Question Child Benefit changes

[ford prefect]

My only gripe with the this is the implimentation whereby a family on 80k can still claim but a family on 45k cant. Personally I like the fact that this government are cutting back on wasting money and the such.

I'm not asking for sympathy, was just stating that not everyone in the higher tax bracket is rich or well off and has skiing holidays every 2nd month

I'm on a fairly decent wage and I can't remember the last time I had a holday. I pay 28% tax, which is quite a lot really, but I don't begrudge benefits to those that need them. What I will say is that when I had no money I budgeted accordingly and planned family accordingly. It is simple common sense - children are expensive.

 

[Scouse]

People pontificating about "you shouldn't have children if you can't afford them" really piss me off no end. Those people should leave raising children to others because they plainly don't understand that children are a necessity for our future. I didn't set out or ask for 3 children but I have them. It's like playing cards, you play the hand that you're dealt and you do the best you can.

They piss you off because you made a choice they don't agree with. Three kids?

Now, I'm not saying 'you shouldn't' have three kids - it's your perogative. I've no problem with it and I've family members who've done the same.

But you shouldn't expect financial help. Period. Your choice, your blame, your fair or foul. Nobody but you.

I also don't buy that "children are a necessity for our future" guff. For guff it is. We've got 6.5 billion people on the planet. The only future we're looking at right now is a world with far too many humans.

By "children are a necessity for our future" read "my children are a necessity for my future"...


My sister lives in a £380,000+ house in Caldy on t'Wirral (nice place). She (social worker) drives a nice Saab, her husband a Merc (lawyer). Their 5-bed house has 3 upstairs bathrooms (one for them, one for the kids, one for a guest) and a downstairs bog. Hewuge kitchen with separate living space. Big living room and a room bigger than my living room that they keep spare for entertaining.

50" TV. Two kids (who constantly do stuff). Dog.

Yet she constantly complains about how skint they are! Not for a second does she understand that if they've any money pressures, at all, it's because of their lifestyle. A huge mortgage in an area normally littered with footballers homes (Rafa Benitez' mansion is a stones throw away). She's just spent a couple of hundred quid on a patio set 'cause she likes to eat her breakfast in the sun before everyone else gets up.

I haven't asked but I bet she's right grumpy about the loss of child benefit.

I love my sister, she's ace, but sometimes she can fuck right off. Just like anyone who wants my money just because they've been dumb enough to shoot out whinging little twats

 

[DaGaffer]

I also don't buy that "children are a necessity for our future" guff. For guff it is. We've got 6.5 billion people on the planet. The only future we're looking at right now is a world with far too many humans.

Those 6.5 billion aren't going to pay taxes in your country in the future, so its kind of a moot point isn't it? It makes me laugh that everyone bitches about social welfare leading to everyone having kids they can't afford when the evidence across the economies with the most developed welfare states (EU and Japan) is precisely the opposite; we have far fewer kids than all those countries with little or no support for your offspring (including the US), and are effectively in population decline.

"children are a necessity for our future" read "my children are a necessity for my future"...

You say that like its a bad thing. I don't think there's anything wrong with fulfilling the primary requirement of your existence; to pass on your genes. So long as you have no more than two kids you're not even growing the population.

 

[Wij]

and we go back to the massively inflated house prices and mortgages people can't afford.

Exactly the point. Benefits paid to middle-income owners like me don't increase our standard of living at all. They just push house prices up so that you end up with the same house you'd have got anyway but with a bigger mortgage.

When the wife and I were looking for a house we could have got a smaller one and been left with some spare cash every month but like most ladies (sorry darlings *patronising pat on bum*) she was more interested in getting the biggest house we could afford. The banks are only too willing to lend right up to the very limit of affordability, meaning that you have no spare cash every month and also pushing house prices up so that if wages or benefits rise for another middle-income family then higher mortgage prices will happily soak it up.

