The real cost-of-living-crisis: Five million British children 'sentenced to life of poverty thanks to welfare reforms'

[ttosca]

Five million children in Britain could be “sentenced to a lifetime of poverty” by 2020 because of welfare reforms, according to research from Save the Children.

Cuts to benefits, the rising cost of living and years of flat wages have created a “triple whammy” for children, the charity said. It argues that children have borne the brunt of the recession in Britain, and now represent the “face of poverty” in the UK.

Policies such as the “bedroom tax” combined with the slashing of tax credits and council tax relief mean “the social safety net no longer acts as a sufficient backstop for poor families”, claims the Save the Children report.

Soaring food prices and childcare costs have also hit families, with the cost of food rising by 19 per cent when compared with other goods between 2007 and 2011. A nursery place for a child under two cost 77 per cent more last year than it did a decade ago.

A significant proportion of families across England – as high as 28 per cent in London – are skipping meals in a bid to make ends meet. And in many areas, more than one in 10 families cannot afford to buy children new shoes when they need them.

cont'd

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-real-costoflivingcrisis-five-million-british-children-face-life-of-poverty-thanks-to-welfare-reforms-9442061.html

Incan- what makes you th

Think that people don't become poor ^after* they have DCs.

If only the rich had DCs (veiled eugenics) then there wouldn't be enough tax payers to pay for your pensi

Friend teaches children in London who are three to a bed. The youngest wets bed all the time which means the other two never get a decent night's sleep. The little one used to fall asleep on the floor of her classroom . She would let him sleep in a corner.

I see the immigration card is bring played again. All very convenient isn't it - introduce punitive policies fir working class people, ensure it is impossible to buy a house, ensure there is inadequate social housing, make it onerous to go to universe, withdraw allowances fir college students, tax poor people who have a spare bedroom, cap housing benefit to enable the poor to be cleansed from gentrified areas of London and housed around the edges, turn a blind eye to families living in shanty town conditions such as garages and sheds, introduce workfare, ignore zero hours contracts, underfund the nhs, introduce austerity (but not for everyone)...

And blame immigration fir everything! Job done!

I think one of the problems is that too many who are comfortably off never meet those who are struggling. Mixed communities worked better imo, as they diluted the social problems and opened people's eyes to other people's lives. They probably kept house prices more realistic too, and evened out the intakes for the local schools.

I really hate the way people look at countries where inequality is endemic, where little children live in sewers and graveyards - and they look at the UK and state that everything must be ok because it's not like Rio or Romania here.

Well give it ten years

This is what we're headed for, or worse, in ten years if we continue along the same path of stagnating wages, inequality, privatisation, etc:

US Set to Become the Newest Third World Country

The United States, the home of Capitalism, is about to demonstrate its ultimate failure, as the cannibalistic economic system consumes the nation’s economy from within.

The US economy is rigged toward the 1% of wealthiest citizens and corporations, this radically skews outcomes to the detriment of the economy as a whole.

As CJ Werlhman writes over at Alternet:

America has the most billionaires in the world, but not a single U.S. city ranks among the world’s most livable cities. Not a single U.S. airport is among the top 100 airports in the world. Our bridges, roads and rails are falling apart, and our middle class is being gutted out thanks to three decades of stagnant wages, while the top 1 percent enjoys 95 percent of all economic gains.

US income inequality is at its greatest for nearly a century and is rising, as the income gap between the bottom 90% and top 1% of Americans reaches its largest since 1928. When compared globally, the US is the second most economically unequal society (behind Chile).

iacknowledge.net/us-set-to-become-the-newest-third-world-country/

ttosca ….. still with the “inequality” mantra, but with no solution to income disparity of billionaires, to those who didn’t want to obtain a basic education, in a global economy, and worse still, as a bright person, pushing a socialist agenda that has been proven to COST the jobs – BRINGING us closer to 3rd world countries who lack the option of jobs.
www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10631728/Pupils-cannot-count-out-change-due-to-poor-maths-skills.htmll
“A study by Nationwide finds that more than half of secondary school pupils struggle to work out change in their heads, prompting claims that maths lessons are leaving them "unequipped for everyday situations"

REFUSING to learn the UK job loss lessons from history and understanding even recent business cost influences caused by Far East economies that were paying salaries 1/5th of ours - and fat governments choosing to grow the State over an overtaxed/regulated private sector - just makes a complete mockery of your assumptions that the UK has a god given right to private Sector EMPLOYMENT and somehow by pushing wages much higher for the low/medium skilled,

But as I have pointed out elsewhere, it is not just WAGES that can reduce companies profits and research and development budgets )that keeps them competitive), it is a combination of the following, ALL OF WHICH ARE TYPICAL LABOUR TARGETS TO INCREASE over their administration which cumulatively kills many private sector jobs, and eventually the company e.g. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/7539343/Labours-planned-National-Insurance-increase-will-cost-jobs-Alistair-Darling-admits.html

Higher Corporation Tax.

