Where are those people's families and where is my tax going?

[AmusedTaupePlayer]

Nearly 50% of my income vanishes in tax and NI, and I’m seriously wondering what I’m getting in return. The streets are filthy, the Tube’s a mess of delays and breakdowns, and my child’s school can’t even fix leaking ceilings.
GP appointments? Impossible. Police follow-ups? Hit and miss.
I asked my councillor, and he said most of the money’s going to social care — mainly for elderly people and kids in care. Fine, but it makes me ask: where are their families? Why is the state carrying so much, and why does it feel like we're footing the bill for a system that’s barely working?
I’m not trying to be cruel — just frustrated. Is anyone else getting the same response from their council? Or any better answers?

Yes. Not everyone pays into the system to the tune of what they eventually take out.

We need to have a very honest and brutal conversation about the cost of keeping people alive who previously would have died.

Look at Covid. The entire country shut down, at enormous cost (not just financial), to keep the colossal number of medically vulnerable people in our society alive. People who, 40/50/60 years ago, would have been dead already.

Yes, that sounds harsh. Reality is harsh. And when it’s Nature you’re trying to fight off, don’t think for a second there’s not a huge cost attached to that, one way or another.

My DF was in a care home primarily paid for by the council because he had no money. I could perhaps have given up my job to care for him, but I wouldn’t have coped with a severely disabled doubly incontinent man for very long before I broke - and how would I have paid my mortgage? I’m a higher rate taxpayer and I don’t begrudge tax money being used to help someone like him.

Anyway OP you’ll be glad to hear that he isn’t a burden on the State anymore because he’s dead.

To answer, where are their families? I'm at work full time whilst elderly relatives get care I cannot provide. How would I do that and keep my own house afloat?

The political fallout from any politician actually saying this would be intense, like, OMG.

I think years ago we knew that rich people had a wonderful lifestyle but other than magazines we didn’t really see it.
Now sm pushes that champagne lifestyle under our nose so of course people want it.

We live on a small island, our manufacturers base has been decimated during the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s and until the 2008 crash our money was from service industries.
The Tories then brought in austerity, then Brexit followed by spending any money saved on covid with a free for all for people like Michelle Mone.

I think the working and middle classes have every right to be frustrated with successive governments who pander to the already rich.
And privately run nursing homes are just legal theft imo.

Do you still live near your parents?

in 10-20 years time, will you give up that career you’ve been building to look after your parents in their old age when they can no longer manage at home?

If not, who will be looking after them if they need help?

The challenge lies in the fact that everything requires funding, and unless there is an unpaid workforce available, every individual and service must be compensated. This creates a continuous cycle of expenses and payments, perpetuating the issue without resolution.

Most older people who are in care are only there in the last 2 years of life when their needs are greater than family can meet

children who are in care are their being cause their families can’t keep them safe

in both cases we are talking about the most vulnerable people in society.

that’s where our tax is rightly going

Will you quit your job to provide care for your family members if they need it?

Incorrect, its actually about 50/50. Due to out ever evolving medical care more and more children with additional need are surviving into adulthood. Its an unpalatable truth with no reasonable other option, but the more medically advanced we get, contrary to what was originally foreseen, we actually have a more dependent society, not a less dependent one.

@Notreallyme27 "When you read threads about people’s parents putting their houses in a trust, or signing ownership over to their kids in their 60s/70s, everyone accepts that as a sensible thing to do to avoid care costs. The public paying for their eventual care is the result."

This. Nobody's screaming about people with £850,000 pound houses (which are very far from rare these days) who avoid paying care costs. We all pay the price so their kids can inherit. Lovely jubbly.

@MandarinCat "people with learning difficulties were chucked into asylums and given a very basic/poor standard of care. Now people are either paid carers allowance to look after family members"

Mandarin - I can assure you that running "asylums" even with the most basic care, food and supervision, would outstrip the absolute pittance of Carer's Allowance a billion times over. To say the Government is getting away lightly is the understatment of the century.

Housing prices are another factor - how many of us have spare rooms for our parents to move into?

But we have to crack funding for elderly care. Theresa May tried, didnt she? But was defeated by the media's "death tax" stories and collective outrage that inheritance might be dented. Every day on MN we see posters talking about their entitlement to 'their' inheritance, but if we don't want to shoulder elderly care as a collective tax burden, we have to raid elderly people's estates.

Bless that woman. I’ve done it for one person and it wrecked me.

You say no-one in your circle has kids but mention your child’s school can’t fix its ceilings (which is very common in schools hence my username!)

I thought adult social care was paid for by local authorities?

A quick google brings up the government's spending forecast and shows the highest areas of spending are:

1. Social protection (pensions and benefits)
2. Health
3. Education
4. Interest on national debt
5. Defence

As a population we are getting older and unhealthier.

@Ketzele Every day on MN we see posters talking about their entitlement to 'their' inheritance, but if we don't want to shoulder elderly care as a collective tax burden, we have to raid elderly people's estates.

I absolutely agree with your point, but I take exception to the wording. People paying for their care using extremely valuable assets that they own is not the government “raiding” their estate. It’s simply them paying for a service that they are receiving, because they can afford it.