Until the housing / credit bubble is solved there's no point in trying to make things more comfortable for the middle-earners. It will all end up going to the banks.

Now though, we're all hooked on that extra grand a year tax free. It's part of the household budget we just keep afloat with. It will make a big difference if it goes. Have to hope my 2013 bonus is low enough to keep me out of the bracket

 

[Scouse]

Those 6.5 billion aren't going to pay taxes in your country in the future, so its kind of a moot point isn't it? It makes me laugh that everyone bitches about social welfare leading to everyone having kids they can't afford when the evidence across the economies with the most developed welfare states (EU and Japan) is precisely the opposite; we have far fewer kids than all those countries with little or no support for your offspring (including the US), and are effectively in population decline.

Aside from tax being no justification for having kids - if we were suffering a massive decline in the ability to source humans to perform jobs then we'd simply open the immigration tap a little bit.

Possibly to one of the countries who are still struggling with coming out of the dark ages, where having large families is a means of survival. That way we kill two birds with one stone - we take human beings out of poverty and increase the tax take.


And the population being effectively in decline points towards a choice that well-educated human societies are making - not to have the little shits, 'cause we'd rather not:

You say that like its a bad thing. I don't think there's anything wrong with fulfilling the primary requirement of your existence; to pass on your genes. So long as you have no more than two kids you're not even growing the population.

I find it insulting that parents think that "the primary requirement" of human existence is to pass on your genes.

It might be that for dumb animals, who do little more than eat, sleep and try to fuck in a competetive dog-eat-dog environment. But humans no longer live like that.

Our intellect allows us to choose our own primary requirements. Passing on our genes, in the knowledge that it'll make fuck all difference to the human race as there's so many of us, is of little significance for many. The need for sex rather than the need for kids is the biological imperative, from a scientific standpoint. Kids are just a natural consequence of sating that need.

But not any more. We can nowadays enjoy the delights of sex whilst staving off the inconvenience of kids until, should we choose to, we decide to go ahead.

If you make that choice then you should be prepared to back it up financially by taking a lesser lifestyle rather than expecting funding from others.

We should have an "in the total shit" benefit system. If you're neck deep then society should help get you on your feet again. No more.

If you live in a nice house, maybe down south where it's expensive, have a few kids and fall on hard times, and have lived in such a way that you've not saved up for those hard times then you should get nada. Nothing. Sell up and move up north if you have to - you'll get a nicer house for half the price.

Just don't come sponging for money off everyone else because the choices you made were financially irresponsible.


Or does everyone here buy in to Capitalism except when it comes to their money and their kids?

 

[Tom]

My only gripe with the this is the implimentation whereby a family on 80k can still claim but a family on 45k cant. Personally I like the fact that this government are cutting back on wasting money and the such.

I'm not asking for sympathy, was just stating that not everyone in the higher tax bracket is rich or well off and has skiing holidays every 2nd month

That's because people are taxed individually, and not as a household.

Taxing households leads to the stupid situation like mine, where a neighbouring house contains 4 people but pays exactly the same council tax as I do (although I get a paltry 25% single person discount).

 

[Raven]

I think everyone is a little too used to the gravy train. Its time to get off folks, it was bound to come to a stop at some point. While I can sympathise with people suddenly finding they will be getting less then they thought each month, its nobodies fault but their own. The state just can't afford it.

 

[Scouse]

I think everyone is a little too used to the gravy train.

To be fair, despite my post, I hardly think it's a "gravy train".

With all the wealth concentrated in the top 5%, and most of that in the top 5% of the top 5%, the rest of us are fighting over scraps. Old-age pesant-stylee...



But then, people do love "democratic capitalism" so. Anything that might try to bring people up on a more even keel, together, is denounced as heresy, especially round here.

So, it surprises me the amount of people who want and support "benefits" - "benefits" are an anathema to capitalism. What they mean is "mwah! I want an unfair financial advantage"

 

[DaGaffer]

Aside from tax being no justification for having kids - if we were suffering a massive decline in the ability to source humans to perform jobs then we'd simply open the immigration tap a little bit.

