Would people prefer to pay no tax under a pure capitalism system ?

Unless there is some compelling force that makes "the poor" work for "the rich" a pure capitalist system cannot ever exist. "The poor" are also participants in such a capitalist system, and unless forced to work for a pittance they will be free to withdraw their labour - so nothing gets produced, harvested or processed from which the rich can profit - or those not benefitting from the system take control where they can, which in the simplest form involves just looting what they need.

No, everyone should pay tax.

Police, justice, defence, health and education don’t come cheap.

But it has to be fair, we now have more net takers than contributors and that’s not right. Tax has to be widely spread.

That has almost always been the case. Feudalism/Monarchy is a system under which the poor work in order to support the rich, who in return (in theory) offer protection to the poor. Of course, what happens in times when the empires of the rich are threatened by external forces is that the poor are also called upon to defend these realms - and when they are threatened by internal dissenters, the poor are again ordered to protect the status quo under threat of incarceration or sanctions should they too dissent.

In more recent times the coercion has been more subtle - whether through the political promotion of the twin economic fantasies of the free market and "trickle-down" economics, or by using the media to convince sufficient people that the country is under threat from an ever-changing cast of scapegoats; the EU, unelected bureaucrats, immigrants, people on the bus speaking "forrin", experts, benefit scroungers, scientists, socialists and cyclists ...

I think water privatisation alone should give us an indication of how this could play out.

Capitalism requires "state involvement". You and your friends don't understand what capitalism is. It operates within nation states - which are in many ways simply contructs designed to manage wealth - and the level of "state involvement" fluctuates and evolves to manage the challenges to capitalism. If, for example, there were no welfare state at all, then society can become unstable - if people have nothing to lose then they are more likely to rise up. It is no accident that the welfare state in the UK arose out of a war during which the working class were armed and learned how to use their weapons. You don't think that capitalism is really in favour of having to pay maternity pay, do you?

The UK does does a piss poor version of both socialism and capitalism.

We've inverted the pyramid so the poor sub the rich.

The police isn’t the interesting one. The fire service is. Rich people can afford gated communities and private security. But their homes are still at risk if the neighbours’ houses are on fire.

Before any of those fripperies, you'd probably want secure borders. I mean I don't think decking and patio furniture are going to stop the Viking hordes.

The police isn’t the interesting one. The fire service is. Rich people can afford gated communities and private security. But their homes are still at risk if the neighbours’ houses are on fire.

Interestingly, the ‘most capitalist’ like Singapore still have self-serving altruism like a LOT of public housing. Keep the workers happy and healthy. The UK does does a piss poor version of both socialism and capitalism.

"I pay my taxes. They buy me civilisation".

It is impossible to have a "state" without taxes. One possible definition of a state is "the area which raises taxes".

The historical, cultural and social journey from hunter gathers to what we could call civilisation and thence nation-statehood axiomatically involves the creation of a monopoly of violence which leads to a monopoly of power.

Good luck if you can find a way to maintain that monopoly if you aren't taxing people.

At a techncial level pure capitalism is about private/corporate ownership and control of means of production, and the freedom to produce and trade without government intervention. It does not prevent the profits being taxed. Conversley, pure socialism is where the state, or society collectively, owns and controls the means of production and there are no profits as such

I don't think there's ever been a civilisation that is completely tax free. It would be impossible to operate.

Of course no state means no leaders.

That's called "anarchy".

I would respectfully suggest that nobody wants that.

Next.

Interestingly one of the biggest advocates for no tax and zero state support, Ayn Rand, ended up living off social security and received medicare. Two things she argued against throughout her life.

She's the inspiration for so many libertarian right wingers, and yet drew on the state support she very much wanted to deny to people.

I'm sorry, have I walked through a time portal and emerged into a dystopian hellscape? I'm all for an interesting thought experiment, but this is an insane idea. Taxation is essential for the basic functioning of our complex society, without it all but the extremely wealthy would be living desperate lives of poverty and violence.

