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So we arrive at the Two Child Cap. This relic of Tory austerity was imposed to limit the payment of child benefit to a family’s first two children only. Its imposition means that, from the third child onward, no child benefit will be paid. This has left many families struggling, and has made them the target of bad faith actors in the right leaning part of our free and fearless press.
SHOULDN’T HAVE THEM IF THEY CAN’T AFFORD THEM comes the plaintive refrain from obscenely overpaid hacks and pundits, few if any of whom have recently, if ever, been in the situation faced by many of the families affected, many of which are both “in work” and still having to rely on the generosity of food banks. The solution is glaringly straightforward.
And that solution is to remove the Two Child Cap, paying for the extra expenditure by taxing the very well off. It is, whisper it quietly, a no brainer. Moreover, it is plainly redistributive: it takes a relatively modest amount from those with a strong Propensity to Save, and gives to those with a rather stronger Propensity to Spend. An explainer on this is required.
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Additionally, the well off will notice a small reduction in their overall wealth less than those less well off. From there it can be seen that the imposition of the Two Child Cap effectively removed purchasing power from the less well off - thus reducing economic activity. Removing the Cap will immediately restore spending power to the less well off. More economic activity follows.
After all, the effect of removing the Two Child Cap is not dissimilar to that of giving less well paid workers a pay rise - the propensity to spend is strong, and yes, economic activity will be heightened as a result. That pay rise has been “hinted” at by Ms Reeves. But still the Two Child Cap is clung onto, as if an act of economic redistribution would cause the sky to fall in.
This matters: how the Chancellor acts will tell us whether this Government really wants to improve the lot of those at the bottom of the pile, or whether it’s merely a case of the new authoritarianism behind the Labour leadership telling the world “nah, not doing that, cos that’s what Trots do”.
Removing the Two Child Cap is an economic no-brainer. If Rachel Reeves wants to be both competent and consistent, she must act. That is all.
https://www.patreon.com/Timfenton
Child Benefit is normally paid for every child (slightly more for the first one), with a qualifying restriction on household income.
ReplyDeleteIt is Universal Credit or Child Tax Credit that is restricted to just two children per family. Those who qualify are amongst the poorest in society, so you are right to state that abolishing this restriction will dramatically improve those families’ living standards, as well as boosting economic growth.
Tremendous black comedy, Reeves/Kuentssberg.
ReplyDeleteReeves is a CGI construct with a voice like a leaking whoopee cushion. Oddly similar to the Starmer Quisling.
Kuentssberg is ageing very badly indeed, especially since the "election". The face and mouth even more crooked and collapsed, the hair like a stream of rancid shredded wheat.
Far right gobshites both. One as bad as the other.
12:1
DeleteAt least we were spared the sight of the weedy grovelling little weasel Mason*. By comparison he makes Quasimodo look and sound like Brad Pitt.
*That's the one with the initial C. The other one with the initial P is the standard "socialist" plant.
We've gotten ourselves a Shakespeare when we needed a Marlowe.
ReplyDeleteReeves is no different to Hunt. Still the same old cobblers about needing to keep 'tight purse strings', keeping taxes low (on wealth), and the private sector leading the way. Hunts terrifying demands that pension funds be 'freed' up and used in riskier investments has been dusted off and wheeled out too. Frankly my private pension is shit enough without the fund managers rolling the dice pre 2008 style - and losing the lot. 'Sensible' and 'neo liberal' do not go hand in hand. It's obvious to even the biggest idiot with record numbers of billionaires, bulging offshore accounts, and yet tax avoidance at record levels, that taxing the rich more, taxing businesses more, (without getting silly about it), and closing tax loopholes is the sensible way to generate desperately needed revenue for public services, councils, and to relieve pressure on the poorest off. But no. Already we can see that will not be happening.
ReplyDeleteRemoving the bedroom tax would also free up a lot of spending power for people who can't find somewhere smaller to move to (which was the "public reasoning" behind the tax, even if reality was really all about kicking poor people). That extra 17/25 quid a week will be instantly spent instead of no creating the slightest bit of economic activity.
