Should Millionaire Mick lead to the abolition of Tax Credits?

BACKFRMTHEEDGE

grizzly1911 wrote: »

Cost of living lower?

Housing costs lower?

Less part time, NMW roles, more full time living wage positions?

Governments don't want people (women or men) at home looking after their kids and houses - they therefore need to offer working tax credits and tax breaks on nursery fees and the like to encourage people back into the work force - the labour force is then bigger, more productive and people consume more and the economy grows....

...everything is about Economic Growth....:)

I can't see a hgher tax threshold working in this way...???

CLAPTON

grizzly1911 wrote: »

Cost of living lower?

Housing costs lower?

Less part time, NMW roles, more full time living wage positions?

Inflation and changes in technology and other things makes direct comparisons difficult.

but yes without the unintended consequences of the NMW and the complicated work related benefits system we might all be a better off

CLAPTON

BACKFRMTHEEDGE wrote: »

Because we don't want children living in poverty?

no child in the UK lives in poverty unless their parents are dysfunctional people.

the benefits system encourages dysfunctional people to have more children

grizzly1911

CLAPTON wrote: »

Inflation and changes in technology and other things makes direct comparisons difficult.

but yes without the unintended consequences of the NMW and the complicated work related benefits system we might all be a better off

You are right times move on.

I think the division in society, we are only now starting to see, would just have become more apparent a lot earlier. I don't think we would all have been better off.

BACKFRMTHEEDGE

CLAPTON wrote: »

no child in the UK lives in poverty unless their parents are dysfunctional people.

• Nearly 4 million children are living in poverty in the UK (after housing costs)
• The proportion of children living in poverty grew from 1 in 10 in 1979 to 1 in 3 in 1998. Today, 30 per cent of children in Britain are living in poverty.
• The UK has one of the worst rates of child poverty in the industrialised world
• The majority (59 per cent) of poor children live in a household where at least one adult works.
• 40 per cent of poor children live in a household headed by a lone parent. The majority of poor children (57 per cent) live in a household headed by a couple.
• 38% of children in poverty are from families with 3 or more children.
• Since 1999, when the current Government pledged to end child poverty, 550,000 children have been lifted out of poverty.

CLAPTON wrote: »

the benefits system encourages dysfunctional people to have more children

Evidence?????

grizzly1911

BACKFRMTHEEDGE wrote: »

Evidence?????

I am not disputing your evidence but poverty measured against an arbitrary figure.

I guess it is not poverty as per the depths of the industrial revolution or against a third world African state.

Perhaps reality is that we will end up shifting that way. Trying to hold onto old values and measures may not be possible in the world economy.

CLAPTON

BACKFRMTHEEDGE wrote: »

Evidence?????

To say children live in proverty in the UK is a dreadful insult to all the people in the world that really do live in poverty.
Travel a bit and see real poverty in the world.

If you mean that some people's income is less than others then that is so.

The benefits system pays people not to work, to sit around all day bored and useless and engaging in minor crime, drugs and alcohol. Children learn from their parents. The children learn that working, struggling, achieving are not part of their agenda.

The evidence is the great increase in the numbers of people making a lifestyle choice of living on benefits with absolutely no intention of full time working.

We can absorb a million foreigners who mainly get jobs but the many of the native born don't

The benefits systems pays people more money if they have more children; it also provides a larger home.

It also encourgaes marriage/partner breakdowns as there is no economic consequences of so doing (in fact one might well be better off especially with a little benefit fraud).

John_Pierpoint

"Poverty" has been cut by the Condems, by the simple mechanism of keeping benefits up with inflation while productivity, value of wages and hours worked fell for those in work - it is a complete nonsense defining poverty as a percentage of average wage.

Child poverty is not asking Santa for a new bike and getting a second hand one from a boot sale - it is not being wanted, with cramped horizons and few relationships with peers and adults.
Being bullied at school isn't much fun, especially if the bullies are shallow kids who try to think that being manipulated into buying branded clothes sold for (say) three times their intrinsic value, somehow defines the worth of an individual.
A child with the former should be able to stand up against the latter.

Parental poverty is mainly loss of hope and self respect - I have a feeling that some people living in these conditions might have more than some living on benefits in the UK.