Higher Business Rates (local).

Higher Income Tax compensation (via salary) for senior staff, using international remuneration scales.

Higher regulatory/red tape costs.

Higher National Insurance costs.

Higher/volatile £currency costs for exporters.

Higher raw material costs.

Higher Fuel Escalator costs,

Higher costs of government intervention e.g. Energy Company ‘price freezes’.

Higher Interest Rate/Borrowing Costs as they ‘normalize’, with or without a Labour policy premium.

According to you their was less inequality in the 1970’s, when British workers, in British companies, used leverage to get what they thought was right no matter what the company could afford in a high tax and high inflation environment – but as there are now next to no large British industrial companies left, even foreign owned, yet all their German and Japanese competitors still exist, how did that work out?

How did Manufacturing work out under the last Labour government,having remained relatively static at around 22% of our economy from 1979 to 1997? Well it halved by 2010, and socialism cannot just blame the recession, most of the jobs had gone from 1997 to 2005, when companies more costs piled onto them by government and the £ was strong.
www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/million-factory-jobs-lost-under-labour-6150418.html

What those with idiotic Tooting Popular Front mantras need to understand is that for small to medium sized UK businesses, like high street shops, wages are a big part of their costs of doing business – and a fat socialist government taxing them to fund their fat State makes matters far worse.

Next you will be using your MEANINGLESS comparison in blaming the global ££$$billionaires for all the empty shops on our high street, that could not cope with current wage costs (and those extra costs thrown at them by governments full of Oxbridge Socialist Debating Society ‘experts’, who have never run a business for a day in their life).

P.S. The fact is, as Chinese salary costs (and other expenses) have risen so much over the past several years, many jobs that left the West over the past 25-years, are starting to come back to the West – so in order to compete for the business investment/jobs in the UK, the LAST thing we need is Miliband and other lefties, spouting of about UK State controls on ‘stuff’ they can’t control – sending signals to the Private Sector that the Uk’s political direction of travel, is Back To The 1970’s.

Solopower1/TheBogQueen …. It seems to me that too many people here WANTS to assume that everyone on Welfare/Benefits have had no other choice for the past 15-years, that government has NOT been complicit in their current situation - or that the Welfare/Benefits bill that inexplicably grew through a global boom faster than many other countrys, needed to reformed after an unbalanced economy spending £157 bil a year could no longer afford to keep it how it was.

First of all lets face it, in 2010, with a £157 bill UK annual budget deficit which was the LARGEST in Europe by far, our Welfare/benefits bill was not a lean, well managed, government run machine.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10574376/Graphic-Britain-outstrips-Europe-on-welfare-spending.html

Secondly, that all claims that had build up, possibly like ‘sickness’ under both governments, were all genuine e.g. 900,000 people decided not to reclaim and be then be checked over for ability to work.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9963012/900000-choose-to-come-off-sickness-benefit-ahead-of-tests.html

Next, if we are not going to blame immigration (the government policy, not those coming here for a better life for them and theirs) we have to understand how/why ALL OF A SUDDEN, APPARENTLY, WE HAD JOBS AND ACCOMODATION, FOR 2.5 MILLION NEW CITIZENS for inside and outside the EU – that in the low to medium skilled sectors, diluted the potential UK indigenous multi cultural applicants pool and put downward pressure on pay rates.

So someone please correct me if I am wrong; in the decade to 2007/8, the UK had the time and financial recourses to build new homes and make sure that work paid by reforms and lower taxes, Welfare/Benefits was not seen as a better paid option to work, address/train/retrain our unemployed to find above Minimum Wage employment – but chose instead to encourage new home demand accommodation to the Private Sector, and to ‘sub out’ many of those 2.5 million jobs to foreign workers.
www.economicshelp.org/blog/5509/economics/government-spending-under-labour/

So posters, in answer to your questions;

No one is” denying” children are living in poverty, even if in the opening post’s report, the household can have an income of £15 to £17k.

No one is saying children “deserve” to be poor.

