In a caring country, the act of alms for the poor, or charity is part of the social conscience, it still is in many parts of the UK, though much of it was taken over by the state in the form of benefits which were supposed to act as a safety net for the less fortunate, paid for by taxation on the better off. As with many things the state got hold of it spiralled out of control to move away from a safety net into a comfort blanket for many. After all, what else can you call a situation where it actually pays someone not to work? Or too breed like mad to give yourself a decent standard of living via the state.
THE cost of Britain’s bloated welfare state has been revealed by figures which show that 40,000 families with five children or more depend on benefits.
It includes 180 families with 10 or more dependants and 10 with 13 or more. In total they cost the taxpayer £150million a year in child benefits alone.
At least one parent in each family is also claiming one or more benefit such as jobseeker’s allowance, incapacity benefit, severe disablement allowance, income support, employment and support allowance or pension credit.
When added to the £150million child benefit bill, it is thought claimants cost taxpayers as much as £50million a year.
The startling figures led to calls last night to stop families claiming benefits for an unlimited number of children.
Now whilst no one would want to see children starve, it does strike me that beyond a certain limit, it should not be the job of the taxpayer to support a lifestyle, after all, the amount of benefits you get for having multiple offspring means that finding a job with an equivalent level of remuneration becomes unlikely to say the least. Essentially, if you want a family bigger than the norm, I believe it’s up to you to pay for it, not the taxpayer via the state.
Now £50 million is not a great deal in the benefits budget, but if you are looking to make a cut off point, this Aprils tax year is the time to do it by saying that the state will no longer pay benefits for any more than two children. if you want more than two, you pay for them yourself, but you won’t get the bigger house, the extras etc.
A simpler benefits system which tarhets benefits only towards those who actually need them will help, though I doubt any government will have the balls to try with the bleeding hearts of the liberal left coming out the woodwork to denounce any attempts to put right the ridiculous state we’re in with the NHS and benefits.
I think in the end it will take a revolution or civil war to repair the damage done. I hope I’m wrong.
I think you’ll find that there are very few families with any children at all that are not “dependent on benefits”. A family with five children will be receiving about £9000 worth of health care for those children, and if they go to school, £20,000 worth of education.
Little of this will be paid for by their parents. This explains the attraction of the welfare state. Almost everyone (especially the “hard-working families” whose fate we are supposed to lament) is getting a fantastically good deal out of it.
The only people who aren’t are the childless, the rich and the future generations, which is why the system will carry on unchanged until it finally collapses.
Why not urge the state to stop paying child benefit altogether? People will still spawn the next generation without their £20/week. The United States has no child benefit and still manages a higher birth rate than most European countries.
It’s worth considering.
I think it’s maybe helpful to divide benefits up a bit Brian.
Some benefits are going to people who can’t or won’t look after themselves, but others are IMHO somewhat mislabelled as ‘benefits’.
Basic education, for example, is something everyone gets as a child, but assuming a responsible productive life, everyone later pays taxes (according to their ability) to pay for it. So although it’s a social cost while children are at school, in another sense it can be considered a bought service received by an individual in advance of payment.
In that sense childless adults have no basis to complain, because they recieved an education for free when they were children and thus should pay for education when earning. The education bill is dependent on the number of children in society, not how they distribute between families on or off benefits.
” assuming a responsible productive life”
That assumption might have held true fifty years ago.
Sadly 20Rothmans I fully agree. But I’m suggesting that is a quite different problem. One of feckless parents breeding feckless kids in a neverending circle of dependency, that is the problem.
It doesn’t alter my suggestion that education is something rather different as it’s not supplied as a benefit to the feckless family but is supplied to all individuals of every background, and paid for by taxes on all individuals – so we shouldn’t simply lump education costs into the dependency problem.
You might argue that large families should get no support whatsoever beyond the first 2 kids, but again that’s a different issue.
Once a benefit is introduced, it can almost never be withdrawn. In a very short time it becomes the recipients’ ‘right’.
Remember all those swivel-eyed socialists with ‘Fatcher, Fatcher, school milk snatcher!’.
I do hope no one who now has 3 children finds out that their wife has an affair , leaves them, causes them to have psychosis, and gets to see their children once a month will be required to defend themselves in this civil war. And I hope their children stay alive. But if a civil war is needed , then I’m thankful that divine justice will always prevail.
In the US, if you’re on the dole, you income does not increase if you choose to have more children.
This is something I’ve struggled to decide in my own mind – is having children a right or a privilege?
I am reminded of a conversation several years ago with my parents – in the 70s my dad got a promotion with a good payrise, which is the reason I’m here at all – they already had 1 child and that extra money meant they felt they could afford to have a second. They received child benefit, sure, but that was the only cash benefit they got from the state, so they looked at their own finances to decide on the size of their family.
Unfortunately there are always those that will play the system, decide to have another child as it will push them up the housing list, mean that they will have longer with a fairly secure benefits income etc.
I do believe that Child Benefit as such should be phased out completely – it was introduced as Britain needed a baby boom, which we now most definitely don’t need!
The problem remains though – if irresponsible adults bring a child into the world that they can’t afford to support, then what should a responsible society do?
Storm, irresponsible adults having babies that they can’t support, should have their new baby taken away at birth and placed on the adoption register. We don’t own our offspring, and we shouldn’t get to use them as hostages to extort more and more money out of the state.