to be shocked, that the goverment do not pay towards chilcare costs for everyone?

[spottyoldzebra]

well they should stop going on about getting mothers back to work then.

Social policy is not my field but it strikes me that it is good to see women in the workforce.

I'm equally sure that we as a society cannot afford free childcare of an acceptable quality for all. The NHS is creaking, the education system needs an overhaul, funding for geriatric care is essential, the prison system is underresourced, the pensions system is worrying. All of those things take priority and rightly so IMO.

What harpsi wrote.

New Labour

New Needy

Quattrocento - "women in the workforce?" Surely this thread is about mothers in the workforce?

People should pay for their own kids/childcare unless they are low income/lone mothers etc.

quattrocento - my bf lived in the states for three years

taxes were LOW

you got mortgage relief for each child you had etc etc etc

notanotter I'm from the States. Taxes are not low across the whole country.

There are more than one kind of tax in the US. There is Federal. There is State. There is sales tax. There can be sin tax, high value tax, etc etc etc.

You cannot say that taxes are low in the States based on one person. It all depends on where that person lives.

i come from the US. Quattro's right.

cost of living tends to be lower - essentials like housing, local taxes, road tax and petrol.

but i always counted Social Security as a tax, because it's highly unlikely people of my generation will have anything left to draw on when we reach 70.

so taking that into consideration, the tax worked out to be about the same.

state taxes vary, too.

It depends on where you live expatinscoland. I lived in California before I moved to Belfast and the cost of living in San Francisco is gigantic compared to Belfast. Trust me on this!

I live in Iowa before that, and yes, it was very cheap to live there.

You can't say the whole county is cheap. Because it isn't. NYC is comparable to London in terms of cost of living.

If you are talking about personal taxes they are quite high for the highly paid as well. From memory just under the 40% mark.

It makes me wonder what the US government does with all the money. I mean they don't bother much with benefits, they don't have much public free healthcare ... They do have a tip top armed forces though.

yep, that's why i said cost of living tends to be lower.

but of course, there are exceptions.

They do pay for everyone
I get the equivalent of £75 a month towards nursery as childcare vouchers and will get 12.5 hours free a week when DS reaches 3 (I think)

Spotty I don't agree with you at all (and I speak as one who has just applied for a full time job in the company I work for, that will take our family well over the threshold for claiming childcare allowance). Albeit from the comfortable position of having a dh who works for a company with a fairly progressive family friendly policy, that means he can go into work very early and be home in time for school pick up.

Would you as a taxpayer like to subsidise my comfortable family life?

I actually feel that the solution lies with employers understanding that it's not just women who are parents but men aswell.

The govt wants more women in the workforce to get them off benefits (if they are on it) and for the taxes they will pay.

The government does not have to PAY women's childcare. They just have to make the cost of childcare tax deductible. That way, it is just a case of the government earning less tax from that woman rather than paying that woman's childcare out of others' taxpayers' money. Everyone benefits because the treasury would still get the excess tax which it would not otherwise get if that woman was priced out of working by the cost of childcare. This would enable more women to rejoin the workforce whereas previously paying their childcare out of taxed income currently make it uneconomic for them to do so.

Childcare vouchers don't go far enough IMO.

AIBU to be shocked that people expect the govt to fund their childcare for children they chose to have?
Spotty- I have been helping you on that other thread, including suggestions of what you could do if you feel childcare is too high cost, but I really do not understand this attitude that someone else should pay for your responsibilities.
The dependency culture in this country destroys lives.

I've just tested this on the CTC calculator, presuming DH wasn't around any more. Unlike now, I would get all my childcare costs paid. If my income went up by £2500 a year I would still get nearly all my childcare costs paid. This does actually mean I'd be better off financially without DH...

Moving on, I'm satisfied that the childcare help is fair, and I'm not normally one to defend the government.

FWIW, I think there are many other factors working against single mothers going back to work. It's one thing getting the childcare paid for. It's quite another thing finding suitable childcare in a suitable location with regard to one's job, and finding an employer prepared to put up with the inevitable potential problems. If I was a single mother, trying to juggle full time childcare with my job could potentially be a nightmare. If I didn't drive it would be impossible.

who is captain karvol?

'I hear quite a few Mum's saying "most of my income pays for childcare - is it worth me working?" Surely your partner should be paying for half of the childcare costs, sfter all they are his children too and he is also out and work.'

Eh? Last time I looked me and DH were a partnership so whether the money comes from my wages or his wages we are still the same amount worse off. I don't get people who are married but have separate finances.

I think the point is that the second income is in many cases just paying the childcare and not much else. Thereby making it questionable whether it is worth the second parent working. That's a fair question to raise, and different couples answer it in different ways depending on many other factors.

captainKarvol is a mner- she posted at the top of the thread.

Just to clarify what others have said - self-employed people (and a lot of other professions including teachers) can't get childcare vouchers.

Although like most, I am not "shocked" that the govt doesn't cover everyone's childcare costs! Although saying that, clearly they should have thought through childcare and flexible working a bit more before saying that all lone parents with children over 7 should work.

Where I think the anomaly is, is that in my position if DH and I both worked 16 hours a week for the same combined income as my single income, we would get all our childcare paid for as if I was a single mother. We could theoretically job share with one of us available for childcare duties at all times, and still stick DS in a nursery full time at the taxpayers expense. I'm not sure who would want to play the system that way, but it could be done.

Why should they?

I am one of the 'mothers' who 'they' are trying to get back to work.
I am 47 yrs old, with 2 children.
I am prescribed antidepressants.
Suffer from bronchitas.
Have two children.

Would it not be better if the government tried to get the young into work, you know, the teenagers, the 20yr olds, the 30yr olds,not necessarily mothers.
Why the hell would they force mothers back into work when so many young are unemployed!