Child Benefit Cap

Child benefit should be capped at two children and not linked to family earnings, why should I get less of a state contribution when my family have worked harder, studied more and put generally put more effort into our lives (consequently paying far more tax back into the system) than two people who are quite happy banging kids out on the breadline when they quite clearly need the state contribution to look after them.

I used to have quite a socialist attitude but that doesn't work when people/families and whole areas seem quite happily living on the bread line rather than working. Our system fell apart when people no longer used it as a necessity and now feel no shame living on the state.
 
Moses said:
Isn't that unfair on the children of poor parents? Growing up in poverty is not a pleasant experience, I can assure you of that.

Also, if you just leave sink estates to continue, you're not solving the problem. It'll just carry on, and on, and on. A nice poverty cycle.
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But you can't have a society where one half works for what they have, and the other half is given it for free.

Well you can, but it's not great (for anyone). The biggest problem is that it's hard to differentiate those who are poor for no fault of their own, and those who are work-shy and trying to get the state to pay for everything.

Sadly we seem to have engineered a society where some chav parents can get themselves a free house, free food and free PS3 by having kids they can't afford.
 
FoxEye said:
But you can't have a society where one half works for what they have, and the other half is given it for free.

Well you can, but it's not great (for anyone). The biggest problem is that it's hard to differentiate those who are poor for no fault of their own, and those who are work-shy and trying to get the state to pay for everything.

Sadly we seem to have engineered a society where some chav parents can get themselves a free house, free food and free PS3 by having kids they can't afford.
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Pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter.

On the engineering of chav parents and the like, rather than cuttings benefits shouldn't we invest in schools, local infrastructure and support groups. We should really be looking at a long term investment to help a larger proportion of the population to make the right decisions.
 
Dandle said:
Child benefit should be capped at two children and not linked to family earnings, why should I get less of a state contribution when my family have worked harder, studied more and put generally put more effort into our lives (consequently paying far more tax back into the system) than two people who are quite happy banging kids out on the breadline when they quite clearly need the state contribution to look after them.

I used to have quite a socialist attitude but that doesn't work when people/families and whole areas seem quite happily living on the bread line rather than working. Our system fell apart when people no longer used it as a necessity and now feel no shame living on the state.
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Because it is a benefit.

You want to be able to claim housing benefit and other in work benefits?

Who do you think pays for this? Certainly not the unemployed or those with low tax burdens.

Taxing the middle class and then giving the money back to them in tax credits and benefits is pointless!

How about pensioners with decent pensions. Should they be getting pension credits just like the people haven't saved into a state or private pension enough to live on? After all the first group worked hard their entire life saving?

Guess who pays for that! You.

Benefits should be means tested as they are social safety nets. Not supposed to be tax refunds.
 
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benefits ARE bad, and the more people that are on them the worse it gets in our current society.

However, there is an ever decreasing number of jobs, this is completely undeniable to anyone with any ability to see whats going on.

The UK, America and a lot of western countries have moved or are moving to financial service based economies.... its BS, the economy doesn't work as its based purely on continued increasing growth. Pensions don't work without more people paying into them than people taking out of them, meaning every generation we have more old people are absolutely need an increasing working population to keep the money train moving.

This has already led to massive problems across the world, it will continue to cause debt in all the countries that aren't propping their economies up with increased spending and debt.

There is basically no longer term industry that isn't losing jobs due to either decreased need, or increased efficiency, and 99% of the things that have reduced jobs are because its an obsolete industry replaced by an entirely new product that is already more efficient.

Society needs a fundamental change away from a system that ONLY works with ever increasing population increase, ever increasing growth of which both things to any sane person are impossible to achieve.

It doesn't matter if we reduce one benefit or another, or fake another million jobs in the public sector, they'll still be being paid by an ever decreasing amount of tax from an ever decreasing amount of real jobs in money generating sectors. yes there are increasing jobs in total, but we've got less private sector tax generating jobs by a mile and most importantly, increasing jobs(even fake public sector ones that are essentially no different to paying benefits) at a rate that is lower than population growth.

