The Off Topic Topic

[Jacob]

My guess: if you don't have an income you're probably a homemaker and can look after your own bloody kids! This is to support working parents!

[The Larch]

My guess: if you don't have an income you're probably a homemaker and can look after your own bloody kids! This is to support working parents!

But this is not a no income case, but a not high enough income case. And in a country like the UK where there are the (obviously devised by an antisocial sadist) Zero hour contracts you can be employed and have a pretty low income.

[Jacob]

If you have low income you are probably working part time and can look after your own kids.

Or alternately poor parents didn't vote for whoever implemented the policy. But I still think they would claim something like I suggested.

[Josquius]

Seems to be it basically yeah.
If she worked 3 days a week there would be no issue getting the money for 3 days of child care but on only 2 days a week she isn't working enough (apparently. My maths says she should be) to cover for those 2 days.
Seems really faulty thinking to me, and not just because I came off for the worse from it, you'll have a lot more luck tempting people back to work if they can gradually build up.

[Tamas]

I am fairly certain this policy appeals to the "I don't want to pay for X minority producing an army of children and living on welfare" crowd, as in, yoh don't work you don't get help.

[Sheilbh]

I am fairly certain this policy appeals to the "I don't want to pay for X minority producing an army of children and living on welfare" crowd, as in, yoh don't work you don't get help.

I don't think it needs to necessarily be racialised to engage middle class Britain's class-based bigotry/hatred of the poor. The looking down on a "single teenage mother" with an army of children stereotype is Vicky Pollard/Little Britain (here with multi-millionaire supermodel Kate Moss playing her sister for Comic Relief of all things):


I'm not sure how it works with the shift to universal credit but I think this might be a New Labour thing. They moved lots of benefits related to children from just being benefits into being tax credits tied to work.

[Josquius]

To be fair to Little Britain, most hate for charvas came from the working class who had to share space with them.
When you get commentators going on about how its classism to look down on folk like that to me it really points towards the commentator being out of touch with the working class. We have folk we look down on too.

[Barrister]

My guess: if you don't have an income you're probably a homemaker and can look after your own bloody kids! This is to support working parents!

That's almost certainly it.

I do think the best "child care" benefit is to just give money to parents without strings attached, rather than subsidizing formal child care, but the scheme Jos mentions isn't completely insane either.

[crazy canuck]

Requiring a person to have a minimum income before receiving the benefit raises the barrier for a woman to take steps to increase her income, because it is more likely that a person in her position cannot afford day care which allows her the time to pursue those other opportunities.

That is not an unintended consequence.  That is a deliberate outcome of the social conservative view that a woman's place is in the home raising the children. 

[Sheilbh]

Requiring a person to have a minimum income before receiving the benefit raises the barrier for a woman to take steps to increase her income, because it is more likely that a person in her position cannot afford day care which allows her the time to pursue those other opportunities.

That is not an unintended consequence.  That is a deliberate outcome of the social conservative view that a woman's place is in the home raising the children. 

As a New Labour introduced policy designed to encourage (and later used to force) women especially back into the workforce after having kids, I'm not sure it's socially conservative as much as neo-liberal

I believe the income threshold is basically the equivalent of x number of hours on minimum wage - so it's tied to being able to say you are working over a certain number of hours. Which was very much the New Labour goal - I think it was actually reformed by my MP who is one of the most prominent feminist campaigners of the last 50 years in British politics so very much came from the opposite of a socially conservative place.

Like lots of benefits and taxes here though it feels like it could do with operating on a sliding scale rather than quite sharp cut-offs.

[Barrister]

If you're trying to force women to stay home with children you just don't give a benefit.

[crazy canuck]

Requiring a person to have a minimum income before receiving the benefit raises the barrier for a woman to take steps to increase her income, because it is more likely that a person in her position cannot afford day care which allows her the time to pursue those other opportunities.

That is not an unintended consequence.  That is a deliberate outcome of the social conservative view that a woman's place is in the home raising the children. 

As a New Labour introduced policy designed to encourage (and later used to force) women especially back into the workforce after having kids, I'm not sure it's socially conservative as much as neo-liberal

I believe the income threshold is basically the equivalent of x number of hours on minimum wage - so it's tied to being able to say you are working over a certain number of hours. Which was very much the New Labour goal - I think it was actually reformed by my MP who is one of the most prominent feminist campaigners of the last 50 years in British politics so very much came from the opposite of a socially conservative place.

Like lots of benefits and taxes here though it feels like it could do with operating on a sliding scale rather than quite sharp cut-offs.

I have less difficult to tying it to number of hours worked rather than a minimum income amount.  The one criticism I have is it should also allow for hours of study so that full time students can also obtain the benefit, which will increase the likelihood that they can continue their studies.

I am not all that persuaded by who the author of the legislation is, politics is about what is possible and she may be pitching legislation on the theory that something is better than nothing.

[Sheilbh]

I have less difficult to tying it to number of hours worked rather than a minimum income amount.  The one criticism I have is it should also allow for hours of study so that full time students can also obtain the benefit, which will increase the likelihood that they can continue their studies.

There's a separate system for students and carers which is basically grants because they're normally not working enough to benefit from tax credits. This was about developing a system of tax credits for working parents - and at the same time cutting benefits for non-working parents.

The biggest issue in the UK is how wildly expensive childcare is - I think it's up there with housing as a big part of our productivity issues.

[crazy canuck]

The biggest issue in the UK is how wildly expensive childcare is - I think it's up there with housing as a big part of our productivity issues.

Same problem here. 

[Sheilbh]

Meta lifting their ban on Trump on their platforms.

Nick Clegg has said it was apparently his decision and is apparently basing it on an assumption that Trump will cease to be Trump. Which seems bold:

Nick Clegg on Trump: "We just do not want — if he is to return to our services — for him to do what he did on January 6, which is to use our services to delegitimize the 2024 election, much as he sought to discredit the 2020 election."