Possibly to one of the countries who are still struggling with coming out of the dark ages, where having large families is a means of survival. That way we kill two birds with one stone - we take human beings out of poverty and increase the tax take.

Which if all we wanted was unskilled labour and burger flippers would be fine, but we don't; instead we steal Zimbabwean nurses from the place where they're needed most.

Its all very well playing the global card, but it creates at least as many cost problems as having a home grown labour force, and a damn site more social problems.

And the population being effectively in decline points towards a choice that well-educated human societies are making - not to have the little shits, 'cause we'd rather not:

I don't disagree, but it still flies in the face of all the people on here saying social welfare encourages feckless breeding habits doesn't it?

I find it insulting that parents think that "the primary requirement" of human existence is to pass on your genes.

It might be that for dumb animals, who do little more than eat, sleep and try to fuck in a competetive dog-eat-dog environment. But humans no longer live like that.

Our intellect allows us to choose our own primary requirements. Passing on our genes, in the knowledge that it'll make fuck all difference to the human race as there's so many of us, is of little significance for many. The need for sex rather than the need for kids is the biological imperative, from a scientific standpoint. Kids are just a natural consequence of sating that need.

But not any more. We can nowadays enjoy the delights of sex whilst staving off the inconvenience of kids until, should we choose to, we decide to go ahead.

If you make that choice then you should be prepared to back it up financially by taking a lesser lifestyle rather than expecting funding from others.

It may offend you, but that doesn't make it any less true, and intelligence, and the fact that as a species we enjoy sex, are simply (fortunate) byproducts of that genetic imperative, not the other way around.

We should have an "in the total shit" benefit system. If you're neck deep then society should help get you on your feet again. No more.

I find this amusing coming from someone with your generally anti-capitalist leanings. The implication is that we're in complete control of our financial destinies, when in reality most of us are at the mercy of a system completely beyond our ability to influence. Millions of people have made financial choices based on the advice of "financial experts" (economists, banks, politicians etc. etc.) whose advice has proven to be worthless. Over here I know dozens of people, and there are thousands more like them, who thought they were planning their futures properly, making their own provisions etc. just like any financially responsible person is supposed to do, all for nothing. All those people are by definition "in the total shit". The state is a counterweight (not a very good one, but nevertheless) to the uncontrollable tide of economics, and I'd rather see a few sponging mums get boob jobs than kids begging on the streets.

If you live in a nice house, maybe down south where it's expensive, have a few kids and fall on hard times, and have lived in such a way that you've not saved up for those hard times then you should get nada. Nothing. Sell up and move up north if you have to - you'll get a nicer house for half the price.

Just don't come sponging for money off everyone else because the choices you made were financially irresponsible.


Or does everyone here buy in to Capitalism except when it comes to their money and their kids?

See above, you don't have to "financially irresponsible" to get royally screwed. As for moving north; and do what exactly? It was precisely to keep people in the north that Labour moved all the public sector jobs up there. Now they're going, where do you think people are going to end up, Huddersfield or Holborn?

 

[Raven]

Factoring benefits into your budgeting is being financially irresponsible. Especially when they are quite clearly benefits that you shouldn't really get, because you don't actually need them. Not need as in, if you don't get them you can't put food on the table.

 

[Wij]

With all the wealth concentrated in the top 5%, and most of that in the top 5% of the top 5%, the rest of us are fighting over scraps. Old-age pesant-stylee...

Wealth is not earnings though. And neither wealth nor earnings take account of benefits and public services designed to even things out for us.

If I can eat, like a pig, drink like a fish and have the NHS fix me up afterwards then I'm not that much worse off than someone with a roomful of Picassos.

Wealth is a weasely measure of wellbeing and therefore your 5% figures are misleading in the extreme.

