# When government benefits go to far...



## Four Pillars (Apr 5, 2009)

This article isn't really related to Canadian finance, but it does show the side effects of generous gov't benefits:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ets-42-000-benefits-year-drives-Mercedes.html

And yes, I put it in the "frugality" section intentionally.


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## cardhu (May 26, 2009)

The head of the EU has apparently decided that going on vacations to sunny destinations is a basic human right, and is attempting to set up some kind of taxpayer-funded vacation benefit for those who can't afford to holiday on their own.


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## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

"...no one can tell me how many kids I can have."

Nice attitude.


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## Four Pillars (Apr 5, 2009)

cardhu said:


> The head of the EU has apparently decided that going on vacations to sunny destinations is a basic human right, and is attempting to set up some kind of taxpayer-funded vacation benefit for those who can't afford to holiday on their own.


Wow...April Fool's?

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2923469


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## CuriousReader (Apr 3, 2009)

This tie in nicely to the other thread from off topic:

Taxes - should there be a limit?

"'It doesn't bother me that taxpayers are paying for me to have a large family,"

"We get what we're entitled to"

I am sure there are similary stories in Canada


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## Spidey (May 11, 2009)

It's an aggravating story, but I'm not sure that much could be done about the situation, given that there are children involved that have to be provided for. The amount provided sounds excessive and perhaps there should be some economies of scale regarding benefits past a certain number of children. The parents are obviously extremely irresponsible, but it doesn't sound like they're abusive, so the children couldn't likely be removed by social services. And of course, we can't force someone to have their tubes tied. I'm sure something similar could be duplicated in Canada, if a person we're willing to keep having children.


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## CuriousReader (Apr 3, 2009)

Spidey said:


> I'm sure something similar could be duplicated in Canada, if a person we're willing to keep having children.


Definitely happening ... I've heard stories of teenage girls (legal age) said that they want to / are having kids because they will get benefits from the government - where's the logic in that?

Also, if the point is about supporting the children - then there should be a better way than giving them ca$h that they could so easily blew on a mercedes, large screen tv, etc.

Far stretched, but there must be ways for the system to detect and stop supporting leechers to society.


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## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

Yes, I for one am sick and tired of the single mom scam. There are WAY too many of these. Near my old work location you would see the stroller armada come out every afternoon around 2PM. Teenagers. And the cycle continues as those children grow up and in 13 short years we see a new generation of kiddies.

Look, I'm a responsible guy. Yes, I have fun behind closed doors. But I ALWAYS use protection and guess what? No illegitimate children! So because these brats didn't do so, the taxpayer has to now keep supporting these groups?

Look after your own children! If you can't afford it, don't have them!

I think it's about time someone starts crying foul to this single mom scam. It has been going on for far too long. These people are irresponsible.


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## Berubeland (Sep 6, 2009)

I hate to do the math for you guys here

$42000/8/12=$437 per month each

As for this Mercedes they are driving my friend just bought an old Mercedes for $2000. A friend or family could have given it to them. 

So while this article is provocative when you look behind the curtain this is barely a living wage. 

It's the same here in Canada with single mothers and people on social services. 

Only an idiot would think they are doing really well by scamming the government by having tons of kids. It's just not true. No matter how many kids you have you are barely scraping by. It's subsistence living at best. If it were really great they wouldn't need to go to food banks and buy furniture at rent to own places.


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## Spidey (May 11, 2009)

That is 42000 pounds, not dollars. At one time the pound was double the Canadian dollar, but now I think it would be equivalent to about $65000.


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

Ah well, life is better on the other side of the Atlantic. All my friends in Europe take 4-week vacations in summer and some of them work 35-hour weeks. The last time I took even a two-week vacation was in 1987.


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## Berubeland (Sep 6, 2009)

I did see that spidey but my point still stands even at 67000$ 

67000/8/12 =697 $ per month. 

Not sure about you but I'd rather make more that 700$ per month. 

This article is inflammatory and aimed at those who want to believe that this is true and who don't want to look at the numbers. 

I personally would like to aim a little higher in life. This is subsistence living in my opinion. The woman is an idiot for thinking this is OK because she gets a big paycheck. 

The money she gets 100% goes right back into the economy, rent, car insurance, food, diapers etc.


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## redwoodave (Apr 14, 2010)

Agree with Berubeland - the article was written to please the readers of the Daily Mail, which is a rag along the lines of the Sun papers in Canada.

A mercedes people mover is basically a minivan - purchased used, I imagine.