No one SHOULD be blaming immigrants for domestic policy government incompetence by condemning many of our indigenous multi cultural unemployed/poor to welfare dependency and homelessness.

But then again, no one should be blaming the “uncaring” Coalition for sorting out Labour’s unholy mess THEY were afraid to publish any solutions to (for 2010 votes in their manifesto, and for 2015 votes since) – when not only has the money all gone, but we were left accumulating debt that has been reduced by over 1/3rd over this parliament - and NOW, before UK interest rates rise, is already taking £52 billion out of government annual spending budgets in interest rate charges.

Pre or post mass immigration, ‘joined up’ policy thinking is CREATE Private Sector jobs for those that can work, encourage the unemployed to take them by reducing taxation e.g. the £10,500 start rate and giving employers National Insurance cuts incentives – and free up more money/resources for those in real needs/poverty traps.

People, the (lack of) policies and spending excesses under Labour were no longer an option, they knew it, but cynically refused to open the debate on solutions by the 2010 General Election – and since chose to concentrate on anti private Sector populist rhetoric/threats, that will from here on, discourage Private Sector investment/jobs until AFTER the next General Election.

In conclusion; it is tougher for people to help themselves with an incompetent government making the wrong policy decisions on a grand scale that directly affects their work/home situation. But with the UK's financial situation and the chance of a better education increasing their options, within a growing Private Sector vacancy pool environment, people have to do what they can to help themselves and theirs, on a personal level, as government can not.

Governments cannot help people?

What is the point of them then?

Wages have dropped by 6-7% since 2010. It is the longest drop in real wages since records began in 1964.

It is even worse if you are already at the bottom of the pile. See the attached chart.

This is what is driving poverty amongst those in work. The government has taken away the benefits which were effectively a business subsidy that kept wages low.

A living minimum wage and sufficient childcare provision so that a family can expect a decent standard of living if two parents work 30 hours a week.

Why is that so much to ask for? I don't care who delivers it but it's what we should be demanding governments focus on.

ThinkAboutItTomorrow …… taking your points one by one;

Wages have been dropping since 2005/6, confirmed by your chart and whether the drop was made worse by inflation (in ‘real’ terms) is not directly under a government’s control, especially once Brown instructed the Bank of England to print money (which is inflationary) via Quantitative Easing.

Furthermore I am not aware of any RECESSION where wages went UP, never mind the greatest recession in over 80-years – so neither the causes of lower pay rates for the poor (immigration and the Great Recession) or inflation (caused by money printing and other bank liquidity) was caused by the Coalition, they just get the blame for it.

As to the minimum wage (aspiring to the Living wage), that is decided by an independent body that tries to decide what is fair and payable without either discouraging the creation of Private Sector jobs or putting companies at the brink of insolvency who are still shaky after the worst recession since the Great Depression 80-years ago. If you look at ‘real’ terms, you will see the recent review was the first ‘real’ term increase since 2008.

www.gov.uk/government/news/one-million-set-to-benefit-from-national-minimum-wage-rise-to-650
“The government has approved a rise in the National Minimum Wage to £6.50 per hour later this year (2014), with more than 1 million people set to see their pay rise by as much as £355 a year.”

“The rise will take effect in October 2014, as Business Secretary Vince Cable has accepted in full the independent Low Pay Commission’s recommendations for 2014, including plans for bigger increases in future than in recent years.”

“The Low Pay Commission (LPC) has said the rise, the first real terms cash increase since 2008, is manageable for employers and will support full employment.”

And this is what happens if you try to pre-empt the report and come up with figures out of the air.

(Feb 1 2014) “Osborne taken to task on call for £7 minimum wage”
www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ebd8aba8-8c1b-11e3-bcf2-00144feab7de.html#axzz32a4m4eoz
“George Osborne was wrong to raise hopes that the national minimum wage could be restored to its pre-recession value of £7 per hour before the election, business department insiders have warned.”

“There is “no way” the Low Pay Commission, which sets the minimum wage, would sanction such a steep rise this side of the election, said one Department for Business, Innovation and Skills insider. “We have no idea how they got to the £7 figure,” said another. “We are baffled.”

Regarding your “taking away the benefits which in effect were a business subsidy that kept wages low”, please explain what you are talking about, as if I remember correctly Labours only plan was to lower VAT for a year (as a ‘magic sponge’ solution to all our economic and social injuries) and put up the cost of Fuel (via the escalator) and National Insurance ( the ‘jobs tax’ prior to the election, to bravely come in after the election they were likely to lose.