/lecture

 

[DaGaffer]

Factoring benefits into your budgeting is being financially irresponsible. Especially when they are quite clearly benefits that you shouldn't really get, because you don't actually need them. Not need as in, if you don't get them you can't put food on the table.

Do you factor in the amount of tax you pay into your budgeting? Council tax? They're both variables that can be changed as often as benefits, but you don't plan your life thinking "shit, tax might rise to 50% next year" (well you might, but you'd be a in a very small minority). Hell, the damn things are called "tax credits". Its intrinsic to the system so its a bit naive to say you shouldn't account for them.

I'm also not so holier-than-thou that I'm going to turn down free money, and once again its naive to expect anyone else would act differently. As it happens we just drop the family allowance into a savings account for the nipper; believe it or not, in Ireland that's actually a special government-backed savings scheme that lets you do that.

 

[Aada]

Personally anyone earning over 45k and claiming beneifits is disgusting i mean 45k a year is a lot to live on if you dont go over board on your lifestyle.

As soon as me and my partner heard this on the news and saw the women moanin because they might have to go back to work we had no sympathy whatso ever.

Why they let people who familys who earn 80k a year still claim is a fucking joke.

My partners mate is pregnant with their 3rd child and suprise suprise and they say they dont know how they will afford another child jesus what is the world coming too.

 

[ECA]

My partners mate is pregnant with their 3rd child and suprise suprise and they say they dont know how they will afford another child jesus what is the world coming too.

Don't worry we just get charged higher taxes to help them, I mean it's not like they could go to the doctors and schedule a snip sometime for either of them, or get an IED.

 

[rynnor]

It might be that for dumb animals, who do little more than eat, sleep and try to fuck in a competetive dog-eat-dog environment. But humans no longer live like that.

You what? Since when? Thats exactly how the vast majority live and tbh its not suprising considering we are just animals with intelligence...

 

[nath]

or get an IED.

An improvised explosive device as a form of contraception? That seems pretty fucking extreme.

 

[ECA]

An improvised explosive device as a form of contraception? That seems pretty fucking extreme.

New Muslim form of contraception, if you stick your cock in you go boooooooom.

 

[Zenith.UK]

You don't understand.
There is no point trying to educate you now because you're now holding a contrary view for the sake of being contrary.

 

[old.user4556]

I cba getting deep into the thread, but simply put, if you're a high earner then tough titty.

 

[Ch3tan]

You don't understand.
There is no point trying to educate you now because you're now holding a contrary view for the sake of being contrary.

Sorry Zenith, you seem like a decent bloke and you probably rely on the benefit, but be honest. There are lots and lots of people who don't deserve it. If you live beyond your means or at the limit of your means then you are asking for trouble. Lots of people do this, with increased salary comes increased spending. If people accepted that they should not live in that nicer house, or buy that new car etc then they would be a lot better off. But we live in a world were people feel entitled to luxury and credit is easy to obtain.

This is the biggest problem in the UK, as Scouse pointed out with the example of his sister. People do not plan for the future or budget effectively. If you chose to have three kids, then that is your choice, if you struggle to support them that should not then effect others through them supporting you via taxation. If you can't afford another kid; then don't have one?

 

[DaGaffer]

I cba getting deep into the thread, but simply put, if you're a high earner then tough titty.

And that's the crux of the debate; the definition of "high earner". I happen to think its rather a lot more than some of the cave-dwelling hermits who frequent this place, who seem to think a juniper bush and self-flaggelation is the height of decadence.

 

[nath]

some of the cave-dwelling hermits who frequent this place

Oi, I've barely even commented in this thread!

 

[old.Tohtori]

And that's the crux of the debate; the definition of "high earner". I happen to think its rather a lot more than some of the cave-dwelling hermits who frequent this place, who seem to think a juniper bush and self-flaggelation is the height of decadence.

I have you know, my cave is quite decadent enough without june's bush.

