I agree there - your benefits, student loans really shouldn't be calculated depending on your parents' income - but that isn't an issue here; the "controversial" change (actually supported by 80+% of the population, but the media seems to want to pretend there is a controversy) affects a benefit which is paid to the parents - currently paid regardless of their income. Right now, every parent gets this welfare payment simply for being a parent, regardless of income, which just seems wrong to me. If this benefit actually went to the child, like the 'Child Trust Fund' payment, there would at least be a reasonable argument against making it dependent on the parents' income, but that isn't the case here.
Indeed, at first my mother had assumed she wouldn't be eligible (my father had a well-paid job with AMI, a big US health care company, at the time) - the notion of having the government hand out welfare while it also extracts a much larger amount of money from the same pocket in tax is just absurd on so many levels.
The other proposed reforms seem very positive (as well as long overdue): capping welfare payments at a figure which is still outrageously high, and changing policies to avoid the "gap" whereby a welfare recipient can be better off staying on welfare than taking a job. It will probably take years for this to have a detectable effect overall, but it's certainly a step in the right direction. It's far from ideal - for one thing, joint tax returns would really need to be in place for this to work properly - but it's going in the right direction at least.
Long overdue
Indeed, at first my mother had assumed she wouldn't be eligible (my father had a well-paid job with AMI, a big US health care company, at the time) - the notion of having the government hand out welfare while it also extracts a much larger amount of money from the same pocket in tax is just absurd on so many levels.
The other proposed reforms seem very positive (as well as long overdue): capping welfare payments at a figure which is still outrageously high, and changing policies to avoid the "gap" whereby a welfare recipient can be better off staying on welfare than taking a job. It will probably take years for this to have a detectable effect overall, but it's certainly a step in the right direction. It's far from ideal - for one thing, joint tax returns would really need to be in place for this to work properly - but it's going in the right direction at least.