The Coalition, just from memory, has lowered Corporation Tax to internationally competitive levels, reversed Labour’s pre election Fuel and N/I ‘Jobs Tax’, lowered rates for and other incentives to help small to medium sized businesses, took employing the young out of National Insurance altogether for and having now produced over 1.5 million new jobs since 2010, been able to put the young on apprenticeships where there is a real hope of a job at the end of it.
www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/10472446/EY-Cutting-UK-tax-draws-in-more-multinationals.html

All Labour knows is how to spend tax payers money ‘building’ an unsustainable Public Sector (1 million jobs from 197 to 2010), and tax the (then) declining Private Sector, that through business and employee taxation, has to help pay our annual bills and interest on £1.3 trillion national debt, never mind pay off the principle amount.

With our nations finances, a better and sustainable Minimum Wage, never mind Living Wage, can only be achieved by encouraging more Private Sector investment and job growth that tightens the labour market – accompanied by a lean government keeping PERSONAL taxes for the lower paid as low as they possibly can be.

Keeping a UK 'more of the same' fat inefficient State and threatening and taxing the private sector, PLUS hiking the Minimum/Living Wage to unsustainable levels, is the country economics of Greece - and IMF financial bailouts/cuts sooner rather than later, as in 1976.

I am surprised that people on this thread are denying that children are living in poverty. The evidence is there. Go and have a look round a rough area near you. See how comfortable you feel walking down some streets. Then try to imagine what it must be like to live there. Do that without thinking about who is to blame. Just see it.

I do see it, every day. In my street and neighbourhood. ALL caused by drug and alcohol abuse.

On Radio 4 at the moment: Cambridge University asks what has happened to the working class. interesting. Probably available on iPlayer.-

Go spread your Tory propaganda elsewhere, isitmebut.

After the 1979 recession it took a year to get wages back to pre recession levels. After 1990 it took 2 years.

Today we are 6 years on and wages are still lagging significantly behind pre recession levels. Today's median wage in real terms is back to 2003 levels.

People feel poorer because they are poorer. And it is the fault of the coalition for significant extending the recession and creating a business recovery that doesn't touch the electorate they are supposed to represent.

Where's the proof that capitalism works? Clearly it works well for the rich - but it obviously doesn't for the poor. If capitalism did work for the poor, after so many hundreds of years, there wouldn't be any poverty.

So where's the evidence that socialism works? The only proof I can think of is in the immediate post-war years when the NHS was created. Apart from that, I don't think we have any evidence that socialism works in this country, because we have never had a truly socialist government. You can't look abroad to communist countries because conditions were so different then and there, it's highly unlikely imo that anything that happened in Russia or China could or should happen here.

So where does that leave us? Well we've tried capitalism. I think it's time for a change.

But even if you don't agree, what I really hate is when people try to justify unfair and inhumane government policies by trying to pretend that people - children - deserve to be poor, or that they've brought it on themselves. Be honest. Stand up for capitalism and say, 'We believe that a few thousand children living in poverty is a sacrifice we're willing to make so that the rest of us can continue to enjoy a certain standard of living.'

Socialism has been proven not to work time and time again. And yet the left always come back with "well there hasn't been a TRULY socialist country, yet". And guess what, there never will be. Because it will keep failing and the left will keep coming back with the same excuses. Capitalism is the least worst option. It's a flawed system but human beings are flawed.

What other options have you tried TucsonGirl? Least worst for whom? Probably not for the children living in poverty. But maybe it is necessary to sacrifice them for the common good, would you say?

Or maybe there is a better way of organising society so that we can all be better off.

IMO the best way to protect children from poverty is to take them away from the parents who are failing to care for them.

And I don't believe that there IS a one-size-fits-all solution to child poverty in the UK/World.

You can throw money at the problem, but ultimately the children are at the mercy of their parents - no Government can micro manage what goes on behind closed doors, all over the UK.

Yes, a possibly neglected child can be flagged up to SS / Police by neighbours, schools etc. That is what happens now, rightly so.

But the fact is that some people are not fit to be parents. for a variety of reasons. If you think that giving them more money means that they will improve their care of their child(ren) - dream on.

ThinkAboutIt Tomorrow ..….. re your rather lame and rather inaccurate Labour propaganda below.

