Child poverty

[ukyp]

Campaign proposal

To eradicate child poverty in the UK

Purpose of campaign

With 1 in 10 children in the UK living in poverty and 1 in 5 in Scotland, it impacts a large majority of young people, and shouldn’t exist. We must eradicate child poverty in the UK.

Read more about this campaign

Discuss

· What do you think of this campaign idea?
· Is this issue important to you?
· Is the campaign realistic and achievable?
· What challenges would this campaign face?
· How could we make this campaign successful?

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[Liam Hannan]

So remind me how we're doing this?

Planting a field of money trees that is guarded by unicorns to ward off all the chavs?

Either the government will have to increase spending (and thus taxes or borrowing) in order to reduce the gap in wealth between the rich and the poor*or there will have to be new legislation regarding wage rates and ownership of companies. Perhaps the MYPs have a worked model of how company profits can be redistributed to the workforce to help reduce poverty brought onj by low wages - though I very much doubt it.

The government has already pledged, and failed spectacularly, to end child poverty. Why campaign for something they have already agreed to do? (Especially when an ounce of common sense tells you it cannot be done)


*This will mean that taxes are high so rich people suffer, and will lose a lot of incentive to work harder. Or the national defecit has to become so large that in a generation government spending cannot help the poor because it's paying off all our debts - so everybody gets poorer. Great plan

[Paul]

Child Poverty can only be eradicated when it is absolute poverty being the marker.

Relative poverty is hard to eradicate because last time I looked at the figures:

• More people earned around £14000 than any other amount
• 50% of people earn less than around £18000
• The mean (add it all up and divide by the number of people) wage is around £23000 (the few super rich distort it)

How much below the average wage (which average? mode/mean/median) is it before a household is poor? Does the poverty level vary according to area and number of children?

[MYP for Maidstone]

This will be hard...

[pretzels]

It's ironic there's two campaigns slating EMA, a scheme set up to keep teenagers on a low income in education, and then this. Confused much.

[Paul]

Originally Posted by pretzels

It's ironic there's two campaigns slating EMA, a scheme set up to keep teenagers on a low income in education, and then this. Confused much.

Maybe they're saying that having something isn't good enough - we need the best possible system, so just because we have EMA doesn't mean we aren't going to stop pushing for reform so that it works better and that the poorest in society aren't excluded.

[Gotlieb Alexander]

It is happening, gradually.

Look at how the poor lived in the past, compare it to now, extrapolate.

[Liam Hannan]

Originally Posted by Gotlieb Alexander

It is happening, gradually.

Look at how the poor lived in the past, compare it to now, extrapolate.

Second part of that formula; look at how the rich lived in the past. Extrapolate.

Step 3; work out average differential

step 4; work out marginal change relative to wealth of society.


Certainly in our lifetime we've only seen the rich-poor divide increase. (and arguing that they live in a better quality of squalor than other parts of the world holds little water - because they don't live in other parts of the world, they live here, so it's our wealth they're judged by)

Still a ridiculous campaign, but let's not let Gotleib's determination to promote the ultimate 'free' market drag us off topic.


This is unachieveable, find the MYPs who suggested it and hit them with a big stick.

[M-lo]

Great aims, but like many of these proposals, it lacks substance.

Essentially, all we can do is lobby the government to make child poverty a priority- something it already does.

Perhaps this suggestion would hold more water if UKYP actually had funds they could use to do something itself to alleviate poverty, but we all know how cash-strapped the organisation is...

[Gotlieb Alexander]

Originally Posted by Liam Hannan

Certainly in our lifetime we've only seen the rich-poor divide increase. (and arguing that they live in a better quality of squalor than other parts of the world holds little water - because they don't live in other parts of the world, they live here, so it's our wealth they're judged by)

Why are the poor judged by the wealth of the rich?

If the poor get less poor, surely that is an improvement, regardless of what the rich do?