To think that there is no hope here?

That figure has been widely debunked. I posted a link, but for some reason it has been hidden. But anyway it is a really comprehensive analysis of the Henley and Partners report. Hopefully the link will clear soon.

Where is this different component stat? The only 52.6% I can see is the ONS one on @TreeDudettepost

Have you ever lived anywhere else other than the UK op? I have lived in 3 other countries and in my experience things are not magically, totally different elsewhere, they are just different. Some aspects better, some worse. Plus unless you go to English speaking country, or are already fluent in the language, you will find that learning another language is hard, and if you don't you'll be isolated in an expat community which can be tedious.
I'm not denying the UK has major issues, or that some other countries are better governed, but people tend to overstate the benefits of living abroad and understatement the challenges.
This is all before you factor in leaving behind aging relatives, though maybe that's not a factor in your case.
Most expats I know are a bit stuck where they are, and they miss aspects of 'home'.

Surely @op means 52% of the population gain more than they pay in. This includes the maintenance of roads, the functioning of prisons, schools, government departments, access to a GP and healthcare more broadly…. in-work benefits, pensions, and all the other stuff and costs of running a vaguely civilised, developed country. We all benefit from workers being able to send their kids to schools, from motorways and roads, from having a judicial system, etc.

if you pay more than £15k income tax (excluding VAT, council tax, etc) , you’re contributing to the costs of keeping everything running. If you pay less than £15k, you benefit from more than you’re paying for.

PPs have been keen to insert themselves into the middle of the question, but it’s broader than that - not about individuals.

I often think about it myself.

I'm sure overwhelmingly most top earners feel they should pay their fair share of tax, that's not the point. The point is that the net contributors are outnumbered by the net takers. There's just no point in people complaining that the net takers are not sufficiently well looked after if there are just too many of them. A welfare state can only be designed to cater to a vulnerable few, not to a vulnerable majority. Obviously once the vulnerable are the majority, the maths just doesn't add up. And it's clearly a problem that too many people are claiming, not enough are contributing.

All those able bodied people in the middle ground who are neither contributing nor claiming are also to blame - they are economically inactive at a time in their life when the economy needs them to be contributing. They are living off the infrastructure created by other people's contributions. All those people choosing to work part time when they could work full time are also part of the problem. For society to thrive, everyone has to be contributing to their maximum, incentivised to create the maximum wealth they can.

t's everyone's fault who is not working as hard/long as they could be as well as the fault of the politicians who have failed to put the appropriate incentives in place.

Couldn’t have put it better myself. Well said.

So what do you propose we do with the surplus special cases?

There are over 1.5 million adults in the UK with a learning disability. 99% are dependent on state support, because the number of £50k jobs available to an adult with an IQ of 55 and a co-occuring condition like downs syndrome or autism aren't exactly high.

Then you have a further 2.9 million with conditions that can affect their ability to work at the same pace as a non-disabled person, or where symptoms wax and wane and make regular predictable employment difficult. Everything from gioblasticomas to MS (300k diagnosed), to rheumatoid arthritis (700k), MND, schizophrenia (300k), bi polar disorder (280k), agressive cancers, blindness, spinal stenosis, ankylosing spondylitis (200k), and many more. 1 in 6 people in the UK have a disability.

add on a further 700k+ million adults with dementia, requiring attendance allowance, or PIP if under the age of 68. Employers are hardly queueing up to hire them!

Are you suggesting we focus government spending on a program to uplift and create opportunities for the 1 in 6, opportunities which give them the ability to work towards becoming net contributors? Hmm?

Or are you suggesting we just throw 'em all into a woodchipper so you get to pay a little less tax and Tesco can continue to make 3 billion a year in profits while bribing the goverment to top up it's staff with Universal Credit payments?

And again. You’re blaming the victims. We have large and wealthy companies in the UK who are paying crap wages their employees can’t survive on, and offloading large parts of their wage bills onto the taxpayer by way of UC top ups. How is that the fault of the employees ? How is that a way of life when it’s actually out of their hands ?

The fact this figure comprises of public sector employee wages is pretty nonsensical.

Clearly this is rage bait.

