Britain to cut child benefit payments

[The Northerner]

LONDON – Britain's government is to scrap child benefit payments for middle income and high-earning families as part of its plan to slash government spending, Treasury chief George Osborne said on Monday.

Osborne, who is scheduled to deliver a speech to the Conservative Party's annual rally in Birmingham, central England, later said parents who earn more than 44,000 pounds ($70,000) per year will lose the payment from 2013.

Currently, all families are paid 20 pounds ($32) a week for their eldest child and about 13 pounds ($20) for other children. The benefits continue until the children are aged 19, if they stay in full-time education.

Osborne said scrapping the benefit would raise 1 billion pounds ($1.6 billion) and was necessary as part of the government's plan to clear the budget deficit by 2015.

"It is a big decision for us but we think it is absolutely necessary and fair given the financial situation we face," Osborne told BBC television.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101004/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_spending_cuts

[xchrom]

1. If they cut the upper incomes benefit - are they then looking

To cut lower incomes later?

[stray cat]

2. So someone like Bill Gates would no longer be given 55 dollars per week by tax payers

[Selatius]

3. This could make it easier to destroy the entire child benefit payments program in the future.

By un-coupling the upper income and middle income people from the program and simply leaving it for the lowest income people, it makes it easier for conservatives to cast people receiving this benefit as a bunch of welfare queens. Worse yet, if a disproportionate amount of people happen to be minorities, it becomes even easier to demonize the people who apply for benefits.

Government programs that tend to be most successful have two key characteristics: 1) They are non-rival, meaning they provide a unique benefit not provided by the private sector and 2) they are non-excludable, meaning everybody receives a benefit regardless of income or any other defining characteristic. This is why programs like Social Security inside the US or the even more extensive systems found in countries like France or Great Britain are very difficult to destroy because everybody gets something from the program, not just the poor.

[LeftishBrit]

5. I fear that this may be the intention. I hope not, but I don't trust Cameron or Osborne further than

I could throw them!

[LeftishBrit]

4. George Osborne stinks...

actually this isn't the worst of his policies; at least this is targeting relatively higher-income families. Most of his policies are against the poor.