"After the 1979 recession it took a year to get wages back to pre recession levels. After 1990 it took 2 years."
"Today we are 6 years on and wages are still lagging significantly behind pre recession levels. Today's median wage in real terms is back to 2003 levels."
"People feel poorer because they are poorer. And it is the fault of the coalition for significant extending the recession and creating a business recovery that doesn't touch the electorate they are supposed to represent."

Firstly, let us not forget that in 2008, with the Brown economy built on the tax receipts from City profits, excessive bank lending, consumer debt and huge increases in government spending, the UK economy (unlike any other economy) LOST repeat LOST around 7% of (GDP) output and related private sector jobs, which is only about to be recovered.

Secondly, let us remember the obvious, that THIS recession was unlike any other since the 1930’s Great Depression as it was the FINANCIAL recession/crash, that led to the ECONOMIC recession (hence our Base Rate is at it’s lowest level since the BoE was formed around 300-years ago) – and businesses have suffered, unlike other recessions (when the banking system was left intact) as they could not raise even working capital for quite a while, never mind expand/employ.

In Europe, our largest trading partner, the Eurozone collectively is only growing 0.2% and in many countries MORE BUSINESSES ARE CLOSING DOWN, than being created.
www.cnbc.com/id/101672468
”The 18-country bloc saw economic growth of 0.2 percent in the first quarter, compared with fourth quarter 2013. This missed analyst expectations of 0.4 percent growth. In the fourth quarter last year GDP also grew by 0.2 percent, data from Eurostat showed.”

"It is true that certain members states are seeing a rebound on a GDP basis, but this is minimal. Many businesses – particularly those that have been hit hard by the crisis – are still struggling. In Italy, Greece, Spain, the rate of businesses that close down still outweighs those that are being created," he said.”

Whereas in the UK, thanks to Osbornes reforms and ongoing economic repair job re-balancing the Brown’s UK country model of a fat State/Public Sector financed by a fat City tax receipts, to produce “no more boom and busts”

"UK will be fastest growing economy in the G7 this year"
www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10752204/UK-will-be-fastest-growing-economy-in-the-G7-this-year.html

“International Monetary Fund upgrades its forecast for UK growth by more than any other advanced economy”

If you think Labour’s 2010 Ballsian ‘growf’ of ‘more of the same’ unaffordable fat State, financed by an ever shrinking Private Sector – all to be maintained and national debt paid off by lowering VAT for 13-months and raising Fuel Duty/National Insurance was the way to a UK economic recovery and HELPING THE POOR until the UK could borrow no more - you are dafter than you seem. Within a year everyones taxes would have gone up; Labour’s version of ‘feeling the recovery’.

Even now, 4-years later, what is Labour's solution to maintain the fragile growth the Coalition has produced that every other major economy aspires to?

No sustainable economic plan, just State controls on the recovering Private Sector THAT WILL REDUCE INVESTMENT/JOBS, like Energy, where companies are meant to ABSORB energy market volatility AND pay to build our nuclear power stations Miliband, as Energy Minister, didn’t get around to.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/politics/1983467-UK-Energy-Policy-Price-scandal-outages-due

Liking thread........

Also in the La La land of left wing politics Labour came up with an utterly deficient definition of poverty which has resulted in so many children being taken out of poverty in the UK in this government because the test was relative. So as more people became poorer in the recession the children became richer - that's labour's policies for you, just like Animal Farm.

If children do badly in poverty incentivise the well educated middle classes and higher earners to have a lot of children and make it very unlikely anyone on low incomes would choose to have more than one child.

It's hardly labour propaganda - the first two recessions I quote were overseen by Tory governments and wages came back quickly.

And I think the economic drop was a global economic drop - the UK was disproportionately impacted due to the high level of reliance on financial services but otherwise we followed a global dive.

My challenge is that the (really quite weak) growth that is being created is only benefiting the tiny number of people at the top of society. I would prefer to see less growth at the top if it meant more growth at the bottom.

What is the growth being seen by the bottom half of the UK?

Labour didn't come up with the definition of relative poverty JaneParker. The level of relative poverty (as defined as an income of less than 40% of the median income) is the level where people are unable to afford the 'norms' of society. It's the point at which people become socially excluded. You can trace it back to Adam Smith:
“By necessaries I understand, not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without. A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. …But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to
appear in public without a linen shirt ... Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England. The poorest creditable person of either sex would be ashamed to appear in public without them. … Under necessaries, therefore, I comprehend, not only those things which nature, but those things which the established rules of decency have rendered necessary to the lowest rank of people..." Wealth of Nations

Because the median income fell children were lifted out of poverty, no one became richer.