I am thinking of defecting to labour. seriously.

ILW

Get rid of it completely, if you cannot afford to support children, do not have them. (except for a safety net for when things go wrong)

flashnazia

leveller2911 wrote: »

Ilya_Ilyich wrote: »

People are advocating coercing the poor and disadvantaged into limiting their reproduction and giving little reason other than disdain for their economic class. Why shouldn't we provide subsidies for people to have children?

What you advocating is a form of Social Engineering in that its Human Nature to "want" and when people see they can have what they want for doing Sod all they will grasp the oppotunity.

What happends then is we have an ever increasing reliance on benefits and the more this increases the need for more taxation.What happends then? the rich will leave or find even more novel ways to avoid paying tax and it will be left to those who earn average incomes to pay the Tax to subsidise the poor.

:T:T:T

wageslave

I have an average income and I feel as though I have been subsidising both ends of the income spectrum for my entire working life.

I see absolutely no difference between the super-rich who won't pay income tax and the super-poor who can't.

And please, please don't sing me the tired old tune about the rich providing employment. Because that is really what motivates them to get up in the mornings.......

treliac

Ilya_Ilyich wrote: »

People are advocating coercing the poor and disadvantaged into limiting their reproduction

I, and I think others, are instead suggesting that most of us have to limit our reproduction for financial reasons. It's a fact of life and we have to deal with it!

I'd argue that before spouting of about rights to reproduce, we have a duty to think about our responsibilities - to the children we bring into this world and as members of a wider society we should be prepared to give to as well as take from .

diable

Child Benefit, pftt next it will be breast enlargement and trans gender realignment operations on the NHS..............

Derivative

Micawber wrote:

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.

Income £11000, childcare £5000, result - cannot afford child.

"The poor" are restricted from driving, from travel around the world, from the arts, from many things. There is no Television Benefit, why should there exist Child Benefit?

I have a real issue with this description of "the poor" as some sort of lame, unintelligent sector of society that cannot help themselves. Safety nets one could say are an essential part of capitalism, child benefit on the other hand directly encourages bad behaviour.

Basing economic policy on emotion has a name. Populism, also known as buying voters.

"Rights" to reproduce simply do not exist. Human rights are figures of speech. They have no meaning besides what people choose to assign to them. I can just as well say we have a Right to Chocolate and it's worth as much as the paper it's on.

I'd like to add I stand by the original poster as I don't believe couples should recieve any state benefits that two single persons would not be eligible to. Couples already benefit from lower housing prices, cheaper food, cheaper travel if only one car is required, and so on.