I'm not on benefits!

[Barry Fish]

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/3808310/Weve-got-9-kids-twins-on-the-way-and-were-NOT-on-benefits.html

I read this today and it made me LOL

The Sun really is a quality paper....

Their income from wages, tax credits and child benefit is £32,000 — and they refuse to claim state handouts.

[MrZigster]

Yes oafish. I am constantly exasperated by my Daily Mail reading colleagues bemoaning "doley scum" while it hasn't entered their heads that the Child Tax Credits they are claiming (or whatever they're called) is a form of dole.

Though the idea that "no child should grow up in poverty" is an admirable one, whichever civil servant/politician/committee set the bar so high had a strange idea of what amounts to poverty imo. It must surely encourage sprogging? I guess they're hoping for lots of future tax payers to pay for pensions or something.

I don't want kids to grow up in poor households, but as a single tax payer it completely baffles me that colleagues who earn about 20-25% more than me already, plus have a partner so live in a double income household, then get even more wealthy by means of tax rebates just because they've decided to have a kid or two.

You don't see these middle class benefits derided in the media as being "scrounged" in the same way that unemployment benefits are do you. I bet they cost a fortune.

Changing it now would be political suicide for anyone though.

Subsidising businesses who should be paying a decent wage already anyway they are.

[MrZigster]

We will be losing Child Benefit soon due to our earnings... Can't really complain given the state of the nations finances and bigger priorities...

[Rufus Gwertigan]

Yes oafish. I am constantly exasperated by my Daily Mail reading colleagues bemoaning "doley scum" while it hasn't entered their heads that the Child Tax Credits they are claiming (or whatever they're called) is a form of dole.

Though the idea that "no child should grow up in poverty" is an admirable one, whichever civil servant/politician/committee set the bar so high had a strange idea of what amounts to poverty imo. It must surely encourage sprogging? I guess they're hoping for lots of future tax payers to pay for pensions or something.

I don't want kids to grow up in poor households, but as a single tax payer it completely baffles me that colleagues who earn about 20-25% more than me already, plus have a partner so live in a double income household, then get even more wealthy by means of tax rebates just because they've decided to have a kid or two.

You don't see these middle class benefits derided in the media as being "scrounged" in the same way that unemployment benefits are do you. I bet they cost a fortune.

Changing it now would be political suicide for anyone though.

Subsidising businesses who should be paying a decent wage already anyway they are.

Edited September 12, 2011 by Rufus Gwertigan

[MrZigster]

What tax rebates? or are you on about Tax credits?

If you feel so angry about the system why don't you repay everything that may have been claimed on your behalf since been born, and then you would not have ever benefited from it. Then you can sit on your high horse and all will be well.

[feral chile]

It's all to do with the Protestant Work Ethic, isn't it? Child Benefit replaced the old tax relief/married couples allowance, whatever it used to be called.

And I always view Working Tax Credits as a subsidy to prop up businesses - it allows employers to pay less than market value for labour.

[grumpyhack]

If the number of people out of work was reduced, and I mean by creating genuine jobs that paid a decent wage, then we would have fewer people on benefits of one sort or another. I suspect that most people would rather be in work than on unemployment benefit.

There are many other less obvious benefits, like the NHS and free education up to age 16, that I believe are part of the hallmark of a civilised society.

My daughter, who's now unemployed after returning from working as a volunteer aid worker in Cameroon, saw the consequences of a society where there are no benefits, no free health care and no free education. Levels of health and education were poor and infant mortaility high and, as a result the country was stagnating.

[Pogues Mcgogues]

I look fondly on my time on the dole. Probably because of the job I'm in now.

[eFestivals]

It's all to do with the Protestant Work Ethic, isn't it? Child Benefit replaced the old tax relief/married couples allowance, whatever it used to be called.

that's factually incorrect. Child benefit was in existence for decades before the married couples tax allowance was abolished in the early 1980s.

[feral chile]

that's factually incorrect. Child benefit was in existence for decades before the married couples tax allowance was abolished in the early 1980s.

[eFestivals]

I know there was something called Family Allowance, but I'm sure they abolished tax relief when they introduced child benefit.

ahhh, I'd forgotten the name change along the way - but it's really only a name change, it's not really anything different.