Tax Credits

dktreesea

Thrugelmir wrote: »

A degree of common sense has to be applied. You would be up in arms if GO announced that the basic rate of income tax was going up by 5p next April. People should be given time to adjust their budgets. Even the headlines alone will have some effect.

Plenty of better use for much of taxpayers money. So change is required almost everywhere. In order that the burden is equally and proportionately shared.

How much time should people on, say, household earned incomes of £25k to £40k be given?


Welfare is only sustainable as long as the country can afford it. Our rate of population growth, combined with our failure to provide paid work of sufficient quality (definition - no need to revert to the welfare state for a top up) to all those who need it suggests that welfare will continue to become less affordable into the future.

chewmylegoff

dktreesea wrote: »

But even so, the fear imposed on the government by the House of Lords is there, that cutting tax credits for working families is cruel/mean/nasty/making "the poor" pay for any cuts required for public spending.


I wonder why a family with, say, a £25k a year earned income is entitled to any benefits at all, regardless of the number of children they have. Because rents are too expensive in places like London? Move somewhere cheaper and commute. It's as if people think a £500 a week household income for a family with children is peanuts, not enough to live on.


Never mind £25k a year household income. If you have children and a household income of under £40k, you can qualify for tax credits, according to the Telegraph in a recent article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/georgeosborne/11951056/Tax-credits-what-are-they-who-claims-them-and-why-is-everyone-so-angry-about-the-cuts.html
Are there any other countries in the world which pay benefits to families earning nearly £800 a week?

The max is higher than that. ~£40k is the limit if you have no childcare costs. The childcare related element can be claimed by people with household incomes up to ~£65k.

dktreesea

chewmylegoff wrote: »

The max is higher than that. ~£40k is the limit if you have no childcare costs. The childcare related element can be claimed by people with household incomes up to ~£65k.

I suppose people on a household income of £40k, as with those on £65k, could argue that any tax credits or subsidised childcare costs they get isn't benefits at all but is an income tax rebate.

Moby

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/nov/22/softening-tax-credit-blow-funded-housing-benefit-cuts
The ingenuity of it. Those losing housing benefit will get evicted when they can no longer pay their rent. They go to the local council, who offers them housing fifty miles away, which, if they don't take, will make them intentionally homeless. Take it and they lose their jobs - hence lose their tax credit. Result? Freeing up housing where the jobs are for those able to command high enough wages to pay the rent (without housing benefit assistance). Hence the move towards a higher wage, higher productivity, economy that we all want. Oh, the ones now living miles away from their support network, relatives, friends, schools, GPs? Workshy so and so on. They need to get a job...another example of a joined up social policy.....not!

lisyloo

Oh, the ones now living miles away from their support network, relatives, friends, schools, GPs?

I can understand why disabled people need to be close to carers, but do normal people have a basic human right not to have to use their legs or a bus to travel anywhere?
I can't see how every single person/family can live next to all services simultaneously.
Most families would only visit the GP occassionally - visting relatives? - go on the bus !! Even people who live in the Stix have buses even if they aren't frequent.

We need to get away from this idea that everyone can have a perfect life without lifting a finger. It's not possible.
If you want a better life then get out there and work for it !!

Ideally those who are working hard everyday should be able to live close to where they work and those who are contibuting little and need to visit relatives a few times a year should surely live a bit further out. Isn't that logical?

CLAPTON

Moby wrote: »

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/nov/22/softening-tax-credit-blow-funded-housing-benefit-cuts
The ingenuity of it. Those losing housing benefit will get evicted when they can no longer pay their rent. They go to the local council, who offers them housing fifty miles away, which, if they don't take, will make them intentionally homeless. Take it and they lose their jobs - hence lose their tax credit. Result? Freeing up housing where the jobs are for those able to command high enough wages to pay the rent (without housing benefit assistance). Hence the move towards a higher wage, higher productivity, economy that we all want. Oh, the ones now living miles away from their support network, relatives, friends, schools, GPs? Workshy so and so on. They need to get a job...another example of a joined up social policy.....not!

just an example of the disastrous consequences of the Brown/Blair dependency culture.