ReplyDeleteThe same with the council tax burden being shifted from the richest to the poorest by making people on benefits pay a % (a variable % depending on what the council chose) of it so the government could cut taxes for the rich and reducing central gov funding for councils. Re-fund councils from central gov and do away with the council tax % on the poorest and that money will be instantly spent in the local economy.
But she won't do that... cos that socialism which is just the same as communism, or some such bulls*it. She likes kicking poor people just as much as the full fat tories.
'Full fat torys'. I like that, I really do. Even if it did immediately produce a hideous image in my mind of Nick Soames and wobbly Willy Whitelaw... 'shudder'
DeleteReeves is everything wrong and bad in politics. Now Cooper has "contributed" a racist dog whistle in the Murdoch Scum.
ReplyDeleteSo no change there. The same old ranting rightie shite from the same old red tory Quislings.
"Eleanor Rathbone, the forgotten MP who changed women’s lives by pioneering child benefits" by Rachel Reeves March 8th 2019 'i' news.
ReplyDeleteReeves is a supporter of 'family endowments'and a great admirer of Eleanor Rathbone MP. My suspicion is that she would see the good politics and good sense in abandoning this savage cap - which, please recall, was Osborne's appreciative nod to the Islamophobic right, who have spent years grizzling at large Muslim families.
I think the problem lies in the office of the First Lord of the Treasury, who appears to have some Islamophobic problems himself.
ReplyDeleteSubtlety and nuance the order of the day in the Comments again.
And sexist misogynist-adjacent Platell/Vine/Morgan-style bitchiness about people's appearance should only be submitted if accompanied by photographic evidence of the authority given their judgements by the poster's own pulchritude.
Triple B, you've made a number of ableist, homophobic and Islamophobic comments yourself.
DeleteOne thinks you'd be unwise to throw stones here.
The vast majority of comments are in fact measured, and making sensible suggestions as to alternatives to Reeves dreary and depressing 'same old' neo liberalism. So, what you really mean is, 'people are saying stuff I don't want to hear'. Well, if you don't like it, there are plenty of places where the 'Akehurst' view of the world prevails, so...
DeleteCooper really is a nasty piece of work. Its (conveniently) forgotten that Labour introduced the dreaded WCA, that it was they that insisted rotten to core private firms ran it, and it was Cooper that decided it was 'not tough enough'. Gee, thanks. It's been fun watching the likes of Cooper and Kendall, Woodcock, Ashworth described as 'caring, dedicated centrists' rather the foaming right wingers they really are. It was thanks to Cooper and Kendalls 'leadership manifestos' that I voted for Corbyn to be leader. As even Torys commented, the choices were two outright, right wing Torys, Burnham unable to get off the fence, or someone who actually still had Labour values. Ironic isn't it? Had the Labour right offered someone genuinely moderate, they would have saved themselves four years of lies, smears, back stabbing, and exposing themselves are very nasty individuals indeed.
ReplyDeletePretty much how I saw it back then and I wanted to see the back of the Blairites for good - after how my wife suffered the distress of WCA (she died not long after) I developed a healthy loathing for the now unfathomably-feted Cooper. It's a pity Corbyn was so disappointing.
Delete13:20.
DeleteBurnham won't get off the fence until he's offered a ministerial post. Then he'll fall into line like the rest, occasional platitude aside. Merely another careerist...
told to bide his time in the Manchester regional office after being routed in the leadership election. The instruction didn't come out of thin air.......
Ironically it's the Right that is obssessed with birth rates. As in the US, where the right wants women to give birth but wants nothing to do with the kids once they are born.
ReplyDeleteTim, you must stop this "misogynist-adjacency".
ReplyDeleteOr something.
10:15, au contraire, Given the number of times the dreaded Tim attacks men and how they look, I reckon he is a misandrist. Also or something.
DeleteYour regular reminder that Rachel Reeves is the holder of the ultimate joke degree, the Oxford PPE.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDelete10.15
You, you fool, not Tim.