When you start looking at the numbers, our welfare system in Canada doesn't cost us that much.

Certainly better than the alternative, which would be slum living like you see in third world countries.


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## Four Pillars (Apr 5, 2009)

Given that it is a big family living under one roof I don't see anything wrong with the numbers you are calculating. Yes $500/$700 per month per person for an individual wouldn't be enough. But for a family of 8? I think that is pretty good.


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## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

That's a lot of money footed by the taxpayer to pay for each freaking child. That couple has clearly never heard of birth control. And because of this, my hard-earned tax money should shell out hundreds of $ a month per child?

How's this for a novel idea: stop making babies if your lot in life can't support it.


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## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

Berubeland said:


> I hate to do the math for you guys here
> 
> $42000/8/12=$437 per month each


In 20 years that's a million dollars. 

People need to work for what they want. This type of person should NOT have the right to continue producing babies when their plan is clearly to compel the taxpayer to foot the bill. Pay for your own life choices!

Scam.


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

What's wrong with babies? We subsidize reproduction, through a variety of social programs and tax credits. Should we be surprised when people respond to these incentives? In aggregate, we need more babies, so maybe that young mother is doing us a service. Many wealthier families can't be bothered to produce enough children to replace the parents.


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## CanadianCapitalist (Mar 31, 2009)

andrewf said:


> What's wrong with babies? We subsidize reproduction, through a variety of social programs and tax credits. Should we be surprised when people respond to these incentives? In aggregate, we need more babies, so maybe that young mother is doing us a service. Many wealthier families can't be bothered to produce enough children to replace the parents.


I think so too. Those babies are future tax paying units. We need more of them if you want current healthcare and retirement benefits when we are senior citizens.


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## Sampson (Apr 3, 2009)

CanadianCapitalist said:


> Those babies are future tax paying units.


Are you actually an accountant deep inside?


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## bean438 (Jul 18, 2009)

CanadianCapitalist said:


> I think so too. Those babies are future tax paying units. We need more of them if you want current healthcare and retirement benefits when we are senior citizens.




Which babies are you referring to, the babies wealthy people are not having, or social assistance babies?

Social assistance babies typically do not grow up to be tax paying units.


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## Four Pillars (Apr 5, 2009)

Sampson said:


> Are you actually an accountant deep inside?


Lol.

I heard that Ram named his kids "Cpp", "Oas" and "Gis".


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

bean438 said:


> Social assistance babies typically do not grow up to be tax paying units.


Unless their name is Oprah Winfrey.


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## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

brad said:


> Unless their name is Oprah Winfrey.


Yeah the world is just full of those types.


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

the-royal-mail said:


> Yeah the world is just full of those types.


Right, but as a billionaire she's probably paid enough taxes to make up for most of the welfare babies who don't!  All it takes is one.


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## Ben (Apr 3, 2009)

bean438 said:


> Which babies are you referring to, the babies wealthy people are not having, or social assistance babies?
> 
> Social assistance babies typically do not grow up to be tax paying units.


Well, I wonder. My siblings and I are 9 social assistance babies who grew up to be accountants, engineers, teachers, IT pros, etc. Growing up wealthy can make one soft and as prone to failure as one growing up poor, with the perspective that instills. Maybe we're the exception, maybe not.

If the rich aren't going to be bothered to have the kids necessary to sustain this country, then someone else has to. We can't rely on immigration 100%.

And....

I'll never be able to look at a baby again without thinking "You're such a cute little future tax-paying unit"...


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## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

The little bit of money these babies will shell out in sales tax pales in comparison to what they'll consume in terms of welfare payments, baby bonuses, health services, consumed daycare spots, traffic, crime, schooling. Do some people really believe this mother of 8 will have the money to send each one of these babies to university when they turn 18? C'mon. By then, half of those girls will be single moms and the cycle continues. 

The kind of babies we need are those raised with good, hard-working values, responsibility, proper money management, strong work ethic, looking after their own financial responsibilities (instead of relying on the taxpayer to pay your way while you hide behind some bogus health issue) and more. Not more that will simply be a burden to society, which is exactly what this family is.


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## CanadianCapitalist (Mar 31, 2009)

the-royal-mail said:


> Yeah the world is just full of those types.


Neither is the world full of single moms with eight kids living on welfare. You can't argue your case with anecdotes and not accept opposing views that also rely on anecdotes.