One wonders how all those immigrants (thousands of miles from home) or indeed UK based people with worthwhile jobs (only the unemployed/benefits or super rich can afford London) , manage to move and cope with the loss of support network, relatives, friends, schools, GPs etc?

lisyloo

One wonders how all those immigrants (thousands of miles from home) or indeed UK based people with worthwhile jobs (only the unemployed/benefits or super rich can afford London)

They compromise on space and share (some to squallid levels).
I'm not super-rich but I live centrally through not having any spare room.
For me that's a better compromise than commuting.
That may be impossible if you have kids of lots of mobility equipment, but otherwise it's not essential to have spare room.

manage to move and cope with the loss of support network, relatives, friends, schools, GPs etc?

Well clearly if you're living in a war zone then you'll take greater risks, but I agree with your point, that people need to stop whinging that everything in not perfect.

Generali

CLAPTON wrote: »

just an example of the disastrous consequences of the Brown/Blair dependency culture.

Yup.

The whole point of the policy is to get people off benefits and into work. Once people are working they start to get promoted and earn more than the minimum wage.

After all, only 1,386,000 people make the minimum wage (as of May 2014) out of a workforce of 31,210,000, less than 5% of workers. Most people that find a job will find one that pays more than the minimum wage although clearly the higher the minimum wage is set the more people will earn it.

If you work outside of hospitality, retail and cleaning you are extremely unlikely to earn the minimum wage.

WHA

CLAPTON wrote: »

there is a huge difference between dealing with a small number of problem poor families and an army of heavily subsidised people who are specifically incentivised not to work hard.

Absolutely. Where you have a any group of !!!!less parents, their kids have no chance. Yes, they may end up in a local school with kids who want to learn, but they'll still end up sat with and hanging out with the other chavvy kids who don't have parental support.

I saw this at my old school. One girl was a real pain in the butt, always disruptive in lessons, detentions virtually every week, hanging out with other like-minded kids (though she was by far the worst), smoking in the toilets, etc. She was virtually bottom in every subject. When we did GCE options, very few chose History so there was only one class, and she chose it, so was in with the rest of us, in fact, she was sat next to me. I feared the worst, but the thing was that none of her "group" had chosen History, so she was isolated. As it turned out, without other chavs to mess around with, she got on with her work without too much trouble, and History ended up being the only O level she got.

Don't know what the answer is, but whether you're living together in a cluster or in school classrooms together, the chav element stick together, and that's what has got to be broken. We need to find ways of getting the kids of !!!!less parents out of their poor situation and instilled with a sense of self belief, study and work ethic. Throwing money at the problem alone won't work (as was proved by the disastrous Labour years).

dktreesea

WHA wrote: »

Absolutely. Where you have a any group of !!!!less parents, their kids have no chance. Yes, they may end up in a local school with kids who want to learn, but they'll still end up sat with and hanging out with the other chavvy kids who don't have parental support.

I saw this at my old school. One girl was a real pain in the butt, always disruptive in lessons, detentions virtually every week, hanging out with other like-minded kids (though she was by far the worst), smoking in the toilets, etc. She was virtually bottom in every subject. When we did GCE options, very few chose History so there was only one class, and she chose it, so was in with the rest of us, in fact, she was sat next to me. I feared the worst, but the thing was that none of her "group" had chosen History, so she was isolated. As it turned out, without other chavs to mess around with, she got on with her work without too much trouble, and History ended up being the only O level she got.

Don't know what the answer is, but whether you're living together in a cluster or in school classrooms together, the chav element stick together, and that's what has got to be broken. We need to find ways of getting the kids of !!!!less parents out of their poor situation and instilled with a sense of self belief, study and work ethic. Throwing money at the problem alone won't work (as was proved by the disastrous Labour years).

Do the "chav element" stick together because they want to, or is it like at our children's school, where the well off kids sniff them out so to speak and avoid them, leaving them with only their fellow chavs to hang out with?