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lol have no children and allow no immigrants, i think this is a good policy. within a few decades there will be no overpopulated areas in the "West". Prolly there will be nothing left here but that may be negative speculation.Quote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
u pay to get ur **** ****ed?Quote:
Originally Posted by Strike For The South
EDIT BY COUNTARACH: Language warning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmOehfTAyCk
Perhaps like in the US, child benefit is a very popular part of the welfare system in the UK. It used to be universal, which - along with the fact that it was paid directly to the mother - may account for that. Recently, it was withdrawn from the highest tax payers. I am not against withdrawing it, although the UK does not suffer from too many babies and without immigration could be said to have too few. However, the reason the House of Lords voted to exclude child benefit from the welfare cap is that it seemed unfair to withdraw the benefit from households on benefits getting £26000 per year and keep paying it to households earning up to £80000 per year.Quote:
Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger
AFAIK, the whole of the UK pays for the welfare system - it's not a case of paying for your immediate neighbours. All national taxes go into a pot and some of that is spent on the poor. But those paying a lot to live in central London should definitely pay to help the poor - they include the richest earners in the UK (those working in the City of London).Quote:
Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro
I am not sure I used the right phrase "central London" - but "inner London" is where 54% of those affected by this change live. It includes a lot of quite poor areas that have experienced sharply rising house prices over the years. It's a strange situation, with newly gentrified areas co-existing with some of the roughest places in the UK and is part of the background to the riots we experienced last year. If you think about the contingencies that cause households to fall into poverty, it's not obvious that them moving home is necessarily the best thing. For example, if someone falls sick or becomes incapacitated, loses their job etc. it's not clear to me that we should add to that the stress and cost of moving home and being uprooted from ones community. Especially, as London is quite a vibrant economy with excellent health services. There can also be social tensions among the new host communities if benefit claimants are driven into their areas in large numbers.
Back to the OP: $777.75 a week sounds a lot, but another way of saying it is £108 per person per week[1]. Which is not a lot when you factor in London rents.
[1]The Department for Work and Pensions estimates that 64,0000 households will be affected by the cap. They include 90,0000 adults and 220,000 children. So on average, those households have 1.3 adults and 3.3 children: £26000/[52*(1.3+3.3)]=£108
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2...eat?intcmp=239
Taking a quick look at my records, it seems my family of 3 has been living on an average of about $486 a week for the 8 months after my son was born (haven't added the last couple months in yet). I think we could probably manage to get by on about $300 more than we have been.
Ajax
One thing that hasn't been mentioned, and I will state for the record that this is only in my limited experience, is differences in the cost of living.
I'm currently in Australia but am originally from the UK and my partner's cousins live in the US. Based on this I can state that the costs in Australia are much higher than in the UK, and that they seem to be more expensive there than the US. This could account for some of the differences raised earlier in this thread...
IIRC the average salary here is $44,000 odd a year. Probably explains it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Centurion1
But, food and other necessities are 30-40% more expensive here (except meat) than in the US and many European nations.
Housing costs in London are insane. The average rental price for a 3 bedroom property is over £3000 per month. This welfare cap would pay for only 2/3 of that and leave nothing left for food or whatever.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gaius Scribonius Curio
http://www.rentright.co.uk/london/3_rrpi.aspx
Who in this thread is advocating this?Quote:
Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube
Keep taking the tablets mate... Let us know when you're feeling up to addressing the topic.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Stranger
I'm sure someone must have mentioned the fact that companies / the very rich avoid taxes... and therefore addressing welfare shouldn't be done as it's an either / or situation.
Yes. And I couldn't afford to live there. I have for a few years lived in the periphery of London, generally in the nastier bits. Should I get s subsidy so I can do so? No, I've moved out altogether.Quote:
Originally Posted by econ21
It is "odd" that when unemployed are grouped together in estates these do not become very pleasant areas - these are groups of people with vastly more than the average amount of free time and so could ensure their environment is kept clean and tidy.
