RE: How will Benefit Britain, Benefit LLOY2 Jun 2026 12:44
@Gunsup, Respect right back, but you are completely mixing up your figures here both on home soil and across the Atlantic.
First, on the UK front: Labour didn't "uncap child benefit." What actually happened was the abolition of the two-child limit on Universal Credit. The net annual cost to the Treasury is indeed around £3 billion but let’s keep perspective. It affects roughly 500,000 low-income households. If we are talking about a country with an economy of over £2.5 trillion, spending £3 billion to lift nearly half a million children out of relative poverty is a fractional reallocation, not a systemic collapse.
As for the 600,000 families supposedly "better off on benefits than working" even if we take that widely cited, unadjusted think-tank stat at face value, it represents a tiny fraction of the 38% of the UK population receiving some form of state support (which, as I keep pointing out, is mathematically dominated by pensioners). In a 21st-century developed economy, the baseline goal should be ensuring families have enough to survive, rather than orchestrating a race to the bottom on working-class living standards.
But your pivot to Uncle Sam is where the maths really falls apart:
1. You noted that $10 billion of US debt needs rolling over this year. You are missing a few zeros. According to US Treasury data, with gross national debt having officially crossed $39 trillion and approximately 33% of marketable US debt maturing within 12 months, the US needs to roll over more than $10 trillion in short-term bills and notes this year alone, not $10 billion.
2. You are right to question the coupon rate and the changing appetite from traditional foreign buyers like Japan and China, who have been paring back allocations. But pointing to Tether ($127 billion in Treasuries) as a primary mechanism to "mop up" the market is looking at a puddle to explain an ocean. The primary shock absorbers remain domestic US commercial banks, institutional pension funds, and the Federal Reserve’s ultimate backstop.
3. When Wall Street valuations finally realign with a cooling Main Street, it won't be because of the welfare bill or Tether. It will be because the structural cost of servicing a $39 trillion debt pile at an average marketable interest rate of over 3.3% is actively crowding out productive private investment.
It's completely fair to analyse macroeconomic risks and sovereign debt maturity wallsbut if you're going to build a thesis around it on an investment forum, you have to get the baseline numbers right.
This Jeremy Vine Discussion on the 600,000 Welfare Households Analysis is relevant as it provides the exact media broadcast context and political debate surrounding the "600,000 families better off on benefits" statistic you cited. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJKEdpanRas
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