AIBU to think if you're a net negative in tax you shouldn't be able to vote?

No, you were arguing that a baby born into great wealth and privilege isn’t lucky.

Would you mind answering my questions please?

Scruton is much hated by the left, but A BIT of his view is quite important. The bit that acknowledges that we are all free to make choices, but that we then have to live with the outcome of those choices. Which then requires me, and you, and everyone else to agree, I did get together with x, and then realised they were not good for me, or dodgy, or a hazard to the human race.

An author, Theodore Dalrymple, who is a medical doctor, now retired I think, from general practise in central Birmingham, wrote a series of essays about his practice in Winson Green and it's surroundings, and many of them are about his experience as a prison doctor. He writes very well and fluently, but it is shocking reading because he is unsparing about the depravity he saw. He generally goes gently on women but he is quite hard about women making poor partner choices.

@ObelixtheGaul , surely that's why tax rates are banded, to acknowledge your ability to contribute while working? Foolish to tax all income at 45%, if you then need help. My issue arose with the invention of working tax credits, as they then were, to subsidise employers dodging SSP and pension contributions by restricting the number of hours' of work offered.

I believe universal suffrage is the fairest system, but in the words of Churchill, "Democracy is the worst form of governance, apart from all the others that have been attempted."

At the risk of starting yet another back and forth between us, Roger Scruton had some pretty vile opinions and your constant referencing of him does nothing to further your argument.

Still mansplaining I see.

Ironically the cost of this would mean paying more tax to fund it.

To be honest, this makes me think of 'benevolent dictatorship/ monarchy'.. As King James I said, 'I will govern according to the common weal but not according to the common will.' Extended to the aristocracy and later to property owners, but fore a long time excluding poorer people.

If the better-off were indeed also the most benevolent, or the wisest and most far-sighted, there might be a point in this. But there is no evidence that this is the case. People tend to vote for what helps them or at best what helps the people whom they know. Before the 20th century, though there were indeed some reforms that inmproved conditions for the poorer in society, poorer people had much worse conditions than later on when they had much more representation.

Nor is being a net contributor in taxes the only thing important to playing a useful role i n society, though I don't think a vote should be a reward for usefulness or indeed a reward at all- but I accept that people performing particularly useful activities may thus become more aware of what is most helpful to the country.. Many crucial, often life-saving jobs are not that well-paid. During the lockdowns, many of the people classed as 'essential key workers' were in rather low-paid occupations. Should such people not have the vote? (Of coursew, an obvious solution is to pay them better, but that definitely won't happen if they don't have the vote.) And this doesn't include people - ranging from family carers to voluntary charity workers- who doi important work for little or no pay.

It is already the case that poorer people are less likely to vote; this is something to be combatted; not enforced by law.

Good suggestion, many thanks.

I get your sentiment but I don’t agree. I think anyone over the age of 18 should be able to vote. We’ll always have workshy people but they should be entitled to vote for that lifestyle.

This.

Women on maternity leave.

Low paid workers.

Sounds like a regime.

Because for me to contribute 45% of my earnings would leave me with not enough to live on. And I mean 'live', not 'have a lifestyle'.

It's impossible for me to do the job that I do and keep a roof over my head and feed myself and keep myself warm on a little over half of what I earn. Because what I earn is considerably lower than that of a net contributor.
Obviously.

And I don't even have a car, let alone HP on one.

If you mean, 'why couldn't I have become a net contributor by earning more later, well, yes. But if we all did that, we'd be leaving what I view as important work to the teenagers and twenty something's rushing through and seeing it as a penance to do before they get something 'better'. Which is something we are already seeing as more and more are being pushed into a world of expectation, and, increasingly, a world which is unaffordable without a high income.

What I do has value to society. We need people to be able to do it for it's own sake, not to mark time, or keep them alive whilst they work their way up. We need people to want to do it.

I was fortunate enough to be able to get on the property ladder in the sweet window in the 90s, when you could get a mortgage on a low wage. 25 years later, I paid that off. I'm not a burden or a drain. This house will pay for my later in life care. I've got my own little pension pot, I've claimed no benefits, I keep myself healthy.

I am proud of never being out of work, of building my little fund, of working hard for what I have. It wasn't given to me. I don't ask for more than I have. But I do think that years of working (I currently have two jobs, btw) ought to have value in and of itself. I haven't been lazy. I haven't been profligate. I've dedicated a good portion of my life to giving some of the most vulnerable in society, care and support.

I wanted to be a film star when I was a child. I could have pursued that path. I had opportunity when older to return to that and have a chance at becoming a 'net contributor' by working in television. Would I have had more value if I'd done that? I don't think so. What I do is harder work, certainly not as much 'fun' as acting, (and please don't think I don't think the arts aren't important, I absolutely do), but I am of more use where I am, doing work thousands aren't queuing up to do.

If I had no choice but to seek more money to get a vote, I would have done it, perhaps. And that would have been one less person who gave a damn doing the job I do. And one more person doing it to get to something else. And an end to what used to be seen as 'vocations'. Jobs we do because they transcend personal wealth.

We are already seeing the death of a society which worked for something other than personal gain. As we pursue the almighty dollar, counting the cost of everything and the value of nothing, viewing ambition only through the lens of personal monetary gain, we lose so much.

Off track a bit, there, but hey ho. It's been interesting.

Keep. Digging.

I meant pre-school children cos they are 24/7.

The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, God made them high or lowly and ordered their estate, eh?

Didn't think this was going to progress into All Things Bright and Beautiful, but the Internet never fails to disappoint.

Just to add:

When a country is down to 60% turnout in a General Election, democracy is at crisis point. We should be looking for reasons why people don't vote and try to combat them. The very LAST thing we need is increased restrictions on who can vote.

Ok.

So what part does “luck” play as you define it?

We know the babies belong to their parents, but they are not with their parents.

Baby A should have benefitted from all the hard work that their ancestors put in over the years, but they will not.

Baby B should have been with a family of feckless wasters but is now living with Family A.

Is Baby A unlucky that all the opportunities set up for them are going to someone else?

Is Baby B lucky to have those opportunities that none of their ancestors have worked for?

I think hardly anybody comes out as a net contributor in terms of money - effectively the majority of us are subsidised by the super rich.

However, I agree that voting should be linked to participation. If you have pre-children you are working many many hours in an unpaid job, but obviously contributing. Also if you are bringing your children up to be well adjusted and polite and decent then you are partcipating to better effect for society. Maybe the answer is more votes for better contributions.

Working full time, however, also seems to me to qualify as participation. Extra voting power for distinguished work? Prizewinning nurses get double weighted votes?

Where your analysis is accurate is that when everybody in society is in a special interest group that expects the State to subsidise them, and they vote, governments are utterly corrupted by the necessity of getting elected by a majority which requires at least some of the special interest groups’ votes.

However, it’s a bit brutal because our system does not acknowledge unpaid labour except by making ‘carer’s allowances’ which are both unaffordable for the state and too little to live on for an individual.

He didn’t quote Hamlet. He quoted Withnail & I. Whether he knows it’s from Hamlet or not isn’t clear.

Oh great, let's go back to pre-democracy days when only property owners could vote.

The whole point of voting in a democracy is that EVERYONE has the right to vote and be represented on matters that affect them.

I was responding to your yet somehow it’s never considered ‘luck’ to live in a country with a welfare state with an example of how I did consider it good luck to live in a country with a welfare state.

The middle must a votes for all starting point...