The consequences of the child benefit row

Bloody Bill Brock

Ham fisted, not very fair if you are a bloke earning £47,000 with a missus at home and your brother earns £38,500 and his missus earns £36,000. But, the great unwashed, somewhere between £15,000 and £35,000 think its great. Further, not every HRT payer earns £44,000. Some earn a very great deal more than that, so the plan will hit the genuinely well off. This makes a majority of "ordinary" people happy and gives the Tories real boost with those who have been brainwashed into thinking that ETON boys are only nice to other Eton boys.

Laughing Larry

The rich Welfare Queens will have to stop sending the kids to Pony Club or PGL, oh how my heart bleeds for them.

Nick

You're right. There will be huge complaints when the poor also get hit.

However, what will be missing is the analysis of who's guilty.

The common factor is the government. Government is bad for you. Government caused the deficit. Government is responsible for the 5,000 billion of unfunded liabilities.

What you won't get is any assertion that those who are responsible should pay the cost or be jailed for the fraud.

Ruby Duck

Those squealing should reflect that :
a) Making two income families worse off would not make the single-earner hrt family any better off, and
b) This is only the beginning. By the time the full programme is rolled out, we'll all be squealing.

Fergus Pickering

If her indoors stays at home knitting then why should she be subsidized? Woman who are too posh to work are letting the side down. It is working women who have got the sexes closer to equality. There are some who stay at home because their family is large. Well, that's their coice, but I don't see why I should pay for it.

AuldCurmudgeon

The origins of the deplorable descent of Gordon Brown are sometimes traced to the decision, in autumn 2007, not to go for a general election. Seen at the time as a poor, but not fatal, choice, it now stands as but the opening aria of an interminable grand opera of incompetence. A totem of the tragedy to follow in its train.

How far will the frayed ends of unfairness unravel for this government? Laurel and Hardy and the Keystone Cabinet? How many other fine messes will George's incontinence have gotten Cameron into before the end is reached?

Too stupid to retreat and then too stupid to do it quickly.

Edward McLaughlin

Bloody Bill Brock

At what salary level do people adopt the habit of washing?

Jill

If you're going to add any form of means testing to Child Benefit - and I get the economic imperative message but I think there are too many non-economic issues to ignore - then it beggars belief that they didn't just add "Child Benefit Element" to Child Tax Credits. Two second job, with multiple and sophisticated options about to whom to pay it and at what withdrawal rate. Cost-free, as the system's already there.

ollie

All this makes Miliband's appointments more and more bewildering. Instead of attacking the Treasury with a hammer, Miliband has appointed a piece of candy floss.

Cameron and Osborne will be relieved that two half wits are at the helm of the Labour party.

Chuck Unsworth

Is staying at home to look after one's offspring a matter of choice? If so, why should those who so choose feel that they should somehow be rewarded by the taxpayer? It's a question of personal responsibility. Responsible adults ought to consider their own financial situation very carefully before starting families. Equally they should not have a right to impose the costs of their children on others - taxpayers without children are obliged to contribute to their education, welfare, health costs etc. Is this 'fairness'? Why should the childless be so penalised?

Leo McKinstry

I wish critics would give it a rest with all this talk about "the unfairness" of the CB change. There is no perfect change that will ever be absolutely fair to everyone. If the threshold were fixed at household rather than individual income, that would throw up some far more groteseque anamolies, such as this common example. On one hand, you could have an affluent jobholder, on £43,000-a-year, living in a substantial period house in Yorkshire, with a stay-at-home wife and couple of strapping teenage sons. He would be entitled to over £2000-a-year in CB. Yet, at the same time, in London, you could have a couple, one on £28,000 and the other on £16,000, struggling to pay the mortgage on a small flat, weighed down by huge childcare costs for their three young children. Yet, because of their combined income of £44,000-a-year, they would be entitled to no CB. How's that for fairness? If the Coalition can't get this fully justified proposal through, there really is no hope for bigger deficit reduction.

Tom

Of course the majority are going to agree - the majority aren't affected. That's the myth of these 'fair' measures, the only group hit so far have been middle income families; massively, disproportionately so.

If you support the concept of a higher rate band because people who can afford more should pay more, then you must also agree than a single person earning 44k has a far greater capacity to pay than someone supporting a family. There HAS to be some reflection of this in the tax system.

Bloody Bill Brock

@EDWARD McLAUGHLIN
About £40,0000 but it depends on the individual. Below that figure, let them eat cake.

Liz

Since having my baby two years ago, I have been a stay at home mother. In order to keep my brain active, I have worked for free for two mornings a week in the local school and have raised over £30,000 for local charities. I have worked harder than I ever did in my previous full time job. I do not mind losing the child benefit, but I do mind how nasty people are being. As a result of this, I will happily go back to work as I now see that this is the only way to gain respect.

TrevorsDen

"Making two income families worse off would not make the single-earner hrt family any better off" -- yes a bit of sense at last well ruby duck. Leo points it up as well.

All the precious hand-wringing is far too late. We are stuffed and anyone worrying about fairness should just forget it.

Oh BTW -- All members of the cabinet get their money from the taxpayer or increasingly from the moneylenders. And the guardian of that whether they like it or not is the Chancellor. He is a not inconsiderable official.

People pondering voting Labour should think on the fact that officially at least the next labour chancellor could be Johnson. Can you credit it.

Bill Fraser

CB, Child Benefit was only introduced in the late 1970's (by a genuine Labour government) as a Universal benefit, prior to that you had to claim something called 'Family Allowance' which amounted to a few pence a week in the 1950's.