(Hope that's not too cretinophobic for you, Single E solitary B. You're really far too sensitive for the rough and tumble of this world.
And in any case, I find your comment discriminatory, exclusionary, judgemental and vitrodomophobic, so there.)
12:52.
DeleteGosh.
U still not OK hun?
ReplyDelete13.34 my comment was written when there were only 3 0r 4 posts here.
They largely consisted of the following infantile laddish crap (the final published order depends on Tim):
'Kuentssberg is ageing very badly indeed, especially since the "election". The face and mouth even more crooked and collapsed, the hair like a stream of rancid shredded wheat.'
'voice like a leaking whoopee cushion'
'weedy grovelling little weasel Mason*. By comparison he makes Quasimodo look and sound like Brad Pitt'
If you're happy with that sort of all-male pub bore stuff then maybe it's you who needs to find a more appropriate home.
Don't forget the door..........
18:37, you misandrists are all the same. Very strange.
Delete18.37.a terrible slur and smear that, making Mason and the Starmer quisling similar to the ladies. Plainly a disgusting homophobic smear.
DeleteThis place was a better class of comment board before Bertie went on this tirade.
ReplyDeleteHard to see what he gains from this.
But she won't act Tim. She's a red tory bought-and-paid-for. Like Starmer.
ReplyDeleteNo, not really. But then nor do I believe in pretending that the early posts were 'majority infantile' when in fact, as I was one of the early posters, and responded to the sensible posts, they were not. Oh, and if you want to call out others as infantile, right wing poster faves like 'mind the door on the way out' needs to go, it really does. Have a nice day.
ReplyDelete'Ere, wots orl vis abaht d'Lads.
ReplyDeleteWe woz robbed in dem Yewroze. We wudda wan dat onny f'dem fancy dan forrins an der tippytappy, garlic an ot sun, innit. D'Free Lyins plyed der arts aht dey did, doo ennyfink fer us dem Lads. Salter de erf dey ar.
I ad dat Deklin Ryce in the backer me cab las week. Wot a geezer. Pity ee tripped owver when ee got aht, but I elped im up an ee gyve me annovver tip. Salter de erf ee iz.
Gawd bless gud owld Enoch an Nyjill. Gryte pytreeuts bowfer dem.
I hope certain posters will now stop entertaining the notion that Labour will be any different, in any way, from the Tories. Crushing the hopes of 300,000 children living in poverty, suspending any who showed the courage to stand up for them, sweeps away any last vestige that Starmers army of right wingers will any different to Sunaks..
ReplyDeleteReeves turns out to be a far right red tory shit house who likes starving a third of a million children into even more despair and misery?
ReplyDeleteWell, colour me shocked. SHOCKED I tell you.
Surely there can't be many remaining divvies who think she's anything more than a willing marionette of her former employers.......Oh hang on.....
There are 404 Labour MPs. 217 of them men, 187 women.
ReplyDeleteOnly 7 had the guts to dissent with Starmer/Reeves. That tells you just how rotten to the core and cowardly are the other 397.
Meanwhile, corporate media glove puppets would have you believe Starmer is 'ruthless'. Whereas he's just the standard module rightie creep hiding behind the numbers.
Britain 2024. Vassal state.
Just as Bliar/Brown go down in history as far right mass murder warmongers who betrayed working people.....so Starmer/Reeves will be the far right Kid Starvers. And that's within days of tenanting Downing Street. Wait until they REALLY start their treachery.
ReplyDeleteAll reminiscent of Thatcher The Milk Snatcher. Their type always start by attacking the most vulnerable.
So they entered Parliament waving white flags and wearing white feathers. Contemptible cowards all. As usual, all for their own profit.
There's no such thing as 'bad economics'. But the people who administer can be bad or evil, as they are in this case.
ReplyDeleteThere is indeed 'bad economics'. As any economics lecturer can tell you. Pursuing the 'Austrian school' or neoliberalism, is classic example of using bad economics. Their ideology simply does not work - regardless of intent.
Delete