This is simply unsustainable, in 10 years in the same system we will have more people on benefits, there is no where for these jobs to come from, no magic growth button, every year you throw money into the economy to generate false growth(the way MOST countries that aren't in recession are achieving their "growth" ) you make your debt worse and long term economy worse. You can buy growth, but you'll pay for it. its like paying off bills with a credit card rather than reducing your monthly bill, you can pay it now but need to pay off the amount + interest, and the price of borrowing increases as your debt gets worse.

Benefits are an issue, because it generates an attitude, take any healthy contributing member of society with a job and schedule, fire them and not let them work for 6 months, life gets harder, no schedule, nothing to wake up and do has a massive effect on you. But the reason people are on benefits is because of how society/the economy/or country works, fundamental change there or numbers on benefits will increase, playing around with benefits will do things in the short term but nothing at all to fix the reason so many people are on benefits.

Why even bring up child benefit, or gay marraige.. distraction, pick any topic people will react over and they ignore the real issue and focus on the thing shoved infront of their face. "think of the kids" because most people are too obtuse to look beyond it, benefits are an issue, but peeing around with one benefit here and putting it back the next year somewhere else, its just distraction. Every time people are about to wake up and see some of the real issues, Labour or the Tories will bring up another hot topic that will rile up Daily Mail readers and consume peoples time and effort thinking about.

benefits aren't the issue, child benefits aren't the issue, the reason people end up on benefits is still the key problem.
 
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estebanrey said:
It is a valid argument when you look at the maths. You've oversimplified the issue and forgotten the how of percentage his tax paid that goes towards child benefits (taxes that pay for everything else are irrelevant to this issue) minus the £3,000 a year he gets back is what you should be comparing to the amount I put in to the CB system.....


His wage: £100k
My wage: £24k

He pays in tax (yearly): £29,884
I pay in tax (yearly): £3,179
Source
* National insurance can be ignored since it doesn't go toward paying for CB.

Gov income tax take: £155 bn
Gov Spend on Child Benefits: £13 bn
% of income tax spent on child benefit: 8.4%

8.4% of his tax paid: £2510
8.4% of my tax paid: £267

Child Benefit He receives: £3,000 (as mentioned in the report)
Child Benefit I receive: £0

His total: £490 up
My total: £267 down

So currently, only looking at his contribution to the CB system versus mine and comparing that to the take, he is £757 better off than me. It takes nearly two of me to pay for the shortfall in his net Child Benefit contributions.
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I'm not sure where you are getting your data from but the above is wrong.

£100k earnings = no CB benefit
£24k earnings (you) = full CB benefit

So actually, he is down £2.5k and you are up about £2.6k

Obviously if you don't have children then you don't qualify and your argument is invalid
 
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I think his point was he doesn't have kids, so he loses out entirely, where as the rich person banged out four kids to make sure he got more back in child benefit than he paid into the system in taxes.....
Ermm yeah.
So the rich person is about to go from being 490 up to 3000 down with the new system, and that somehow seems fair in the world of generated numbers. That will be one hell of an annual swing for any household to suffer.
 
And those unthinking swines who get ill all the time too...they wind me up...

I'm seriously considering hacking off a leg so that I can claim my fair share of the NHS budget.
 
aln said:
Even without the benefits, 2 x 25 would give you more money based on the tax free allowance and 40% tax rates, no?
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That is exactly my point. £25k is a fairly average salary and yet they get 2x personal allowances, don't have to pay any tax at the 40% rate AND get to keep their child benefits. Surely that isn't fair when there is a single working parent on £50k getting taxed a lot more and losing their benefits.
 
It seems to me that benefits breed a dependency and entitlement culture.

I used to know several people on benefits and they always spoke of 'my money' and how they paid taxes (because VAT was applied to lots of the things the spent the money on). They were more than happy to live this way and augment their lifestyles by working 'fiddle' or 'cash in hand', paying no tax back into the system that is supporting them. There are council estates full to the brim of these people. There are also the ones who support their benefits lifestyle by becoming drug dealers.

