BBC Thursday: The Future State of Welfare

michaels

What about those who do not have the skills to earn more than a minimum income however hard they work; we are not all born with the intelligence to succeed in a knowledge based economy where low skilled jobs compete against much cheaper developing world labour. Should we deny these people the opportunity to have kids?

ILW wrote: »

What is wrong with the idea of "if you cannot afford to support children, do not have them"?

lostinrates

Jimmy_31 wrote: »

If you want to breed dogs in britain you have to apply for a licence.

If you want to breed human beings you just go ahead and breed.

No you don't need a licence to breed dogs in Britain so far as I know, maybe in NI? But not in England at least. (Mores the pity!)

Jimmy_31

michaels wrote: »

What about those who do not have the skills to earn more than a minimum income however hard they work; we are not all born with the intelligence to succeed in a knowledge based economy where low skilled jobs compete against much cheaper developing world labour. Should we deny these people the opportunity to have kids?

If somebody who is on minimum wage for life and knows full well they will always be skint, then decides to have a kid that they cannot afford then that is a bit wrong dont you think.

Why should all the people who dont want kids have to work harder so somebody else can have something they cannot afford.

Do you think somebody who cannot afford to feed a dog should go out and buy a dog.

Jimmy_31

lostinrates wrote: »

No you don't need a licence to breed dogs in Britain so far as I know, maybe in NI? But not in England at least. (Mores the pity!)

It depends if you breed your dog as a one off or if you treat it as a business and produce lots of litters per year from lots of dogs.

de1amo

one of the biggest problems faced by the uk economy is the disportionate number of old to young. İt is an aging society and if it isnt rectified the entire welfare system will 'die'-no hospitals etc--just because the parent survives on benefits doesnt mean their childreb will!
(thus paying no tax). The labour Government tried to rectify this unbalance by letting in young foreign workers but they seem to have had enough of the bad weather!

Mary_Hartnell

Bringing up a kid is a major investment, it costs the working parents something well into 6 figures, particularly so if one of the parents, usually the mother decides to take time off or work part time.
It also costs society at large a similar sum in health care and education.
If as an adult it goes off the rails or refuses to contribute, you can more than double those figures.
We have that famous "cycle of deprivation" that needs to be broken.

However, I am not prepared to tell every poor woman in society that she has no right to have a child; I would stress her responsibility to care for it.
I think the problem starts in the teenage years, there are a lot of young mothers who have woken up too late, and ask themselves, "where did I go wrong - my contemporaries are out there having fun - seeing the world and/or making serious money".
There is also a sub set of parents, who encourage their teenage daughter, in that they want her out of their overcrowded house and know that "the social/council" will set her and the baby up in a household of her own. This stupid young woman suddenly has a standard of living that was far out of her grasp as an almost unemployable burger flipper, and is able to bask in the reflected attention focused on the baby.
The baby, being some sort of justification for its grand parents' none too useful lives.

So when the baby goes to school its mother is back to the meaningless lifestyle only she is less employable and facing the 94% tax trap.

The logical thing to do is (you guessed it) HAVE ANOTHER BABY.

I would like to apologise to "burger flippers" everywhere. I have some experience as my kids have flipped burgers in their time. Flipping burgers teaches you how to be part of a team and how to get on with the other members of the crew and those difficult unreasonable people called customers. It also teaches something about "elf and safety", which is a major concern these days in a crowded, potentially pandemic world.
It also teaches something about handling money and accounts & budgeting. The pay is about 100 times that of standing up to your knees in mud, raising a crop for your fellow citizens in the third world on dad's five acre farm. That is a living wage, millions of people manage to live on it.

However pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps in a pressurised retail environment requires real determination, perhaps better expended on something more productive.
Flipping burgers is 100 times more sensible than rotting on the dole.
.

ILW

michaels wrote: »

What about those who do not have the skills to earn more than a minimum income however hard they work; we are not all born with the intelligence to succeed in a knowledge based economy where low skilled jobs compete against much cheaper developing world labour. Should we deny these people the opportunity to have kids?

I cannot see why not.

Mary_Hartnell

de1amo wrote: »

one of the biggest problems faced by the uk economy is the disportionate number of old to young. İt is an aging society and if it isnt rectified the entire welfare system will 'die'-no hospitals etc--just because the parent survives on benefits doesnt mean their childreb will!
(thus paying no tax). The labour Government tried to rectify this unbalance by letting in young foreign workers but they seem to have had enough of the bad weather!

You have got to be joking.
If they have half a brain, they HAVE A BABY, preferably with some scrounger with a UK passport, that makes it very difficult to send the mother "home" to the third world country.

There is no problem recruiting third world care workers, the problem comes when they decide to play "happy families" and the effect they have on our own "difficult to employ" citizens.

bob_a_builder

"f e c k less" - if only they would !

Trouble is breeding at the current disproportionate rate that they are, compared to those who have to pay to support their offspring - how long before they take over the asylum ?

how much you can get in Housing Benefit, how much you can get in tax credits, even though you pay no tax

Never understood that one myself, either

de1amo

Mary_Hartnell wrote: »

You have got to be joking.
If they have half a brain, they HAVE A BABY, preferably with some scrounger with a UK passport, that makes it very difficult to send the mother "home" to the third world country.

There is no problem recruiting third world care workers, the problem comes when they decide to play "happy families" and the effect they have on our own "difficult to employ" citizens.

what percentage of nearly 70 million are 'we' talking?- it doesnt seem the norm in my local!-i was thinking of the legal immigrants over the very small number of illegals