Angry at scrapping of 2 child limit

[BearBuggy]

I know there are a few families that find themselves in rotten circumstances and this isn’t aimed at them . However I live in an area where having children to continue to receive benefits was the norm and only now the cap is in place has that stopped.

The Scottish government has now announced it will be scrapped. I am so angry I’m paying towards people breeding children they can’t afford. I didn’t vote SNp this time because of this, as did many of my friends. They lost heavily in my area but still seem to not care what the tax payer is saying.

I’m not surprised you are annoyed -l would be fuming as well. I’m not a fan of the conservatives but the 2 child cap is totally reasonable. I don’t see why taxpayers need to pay for people mindlessly having child after child they can’t really afford 🤷‍♀️. It’s not a luxury most of my friends working full time not on benefits can do

Assume that was for @DragonFly98

I'm not sure about that at all... nursing, vets, dentists....we've been importing these. As well as construction, beauty business....

If we want this country to prosper we have to excel in everything and that means high standards across the board. Best trained hairdressers, best builders, best chemists....it's high time we stopped leaving training people until there's a shortage....get them trained years in advance so when they are working these are skilled.

Money is however a barrier to having a large family.
If you can’t afford more children you don’t have them
Many full time working parents can’t afford large families, even more so now that CB is means tested and not there for all.
Obviously if you can’t afford something you don’t have it.

Catholic here too and every Catholic I know doesn’t keep having more and more children. I assume they use birth control as the families rarely have more than three. Including my parents generation with an average of two kids.

What's cheaper for the taxpayer? "Pay" an already economically inactive mother on benefits an additional amount to have a third child, or for a highly-paid worker to leave their job or cut their working hours to have their first child?

I'm not sure 🤔. There's much less opportunity cost if you concentrate births amongst those earning less or not earning. There's something to be said for the lower-paid or economically inactive taking on a higher share of unpaid labour like raising children, freeing up higher earners to work and pay taxes. This is not necessarily a viewpoint I agree with but it's an interesting angle to the debate.

Take a VP working for an investment bank earning £800k a year, but whose job is 24/7 and incompatible with raising kids. The £400k plus she pays in tax could pay for an awful lot of benefits/tax credits for lower-income families to have additional children.

If you look at this in terms of the planet rather than our small island. Or an individual country we are a growing population
Watch the population meter grow online minute by minute, going up up up.
The world is overpopulated and whilst we continue to over-consume we are bringing about its downfall

So
Either continue to have babies for this small islands economy and reduce consumption in everything including on a personal level.
Or value the planet as a whole and reduce the population.

That sounds like Gilead
What an awful thought

It's an aging population. Longevity is the driver, not births when it comes to the growing population figures. The number of countries with a fertility rate high enough to maintain population stability is so emaciated that it spells a crisis for swathes of the globe who will be thrown into a financial and productivity death spiral.

Not that I think that this will be a situation that is altered by a retreat on the two child cap. 😁

The CB cap has reduced the choice of having a third by 5% according to stats.
The figure is low because there are many reasons people have children and finances is only one of them with many not considering the affordability anyway,
Its also worth noting those on UC still get more money for more children.

Despite the ageing population there are more births than deaths.
So in terms of that ageing population those births are going to live much longer too and make the situation worse on a global level
Spending and lifestyle expectations and overconsumption on an individual level cannot be maintained at the current rate.

Global growth will decline by 2100, by that point the inverted population pyramid in countries which already have dwindling fertility rates will be incredibly vulnerable.

This is a terrible idea.

Families who are in the lower socioeconomic bracket tend not to be educated or be able to provide life lessons on how to lead a prosperous life to their children as they have not figured it out themselves. The greatest predictor of the type of life you will lead is the type of life your parents lead. They also tend have fewer skills to pass on their children and can't afford all the extra curricular activities that develops childrens interests, self confidence and abilities. That is why poverty is intergenerational.

So for impoverished families to keep on producing impoverished children with poor futures so that the people who have attained education and wealth can continue to work and not pass any of this life experience and opportunity onto children is a road to one destination. A population lacking in skills, education and aspirations and the slow decline of the professional class until we run out of people to be our doctors, lawyers, dentists etc. and council estates become children farms.

How is this a good idea? How does it benefit anyone? And most of all who is going to pay all the benefits for these large poor families when the high earner group has shrunk and aren't paying their taxes anymore?

However as a planet there are clear benefits

I would be looking at the positives in terms of reduced
Global warming
Deforestation
etc

@SerenePeach . So for impoverished families to keep on producing impoverished children with poor futures so that the people who have attained education and wealth can continue to work and not pass any of this life experience and opportunity onto children is a road to one destination. A population lacking in skills, education and aspirations and the slow decline of the professional class until we run out of people to be our doctors, lawyers, dentists etc. and council estates become children farms.
How is this a good idea? How does it benefit anyone? And most of all who is going to pay all the benefits for these large poor families when the high earner group has shrunk and aren't paying their taxes anymore?

We need people to do all sorts of jobs, not just the highly-paid and skilled ones. Arguably a shortage of carers is going to be a significant problem going forward. And outcomes improve significantly for children in poor families when you invest more money in them - we invest in our own futures when we invest in all children, not just our own.

The high earner group is already shrinking. Many high earners don't think it's worthwhile to have children - the opportunity costs are too great. I'm not sure you could pay them enough to change their minds and it's not a given that their children would similarly be high earners too.

They'll be small comfort compared to the dramatic geopolitical instability and the cascade of consequences that follows.

Haven’t RTFT and no strong thoughts either way on the cap but yes having worked and lived in deprived issues where there js often generational unemployment and having kids is seen as the only way to progress in life, I feel the issue goes way beyond some extra money.

Really!
Do you not think we should value all non human life forms and those on the margins of society.

I think we are already seeing the global consequences of overpopulation and over consumption already

With birth rates plummeting, mostly due to the cost of raising children, I see this as a positive thing.

Agreed.

No we don’t need more people having kids. I have some friends with 3 or 4 kids and I don’t think they have “too many kids” because they are brilliant parents. But not everyone needs to be having even one kid let alone 3.

I used to work in social services and mainstream education and believe me there’s more than enough unfit parents from all social classes that leave children who spend their adulthood recovering from their trauma or neglect.

Yes, I know there may be economic impacts in terms of the labor workforce or pensions etc, but I don’t really see everyone having more kids as the answer. It’s a big thing to bring life into the world and that’s often forgotten. Many people shouldn’t be doing it and certainly not for the good of the economy!

And let’s face it, even if we look at in terms of financial benefit to country, many (not all) of the ones who are having too many kids they can’t afford aren’t raising the kids that are going to be net contributors. Generational worklessness is a big thing.

That shit is baked in. It's happened already. Now we'll get to see the other side coin. Where increasingly elderly, frail and sick populations cannot maintain their borders, where health and social care will buckle under weight we cannot yet imagine or mitigate, where migration will shift to those countries offering the lowest tax burden, where innovation will stall because those who are productive and capable will be occupied entirely by necessity and not what can be. It will be a fresh hell, while we endure the effects of global warming. Joy.

I agree and if we continue with this downward trajectory we make matters worse and worse.
We can’t stop global warming but theoretically we can slow it and work towards ways of mitigating its impact.
Over reproducing goes against that.

In terms of your comment re countries offering lower tax burdens. I also agree, if we tax away the 15% net providers we are left with nothing in this country, something other countries have clearly already seen coming.

You think the corrective to rapid global population growth is rapid global population decline. It's a child's understanding - it's like throwing cold water on hot oil.