I used to live in a flat in Gateshead and a few doors down from me there were about 3-4 houses of people on benefits. They would often have parties late into the night (any day of the week), keeping their working neighbours awake. These parties would often end in street brawls and they would complain about the 'grasses' in their street who called the police to ensure the fighting stopped and that their cars wouldn't be damaged (they would shove each other against the cars, throw bottles at each other near the cars or end up sprawled across the cars when fighting).

I regularly came home from work to find a group of 7-8 people sat out the front of on of the flats drinking, where they had obviously been for hours while I had been at work.

Some days I wondered who the idiots were, them - enjoying themselves with their mates all day every day, or me - working for poor money (at the time), but actually bankrolling the lifestyle of the idle!

One of the main problems with benefits is that if you start working you can be worse off than staying on benefits, because once you qualify for one benefit you automatically qualify for LOADS of others. If you start working you can lose the key benefit, meaning you lose all of them.

The system is broken and need a complete re-think. Also, it shouldn't be an option available to the able-bodied/minded to live off benefits without ever having paid into the system.
 
SDK^ said:
I'm not sure where you are getting your data from but the above is wrong.

£100k earnings = no CB benefit
£24k earnings (you) = full CB benefit

So actually, he is down £2.5k and you are up about £2.6k

Obviously if you don't have children then you don't qualify and your argument is invalid
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I'm getting my info from the report in the OP (did you listen to it?). I was comparing the current situation not what would happen under the proposal.

My argument isn't invalid because I proving that only looking at the CB system I am subsidising his children. The fact I don't have any is what contributes to that fact sure but it doesn't invalidated the statement I'm making.
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
I think his point was he doesn't have kids, so he loses out entirely, where as the rich person banged out four kids to make sure he got more back in child benefit than he paid into the system in taxes.....
Ermm yeah.
So the rich person is about to go from being 490 up to 3000 down with the new system, and that somehow seems fair in the world of generated numbers. That will be one hell of an annual swing for any household to suffer.
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It seems like one hell of a swing but then in the context of someone earning £100k, is £260 a month really a HUGE deal when their take home pay is in excess of £5000 a month?

If they're living that close to the edge that a 5% drop in income is going to cause them problems, I can't say I have a huge deal of sympathy.

SpeedFreak said:
why are you ignoring the £18k and £4.5k in NI?
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Because NI contributions aren't part of the pot from which CB is sourced.
 
Fenris said:
Any family where 1 parent alone earns over 50K clearly doesn't need, nay deserve the same help as, say, a single mother earning 20K.

Especially if the other parent is earning as well.

Benefits should be reserved for people who without them would actually struggle to live, not those who otherwise might not be able to go skiing every year.
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A family with 4 kids and 2 parents with a 50k income is likely to be less well off than a single mother with 1 kid earning 20k a year.

A test for expendable income and potential expendable should be the measure, actual income isn't valid because it doesn't take into account how far that has to stretch.
 
Caps and means tests save significantly less than you'd expect due to the cost of administering them; employing lots of extra civil servants costs a fair whack.

A more efficient way, and equitable, to cut the cost of child benefit is to make it taxable. It is simple to add it a parent's income, typically the mother, adjust their tax code as necessary and deduct the income tax at source.

That way you ensure those in most need do not go without, those on high incomes pay their fair share, cheap to administer and easy for people to work out how much they'll get.
 
pitchfork said:
A family with 4 kids and 2 parents with a 50k income is likely to be less well off than a single mother with 1 kid earning 20k a year.

A test for expendable income and potential expendable should be the measure, actual income isn't valid because it doesn't take into account how far that has to stretch.
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That then becomes a minefield though based on how you classify expendable income. Choosing to live in a bigger house would result in less expendable income - should you get more benefits because you chose to make less of your income available by buying a bigger house?

Just one simplistic example, but you'd enter a complete mess if you tried to go down that road I think.
 
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