Good idea! Take back control and only pay for what you need and use! However, perhaps over time communities will find it is easier and cheaper to deliver services they all use if they band together. Even better if they pool resources, maybe everyone could reguarly add to the pot so there is money available to fund these things consitently and fairly.

Perhaps they could call it tax.

"Would people prefer to pay no tax under a pure capitalism system ?"

There is of course an alternative "No Tax" system....

One in which the government owns and controls everything- housing, factories, farms, infrastructure, hospitals, police and military, education and so on.
Everyone is allocated what they need in order to exist - somewhere to live (in a government-owned complex), somewhere to work (but everyone gets the same existence-level wage), free healthcare, free public services, free education (but according to whatever doctrine the government decides) and so on. Private property is banned; private enterprise is illegal; independent thought is punishable by imprisonment.

Is that what all the "No Tax" supporters are advocating - and if not, how do they propose to provide education, healthcare, housing, infrastructure, transport, defense and policing and employment to those who cannot afford these basics, or are these just reserved for those who can pay?

No I wouldn’t like this as even though I could probably afford to pay for what I need, I don’t want to live in a country where eg there are homeless disabled beggars everywhere and criminals are running amok.

I also don’t agree with purely private healthcare, mainly because healthcare should be prioritised based on health outcomes, not profits. See the US which has a largely private system and by far the worst health care outcomes in the western world in i think nearly every possible measure.

Having said that, i also don’t agree with the current level of wastage - ie benefits should be a safety net not an equality measure (so no, if you don’t work you shouldn’t be able to afford luxury holidays on the taxpayer)

The UK is a relatively low-taxed country when compared with EU and OECD countries.

If people want good public services, they have to pay for them. Since the 1960s politicians have chosen to keep UK taxes relatively low instead of investing in infrastructure, in education and healthcare and in public housing. The results of spaffing away the huge North Sea oil revenues - by cutting taxes instead of investing and creating a sovereign wealth fund - have worked their way through the system to give many of the problems faced by country today. Crumbling schools and hospitals, shortages of qualified staff (or rather, a shortage of money to pay these staff decent wages), outdated infrastructure, dilapidated Victorian public buildings such as courthouses and prisons, 7 million people in England waiting for NHS treatment, people unable to find a GP or dentist and much more.

Just taking healthcare as an example. Austria has twice as many doctors per capita as the UK - so people can see a GP just by walking in, and hospital waiting lists are largely unknown. Germany invests over 30% more per capita in healthcare than the UK does. So every three years UK healthcare investment falls an entire year behind German levels. British patients wait months for a hospital appointment. 300 people a week in the UK die due delays in admission to A&E. In Germany, politicians would be booted out of office if they had allowed situations like these to arise. In the UK, people are supposedly queuing up to vote for a party that intend to make the situation even worse by slashing taxes.

So how about paying more tax in order specifically to facilitate better healthcare? Almost 6 million people in the UK are covered by private healthcare - so 10% of the population (or their employers) are happy to pay over £12 billion a year to private providers so that they can be treated, but baulk at the thought of paying 1% more in tax so that everyone can have better healthcare. Meanwhile, Hunt told the NHS that balancing the books was more important than treating patients, and Streeting's last plan leaves the NHS £10 billion short of what is needed just to keep the current levels of service running.

I guess there would still need to be a small tax for services that are needed equally by everybody: police, army, street lights, justice etc.

But lots could be paid as a service when/if needed: education, health, roads…

Also, it is not that people don’t want to pay tax, it is that a majority of people think they pay tax when actually they receive more than they pay in.

The state getting too big disempowers people. Yes there is an upside, which is that life is safer, but there’s a downside too: people lose the impetus to solve their own problems and look after their own communities.

@Municipalwe already have to pay for the maintenance of our own road ourselves as it’s a private road but you’re right, I’m not sure how we would pay for the main roads etc. Perhaps things like road tax would remain? As for the police- the public sector is not fit for purpose. Far too much money spent in red tape and management. It all needs reform and I say that as somebody who has lots of family and friends in various parts of the public sector and who until recently worked in the public sector myself. There are good people in the public sector but bad systems.