This is rather the problem. People are usually perfectly happy to advocate tax rises and benefit cuts for ‘the rich’. They just always classify ‘the rich’ as ‘people significantly richer than me’.

“it represents the value we place on raising the next generation and is a badge of shared citizenship”

I’ve never read so much nonsense in my life!

Though as I have said before this is the BEST ARTICLE EVER on the topic.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/04/osborne-child-benfit-war-families

“not since China’s one-child rule has there been such a penalty for having kids”

Pure gold.

Second best one here:

http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2007/03/child_benefit_f.html

Hi Richard,

“What gets me is that, whenever there’s a proposal for higher taxes on the genuinely rich, suddenly people on eighty or ninety thousand pounds a year describe themselves as “middle class” (when that level of income puts you comfortably in the top 5 per cent).

But when it comes to benefit cuts, just as suddenly, people who earn half that are “the rich”.”

So if the government removed housing benefit for people earning at least £80,000 per year, would that still be an issue of principle to oppose?

https://liberalconspiracy.org/2009/12/11/right-wing-notions-of-middle-class/
https://liberalconspiracy.org/2009/05/28/where-is-middle-britain/

I shan’t be so ungallant as to ask what Senior Policy Officers earn

Future generations will pay the taxes that pay pensions, and if you own private pensions the value of equity and debt that you hold also also conditional on the existence of future generations. We already have a fertility rate below replacement, it’s quite sensible to subsidize the cost of raising children, including for richer parents where “subsidy” means effectively reducing the tax net of benefits that they pay into the exchequer. It also makes sense to subsidize investment in “human capital”.

To take your main points in order:

1) I am unconvinced that many people will be ‘devestated’ by having their income cut to a paltry 44k gross. I earn about 15k and I’m fine. I don’t think kids are likely to add an extra 30k in expenses. If someone on 44k is vulnerable to a 1k cut, they’ve decided to sail far too close to the wind. As for unions: it’s not their job to do what’s right, but to protect their workers’ interests. These are often one and the same, but you can’t assume that in any case.

2) Unless you can find evidence of a large group of wealthy men who leave their live-in wife and children to live on scraps, I have to assume this is simply made up.

3) Symbolism is all well and good, but in difficult financial circumstances it should be the first thing to be cut from the budget. Let’s spend our money on real things.

4) I agree here: in my view, encouraging higher-earners to favour the welfare state is the only reason to oppose the Tory’s child benefit proposals.

“Four reasons why we should be defending the middle-classes too”

Twaddle. This is a defence of why the middle class or wealthy should be dragged within the realms of welfare dependency and gratefulness to the politicians who so kindly distribute the largesse to the masses.

“Child Benefit…represents the value we place on raising the next generation and is a badge of shared citizenship.”

You’d have to have a heart of stone…..

According to (ahem) the TUC’s middlebritainometer £43,875 puts you in 89% percentile

of course I am only being mischievous, having previously argued that such comparisons against static household income distribution data are deeply misleading (bad TUC middlebritainometer!) and also have previously argued that it makes sense to retain universal benefits matched with progressive taxation.

If you want to argue that the budget is tight and we need to close the deficit, you can do it either by reducing pay-outs to wealthy households or by increasing tax contributions from wealthy households. If we need to find £1bn, better to do it the latter way for lots of reasons.

It’s deeply misleading to think “why should somebody on £20k be paying taxes to fund child benefits for somebody on £45k” – however as the opinion polls Don points to suggest, most people think that way. That is to say, they implicitly regard the tax system as fixed and then think about how to allocate spending.

Secondly, some people live with partners who pay higher rate tax but their own incomes are well below the average. Usually they are women married to men who choose not to share their earnings fairly; for them, Child Benefit is vital and this reform will leave them bereft.