~:smoking:
Easily. And, of course, it's far too much. People should get the cost of food (own brand prices), rent, utilities and some sort of luxury allowance (cars and cable are luxuries). If you want McVitie's jaffa cakes - God knows why, they're not as good as the own brand ones (worse jaffa:cake ratio, if you had to ask) - then find a job, or dip into the luxury bank.
Why is the thread title in dollars? There was a time when non-US threads in the Backroom had the self-respect to deal in their own respective currencies. What went wrong? That's the real question we should be asking ourselves.
I'm disappointed.
It sounds more in dollars. :creep:
Civil society only exists along as their is popular consent to restrictions in your negative liberty (via taxation) in order to improve the positive liberty of the group as a whole (via Gov't services).Quote:
Originally Posted by econ21
Without that consent you pave the road to insurrection.
I don't believe there is such consent for a level of benefits that approximates a wage of £36,000 (far more than i get), and if that is threatening to undermine the common consent to collective social provision then it is not populist, it is flat-out necessary!
maybe that is because we believe the defence of the realm to be the primary job of the nation-state, and outside that we look for the minimum possible interference in our lives with the obvious corollary that self-reliance is an important trait to foster in society.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube
Depends on what you mean by defense of the realm.Quote:
Originally Posted by Furunculus
Does making sure you have suitable candidates for millitary life through HSE or educational spending come to an equal or greater concern as actual military spending.
I only ask because it seems to be important to yerself so we would need to ask who decides where the line is.
Defence spending in the UK is pretty small as a percentage of the total budget.
I think you will find that a number of people look to the state / others to provide everything in their life as it is a birthright. Some state that the trend to download content for free is further causing the expectation that things are provided on a plate with no requirement to invest time or money in achieving them. Labour recently has stated that they would not increase the wage of public sector workers - to howls of protest from the Unions who still have the thinking that the State is a piggy bank to be squeezed for all the money possible.
What are "suitable candidates"? The Foreign Legion seems to manage well by having entry requirements of 18+... and that's it. The percentage that require to be highly trained academically is pretty small. Most vocational skills are best learnt undertaking the vocation. Does a grasp of French suddenly make one a better citizen, or the ability to calculate the height of a building from the distance from it and the angle of inclination? The Navigator needs to know where the ship is heading, but those below decks in the trireme merely need to know how to use an oar.
~:smoking:
Quote:
Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name
Guys.... we're talking about the UK (in this case), not the US - we have graduated benefits.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube
As to Child Benefit, it is regressive with the way it is because (and I know this from where I live) men get women, have them pump out babies and get a new one once she's past childbearing. Children become comodities and women become cash cows - capping child benefit stops that.
It's a two way street. Women get men to get them pregnant and then since in many cases they are financially better off without the man sticking around they get rid of them. If the man wants to stay around they can then fight through the courts to see their child - with the assumption being that the children are best off with the mother and that contact can be delayed as long as there are any outstanding allegations by the mother as to the fitness of the father. The other way around appear to be ignored. Since this processs can take years before contact is even gained many think they'd be better off starting again elsewhere.
~:smoking:
i really don't intend to define it at all, merely reject the notion that there is some inherent iniquity or contradiction as posited by GC.Quote:
Originally Posted by gaelic cowboy
The reason I think this is a populist measure is because it is an ad hoc quick fix. Why £500 per household? Why not £450 or £550? Why not £100 per person?Quote:
Originally Posted by Furunculus
The welfare system has arisen by trying to estimate how much people need given various contingencies:
A for housing
B for kids
C for disability
etc
Then to say they need A+B+C+... but can't have it because the total is over £500 per week just seems inconsistent and irrational.
I agree that a case can be made for reforming A - who benefits from the very high London housing allowances? I suspect typically the landlords. Or reforming B if we are afraid of "incentivising" babies (I'm not but apparently many are in this thread). C (disability) may be ok in many cases, but perhaps going to many who don't need it etc.