And self-burning is just silly.

 

[old.user4556]

juniper bush

Hey, they're all I've bloody got to eat!

 

[Bugz]

Personally I fail to see how someone in the higher tax bracket is automatically well off ...

As of next year I will earn £44,450 a year (just agreed 4 year pay deal) and I'm certainly not comfortable. Everything is budgeted and we very rarely have anything left over to spend on going out and doing stuff with the kids.

The whole country appears to think that anyone in the higher tax bracket is well off and can afford this that and the other when it's simply not true. No Working tax credits as of next year, no Child Benefit in 3. Anyway, theres ways around keeping the child benefit, for instance my company offers a 'salary sacrifice' scheme.

Coming from the South East myself I know a lot of families who live on <30k with 2-3 children who also budget everything and rarely have anything left over.

Either your idea of budgeting isn't as budget-like as you think or you pushed your mortgage as far as you could. I don't see what is happening to the 10-12k disparity (after taxes) that stands between you and the families I am talking of.

 

[Scouse]

And that's the crux of the debate; the definition of "high earner".

For me the crux of the debate is whether there should be a child benefit at all.

 

[old.user4556]

Personally I fail to see how someone in the higher tax bracket is automatically well off ...

As of next year I will earn £44,450 a year (just agreed 4 year pay deal) and I'm certainly not comfortable. Everything is budgeted and we very rarely have anything left over to spend on going out and doing stuff with the kids.

I don't want to get sucked into this thread, but my own view on the "automatically well off" is all very much relative.

I too pay some tax at the higher rate so wouldn't get child benefit, but I don't have any kids . I live in a two bedroom top-floor flat and I would say I was happy with what I earned and can afford some (imo...) luxuries (two holidays a year, sports car, big TVs etc.). However, someone I know at work who earns roughly the same as I do lives in a much bigger house in a nicer area and has two kids to feed along with a wife. He's forever counting down to the last penny and basically struggling to get by just now, yet we earn the same.

He'd say "I don't get paid enough", but I say "I'm quite happy with my spending power".

The difference between me and him is that I took out a modest mortgage on a smaller (albeit brand new and nice) property instead of living on the never-never, mortgaged up to the hilt just to have a four bedroom house. If I was to take a job paying less money, I'd be ok. He took out the biggest mortgage the bank would give him to keep up with the Jones'. Whenever he complains about his lack of cash, I say "downsize your house", but he won't do that. "It's easy for you to say!" - yes perhaps, but my own parents had to downsize in order to improve financial liquidity when I was a kid. My parents also ran two cars (as does he), but they sold one as they couldn't realisticly afford the upkeep. He also has two cars, but again he refuses to sell one of them.

The best bit is that his wife works part-time and refuses to work full-time; yet they're quite prepared to moan about the Tories slashing the child benefit when they're a) living way beyond their means for the money they bring in and b) not even working the maximum they could be.

I know that's probably not your situation Pfy, but I do think part of the problem in the UK is the lack of willingness to live within one's means. Everyone wants everything, and they want it now: kids, bigger house, the latest Bravia. I know this post makes me sound self righteous, but I don't struggle because I don't do things I can't afford (have kids, get married, have a big mortgage etc.).

 

[Pfy]

Coming from the South East myself I know a lot of families who live on <30k with 2-3 children who also budget everything and rarely have anything left over.

Either your idea of budgeting isn't as budget-like as you think or you pushed your mortgage as far as you could. I don't see what is happening to the 10-12k disparity (after taxes) that stands between you and the families I am talking of.

My point was that I don't think that those on the lower level of the 'higher earning' bracket are well off/rich. I also said that I agree with the austerity measures and wasn't directly moaning about the fact that the Mrs will lose the child benefit, more highlighting my disagreement with the 'you earn 45k you must be well off'.

 

[Wij]

I don't want to get sucked into this thread, but my own view on the "automatically well off" is all very much relative.

