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Demand for UK Food Bank Up 15% Year on Year

theguardian.com

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Re: Demand for UK Food Bank Up 15% Year on Year

#21

Post by vivekd »

ukrefugee wrote: post #18
jmyeet wrote: post #9

For the last 50+ years, Western governments have largely acted to funnel wealth from the poor to to the wealthy. Each economic crisis seerms to have ushered in a big jump in inequality. The OPEC oil crisis, 1987, recessions in the 1980s and 1990s, the dot-com bubble, the GFC and Covid. Ultimately this is going to correct. My preference is that it corrects by governments enforcing a fairer distribution because otherwi…

tax revenues are higher than ever, government spending is higher than ever, social programs and social spending is higher than ever also self entitlement, reliance on the government is at the highest, individual autonomy is at the lowest ever

I believe your statement can be 100% true without affecting the truth of the parents statement. It's possible for a government to charge high taxes and have high social spending while also funneling larger and larger amounts from the poor to the rich through regulations and government agencies that favor and act for the interests of the rich.

Re: Demand for UK Food Bank Up 15% Year on Year

#22

Post by mytailorisrich »

wood_spirit wrote: post #15
mytailorisrich wrote: post #12

The title was edited for some reason, the actual one is: " Budget 2025: how inflation and the two-child benefit cap has increased poverty " And indeed this is an article against the 2-child benefit cap. This is obviously full of warm feelings but ignores the tough question of the individual responsibility not to have more children than one can afford. The article interviews a family with 4 young children and apparent…

People made the decision to have each child at least 9 months before the child was born. And in the subsequent years and 9 months anything could have happened, eg illness or losing a job. So even careful planners might be unlucky enough to need food banks?

This can of course happen but it is obviously disingenuous to imply that this is what usually happens in response to my comment.

Re: Demand for UK Food Bank Up 15% Year on Year

#23

Post by beeflet »

ktallett wrote: post #2

It will only get worse whilst costs are not regulated of essentials such as housing, food, utilities, and public transport. The rich need to be taxed on all UK based assets and income no matter where you live and we need to restrict profit and pricing accordingly. We can't keep being held hostage by those who wish to increase their bank balance year on year. Now we have no incentive right now as those who are in gove…

I am pretty skeptical of rent-control like policies, but if is being proposed for somewhere else I completely support it.

Also, removing the option to have multiple jobs?

Re: Demand for UK Food Bank Up 15% Year on Year

#24

Post by ukrefugee »

barbazoo wrote: post #19
ukrefugee wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tax revenues are higher than ever, government spending is higher than ever, social programs and social spending is higher than ever also self entitlement, reliance on the government is at the highest, individual autonomy is at the lowest ever

Source?

24 million people receiving benefits (aka cash) in uk

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/dwp-benefits-statis...

in addition to the usual free everything

free health care free roads free housing (often) free education

free riding and on top of it you get to complain about the rich!

Re: Demand for UK Food Bank Up 15% Year on Year

#25

Post by Loughla »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #12

The title was edited for some reason, the actual one is: " Budget 2025: how inflation and the two-child benefit cap has increased poverty " And indeed this is an article against the 2-child benefit cap. This is obviously full of warm feelings but ignores the tough question of the individual responsibility not to have more children than one can afford. The article interviews a family with 4 young children and apparent…

That's a very morality based argument. In general, those types of arguments aren't great and don't really serve a purpose outside of letting the individual take the moral high ground for whatever reason.

I had to rely on food banks when my parents kicked me out at 16. I had to again my second year of marriage while I was still in graduate school and our car got hit, forcing us to use our food budget (and we did have a budget that we followed) for the family.

For the second time, I had kids, I had a good job, so did my wife, I was seeking higher education to advance in my career. But times were tight due to factors out of our control, and we needed help.

What should we have done differently?

Re: Demand for UK Food Bank Up 15% Year on Year

#26

Post by Nursie »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #12

The title was edited for some reason, the actual one is: " Budget 2025: how inflation and the two-child benefit cap has increased poverty " And indeed this is an article against the 2-child benefit cap. This is obviously full of warm feelings but ignores the tough question of the individual responsibility not to have more children than one can afford. The article interviews a family with 4 young children and apparent…

The problem with that view is that it’s not the children’s fault, and the cap punishes them and messes with their life chances because of decisions made by someone else. If there are kids going hungry, that’s somewhere you usually want the government to step in and take the strain.

It’s a very difficult area to navigate, politically. While it’s entirely understandable that there’s public discomfort with the idea that a family could bring in more in benefits than the average national wage (like, why the hell am I bothering with working in a system like that?! Am I the sucker here?), you also have to take into account that kids are going to need a certain amount of support, just to stand a chance in life.

So how do you ‘punish’ the parents, or even just balance the feeling of what’s ’right’, while not punishing innocent parties?

I agree though - the underlying cause is that the UK is stagnating, the average national wage is really not good anyway. And that’s the driver of a lot of the problems we see with anti-migrant sentiment, with benefits restrictions, with all sorts of stuff. If the country was thriving it wouldn’t be so much of an issue.

Re: Demand for UK Food Bank Up 15% Year on Year

#27

Post by Loughla »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #22
wood_spirit wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People made the decision to have each child at least 9 months before the child was born. And in the subsequent years and 9 months anything could have happened, eg illness or losing a job. So even careful planners might be unlucky enough to need food banks?

This can of course happen but it is obviously disingenuous to imply that this is what usually happens in response to my comment.

I don't think that's what they're implying. They're simply saying that careful planning isn't necessarily always what's needed.

Consider carefully your sentences before making deep moral judgements about people and situations you might not be familiar with. That, I think, was their implied point.

Re: Demand for UK Food Bank Up 15% Year on Year

#28

Post by cjbgkagh »

ktallett wrote: post #2

It will only get worse whilst costs are not regulated of essentials such as housing, food, utilities, and public transport. The rich need to be taxed on all UK based assets and income no matter where you live and we need to restrict profit and pricing accordingly. We can't keep being held hostage by those who wish to increase their bank balance year on year. Now we have no incentive right now as those who are in gove…

We have oligarchic corporatism, not democratic capitalism, though I guess that is what is meant by the phrase ‘late stage capitalism’. The problem is that we already have regulatory capture, a more powerful regulatory system leaves us with fewer ways to escape the oligarchs control.

Re: Demand for UK Food Bank Up 15% Year on Year

#29

Post by ukrefugee »

vivekd wrote: post #21
ukrefugee wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tax revenues are higher than ever, government spending is higher than ever, social programs and social spending is higher than ever also self entitlement, reliance on the government is at the highest, individual autonomy is at the lowest ever

I believe your statement can be 100% true without affecting the truth of the parents statement. It's possible for a government to charge high taxes and have high social spending while also funneling larger and larger amounts from the poor to the rich through regulations and government agencies that favor and act for the interests of the rich.

what are the rich anyway. UK average citizen is in the top 95 percentile in global wealth.

there are no poor in UK, just wasted opportunities.

if you want to listen how massive inequality is created in UK, start by looking at immigration

Re: Demand for UK Food Bank Up 15% Year on Year

#30

Post by carlosjobim »

nialv7 wrote: post #10
wtcactus wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, yeah. Regulating the food prices is the trick here. That went really well in the Soviet Union and Mao’s China... just to name a couple of examples. It's funny that for some people, the answer of the enormous failings of Marxism is always "We need even more Marxism!"

Food production is heavily supported by the government in China in order to keep food affordable. Food price is also incredibly low in China. If that's failing that the Western world is in hell now.

Today's China isn't Mao's China.
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