Chuh. No-one ever seems to read public policy proposals. The reason that this change is being administered through the tax system is that a means test would be too expensive and complicated. There are also, I believe, issues with national insurance. So what will happen is that CB will be paid to everyone in the same way that it is already, and if your household has a higher-rate taxpayer, an equivalent amount will be added to their tax bill. So your second point is nonsense.

How funny to see lefties defending the rights of someone taking home £2700 a month on the basis that they need a £20 per week state handout. Through the looking glass stuff to be sure.

anybody who wants to understand the apparent paradox that has bufuddled poor dizzy really should have a quick scan of the introduction of the article I linked to yesterday

@7 – Re your second point: ‘Unless you can find evidence of a large group of wealthy men who leave their live-in wife and children to live on scraps, I have to assume this is simply made up’

Bear in mind it’s not necessarily about scraps but about independent income that goes straight to the primary caregiver and that in principle doesn’t have to be bargained for, pre-agreed, balanced against the rest of the household budget or justified after being spent. Don’t underestimate the solidarity women who won’t lose child benefit feel on those grounds, even if it’s ultimately not justified.

What is the opportunity cost of retaining child benefit for the wealthy?

What could we cut instead that would have more impact on the deficit?

My personal favourite is Meals on Wheels.

Because presumably, if this were axed, lots of old people would starve to death producing significant ongoing savings in both the NHS and in pension payouts. Furthermore, it would provide a much needed fiscal stimulus for private sector businesses like funeral directors and care homes.

So could anyone arguing against the child benefit cut from now on please follow my example and specify what they would cut instead?

Pager,

Of course there could always be worse things to cut, to make an argument based on that would be nonsense (Though councils are closing meals on wheels services).

Taking it at face value though, I would simply stop the proposed marriage reward, which the government have suggested will benefit lower and higher tax payers).

While the chattering classes fight micro-class wars between themselves, it might actually be useful to look at how this would affect ordinary people.

A family with 3 young children will be getting about 2.5k in child benefit and will have either one parent at home or horrendous childcare costs (remember that not only are non-working mums a rarity, so are non-working grannies). Even on a 45k salary, after tax and typical affluent area mortgage, that’s a really big hike out of anyone money to live on.

I’m not sure you can rely on public support for cutting child benefit to “the rich” for long either. True 83% said that in principle they “support[ed] … limiting child benefit so that people with high incomes do not receive it”. But when it was explained that “a family where a husband and wife earn £30,000 each would still recieve the benefit, but a family where the husband alone earned £44,000 would not”, things changed.

Now 46% (against 41%) agreed that “The proposed system is unfair, if the government want to stop the benefit going to the wealthy they should introduce a proper means-test, even if this means less money is saved”. Once further anomalies start turning up, support may fall even more.

Full poll details here (yes, some of the questions could be better worded)

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Pol-Sun-ChildBenefit-051010.pdf

Meanwhile I’m amused by all the macho “children – they’re for poofs” posturing above, but disappointed that nobody suggest legalising infanticide up to 18, to get rid of the retrospective nature of the change. Where’s Jonathan Swift when you need him, eh?

14. Pagar

What is the opportunity cost of retaining child benefit for the wealthy?

Can’t think of any.

But I come from the school which says there is no need to cut spending in the way that the coalition – up until yesterday – were talking about.

There are ways of raising revenues which, for dogmatic reasons, haven’t been looked at. Abolishing the higher rate subsidy on Pensions would be a good start.

So a subsidy paid for by everybody boasting the incomes of for those already in the top 11th percentile is progressive? The government cannot keep on running deficits of over 10% every year so somewhere spending cuts will have to be made. If they are going to be made surely it is more progressive to find them in places that will lower the Gini co-efficient, such as reducing the subsidies to those that are already very rich.

“Secondly, some people live with partners who pay higher rate tax but their own incomes are well below the average. Usually they are women married to men who choose not to share their earnings fairly;”

What a weird, weird statement. The presence of disparate incomes in a household leads to “usually” (I don’t deny occasionally) those incomes not being shared? Shit, my wife doesn’t work and she spends more of our income than I do!

