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That is a different situation, since a family with one partner earning £100k is assumed to be well enough off to provide childcare for their kids.

Another way to look at this is that it's providing more to the poorer families who need it more by cutting away costs for richer families.

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You could apply the exactly same argument to the other example. And regarding the second line, in both cases the problem isn't that richer people get less, but that there's a sharp cutoff instead of a gradual scale.

The similarity is that there's a discontinuity which discourages you from increasing your gross pay because your net pay will be reduced.

That a single £100k salary is enough to maintain a household of two kids is neither here nor there (and also depends very much on where you live).

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