But fixing A, B and C is difficult. It would cause political problems for Boris in London, would challenge the middle class entitlement for childbenefit (electoral suicide for Cameron), would bring the government into conflict with doctors and disability rights campaigners (guess who would win?).
So we take the popularist route - splash big payouts and bad cases over the headlines, then watch as 284,000 people on benefits arbitrarily lose money to save the taxpayer £150m.
The Lords have done the right thing in asking the government to think again.
uhhhhh if by suitable candidates means physical fit, mentally stable, and no health concerns then I think the money would probably be well spent.Quote:
Originally Posted by gaelic cowboy
Keeping a system that has several parts increases complexity and hence has both higher overheads, higher unintentional error and increased risk of fraud.Quote:
Originally Posted by econ21
Having benefits that are close to the net earnings of someone on an above average salary should be fine. This will mean there is an upper limit on the size of one's family (as is true of working families) and where one can live (as is true of working families). This does not meet that disabled people need to use this money for their carers / alterations to their house as this comes out of the NHS budget and in some cases will be vastly more.
If you can't live your life in this sort of money, then frankly you need to alter your life - be that alter what you spend the money on, or move to a less expensive area.
~:smoking:
i believe £36,000 is the average household income.Quote:
Originally Posted by econ21
Yes thats exactly what I mean.Quote:
Originally Posted by Centurion1
A western country can hardly defend itself in todays world if it's population suffer chronic health problems or rampant illiteracy.
I mean its not even about defense its about competitiveness and not becoming a nation of degenerate rejects that are so out of shape and mentally unstable the state plays mother hen.Quote:
Originally Posted by gaelic cowboy
If I ever want to own my own home, then that is most definitely not enough to get me a house of my own. Also cost of living is much higher in Australia than it is in most places since we did not experience a slow down like much of the rest of the world.Quote:
Originally Posted by Centurion1
Thanks, so it's an average - that explains the sum. But why per household? Average household size in the UK is 2.3. For those households affected by the cap it is 4.6. If there was some allowance for the size of the household - such as excluding child benefit - it would be more reasonable and have passed through the Lords.Quote:
Originally Posted by Furunculus
Two problems. Do they have more children/larger households to get more benefits?
Second issue is if the cap is per household then the consequences are pretty clear given current welfare eugenics. The fathers will decamp and get another home leaving the mother and offspring in a separate house. This will double the amount of income available and further shatter marriage/de facto relationships. End of the day if you reward a sequence of actions don't be surprised about them salivating when the bell tolls.
Two problems. Do they have more children/larger households to get more benefits?
Second issue is if the cap is per household then the consequences are pretty clear given current welfare eugenics. The fathers will decamp and get another home leaving the mother and offspring in a separate house. This will double the amount of income available and further shatter marriage/de facto relationships. End of the day if you reward a sequence of actions don't be surprised about them salivating when the bell tolls.
Often the case already, where there is more money without a useless, unemployed man. As has also been said the child benefits should be capped for the first two children.Quote:
Originally Posted by Papewaio
The only "solution" would be to give money for marriage - even then who is to say it is a genuine marriage? There will always be ways of gaming the system. At least this would be capped in the new proposed system.
~:smoking:
Child benefit is £13.40 a week (after the first child). Given the cost of rearing kids - financial, in time and emotional - I just don't see that as a big enough incentive to induce increased fertility. You'd get about that by working a couple of hours or so on minimum wage.
Papewaio, I do agree with your second point that the per household cap will induce family breakup, but that's a problem with the government's proposed cap rather than with my argument that any cap should be per person (or per adult equivalent, if we think children have lower financial needs than adults).
The argument is not controversial: no serious economist would measure individual well being per household without adjusting for household size - it's like measuring Chinese citizens' well being by looking at China's GDP not GDP per capita. It's nonsense.
I'd like to be able to split income within a married houshold and a higher tax free threshold for income earners with children.
Until androids of Asimov variety come along, the children will be the doctors and nurses and carers looking after the perma DINKS. So we should be looking after our future prosperity.