question why this happened!

And politicians also hopped on the gravy train. After all, why should the bankers have all the fun?

I don’t know how we end up having a trusting cohesive society again where it is felt politicians are working for the good of all.

*(nurses, doctors, normal lawyers)

In fact (and as anyone curious enough to Google my username could read up on), the GFC was an excellent cover for reducing benefits and introducing greater conditionality. Focus was shifted from a flawed system (capitalism) onto the shoulders of individuals, to fix the crisis that they hadn't caused. And guess what they were told to take? Our old friend personal responsibility!

£17.90 per child per week ? More like £303.94 per month per child. Or more for children born before 2017. It’s the child element cap on universal credit that has been lifted.

The irony of attempting to mock me about something you clearly know nothing about. The two child cap wasn't just about Child Benefit. If you knew that then you would understand we are genuinely talking about some families recieving an incredible amount of money

@ClarkeandNewman ,

I am not sure capitalism, despite its flaws, isn’t still by far the best we have. Especially with a safety net below it.

The problem is that we don’t have capitalism. Capitalism creates haves and have nots, but they aren’t always the same people. Risk takers face the downside of losing all if they choose the wrong risks. And this creates new opportunities for new different risk takers.

If you look at the 1970s crash, many lost their all and, out of the ashes, new entrepreneurs were able to become rich. Capitalism demands serious recessions (if not depressions) to work successfully.

If we abolish these by debasing the value of money, which is what QE basically was, we just keep money in the same hands, who get richer and richer.

COVID was the same. A clearly detrimental global economic event led to the stock markets making new highs within a year, borrowing from everyone’s futures (that is what stupidly high valuations effectively is) to keep the high life going for the asset rich.

It is crony capitalism.

This is a bit misleading. We have been running a chronic deficit for over 20 years. Yes, crisis have massively exacerbated this issue but it's clear that COVID and the 2008 crash were global issues that exposed structural weaknesses. Could they have been mitigated? Potentially slightly but we would always have had a financial shock due to the structure of our economy and other issues. No doubt other shocks will come. We can't completely stop pandemics or economic crashes.

A sensible approach would be to run a surplus in ordinary years so that we can better deal with extraordinary. Except we don't do this due to general spending being too high and a large part of this is due to welfare spending (36% of total public spending). Welfare spending has increased in real terms but it has remained a static percentage of GDP over the past decade due to growth that mostly took part in the early part of that decade. We are in very lean times now indeed regarding growth and welfare will soon start to take a higher percentage of GDP if we don't cut the bill.

@Itchthescratch ,

‘Yes, crisis have massively exacerbated this issue but it's clear that COVID and the 2008 crash were global issues that exposed structural weaknesses. Could they have been mitigated? Potentially slightly but we would always have had a financial shock due to the structure of our economy and other issues. No doubt other shocks will come. We can't completely stop pandemics or economic crashes’

2008 and Covid are completely different things! We can’t stop acts of god but the financial crisis was caused by political decisions (yes globally, but especially in the US and even more so in the UK).

And no, we can’t stop crises, but the responses to them are political. Politicians choose how to respond and who is going to pay. If you look at the leverage in the system now, we could easily be on the brink of another 2008 (probably not directly in the banking sector but other areas of the financial sector).

It is fascinating that bailing out the banks is airily waved away as a ‘structural weakness’ but a few benefit scroungers are a real problem. Aren’t they just a ‘structural’ weakness of the benefit system?

100% this. Free at point of need is bullshit when the service your child “needs” is not offered, on a 5 year waiting list, or might be available but the next available appointment to decide is in 2027.

It’s spirit-crushing to be told that your disabled child will not be helped by the NHS. It’s absolutely fucking galling, infuriating and nonsensical to be told this after you have just handed over six figures of your income to HMRC.

Ironically, the need to spend £30k on therapy that is not accessible to DS on the NHS is the main reason I claim DLA - with a gross household income of £400k we absolutely don’t need it, but we pay through the nose for the NHS, are treated like supplicants, and still have to pay again to get DS what he needs, so I see it as trying to “break even” really.

The IMF will come knocking before long, and then the fun will really start.

See I look at this the other way.

I am fortunate that I can afford to pay for my son to get what he needs, despite it obviously being frustrating that he can’t access it with the immediacy that he needs it from the NHS.

Others aren’t so fortunate, their kids have needs too and they have no option but to wait. If my taxation makes their wait shorter - great.

I'm not waving away anything or pretending mistakes weren't made but we need to be realistic that crises will continue to happen and mistakes will continue to be made. It's been happening since the dawn of time. The structural weakness isn't bailing out the banks, that was done out of necessity is 2008. It was the fact that our economy had moved away from manufacturing and into financial services so we were more heavily exposed than some other countries but by no means the worst impacted. We have to have a cushion to be able to deal with these almost inevitable crises that we know will keep coming.

The welfare bill is enormous and continues to grow year on year fueled by a surge (and it really is a surge) in health and disability related benefits.the UK economy grew 1.5% in 2025 and welfare spending grew 5.7%.

I'm not sure that's quite how the IMF works. 😂

I don’t know anyone like this. But I believe people here when they describe real-life scenarios they have encountered. If I disbelieved everything on here, there would be no point posting. The stories seem believable to me, anyway. Ofc some people will take the piss.

Crony capitalism is still capitalism, it just requires a bit more support from the state. It's still predicated on the same basis of class relations and capitalist reproduction. The same crises still arise, posing a threat to that class system, and need to be dealt with. But they're created by capitalism in the first place.

Whether it's the best system we have depends on your perspective I suppose. Personally I think it's at the root of almost, if not every single thing that's wrong globally. What would replace it? Haven't a clue. That's not to say nobody could devise something less calamitous for the future of people and planet.

If "welfare" (benefits and pensions) spending is at the root of the UK's financial problems and has been for two decades, how do explain the fact that as a percentage of GDP it has remained stable over the past twenty years? Why do other nations tax more and spend more on benefits than the UK and thrive?

Can you point to countries which were able to absorb the shocks of the GFC and of COVID simply by running a surplus?

"The IMF will come knocking before long, and then the fun will really start."

What does this mean? Was it intended as hyperbole?