From chatgpt, expenditure nationally from tax income 24/25:
Total expenditure：約 £1,200 billion

• Pensions: £220.6 bn (~18%)
• Health Care: £230.7 bn (~19%)
• Education: £115.6 bn (~10%)
• Defence: £66.2 bn (~6%)
• Welfare (other than pensions): £171.6 bn (~14%)
• Protection (e.g. police, courts): £47.6 bn (~4%)
• Transport: £43.4 bn (~4%)
• General Government (administration): £25.8 bn (~2%)
• Other public services: £202.2 bn (~17%)
• Debt interest: £74.5 bn (~6%)

Key Comparisons Over 40 Years

1. Big rise in pensions & health

• Pensions rose from 11% to 18.4% of total spend.
• Health jumped from 11.5% to 19.3%, now the single-largest category.

1. Defence down dramatically

• Defence share halved—from 12.6% to 5.5%.

1. Debt interest fell in share

• From 11.4% in 1981–82 to 6.2% today, despite higher nominal amounts.

1. Discretionary areas squeezed

• Education dropped (12% → 9.7%), Transport (4.9% → 3.6%), Protection steady (3.9% → 4%).

1. "Other" spending rose modestly (14% → 16.8%), reflecting services like local government, environment, and culture.

I find these figures fascinating, especially when you consider the general worry about debt interest which is in fact sharply down.

I think it is naive to be asking "where are the families" of those receiving care, and why are feckless men reproducing.

Some of the reasons that elderly care falls to the state (via subsidising payments to private homes or carers) is that people are living longer, families do not have "spare" members not at work and available to be carers and care is often more specialized now.

As for care of children - frankly I am happy to see money spent on helping children from problem families - it is a good investment in the future if done well. I am less happy about the fact that all care (elderly and children) is now based in profit-making companies whose charges can be astronomical.

Our debt interest is down. We need to see more government borrowing and higher taxes in order to provide proper services for everyone; and we need to get away from the every man for himself attitude that makes people dissatisfied with having to pay tax. You have to pay in in order to draw out. We need to bring back the concept of society.

I pay tax on my retirement pension because I also have a small NHS pension. This in spite of the fact that my actual income is £15000 pa below the average UK income. So I am not rolling in money! But I am happy to pay as I want to see my GC educated, people living in poverty helped and children living in danger given proper care - and I have truly got my money's worth out of the NHS in the last couple of years!

The basic problem of course is that governments do not always spend the money as we might sih, but that is the nature of democracy.

I can’t edit my previous post asking @AmusedTaupePlayer about her parents, but in fairness I will add that I had moved away from my parents for university, and was not willing to leave my job and go back home to look after my mum for the last few years of her life. Neither were my sisters. So we accepted that the house would go to cover care costs, and that part of the tax we pay also goes towards care costs, to look after the vulnerable people in our society.

How would chatgpt know the expenditure on debt repayments on a tax year that we are only two months into?

If the elderly are funding their own care why do you object?

It is those who are not and on the take that is the problem. They need to contribute or provide their own care or do without.

What benefits do you think people in Scotland get when they have kids? Scotland has the same universal credit system as England. The only extra is the Scottish child payment. An extra £100 a month does not incentivise people to give up work.

Covid was a little different for me in that DH (who was 37 at the time) is one of those people who had to shield for over a year. There is a massive assumption that those who shielded were elderly, infirm or at deaths door. DH's company were remote beforehand and he worked throughout the whole pandemic, no furlough for our household. He is also a fully functioning member of society who is a top rate taxpayer who volunteers for several community projects outside of work. Put it this way a lot of people don't know he is CEV. There is also the difference that we have provisions in place. He has death in service and I have life insurance and also death in service. We also pay into our pensions heavily to enable him to retire early on ill health if required. We have never maximised ourselves on a mortgage so have the equity to easily downsize and be mortgage free. He also has medical cover to enable him to get outside preventative screening on things that can occur later in life a result of his condition that the NHS don't cover. We as a household do not expect the state to pick us up

I am a firm believer in that the state does need to rescue people at times because you never know what's round the corner. Not everyone is in the position we are. However the state is not a crutch and that people do need to help themselves to an extent and have some provisions in place should the worst happen.

God this thread is grim. Just pay your taxes love.

The other side of the issue lies in companies expecting a certain level of value and productivity from their workers while failing to provide adequate compensation to meet those expectations.

What Can Be Known Two Months Into a Tax Year?
By late May or early June, only partial data is available for the current UK tax year (which starts in April). However, several sources provide provisional figures or forecasts:

• Debt Management Report (DMR): Published annually by HM Treasury, it outlines the government’s planned borrowing and debt servicing costs for the year ahead. This includes interest payments and gilt issuance targets.
• Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR): Issues fiscal forecasts that estimate debt interest costs based on inflation, interest rates, and borrowing levels.
• Monthly Public Sector Finances: The ONS releases monthly updates showing actual debt interest paid to date, but these are not extrapolations for the full year.

So, if ChatGPT (or any AI) says something like “the UK will spend £X billion on debt repayments this year,” it’s likely referencing:

• A forecast from the OBR or DMR
• A projection based on previous years’ patterns
• Or, less ideally, a static figure from a past year misrepresented as current