To want a society where we just pay for ourselves

[LettingTheBadThingsGo]

Okay this is going to get some backs up but it's also how I feel so..
I wish we could just live in a society where we all just pay for ourselves.
So you want to have children - you pay for it all yourself. No benefits of any kind.
You want to see a GP - You pay a fee and get the service
You need the police - You pay a fee and get the service
You want education for your kids - you pay for it and get to choose where to send them

Nobody gets a pension or any benefits. However we all know this and as such we pay no tax/NI and save for ourselves.

Obviously there would have to be a phased input over a large number of years (like 30)

I want to know that if I need the police I can get them here in 5 mins. If I need an ambulance I want to know I can get it here in 5 mins. I don't want to not have these services because there is a rubbish 'free' service because there is not enough being allocated to them because it's all being spent on things I disagree with (welfare, council houses)

This would make everyone responsible for themselves. Those who work hard would be better off. Those who don't work will be worse off. Seems fair to me.

Everyone would save from day 1 in case they become ill or disabled and need to support themselves or have a disabled child (although they could choose not to have children in the first place).

I find it very weird that we live in a capitalist society where so many people are being supported by welfare. To me that is the opposite of a capitalist society.

Obviously there are some things that could never be allocated to each person such as defence of the country. There would have to still be a 'country charge' to every person to cover things that just could not be split. Street lighting would probably have to come under this as well. However roads could be covered by a charge to each person based on their mileage each year.

Yes it would take lots of thought and as I said would have to be implemented over a large number of years. However this would lead to a more productive society as well as better services. Obviously on the basis of a thread I haven't thought everything out but hopefully you all get the idea.

Anybody who didn't want to live like that could leave of course and live somewhere else.

So anyone else agree - no tax or ni - save and pay for yourself. Just pay a 'country charge' to cover things that can't be allocated like defence of country. Everything else is private (healthcare, police, pensions) and you save for it all yourself.

The only people who I can imagine not wanting this is those that live on the hard work of others ie life time welfare claimants. For everyone else surely they would be better off.

You want everyone to pay 100% for themselves, including yourself, because this will save you money?

Have you thought about how much more things like childcare, keeping the streets clean, your weekly shop, emptying your bins, etc will cost you once there is no one else paying towards them via taxes?

Even if you are a net contributor now, you wouldn't be for long once the bin men started demanding higher pay, the street cleaners started charging per street, and the people working in the supermarkets refuse to get out of bed for less than £200 a day because they're too sick to work without healthcare.

The OPs position is an extreme position. What we have now is the opposite extreme. We need to shift the balance a little towards where the op is coming from.

The problem with this idea is that it's far too simplistic and ignores how society actually works.

Not everyone can simply "pay for themselves". What about people born with disabilities, those who develop serious illnesses or mental health conditions, or people who become unable to work through no fault of their own? Telling them they should have just saved enough isn't realistic when some conditions require lifelong care costing hundreds of thousands of pounds.

It also ignores children. If parents can't or won't pay, do those children just go without healthcare or education? What about children who need social care or protection from abuse? A civilised society doesn't leave vulnerable children to suffer because of their parents' circumstances.

Then there are the services we all rely on collectively - roads, bin collections, public health, environmental protection and countless other things that simply don't work well as individual pay-per-use services.

The idea assumes everyone starts from the same position, has the same opportunities, and can predict every future illness, accident or hardship. That's not how life works.

Ultimately, it's a naive view that reduces complex social and economic issues to "everyone should just pay for themselves", while failing to account for the weakest and most vulnerable people in society, and that's a society I would not want to live in.

I physically could not disagree more.

My background / career was actually in finance. I'm retired now but pretty sure the basics are unchanged.

What the OP is proposing is literally anarchy - and I mean that just in the political philosophy sense, not in a hand wringing way. No taxation means no government, no laws etc. - the 'police' they refer to would effectively be private protection units.

Lots of comments on here treat this as if it's a left/right argument. I agree with those defending welfare, but that's hardly the point here! Perhaps the OP should look at which countries in the world come closest to operating without government and consider whether they would like to move to one of them.

So your university education was funded by taxes, or have you paid that cost back?

