Jump to content

Child Support ( Non Bollitics ideally)


tonyh29

Do you agree or disagree with the proposed cut In Child benefit moneyfrom 2013  

39 members have voted

  1. 1. Do you agree or disagree with the proposed cut In Child benefit moneyfrom 2013

    • Yes
      29
    • No
      10


Recommended Posts

I agree that a household with an income in the region of £44k does not need child benefits and should not be getting them.

So a family that has an income of 44K that has 3 kids for example should not get any sort of help but a family with a income of 43999 should?

When you say they don't "need" them, I am interested in how you come to that conclusion.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maybe Tony's point is a simple one - at what level should child benefit start to be removed?

44K (soon to be lowered) seems to be a magical figure that is talked about. Is 44K that much when for example you have 3 kids?

The average salary in the UK is what now?

Is there an argument (an I am in NO way advocating this) for Child Benefit to be paid in the form of vouchers that can only be spent on certain things?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Or is it more of a question as to whether we approve of the idea of someone like Osbourne, having a thought of his own, and then deciding to just make it a policy. I mean bless him for trying and all that, but shouldn't we perhaps vote for him to be put somewhere safe, where an economically literate grown up from the treasury staff can stop his fantasies from getting out of hand, and thereby save a load of embarrasment all round? That would seem the fairest thing, all in all.

That sounds like a very good idea. :P

Belize, perhaps? Or the Isle of Man?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree that a household with an income in the region of £44k does not need child benefits and should not be getting them.

So a family that has an income of 44K that has 3 kids for example should not get any sort of help but a family with a income of 43999 should?

When you say they don't "need" them, I am interested in how you come to that conclusion.

You have to have a cut off point somewhere though.

What I oppose to is the method of calculation. You can have a household earning £44k (single earner + full time parent) losing the benefit where a household bringing in anything up to £87k with both parents in full time work but below the threshold still getting it.

The government try to promote family values. It's not good for kids to be latchkey kids (etc) but this move just shits all over that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You'd have to be pretty stupid to make that mistake given this is a thread about child benefits that you yourself actually posted.

you'd have to be even more stupid to not be able to post a coherent answer in a thread

but carry on

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You'd have to be pretty stupid to make that mistake given this is a thread about child benefits that you yourself actually posted.

you'd have to be even more stupid to not be able to post a coherent answer in a thread

but carry on

You're quite right.

BTW, are you going to redraft the opening post so that people understand what the question you're actually asking is? There are a number of confused readers by the looks of things. Cheers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maybe Tony's point is a simple one - at what level should child benefit start to be removed?

Daily Mash

Middle class families face no longer being able to use child benefit to buy wine, it emerged last night. Ministers have spent two months searching desperately for ways to cut the UK's soaring welfare bill before finally realising they should just stop giving money to people who obviously don't need it. A senior source said: "We looked into who would be adversely affected by scrapping the £87 a month child benefit for middle class families and realised pretty quickly that it was Oddbins and Majestic. "We may as well have been paying them directly, so all people would have had to do was drop by once a month, show them a photo of a child and pick up their free case."

But Helen Archer, a woman who doesn't know what a job is from Grantham, said: "I use my child benefit for Oliver's trombone lessons. Two years and he's still absolutely **** shit. Thank Christ it's not my money."

And Emma Bradford, a part-time locum GP from York, added: "My £87 a month goes towards the accountant who is helping us avoid inheritance tax."

Meanwhile old people's charities have warned that scrapping the winter fuel payment for middle class pensioners could force them to burn their Bill Bryson collections in their garden chimeneas. A spokeswoman for Old UK said: "Thanks to the recession the average middle class pensioner couple is already down to just 27 holidays a year. Many of them in Scotland.

"Removing the winter fuel payment will simply cause a vast bonfire of gentle, but keenly observed transatlantic humour, or force thousands of people to stay in Magaluf until early April."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If I still lived in the UK, I'd be a higher rate tax payer, and would therefore be waving goodbye to the child benefit that comes my way. Whilst any sort of income reecution is unwelcome, I don't "need" it in the same way that somebody on minimum wage would. Would I be pissed off that a family next door both earning £40K would keep theirs? Well maybe, but that's more fool the Tories for letting an affluent group of people off the hook.