“currently £43,875. They’re a long way from being poor, of course, but they aren’t ‘rich’ either.”

Such a pity we tax them as if they’re rich then, eh?

11
Like many others who post on LC, you confuse income with class, ‘lefties’ tend to defend the working-classes but there are many middle-class people who are also ‘left’ minded. Probably the greatest supporter of socialism was one Friedrich Engels, the son of an industrialist and a avid participant in his local Lancashire foxhunt

Still a lot of talk about the families living on £44,000 being ‘in the top decile’ of the income distribution. They’re not. It’s *single people* on £44,000 who are in the top decile.

You can work out what decile a *household* is in, taking into account the number of dependent children etc., on the IFS website here:

http://www.ifs.org.uk/wheredoyoufitin/

Depending on what tax credits they got, how many kids they had of what ages etc., most families with a single earner on around £45,000 would be in the fourth or fifth decile.

These people are bang in the middle in terms of how ‘well off’ they are, and hence in terms of the net contribution they can afford to make to the public finances.

Which is why it is absolutely right – quite apart from any arguments about the importance of universalism – that they should be making a slightly smaller net contribution than people who are on the same income but who sit higher up the income distribution (i.e. who are relatively ‘better off’) because they don’t have dependent children.

@13

“Bear in mind it’s not necessarily about scraps but about independent income that goes straight to the primary caregiver and that in principle doesn’t have to be bargained for, pre-agreed, balanced against the rest of the household budget or justified after being spent. Don’t underestimate the solidarity women who won’t lose child benefit feel on those grounds, even if it’s ultimately not justified.”

Yes, but then (I think) we’re back to it being tactically correct to defend child benefit for higher earners, which I agree with, rather than it being morally right in itself, which I don’t.

Put it like this: they don’t need the money, but give it to them anyway to make sure a sizeable proportion of them don’t decide to fuck everyone else over.

If you paid the primary childcarer for the work involved, then we wouldnt have to worry about ‘child benefit’. Full time child raisers would be paid just like every other worker, and parents who work instead of raising children would have a wage from that. Then its just a matter of making sure that every job pays an adequate living wage, and we’re sorted. Everyone gets to choose if they’d rather earn their cash at home with the kids, or out doing something else.

Its so simple when you think about it.

@ 23 But who pays for the primary childcarer – the taxpayer. In other words socialised parenting, with every parent effectively a civil servant. Creepy, orwellian, deeply scary.

Secondly, some people live with partners who pay higher rate tax but their own incomes are well below the average. Usually they are women married to men who choose not to share their earnings fairly; for them, Child Benefit is vital and this reform will leave them bereft.

How can someone “chose not to share their income” ?/ In general married women live in the same house as their husbands, drive the same car, eat the same food, go on the same holidays, do similar stuff at the weekend etc etc.
Some on the left still seem to be living in a 1960s kitchen sink drama, husband leaves factory, goes to pub, spends his wages on drink, gets home and grudgingly hands over whats left to the wife for the housekeeping. Purlease, it’s 2010……..

donp – isn’t housing benefit means tested?

I do find it amusing that suddenly right-wingers are coming on here demanding re-distribution to the poor after being against it for….forever. Will buy their faux-concern once that actually start advocating for higher minimum wage or LM.

Back to the main point – it has been said several times that we should all have a stake in the welfare state, and there are good reasons for doing so.

Chaise – your point 4 negates point 3.

25
And some women even have to share the same butler with their husbands.
You also need to read Orwell before you use the term ‘orwellian’, hint – it’s about ideologies and ideas shared by the masses, unless you believe that all employers of the NHS have the same kind of views and lifestyles. In fact from your post, you seem to believe that the whole of 1960s male lived in some orwellian state, characterized by Arthur Seaton.
And if you believe that all women are given any access or control to their partner’s earnings you are living in a parallel universe.

@27 I shoud have written employees.