To think a lot of MN are ableist?

You also assume that every parent - in fact every person - has the ability to earn, so that the tax /NI is available as extra.

What if a person has or acquires an illness / disability that means they can never work? What happens to them after their parents / carers die?

I think you are mistaken in assuming that people would choose not to have children they could not ‘rationally afford’.

A deep acquaintance with - or frankly, a short exposure to - schools operating amongst our most deprived communities will reveal that many, many people have children for ‘non rational’ reasons, regardless of whether this is ‘a good idea’ or not. Drug addicts; alcoholics; abused women; young women fresh out of - or still in - care; prostitutes or trafficked women; women living in formal or informal situations where a dominant male has multiple partners, where this is a norm in their micro-community; vulnerable women desperate for something to love having children with short-term partners; women trying to hold on to a spouse or partner etc etc.

Im all of these cases, the child is not at fault, and should not be further punished by their parents’ choice to have them by then having no health are, no education, live with no rubbish collection etc eyc.

Exactly. Instead of paying taxes to the goverment I keep the money I have earned and pay it direct to the service supplier. I mean the goverment is literally a middle man.

You need to stop with the insurance nonsense ad nauseum. This is not how it works. It's getting a tiny bit tedious now and ads nothing to the discussion as this is neither here nor there.

You are being silly. Obviously at the moment I can't chose to pay for street lighting myself nor an ambulance because the system is not set up for that. It literally does not exist.

However I have chosen to pay for a private GP to get seen quicker and have a longer appointment. And if there were better services for other things by paying then yes I probably would use them as our public services are all falling apart.

Once the new system was in place yes I would call an ambulance but I would be expected to pay for it.

You are correct street lights and roads could never be a pay per use although thinking about it I guess the pay per mile tax that they are talking about in the budget would fund roads so that makes sense and people could pay for what they use.

Wow, you actually admit there may be a few holes in your entirely reasonable and well-considered plan, surely not!
Having re-read your posts I am beginning to suspect you are a bit of a wind-up merchant you cheeky scamp! If so well done, you genuinely had me going as it really is a pretty good, though extreme, pastiche of some of the offensive drivel spouted by posters on here every day. Very amusing!
On the off chance you are actually being serious, crikey!

I assume you live by your firmly held principles. If you have a heart attack in the street I imagine you would tell any helpful members of the public not to call an ambulance as you don't believe in the NHS. I would also hope that you don't drive your car on public roads, use illumination from streetlights or walk on public pavements since it is all paid for by taxes stolen from hard-working people by our lousy communist government!
I think you do need a new word to replace sensible in the context you are using it, how about nonsense?

I'm guessing the health insurance industry in the UK would change to accomodate things they don't currently offer as nobody uses them.

It would just become a much bigger industry because everyone would have insurance. If they can make money they will do it (ie insuring babies before birth). It would just be normal.

Absolutely there are holes in the plan. I mean it's not a plan it's a starting point which would have to be worked out of course.

I don't think a carer is less worthwhile at all. I was a carer for 5 years and it was one of the hardest periods of my life. There is nothing wrong with being a carer. People would just cut their cloth to their own income. So someone happy being a carer, might live in a small flat because they value looking after the elderly and are not materialistic. I mean surely people who are carers now don't do it because they think it is well paid.

Absolutely no shame in any job. People would just live to their means.
Bearing in mind nobody is paying tax or NI on their income so can divert this to pay for healthcare etc.

So far we've had comments to suggest that adults paying for themselves is outrageous and adults should be happy to pay their income over to complete strangers they have never met. When you actually think about this, it's completely weird.

How does that work if during pregnancy you found out the child is likely to have a disability?

You are right. People would be free to donate to charities as they wish (and currently do). Some people might get help from them (as they currently do).

I don't know whether I am a libertarian. I'm a fan of common sense. A adult by defination looks after themselves and takes accountability for their own decisions and choices. They pay for themselves or any children they have created.

I find it weird that we are expected to work hard, then hand over part of our money so strangers can spend it. I mean why? I don't expect anyone to pay for me and by the same token I don't expect to pay for someone I've never met.

It's so sensible I need a new word for sensible.

How do you explain the many, many children who are born every day in countries that don't have benefits or council housing?

A child getting cancer has nothing to do with benefits or milking the system. So if you have the 'wrong' insurance and your child gets cancer, would they have to be put down like a dog? Is that what you are saying?

