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child benefit
Oct. 5th, 2010 11:00 amThe political point-scoring by the Labour party over removing the 'universal benefit' of child benefit from those who have someone who earns over £44,000 a year is making me angry. I'm well aware that political parties are full of shit at the best of times and will attack their opponents regardless of merit but this really takes it to a new level. For all their years of claiming that the Conservatives would only ever serve the rich, as soon as a measure comes in that only affects the top half of society, Labour chime in saying, "oh, by 'the rich', we meant the poor, sorry'.
If you have 1 person earning £44,000, that's about £32,270.40 after tax, which is roughly the same as 2 people earning £20550 each. That's very close to the national median wage of £20,801. In other words, even if there was just one of you, roughly 49% of the country already earns less than you. But in fact there are two of you, typically living in the same house and saving money as a result. The idea that such a couple requires a child subsidy on top is ridiculous. (And if it was a one-earner household, that one earner is almost in the top 10% of earnings in the UK - I won't accept any suggestion that they can't afford to bring up a kid given that they are typically going to be paying a big fat zero for childcare.)
And calling it a "universal" benefit is bullshit anyway - it's only "universal" if everybody has a child, which we don't. It's bad enough that the rest of us pay taxes to subsidise those who choose to have children anyway, never mind paying those who can clearly afford to pay for the privilege themselves. This is far more unfair than the awkwardness around the £44,000 figure - if you're anywhere remotely near triggering this threshold then you shouldn't be getting government handouts.
So not only did Labour want the entire country to live outside of its means, it believes that families should still be encouraged to spend more than they know they earn, even if they already are well above the poverty line in the first place. That's not social justice, that's stupidity. Stop wanting to spend our money on people and things that don't need it. Idiots.
If you have 1 person earning £44,000, that's about £32,270.40 after tax, which is roughly the same as 2 people earning £20550 each. That's very close to the national median wage of £20,801. In other words, even if there was just one of you, roughly 49% of the country already earns less than you. But in fact there are two of you, typically living in the same house and saving money as a result. The idea that such a couple requires a child subsidy on top is ridiculous. (And if it was a one-earner household, that one earner is almost in the top 10% of earnings in the UK - I won't accept any suggestion that they can't afford to bring up a kid given that they are typically going to be paying a big fat zero for childcare.)
And calling it a "universal" benefit is bullshit anyway - it's only "universal" if everybody has a child, which we don't. It's bad enough that the rest of us pay taxes to subsidise those who choose to have children anyway, never mind paying those who can clearly afford to pay for the privilege themselves. This is far more unfair than the awkwardness around the £44,000 figure - if you're anywhere remotely near triggering this threshold then you shouldn't be getting government handouts.
So not only did Labour want the entire country to live outside of its means, it believes that families should still be encouraged to spend more than they know they earn, even if they already are well above the poverty line in the first place. That's not social justice, that's stupidity. Stop wanting to spend our money on people and things that don't need it. Idiots.
