What's the Future of Child Benefit?

[Deleted User]

tara747 - are you saying we should let those 1,500 people who attempted to illegally enter England via the channel tunnel in? We should have an open doors immigration policy?

Dansmam

ringo_24601 wrote: »

tara747 - are you saying we should let those 1,500 people who attempted to illegally enter England via the channel tunnel in? We should have an open doors immigration policy?

What's this about? Anyone get how this is relevant to the thread? It was an interesting discussion up to now.

[Deleted User]

Dansmam wrote: »

What's this about? Anyone get how this is relevant to the thread? It was an interesting discussion up to now.

The argument is: Western and advanced nations often have declining birth rates - whilst people are suggesting that we shouldn't have more kids or we'll over populate the planet. Someone suggested that we need to 'redistribute' people - and accepting immigrants is redistribution.

If we look at the situation with schools 10 - 15 years ago they were merging and closing them due to reducing numbers of school age children. Due to our boom in EU migrants, there is now an oversubscription to schools and we're going to have major problems in 5--7 years time as secondary schools run out of places.

Mistermeaner

Back on track:

How about withdraw child benefit completely. Re distribute the funds paying for childcare such that it is FREE for working parents.

I'm not a fan of benefits but those that pay people not to work are the worst (thanks Tony + Gordon) money should be used to support people who want to get on.

Ps working tax credits don't for me count as an in work benefit - they are an incentive to do minimal work and not try harder

Blue22

tara747 wrote: »

I'm not saying "don't have children", I'm saying "be prepared to pay to feed and clothe them if you want them".

'Children are not simply a private luxury. They are an asset to the community, and the community can not afford to leave the provision for their welfare solely to the accident of individual income'
Eleanor Rathbone 1940

http://cpag.org.uk/sites/default/files/CPAG-Child-Benefit-Fit-Future-0806.pdf

remorseless

Blue22 wrote: »

'Children are not simply a private luxury. They are an asset to the community, and the community can not afford to leave the provision for their welfare solely to the accident of individual income'
Eleanor Rathbone 1940

http://cpag.org.uk/sites/default/files/CPAG-Child-Benefit-Fit-Future-0806.pdf

Made maybe sense in 1940, population was a little bit less...



...do we still need to incentivate to make children?

Mistermeaner

Blue22 wrote: »

'Children are not simply a private luxury. They are an asset to the community, and the community can not afford to leave the provision for their welfare solely to the accident of individual income'
Eleanor Rathbone 1940

http://cpag.org.uk/sites/default/files/CPAG-Child-Benefit-Fit-Future-0806.pdf

It's not like child benefit is the only freebie though is it?

Blue22

remorseless wrote: »

Made maybe sense in 1940, population was a little bit less...



...do we still need to incentivate to make children?

Yes the population is growing but not from too many children being born. Its rising partly due to immigration but mainly due to people living longer.

To have a stable population each woman needs to have on average 2.1 children, it hasn't been that since 1970.

Blue22

Mistermeaner wrote: »

It's not like child benefit is the only freebie though is it?

As I said in my initial post, I'd rather it was the only benefit for children

michaels

ringo_24601 wrote: »

I wouldn't say that to her face.. she does 25hrs a week as a an A&E Senior Sister... Yep, I also pay out ~£3k a year in nursery fees (one more year to go, woop). I guess our household income is around £75-80k also.

Crossing my fingers on a payrise if the 'promotion panel' goes in my favour. I can then afford to up my pension payments! The sooner i'm into the £60-70k pay band the sooner I can cancel the child benefit payments.

The wife won't step foot in Lidl/Aldi - not to mention it's nowhere near as close as M&S/Sainsburys is - and they've got much better parking.

We don't struggle with money especially, we've got the kids in a good state school, 3 bed house near St Albans, foreign holiday and a UK break every year.. we've just not got much savings and a bit of debt on a 0% card. Life could be worse. It helps that I have no commuting costs, and we keep only 1 car.

Given what the health authority have done she must have a fair commute to the a&e...
Our 5 bed in St A right by arguably the best state school would be mortgage free if it weren't stoozed to the max despite having a sahw wife and a lower household income, but then we would never buy food in m&s and cutting the grass is the only exercise I get in the week. If someone can come up with anything money saving on kids extra curricular activities I would be grateful to hear it though.

On topic strangely whilst I don't see the sense in universal benefits, a minimum subsistence citizens income does make sense to me, then scrap the personal allowance but there are no 'benefits' so no issues around benefits withdrawal and work not paying. I think at times this has been a green and ukip policy but always treated with derision by the mainstream.