I would be interested if you could provide me with a link to an insurance company which will provide life-long cover to an unborn baby, in the event that they are born with a severe health condition. As far as I am aware no such policy exists, but I am sure someone as well-informed as yourself, who has clearly given a great deal of thought to the tax-free utopia you are espousing and who hasn't remotely extracted the idea from their fundamental oriphice with no thought whatsoever, will be able to correct me.
Also, have you ever tried to get health insurance, life insurance or travel insurance as a severely physically disabled person? If you ever had you would know that insurance brokers deliberately make premiums prohibitively high to discourage us buying their products as we are too risky a proposition and they do not want our custom. Would you force insurance companies to provide cover to anyone who wants it in your libertarian Neverland or is it just our tough luck if providers consider us uninsurable?
If I were to begin picking holes in your foolproof plan I would be here all day but let me start by pointing out that many of the services you use every day are provided by low-paid workers. Carers, shop workers, delivery drivers and countless other professions may not earn the same as a top lawyer or a stockbroker but they are absolutely essential to our daily lives. The fact they are paid less is a result of your beloved capitalism which has a weird and skewed value system rather than a reflection on how hard they work. I would warrant a carer on minimum wage works a damn sight harder and is more valuable to society than an investment banker earning many times their salary.

Everyone would get insured prior to the birth of their baby. So the baby would be insured even before childbirth in case anything goes wrong. So no pre-existing conditions.

Yes there would be a catch up period but once everyone was insured from birth it would all be fine.

Remember you are not paying tax or NI. So you put that away every month you have a nice bundle of cash to pay for anything you can't get insurance for.

Everyone would just be much more sensible and accountable and ensure they always had a good bank of savings.

You would just have taken out insurance before you give birth so there is no pre-existing conditions so everything would be covered. Okay your premiums might go up next year but that happens with your house, your car, your pet, your dental insurance. We would just get used to it.

I actually think lots of people wouldn't have children if they knew they would get no benefits/council housing. I mean everyone on here gets outraged but we all know some people that do this to milk the system. If they have kids they can't afford then they suffer the consequences of that. I mean how many times do you see a person heartbroken because their pet is ill and they can't afford to get surgery for it because they have not taken out insurance. This is a terrible shame of course but they have to get the animal put down.

The percentage of people who would put themselves in this position would be tiny. If you got pregnant by mistake you would just abort. Otherwise everyone would just be more diligent about birth control. I mean there is no need to get pregnant unless it is planned is there.

yes but remember you keep your own tax and NI each month so you are better off. So what if really poor people couldn't have kids. Plenty others would have them. I mean there are lots of arguements to say the country is too crowded anyway. We don't need everyone to have kids.

I don't think just the extremely wealthy would be having kids at all. Most parents work and so most parents would still have kids. Just diverting their saved tax /NI to good health insurance and a better pension scheme and private schooling. I reckon 70% of the current parents would still have their kids.

Maybe the very poorest in society might not have kids but then surely that is a good thing. They won't be under so much stress to pay for stuff they can't afford. Instead they can have a good life focusing on other things. Lots of less intelligent people who do lower paid jobs are perfectly happy. Often more so than highly paid stressed out people.

You can’t get health insurance for pre existing conditions and there are expenses on top of insurance.

I'm part of a few parents of children with cancer groups, one of them is majority American and one of the most popular discussions is them frantically worrying about what their insurance will or won't cover all whilst their child is fighting for their life.

Not everyone would be able to afford ''good'' health insurance and even then, I'd be surprised if nothing but the most expensive, amazing health insurance would cover 10 months in hospital and all of what my son endured during that time as well as what he currently needs and will need for the rest of his life.

Poor people would still have children because poor people have always continued to have children

I don't want to live in a society where a child getting cancer could potentially bankrupt a family unless they are wealthy and have the right insurance.

To suggest that a grown adult should pay their own bills is outrageous?

That is what you are saying. Adults should not be .......adults?

To me the system we have is much more complicated than all of us just paying for ourselves. We would all just take our good health insurance for our entire family, same as house, car, pet insurance.

I find it so weird that others (presumably adults) are shocked at the idea of being responsible for themselves. I mean is that not the very definition of being an adult.

Communism is probably a bit extreme, But it's a slippery slope when the government pushes or plans to push policies that stifle growth whilst effectively telling people how they should use their money. Whether its higher taxes or directing saving towards the UK stock market rather than ISAs, or limiting house wealth rather than dealing the causes of wealth inequality it starts to look like a lot like the top down control that communism relies on rather than a guiding hand. I would argue that this is a different position.

Yes the other things you have mentioned have all happened. But when the government is pushing / likely to be pushing the above policies but refuses to get their spending under control, how can anyone have any faith that this is the team to deal with a, b an c?

But that is a different conversation to 'is MN ableist?'

By your logic, having children would become something only the extremely wealthy could afford. That’s not how society functions, and it ignores the fact that we need a sustainable reproductive rate to maintain our population. Many essential jobs are low-paid, and imagining a society made up entirely of solicitors, doctors, or engineers is unrealistic. Someone still has to perform the work at the bottom of the economic ladder. When you grow old and need help with basic care, it won’t be a stockbroker assisting you. Society depends on a wide range of roles, not just high-status professions