[user104658]

Originally Posted by kirklancaster

I am not commenting on this article or the underlying points in it, because I have not the time at present, but I will say, that there are certain TRUTHS that A LOT OF people seem to overlook;

There are thousands upon thousands of hardworking ordinary families with children who DO NOT EARN anywhere NEAR £23,000 pa.

the 'rising costs of living' mentioned within the article affects THEM just as it does those CUSHIONED by benefits.

Most of these families have NO disposable income and could NOT afford to live in London or a thousand other locations South of Watford, which seem to be the locations where much of these 'statistics' are centred on.

Originally Posted by jaxie

I have to agree with you here Kirk. When I read the OP I thought wow those benefits, even with the cuts, are better than a lot of peoples wage. I'm not sure I see that they are being deprived.

That's not even vaguely how it works, though. Benefits scale with earned income so, no, a family of four with an income of say £16,000 would still be getting working tax credit, child tax credit and child benefit bringing their total after-tax income to around £25500. Total for the same family with two unemployed adults would have been about £21000, now capped at £20000.

It scales in this way across the range of earned income so the idea that "hard working families" end up worse off than those not working is nonsense. The only way it could be even vaguely true is if the person working has absolutely massive travel costs.