I don't object to the general principal of doing away with universal child benefit, I just think they need to look at ways of making it a bit less of a pigs ear. And whoever suggested sending Osbourner o live over is just plain mean. :(

Link to comment
Share on other sites

losing the benefit where a household bringing in anything up to £87k with both parents in full time work but below the threshold still getting it.

I guess the logic is that if both of them are working full time that unless they are Josef Fritzl , in theory they have to employ a child minder to look after the children whilst they both work and thus are outlaying more than a family where one person stays at home ... and the child benefit money can go towards the child minder cost ??

only really applies to children in the early years though but is about all I can really think of as a logic behind the cut offs ....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maybe Tony's point is a simple one - at what level should child benefit start to be removed?

Daily Mash

Middle class families face no longer being able to use child benefit to buy wine, it emerged last night. Ministers have spent two months searching desperately for ways to cut the UK's soaring welfare bill before finally realising they should just stop giving money to people who obviously don't need it. A senior source said: "We looked into who would be adversely affected by scrapping the £87 a month child benefit for middle class families and realised pretty quickly that it was Oddbins and Majestic. "We may as well have been paying them directly, so all people would have had to do was drop by once a month, show them a photo of a child and pick up their free case."

...

He he. :D

Interestingly enough, some research says:

5. Conclusions

Our analysis finds that unanticipated variation in CB that is driven by policy induced changes in its real value is disproportionately spent on adult assignable goods. The results for couples suggest that, at the margin, as much as a half of unanticipated changes in CB, is spent on alcohol. The results for lone parents are less strong but nonetheless still apparent. These findings contrast with those of Kooreman (2000), which exploits variation in Dutch CB, and of Edmonds (2002), based on data from Slovenia.

A weakness of this line of research is that it is unclear what inferences can be drawn from an equivalence (or lack of it) between CB and other income. One might be tempted to conclude that CB is treated differently because there is something different about it. For example, CB is usually given to the mother so that a lack of equivalence may suggest imperfect pooling of household incomes. However, our results are also true for lone parents where there is no intra-household distributional issue, so this cannot account for all of this lack of equivalence. It is true that the effect for lone parents is less pronounced, the alcohol coefficient for CB is around half the size as in the couples samples, and this is consistent with the idea that there is some free-riding between partners which does not occur in single parent households. A second issue might be that real CB variation tracks the business cycle implying that our results are attributable to cyclical effects in spending. However, we find no such cyclical effects in the spending patterns of households without children and there is little reason to expect households with children to differ in this respect.

Finally, a simple but important innovation in this work has been to distinguish between anticipated and unanticipated variation in CB. We find that it is unanticipated CB variation that is reflected in adult assignable good expenditure suggesting that parents are successful in providing at least some insurance for their children. This finding suggests a high degree of altruism on the part of parents. The implication is that CB may simply finance spending on children that would have otherwise occurred.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If I still lived in the UK

:-)

Well I don't! It might only be a few miles off the coast, but when it comes to tax and company law etc, it's very much its own country. Obviously if we were discussing BBC telly or the weather or anything else where there was no difference then I wouldn't make the point.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree that a household with an income in the region of £44k does not need child benefits and should not be getting them.

You obviously don't have kids and have never had to run a household.

It depends on your definition of "need". I take the point that I think you're making in that when you have kids, there always seems to be things to pay out for, but would you be on the breadline if you didn't get the cash?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It depends on your definition of "need". I take the point that I think you're making in that when you have kids, there always seems to be things to pay out for, but would you be on the breadline if you didn't get the cash?

to be honest , blandy's jokey article probably isn't far from the truth in some instances .. Would be nice once we've wiped out Labours debt if child support could increase for those that do actually need it to buy food and clothes for their children rather then being restored to those that don't need it for essentials

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It depends on your definition of "need". I take the point that I think you're making in that when you have kids, there always seems to be things to pay out for, but would you be on the breadline if you didn't get the cash?

to be honest , blandy's jokey article probably isn't far from the truth in some instances .. Would be nice once we've wiped out Labours debt if child support could increase for those that do actually need it to buy food and clothes for their children rather then being restored to those that don't need it for essentials

I think there is an element of truth to it also. I don't personally notice the money as such, in that it just goes into our account, and I don't say "right, that £80 is going on Isabelle's new school shoes and two new school sweatshirts". It just gets spend as part of our normal monthly expenditure, which does include the odd bottle of wine or two!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...
Â