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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

#61

Post by bluescrn »

docdeek wrote: post #60
api wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m just going to throw this out there. What if reducing birth rates at this point in time is rational? On the employment side, we have rapidly advancing automation and AI that are dramatically reducing the work force required to maintain society. On the ecological side we have a combination of climate change, soil depletion, and many other factors that at least threaten to impose a bottleneck on us. We are smart and…

This runs into trouble when the older people rely on the younger ones to pay for their retirement and government services. Having fewer children means fewer people to pay taxes, so while a lower birth rate might address environmental and automation/AI challenges, it creates significant headaches elsewhere and requires a society-wide shift in expectations and responsibilities.

Young people can't pay for their own retirements, as they're effectively funding their parents retirements.

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

#62

Post by Nursie »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #55
Nursie wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don’t know, perhaps find some to ask. To me that looks far too much like government overreach and interference. Not that government overreach or interference is anything but fashionable these days. As others have said as well - people’s lives take all sorts of unexpected twists and turns. Jobs are lost, economies change and make whole sectors irrelevant. You can’t just assume everyone with more than two ki…

If suggesting that perhaps people should live within their means is government overeach and interference then surely the government should then stay out of it and not provide any children benefits at all... I think you've shown exactly how this debate and complaints against the 2-child cap is one-sided and refuses to consider the issue of family planning and living within one's means. As I replied before, the argumen…

I’m not sure who hurt you but I find this outburst a little unnecessary, especially as I’m exploring arguments rather than making assertions on one side or other.

> we all know that this is not what happens in the vast majority of cases...

I’d love to see your evidence on that.

(Your restating it in your edit, still absent any evidence, doesn’t make it any more compelling. This is not bad faith, you are making factual assertions. Are they true? How do we know?

What is bad faith is saying that other people’s ideas are “disingenuous” or demonstrative of a failure to consider other viewpoints.

Your second edit tells us that 19.8% of families with three or more kids had no employed adult, in 2021, vs 11.9% in smaller families. It’s an interesting stat but it doesn’t give a full picture or confirm for us that the “vast majority” of those affected by the cap are long-term benefit recipients. Perhaps they are, even then it doesn’t address the root concern that the cap punishes children for their parents’ life decisions.

I don’t know what the right answer is. It may be there is no good one. As I implied before I’m not necessarily on the other side of this, I think it’s complex.)

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

#63

Post by louthy »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #55
Nursie wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don’t know, perhaps find some to ask. To me that looks far too much like government overreach and interference. Not that government overreach or interference is anything but fashionable these days. As others have said as well - people’s lives take all sorts of unexpected twists and turns. Jobs are lost, economies change and make whole sectors irrelevant. You can’t just assume everyone with more than two ki…

If suggesting that perhaps people should live within their means is government overeach and interference then surely the government should then stay out of it and not provide any children benefits at all... I think you've shown exactly how this debate and complaints against the 2-child cap is one-sided and refuses to consider the issue of family planning and living within one's means. As I replied before, the argumen…

> we all know that this is not what happens in the vast majority of cases..

No, we don’t know that, you’re talking from a point of pure prejudice. Unless you have some actual evidence to back up what you’re saying, I would hold back on those types of blanket statements about people in poverty.

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

#64

Post by meheleventyone »

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?

Not to mention that children are a multi-decade commitment. My kids are nine and twelve. In that time I’ve been laid off twice and had a serious medical emergency. Things on that timescale are just not realistic to plan for as if there are guarantees. The less well of you are the more precarious everything is as well.

This is also all on the back of people complaining about declining birth rates!

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

#65

Post by anon191928 »

docdeek wrote: post #60
api wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m just going to throw this out there. What if reducing birth rates at this point in time is rational? On the employment side, we have rapidly advancing automation and AI that are dramatically reducing the work force required to maintain society. On the ecological side we have a combination of climate change, soil depletion, and many other factors that at least threaten to impose a bottleneck on us. We are smart and…

This runs into trouble when the older people rely on the younger ones to pay for their retirement and government services. Having fewer children means fewer people to pay taxes, so while a lower birth rate might address environmental and automation/AI challenges, it creates significant headaches elsewhere and requires a society-wide shift in expectations and responsibilities.

social welfare in almost any nation (excl. energy rich countries) is not sustaniable long term. maybe we can start with ack. that fact? Sure retired people can get some amounts and free food but bigger amounts in budget just don't make sense? I mean calculate and see it. Countries literally pay these with DEBT. How hard it is for avg people to get this? It is such a simple thing to calculate too. When debt gets too big for so many countries, entire thing collapses? we know that already

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

#66

Post by nobodyandproud »

solumunus wrote: post #32
Loughla wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I can’t understand what you think their argument is. This response doesn’t seem relevant to theirs.

I’m pretty sure the retort was aimed at the patronizing bit here:

> but ignores the tough question of the individual responsibility not to have more children than one can afford.

Which seems quite relevant. The only fool-proof plan for anyone is to have zero kids, which is ridiculous.

My wife and I live beneath ours means, save as much as possible, live debt free, and we instead try to afford as much as possible for the kids.

A job loss or major accident/medical problem where we survive is terrifying from a financial PoV.

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

#67

Post by webdevver »

unfortunately a growing segment of people see food banks as a place where you can grab goodies for free, a-la 'you'd be stupid not to!'. i think they had a similar problem in Canada.

ultimately its a very politically difficult situation since you're entering the quagmire of what constitutes being poor. that's a discourse where political careers go never to return - easier to just throw your hands up in the air and just give everyone as much free food as they want.

ofcourse this then leads to the discussion of "wait... why don't we just do that anyway? arne't we a first world country?" but then you wind up with a whole enterprise of getting food for free (or steep discount) only to sell it to another community that doesn't have access to it and taking a profit. i think a similar problem (?) exists in the US, with SNAP food rations being (re?)-sold to latin americans.

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

#68

Post by webdevver »

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 assume you left the uk - out of curiosity, where did you move to?

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

#69

Post by mytailorisrich »

nobodyandproud wrote: post #66
solumunus wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t understand what you think their argument is. This response doesn’t seem relevant to theirs.

I’m pretty sure the retort was aimed at the patronizing bit here: > but ignores the tough question of the individual responsibility not to have more children than one can afford. Which seems quite relevant. The only fool-proof plan for anyone is to have zero kids, which is ridiculous. My wife and I live beneath ours means, save as much as possible, live debt free, and we instead try to afford as much as possible for…

Nothing patronising in my comment... it's common sense.

Unfortunately it almost customary here that any comments be interpreted in the most negative way possible for some reason. Perhaps to avoid discussion or, indeed, the tough, uncomfortable questions.

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

#70

Post by kjksf »

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.

Per AI, comparative food production subsidies are the same in US and China. China spends a 2x total but they have more people so per farmer support is more or less the same.

So if that's your metric, US is at par with China.

US food is affordable. To the extent that food in China is cheaper, I'm pretty sure the main reason is dramatically lower cost of labor.

But the premise of your comment is just wrong.

Money doesn't grow on trees. It's taken by the government from people.

Subsidies don't make things cheaper. They just obscure the real cost and can be used by politicians to buy votes from pickFrom([farmers,students,renters,teachers,...])

If US government didn't spend $35 billion/year subsidizing food production, food would be more expensive but an average worker would have $214 more per year to spend on food.

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