Yes adults should work to fund their own lifestyles, the current welfare bill is too high. But, I’d rather have a societal safety net where vulnerable people are provided for and public services are well funded.

Not most but a lot.

Immigrants are mainly poor. Emigrants are mainly wealthy.

So what should we do with the people who can’t afford healthcare? Do we just put them in gas chambers or something? And what do we do with all the people who steal because they can’t get the money they need to survive? Gas chamber too? Or would you prefer a more macabre punishment?

It pains me to admit it, but I think there's an element of truth here. The sense of pride, responsibility, and the wider social contract that many people once felt has weakened.
That isn't to say anyone claiming benefits should feel ashamed - they 100% shouldn't. But nor should living on benefits become an aspirational lifestyle.

In my view, the OP is well off the mark. At the same time, we need to be willing to discuss the parts of our societal structure that clearly aren't working. If we refuse to acknowledge any problems, we just end up swinging from one extreme to the other.

People laughed off Trump in American. The left elite saw him, and thus his followers, as a joke... now look where we are.

A person who has a child born disabled (bearing in mind it was their own free choice to have children in the first place) would have large savings from paying no tax/ni and thus would pay for and look after their own child.

You are ignorant to how much care (and education for disabled CYP) for a disabled person can cost. It can be far more than the vast, vast majority of people can afford even if they paid no tax/NI. It isn’t a matter of just needing to plan better and save more.

We really, really need the laughing reaction back.

Ok. OP said most.

They've still got some small support in place in the usa though. What you really need to do is move to, say, Haiti, maybe afganistan, somalia, somewhere like that. You are 100% screwed there if you cant fend for yourself. You'd love it.

Nobody pays any tax or ni so if you find yourself disabled/ill then you have a bank of money to fall back on.

Um. Whit?

Do you read the daily mail by any chance op?

The current state of things is not perfect, but that more investment is needed is clear. We live in an aging society, and that needs to be factored in when considering public services, in addition to addressing structural issues that are impacting efficiency.

People are quick to moan about how broken the system is, but how many could really survive without it? We do not choose the circumstances into which we are born, and I believe that society as a whole benefits from supporting and showing compassion to those in need.

Let's go the whole hog! stop women voting or being able to own property and have a full education, happy days when everyone knew their place . I think the OP would love this unless they happened to fall on hard times. The author of Hard Times would be turning in his grave at the OP's world view

There wont be a Tesco in your world!

The idea that everyone, especially low earners, would save so much by not paying tax or NI to pay for every eventuality that may ever arise in their total life span is laughable. Do you know how little some people pay in tax and how much private education and healthcare etc costs? The maths doesn’t work. Unless you think that all jobs should attract six figure salaries (because we do need people to do the lower earning jobs), or would the state be subsidising the costs to make it affordable?

Absolutely not.

I don't want to live near people who think shitting in their garden and letting their rubbish pile up are acceptable because they don't want to pay for rubbish removal and sewage works.

I don't want murderwrs wandering around because they only murder people who don't have family or friends who can pay for the investigation.

I can only imagine how bad the health care system would be if it was only funded by those who were using it.

1st person to need an MRI - that'll be £1.5million please.

So if I’m a victim of a crime then I should have to pay for the police to attend to look into the matter?!
A murder victims family have to pay to see some sort of justice, if they can’t afford it then it doesn’t get investigated and the perpetrator goes free??
Think you need to go back to the drawing board for this one…
No one argues with you that people need to be responsible for their choices, number of children etc however surely as part of any civilised society you make sure the most vulnerable are protected.
In your argument someone who is unable to work with through disability/disease should only have their own family to rely on rather than society as all.
This post is nuts 🤣

So you understand that socialism can and does operate within capitalism?

Even saying this is so pig ignorant to be funny.

Previously working in finance gives you no realy insight into the economics of a whole country and youre crazy to think it does.

You can’t get a visa if you can’t contribute.

there’s no such thing as an “unskilled worker visa”. You need a job that will contribute, to be financially self supporting, or have a sponsor with a job earning a set minimum.

where do people get the idea that people are being given worker visa’s for low paid jobs?