@Taxed I wholeheartedly believe in a welfare state. What I don't believe is right is when 52% of adults and growing are net-reliant on the state

This is part of the reason you’re getting so much flack on the thread. Not only is the 52% part of a downward trend and not ‘growing’ as you seem to think, but its made up of several different components, many of which don’t support your narrative.

Are you a homeowner OP? If so then government intervention in the free market will have raised and maintained your house value and thus your financial security, wealth and ability to function better in society due to having more secure or suitable housing. That very intervention on your part will have made it impossible for others, despite their best efforts, to have buying power in the market. It is your state benefits that will have made them more likely to need support, or perhaps they get no support but are just much worse off so you can get your benefits. Perhaps they are paying huge private rents and suffering lifelong financial insecurity to support you getting your home value handout.

Or have you worked in a setting where the profits that may your larger salary are enabled by the hard work on many on minimum wage or insecure contracts?

I am not trying to disagree with your overall point really, just saying that it isn’t as clear as you think who is a net contributor. The waters are much more muddied, and often those who are doing well are actually benefiting from a system that holds back the very people they think should be doing better.

Where do you think you’ll go?

brilliant!!

It starts at home but too many people’s homes are failing them.

That’s part of the problem, but there are many and varied situations which don’t allow for opportunities to be taken up. The school leaver who has no choice but to work to help support the family. The child who is a carer to a disabled parent. The single mother who works three jobs and has no energy left for anything else. And many more. These are all contributing factors. Where is their ‘guidance’ ? Yo speak as though it’s easy to work your way up. It isn’t. And I can see why you are thought of as staunchly middle class - your upbringing may not be, but your views certainly are.

If you're not earning it doesn't mean you're relying on the state. I'm 54 and retired, and don't claim anything, so you can't jump to conclusions.

Double the minimum wage…. I wonder how many would come out of your stats then.

I do a pretty stressful and essential job. I am reliant on universal credit.

Im never going to be rich and you need me doing my job

Create more ways of incentivising people other than wealth.

if we name a public library after you will you stay OP….. and pay a higher tax to help redistribute money? What is your net income that you are leaving you in existential despair?

Muppet

@StarlightRobot nobody is saying all rich people should leave. They just don’t agree with the rhetoric that OP is spouting. Loads of rich people on here have voiced their willingness to pay their taxes. Those that don’t want to pay are free to live wherever they like it’s not like the UK is keeping them captive. Like others have said even James Dyson is back with his tail between his legs 😂

No, it’s their policies. They create the brickbats and leave others to throw them.

Judging by some of the comments on this thread toward benefit recipients It’s not a compassionate society now. Of course work should be encouraged, that’s a given. What’s harder is encouraging employers to pay better wages so the tax payer isn’t left footing the bill.

We have hundreds of thousands of sick and disabled people claiming benefits who could probably work with the right support, but that support is costly and subject to ever decreasing budgetary constraints because it’s not seen as important enough. And denigrating the disabled in the press and the media - calling them idle scroungers and benefit cheats - doesn’t help when you then come to try to persuade employers to give them a chance. It also doesn’t. Help that the wealthy have systematically bought up property for buy to let and ordinary hard working people are left struggling to pay exorbitant rents, which again are subsidised by the tax payer, out of necessity.

We’re running on greed at every level, and it’s this that has to change before anything else can. Just because you stop supporting a need, doesn’t mean that need disappears - all that happens is that the bill for that need is shifted somewhere else at increased cost.

Yes but it’s the politicians that horrify me. Rioting bullies are just the symptom of glass fuckers.

Personally I like a more ethnically and culturally diverse population.

The country is a mess. Nothing works. Immigration out of control. Values gone. We have had a similar discussion. Free speech being eroded.

I don’t think OP was using a person’s net contribution to assess the value of their life. She was using the percentage of people “reliant on the state” to assess the health of the UK economy.

Of you go then .

Every country has its pros and cons. E.g. I lived previously in Spain and Poland. Spain has this laidback lifestyle and an amazing cuisine, but wages/education system are abysmal. In Poland you can live in a big, beautiful villa with a big garden/farm at a fraction of the UK price and everything is so cheap, but kids will be stressed out at very demanding schools/difficult language and there is war behind the border. And the free NHS is somewhat unique - you usually have to either pay in cash or pay your taxes/be employed to have any kind of (good) healthcare anywhere else in the world.