I too pay some tax at the higher rate so wouldn't get child benefit, but I don't have any kids . I live in a two bedroom top-floor flat and I would say I was happy with what I earned and can afford some (imo...) luxuries (two holidays a year, sports car, big TVs etc.). However, someone I know at work who earns roughly the same as I do lives in a much bigger house in a nicer area and has two kids to feed along with a wife. He's forever counting down to the last penny and basically struggling to get by just now, yet we earn the same.

He'd say "I don't get paid enough", but I say "I'm quite happy with my spending power".

The difference between me and him is that I took out a modest mortgage on a smaller (albeit brand new and nice) property instead of living on the never-never, mortgaged up to the hilt just to have a four bedroom house. If I was to take a job paying less money, I'd be ok. He took out the biggest mortgage the bank would give him to keep up with the Jones'. Whenever he complains about his lack of cash, I say "downsize your house", but he won't do that. "It's easy for you to say!" - yes perhaps, but my own parents had to downsize in order to improve financial liquidity when I was a kid. My parents also ran two cars (as does he), but they sold one as they couldn't realisticly afford the upkeep. He also has two cars, but again he refuses to sell one of them.

The best bit is that his wife works part-time and refuses to work full-time; yet they're quite prepared to moan about the Tories slashing the child benefit when they're a) living way beyond their means for the money they bring in and b) not even working the maximum they could be.

I know that's probably not your situation Pfy, but I do think part of the problem in the UK is the lack of willingness to live within one's means. Everyone wants everything, and they want it now: kids, bigger house, the latest Bravia. I know this post makes me sound self righteous, but I don't struggle because I don't do things I can't afford (have kids, get married, have a big mortgage etc.).

Well yeh - pretty much what I said. Should be well off but 4-bed house at ridiculous price, 2 cars, kids to clothe (and a wife who thinks kids need new clothes every day ) and I'm skint constantly. I don't even remember what having spare cash was like.

 

[cHodAX]

I don't want to get sucked into this thread, but my own view on the "automatically well off" is all very much relative.

I too pay some tax at the higher rate so wouldn't get child benefit, but I don't have any kids . I live in a two bedroom top-floor flat and I would say I was happy with what I earned and can afford some (imo...) luxuries (two holidays a year, sports car, big TVs etc.). However, someone I know at work who earns roughly the same as I do lives in a much bigger house in a nicer area and has two kids to feed along with a wife. He's forever counting down to the last penny and basically struggling to get by just now, yet we earn the same.

He'd say "I don't get paid enough", but I say "I'm quite happy with my spending power".

The difference between me and him is that I took out a modest mortgage on a smaller (albeit brand new and nice) property instead of living on the never-never, mortgaged up to the hilt just to have a four bedroom house. If I was to take a job paying less money, I'd be ok. He took out the biggest mortgage the bank would give him to keep up with the Jones'. Whenever he complains about his lack of cash, I say "downsize your house", but he won't do that. "It's easy for you to say!" - yes perhaps, but my own parents had to downsize in order to improve financial liquidity when I was a kid. My parents also ran two cars (as does he), but they sold one as they couldn't realisticly afford the upkeep. He also has two cars, but again he refuses to sell one of them.

The best bit is that his wife works part-time and refuses to work full-time; yet they're quite prepared to moan about the Tories slashing the child benefit when they're a) living way beyond their means for the money they bring in and b) not even working the maximum they could be.

I know that's probably not your situation Pfy, but I do think part of the problem in the UK is the lack of willingness to live within one's means. Everyone wants everything, and they want it now: kids, bigger house, the latest Bravia. I know this post makes me sound self righteous, but I don't struggle because I don't do things I can't afford (have kids, get married, have a big mortgage etc.).

Your post is pretty much the story of the last two decades bud and is the main reason we are in such a deep economic hole now. Everyone wants everything, even if they can't afford it directly or the repayments.