Dear Dave: pay child benefit to all regardless of income, and save a packet

Derek Gardiner gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

No, they were meant to provide a contribution to the exchequer - some of which helped to pay the state pensions of those who were retired at that time.

Part of your NI contributions may buy you entilement to some extra pension (S2P). However people working now pay the pensions of people who are retired.

There was no child benefit then? I thought this has been around for a long time.

So only the rich are allowed to have children? Personally I don't begrudge paying a little to help people who are less fortunate than myself.

Again I ask what is my NI for?

Then surely I have the right to expect current NI payers to contribute to mine.

It just goes into the general tax pot.

The linkage to it being used directly to pay for benefits and pensions was broken long ago

tim

you might have a reason to expect it, you don't have a right to do so

tim

I accept everything you are saying but my concern is that Government like many 'normal' have grown used to using credit to fund their activities. The time has come for this to change, Government has to realise that Britain is no longer a major political power and could easily trim it's military budgets.

I also do not begrudge paying to help people who really need help but I object to contributing to people who already have a better standard of living than I have ever enjoyed.

Sorry if it appears that I am unfeeling but I was brought up in age when people were expected to pay their way.

Not my fault, governments should provide what they can afford, an impossible task now that have caused such a financial mess.

It's not the current Government's job to honour a promise made by one

ISTR that the previous government didn't even see the need to honour a promise that they themselves had made before being elected (not to introduce university fees).

As my dad always said, "what's sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander"!

Though not caused by the current one (if indeed there is agreement that it was, partially, caused by government)

tim

Many of us are in agreement without you, but how do we get there from here?

At 7% of total spending even halving the MoD budget only makes a small dent

You need better ides.

tim

In message , Adrian writes

If you are paying them now, they are helping to pay for mine.

Exactly, I paid them for 42 years to pay for the pensioners of that era, and for benefit of the unlucky people who were ill and needed medical treatment..

I don't remember anyone doing quite so much whining about it in those days either. ;-)

In message , Mark writes

LOL! When my wife was receiving CB it was a trivial amount, and didn't apply to the first child, IIRC. There was (I think) a few months Maternity Benefit, and no time off for dads, I had to use my holidays.

Fortunate being the key word. When I see someone with a disability or painful illness who can only be helped by the welfare state, I think "It could be you-hoo".

Consider each person in the population in turn... It doesn't matter how many children that person has, when the person is young there'll be childrens benefits paid in respect of them; when they are working age they'll pay taxes; when they are old they'll recieve more state benefits. For the average person, the value of the children's & old age benefits will correspond to the value of taxes paid while working (it's essentially a 'zero-sum' game).

That means that, to be fair, you either have to:- (A) pay *everyone* their state pension, or else (B) don't pay the state pension to some people (those without children), BUT TAX THEM LESS over their working lifetime.

Are you advocating (B) ?

"tim...." wrote

Which is exactly what you need to consider: the *total* tax take, against the total benefits received in respect of each person.

That's the same whether the person has none, 1, 2, 3, ... or even 17 children!!

Agreed. Credit has been much abused over recent years. However, we need to be careful what is cut. IMHO the current government is cutting the wrong things. Trident should go and the Banks need to pay us back a lot more quickly for a start.

The problem I have with the current situation is that the government is planning to cut benefits for /everyone/. Even if it was decided to change the rules to favour the genuine recipients, how could this be done?

What *and* rebuild their reserves, *and* get lending to businesses again?

No they aren't. Some benefits recipients will be better off, eg the CTC increases. The main focus seems to be getting people off disability benefits, which are abused (unless you really think the number of "disabled" has tripled over the last 30 years), and IS (eg single parents with school age children) and onto JSA.

It shouldn't be done. Just get rid of means testing altogether.

Yes. If they can currently make a profit and/or pay bonuses they can afford to repay us more quickly.

I would have thought it was quite likely that the number of disabled would have increased considerably over the last 30 years.

Although there is abuse of the benefits it is not a big problem IMHO. The government estimated that there was more disability benefits not claimed by people who were entitled to them that there were fraudlent claims.

I'm not convinced it is best for the children to force their only carer back to work too soon.

Well as the government has a major stake in the bailed-out banks, the taxpayer gets most of those profits anyway.

They should be separating out the risky stuff (ie investment banking) from the important stuff (ie retail banking), then they can do what they like and pay what bonuses they like, and if the investment bank goes bust who gives a toss, it won't take the economy down. This was a lesson learnt in the 30's but forgotten.

Erm, why?

Did they? Have you got a URL? This is probably true for tax credits and pension credit, maybe even housing benefit and council tax benefit, but I doubt it's true for disability benefits. Besides it's not really "fraudulent" claims that are the problem, more the definition of what disabilities qualifies for disability premiums. Fair enough if the disability genuinely results in a higher cost of living, but many don't yet premiums are still payable.

In message , Mark writes

And of course they have been more sympathetically treated (until now).

I believe this is the case, and the whole aim is to get them onto a lower rate of benefit (JSA), to encourage them into non-existent jobs, at the same time as the unemployment level is bound to rise due to cuts in the public sector.