Here are the statistics:

Canada has 12.4 million households. Out of those, a grand total of 26,470 (0.21%) are female lone-parent families with five or more persons.

http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-r...&Temporal=2006&THEME=81&VID=0&VNAMEE=&VNAMEF=


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## CanadianCapitalist (Mar 31, 2009)

Four Pillars said:


> Lol.
> 
> I heard that Ram named his kids "Cpp", "Oas" and "Gis".


Actually, we named them UCCB, CCTB and CESG. After all, we belong to the "beer and popcorn" crowd. )


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

CanadianCapitalist said:


> Here are the statistics:


Thank you for taking the time to look up the actual figures.


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## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

You can't start throwing stats around when they only support your position. That makes them meaningless.

Where are the stats that show the % of public funds used by this 0.21%? THAT would be a meaningful number.


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

I think the point is that professional baby-mamas with many kids (4+) are pretty exceedingly rare. And not even all of those are on social assistance, necessarily.

This reminds me of the political tactic often employed by the right that involves attacking some imagined social problem. For instance, there was a proposal to change the law so that if pregnant women are assaulted, the assailant could be charged with special assault charges against the fetus. Only, this is an imagined problem. Assaulting a fetus is already a crime as it necessarily requires assaulting the woman carrying it. Beyond that, it almost never happens! It was just a nice juicy piece of meat thrown to the anti-abortion crowd, although it has nothing to do with abortion.

We see these policy debates about problems that don't really exist, especially at any scale that is truly consequential. People are cynically manipulated by these hypotheticals.


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## Four Pillars (Apr 5, 2009)

CanadianCapitalist said:


> Actually, we named them UCCB, CCTB and CESG. After all, we belong to the "beer and popcorn" crowd. )


Haha - touche!


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## Berubeland (Sep 6, 2009)

People have a number of reasons for being on social assistance. 

Not to be rude or anything but I have one child and that is tons of work. A woman who has four children has a full time time job. She is a mother. 

It would be optimal if the sperm donor of these children would stick around and help support them. There were two people involved in conceiving those children - where is the Dad in these scenarios ? You can't blame the woman she is at best 50% responsible. 

Furthermore, there are a lot of additional reasons for the man not being able to support his kids, he could be unemployed, uneducated, or dead. Then there's mental illness, alcoholism and drug abuse. 

So yes in an optimal world these people would not need social assistance or old age pension or EI or any other social safety net. In the real world **** happens. 

That is why we call it civilization, because we care for the sick and elderly and indigent. We as a society pay the costs of these social services because when it is our turn to be sick, elderly or indigent someone will take care of us. That is the social contract.


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

Berubeland said:


> That is why we call it civilization, because we care for the sick and elderly and indigent. We as a society pay the costs of these social services because when it is our turn to be sick, elderly or indigent someone will take care of us. That is the social contract.


I don't think anyone here is arguing against that, it's the cases of abuse that are a problem. I happen to know two young women (one of whom is my stepdaughter; the other is her best friend who dropped out of school at age 16 to have a kid) who fully intend to live off the system simply because they're lazy and are not into working for a living. They've got it all worked out, and they're not the only ones (although without data on how many abusers there are out there, we can only speculate. My guess is as good as yours).

Oversight should be improved to more effectively weed out people like that, but it's not easy to prove that someone's gaming the system.


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## redwoodave (Apr 14, 2010)

The thing about "living off the system" is that you will hardly be handed a life of luxury.

Think renting forever, driving shitty cars while constantly worrying about a breakdown, not going on vacation, etc. etc.

I don't know about you, but I'd much rather go to work and earn the sort of money that lets me do fun things than "work the system" and live a drab, colourless life. Sure, you can see people with the visible consumer crap (big tvs and electronics), but we all know that anybody can qualify to buy that crap on payments or credit.


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## CuriousReader (Apr 3, 2009)

redwoodave said:


> The thing about "living off the system" is that you will hardly be handed a life of luxury.
> 
> Think renting forever, driving shitty cars while constantly worrying about a breakdown, not going on vacation, etc. etc.


They might not even live the life of luxury, they might not be able to go on vacation, etc ...

BUT the fact that one can _*choose*_ to live solely on government assistance and *choose* not to work - I think that's just plain wrong. Government assistance should be there to help those who are actually in need, not those who refuse to work.

For someone living on welfare, they should _*not*_ be able to afford a TV, a mobile phones (not to mention multiple of them), a car (not to mention a mercedes). Government assistance should be enough to provide the basics, clothing, shelter and food ... and should probably give some that can help them to get work (assistance for re-training, etc), they should NOT be able to buy other consumer goods.

Point is, again ... those who _*choose*_ not to work, should not get assistance.


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