How good intentions can be counterproductive

Dorothy Wilson

This "marginal effect" also applies to people who save for small pensions. A small personal pension can mean the recipient not only moves into the taxation level but also misses out on various benefits.

Cuffleyburgers

Tinkering tinkering - isn't that what Brown, rightly, was excoriated for? (among other things)

End tax credits. Increase personal allowances.

Simples

TomTom

Child Tax Credit and Child Benefit should be capped at TWO children to stop serial pregnancy as a taxpayer-funded welfare annuity. The Child Trust Fund should be scrapped totally. There should be no taxpayer support beyond two children.

Unless people learn that Poverty is a product of not working rather than simply being married and working which is the problem at present. If the Benefits System penalises those at the margin by making Indolence economically viable then the system is sunk because working becomes positively Risk-Taking compared to Benefit Claimant status living on the taxpayer.

Come to think of it why aren't public sector jobs on time limited contracts ?

jm

Could we not just scrap tax credits, raise the tax allowance a chunck more. That may make it worth while people working.

old fogey

I hear with disbelieve the stories of people preferring to go on welfare rather than work, even for a lowly wage. Simply I dont believe that it is as widespread as the press or the politicians and other assorted experts claim. For as start there are not the jobs available at present ( 5 people for every vacancy ), and also because of the massive Slavic invasion 2004- 2008, and their rapturous reception by bargain hunting employers ,has seen the indigenous population both conspired against and dispirited.

TGF UKIP

Difficult not to have symapthy with TomTom's view. The Dear Editor spelled it out in his Screws column two weeks ago - a woman with one child gets £207 pw, with two £260 pw (more than a receptionist) and with three £324 pw (more than a lab technician.)

As it is we now have a troglodyte almost certainly uemployable underclass clearly visible on the streets of every town centre. However, while this has been the fruit of the entirely misguided social policy of the past four decades, the time has come to draw a line along the lines suggested by TomTom, for while we can do very little about the present crop of Trogs we can severely limit their future numbers by restricting child benefit payments.

One uintended drawback to this, though, might be further limiting the growth of the indigenous white population. On the other hand it would be interesting to see the amount of child benefit being paid out per 1,000 of the population in, say, Bradford compared with, say, York or Hull.

Holly ......

Watching Nick Clegg & David Cameron being
'grilled' by a public sector worker over the
pay freeze being a cut and the public sector
pension conundrum,I was wishing either Clegg
or DC would ask them,"Why should the taxpayer fund YOUR pension"?
Pay for it yourselves!!!
A bit like benefit claimants moaning about their taxpayer funded benefits.
Bozo & Co really did do a grand job at brainwashing the masses into believing that high taxes- welfare dependency is better than lower taxes and more take home pay.
It looks like the country is going to have to grow up & learn to stand on their own two feet again....like we did in the good old days....when going to work was actually beneficial.
A lot of under forty's are in for an intense
training session of self dependancy.
In the not too distant future those who put
in the effort,will benefit.
Harsh?

John North

Pension benefit should be directly linked to the number of years worked before retirement. Right now, a pesron who has woeked the least gets the most from the state; how can this be fair?