I know there have been hundreds of these posts recently, but is this case study typical? Linky is here.
My first thought was that the difference to the household budget, before and after the £26k cap, is going to be roughly the cost of her 200 fags per week habit - a habit which, I reckon costs around £70 per week, I couldn't justify financially.
My second thought was that, if you took away our two cars (needed to get us to work) and their additional associated costs, and the factor in that we pay a moderate mortgage rather than rent in massively subsidised social housing, their outgoings - or crucially, disposable income - look uncannily similar to our own.
I pay income tax in the middle rate and I'm middle class. It's taken me fourteen years of working very hard to get to the level I'm at in my career and my wife and I decided to wait until our careers were firmly established before starting our family and yet, I can still look at this family and think that I'd be better off if I was in their shoes. How can that be right?
What really grates though, is the emotive language used "If they do cut our benefit we are going to have to choose between eating and heating the house properly." Am I right in interpreting that statement as meaning "My wife could quit smoking but she'd rather our kids went unfed or cold"?
It's nice to know that my family is forced, through taxation (backed up with all the threats and force that the state can muster), to go without stuff just so that some unemployed family, who will never thank me for my hard work, generosity and sacrifices, can sit on their arses all day smoking themselves into an early grave.