It's a pretty dismal reflection on our politics that a policy as bad as the two child limit was introduced in the first place and has survived for a decade. Especially once it became clear it was having no impact on family size (which was the only flimsy policy justification). - ThreadSky

samfr.bsky.social • 3 days ago

It's a pretty dismal reflection on our politics that a policy as bad as the two child limit was introduced in the first place and has survived for a decade.

Especially once it became clear it was having no impact on family size (which was the only flimsy policy justification).

Reposted from Rachel Sylvester

Good piece by @stephenkb.bsky.social . Reversing the winter fuel allowance cut is pure politics but scrapping the two child benefit cap is actually about the merits of the policy on.ft.com/4kz4GJN

Comments

lavajackal.bsky.social•3 days ago

It more or less exists solely to pander to the myopic selfishness of an unfortunately large chunk of the electorate.

ieatpie.bsky.social•3 days ago

Wouldn't encouraging more people to have 3 kids to keep a replacement birth rate be a positive thing anyway?

samfr.bsky.social•3 days ago

It's quite hard to develop a policy that no benefits whatsover to trade off against costs. There's not even a financial benefit as the long term costs significantly outweigh the annual savings.

edsaykay.bsky.social•3 days ago

The comments to Stephens article definitely makes it seem like the benefit it had was "we want the government to be cruel to the poor who we don't want having children anyway"

tepid.meme•3 days ago

Surely the major benefit that governments have drawn from it is that it pretty consistently polls well...

stiggylou.bsky.social•3 days ago

The lazy trope of women (particularly young) having babies just to increase benefits is decades old. It wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now.

helen121.bsky.social•3 days ago

I thought the justification at the time by IDS was that young women were having babies purely to get higher up the housing list and profiting from child benefit? Not sure he said the quiet bit out loud.

matruman.bsky.social•3 days ago

There was definitely a spate of TV programmes around that time, some sympathetic and some not, about people with very large families - a dozen or so children.

mimij9.bsky.social•3 days ago

Also, “brown people have more children” was a big reason that filtered through.

thatsoph.bsky.social•3 days ago

The thing that is crazy to me is that we know we're sleepwalking into a real problem of an ageing population. Yet we are discouraging people from having kids, telling migrants to not come here, and doing all we can to make it worse?

chelseachemist1.bsky.social•3 days ago

The painful irony being it’s the end of the population that is going to have seriously increasing care needs over the next two decades that want it politically

steber2.bsky.social•3 days ago

If we assume a successful push for more children will take >25 years to make a noticeable impact on workforce levels, the youngest Baby Boomers will on average be just about to pass away by then.

So it might be a small help in 25+ years time, but really the only mitigation now is immigration?

cahirokane.bsky.social•3 days ago

Even this justification is a eugenic one, to prevent the less desirable from breeding. And those hit hardest are children who are feckless enough to be born into families with more than two children.

stiggylou.bsky.social•3 days ago

Any policy that requires a ‘rape clause’ cannot be a good one.

mcopsey.bsky.social•3 days ago

And we don't have enough children and so rely on immigration that people supposedly don't want. Surely family friendly policies are now a must

dlynch.bsky.social•3 days ago

But I thought we needed *more* children...

Just not *those* children.

chrisdshaw.bsky.social•3 days ago

They were trying to reduce the fertility rate?!

theangelofhistory.bsky.social•3 days ago

It was the perfect policy in electoral terms because it tapped into the most malicious kind of resentment and hierarchy on the part of swing voters: they wanted to see some people become worse off

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