Moby

Mr_Mumble wrote: »

The spat between The Gruaniad and Heil Mail, over the murderous Mick Philpott, has been as amusing as usual.

The core of the financial problem laid out by The Mail:

Money from Housing Benefit and Child Benefit is dwarfed by the Tax Credits. For every £1 earnt from the cleaning jobs the 'ladies' were garnering £2 in benefits. Philpott and his accomplices - including one of the mothers convicted for 17 years today - were playing the system, being smart and tripling their money from doing these jobs.

The state should be incentivising people to use their smarts in more productive ways than the negative-sum game of ripping off other taxpayers. In this case the modern 'tax credit' system based on 'means-testing' is being abused far more than the older - more flat-rate - child and housing benefit.

The Guardian is, of course, in a different world to The Mail. They got especially enraged by the Mail front-page a couple of days ago:



The problem with the Guardian's response is the factual delusions of their writers, consider this from Zoe Williams: Don't get mad about the Mail's use of the Philpotts to tarnish the poor – get even

The word "poor" continues being used throughout the article. But Philpott, nor anyone else living on benefits with children, is "poor", at least not in a financial sense.

Using the £100,000 taxable income from the Mail's numbers how much would an annuity for someone like Mick Philpott cost?

The current FT/Hargreaves Lansdown annuity table: Single life, RPI, 5yr guarantee at 55: £2,346 income per £100,000 of capital

A lump sum of £4,265,745.95 is required to get an annuity that pays out what Philpott was 'earning'. Philpott was a multi-millionaire!

Yes, this is back of the envelope stuff but I'll refute some initial obvious responses:

1. The kids will not provide a revenue stream until Philpott dies like an annuity would. His partner in crime was 32, plenty more sprog producing years and that's without the potential of snaring another 'lady'.

2. Benefits are no longer uplifted at the rate of RPI. Well, they were at the time of the crime.

3. There's no 5yr guarantee with benefits. True but there are state death benefits and the difference for a level annuity between the guarantee and no guarantee is a fraction of 1%.

4. The Mail numbers are wrong. They'd have to be very inaccurate for Philpott not to garner an income be a millionaire.

5. The numbers you're using are the credits for three adults not one. Many of the potential benefits for the mothers are not included. Even 1/3rd of the sum still makes over a million each.

6. They have a lot of kids to feed. Boo hoo! You breed, you feed.

Many on the left have said the characterisations of benefit claimants as unfair - likening Philpott's incentives to those who of a 'wealthy' person with life insurance. Okay. The incentives of Philpott and other murderous evil-doers are similar here. The loss of cashflow for Philpott from one of his mistresses leaving him was a high six figure lump sums worth.

Most detective stories will float the idea of a life insurance payout as a motive for murder. Why is it wrong for the media and politicians to mention the luxurious benefits culture in modern day Britain as a similar motive for murder considering its lucrative payouts?

Earlier this week the Daily Mail and Guardian were in agreement playing to their readership. They both stated the benefits cuts introduced on Monday were sizeable and historic. The Tories wanted to look tough on 'spongers', Labour wanted to play up the 'harm' on the 'poor'. Yet, the changes in monetary terms were miniscule compared to the cost of Gordon Brown's tax credits that now cost the British taxpayer £30bn each year.

Why not scrap tax credits and use the money by reducing taxes on the working poor? Making income tax and National Insurance Contributions 0%-rated up to £12,000 in earnings would cost £20bn of the £30bn savings from scrapping the circular, admin-heavy, easily exploitable and open to fraud tax credits.

Yes, many in the middle class with children would lose a few hundred quid in tax credits and there will be a sliding scale on down in-terms of impact but the savings from paying less tax on work would also be more meaningful for those on lower wages. It would hit hardest those following similar tactics to Mick Philpott... not a bad trade-off.

Its totally wrong to draw wider lessons about 'society' from a tragedy such as this. Any sensible person would know this....so what's the agenda....it wouldn't be political point scoring would it?:rotfl:

robin_banks

The murders are down to Philpot alone and not the benefits system. He was a violent man in 1978 when he tried to murder a previous girlfriend.

Yet the media gave him a celebrity status via Jeremy Kyle etc.