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.

100% agree with this
Also how much does it cost to build, run, stock and maintain fire engines ambulancs , police cars , riot vans , moter bikes for police and ambulance .

Regarding the road tax , I do not drive but I use buses and taxis so I want the roads to be in good condition.

Your whole idea is laughable @LettingTheBadThingsGo .

I actually opened this thread thinking you were going to talk about spitting bills for meals / tickets .

The only option I could sort of see working was if people who chose to could opt out of paying NI and pay for high health insurance and like in the USA be able to prove you can pay for everything inc ambulance before they come out for you.
But even this is a impossible stretch imo

'when I return.'

• how dramatic ... 🙄🤣

So a finance professional who knows the cost of everything and value of nothing.

OP - do you understand macro economics? Do you understand the connectedness of every humans wants and needs? And how the state works to deliver that? You want a private police officer to come and assist you? That police officer is someone’s child, who had to be housed, fed, cared for, educated, kept healthy, trained, used a road to get to your house. According to you that’s all someone else’s investment. And what price are you prepared to pay to access that investment? How’s that market going to work? What if you agree a price and they get a better offer? If they’ve got to save for their own future needs, they will want as much money as possible. How will you feel about that?

You seem to think you didn’t get what you paid for in the 35 years you paid tax and NI because you don’t think it benefitted you, personally. You don’t understand anything

If you hadn’t responded so much to the comments I’d say this was a rage bait thread as I struggle to believe that you truly think things like schools, healthcare, law and order are personal luxuries that you should only have access to if you can afford them.

Name a successful capitalist society which functions the way you want.

So OP...

say you have a family of three. Two parents and a child. The child has a severe learning disability and can't attend school. One parent stays home looking after the child, and the other parent works.

Working parent is killed in an accident.

Non-working parent gets cancer and quickly burns through all the savings, insurance etc on treatment and on care for their child.

Non-working parent dies.

What happens to the child? Just leave them to die?

You would like to go back to the days of Dickens? Or to become like a poor developing country, where rich people are rich, but young children and sick or disabled people die like fliea? Or even like America, which is certainly not without welfare or public services, but it's far more limited than here, and despite all their technological advancement, the life expectancy is three years lower than here?

Leave me out of it!

And I'm not on benefits, by the way.

Setting aside the costs of national infrastructure, policing and defence I am in the group of people who are net tax contributors, and have been for a very long time. The thought of a society like this terrifies me.

This!

Saving from day of birth is not going to keep you afloat if you are disabled later. I have a disabled child and she won’t ever have to work but she’s in the minority. The expense of disability is high due to provisions being targeted to those who are not and custom anything costs more.

Yep, I'm voting option 2.

I want the OP to post some proposed costings, I think it would be a real laugh. I am imagining the police website or call centre working something like this:

Welcome to Dystopia Policing. Please have your credit or debit card ready and choose from the following options ( the intial call out charge is subject to further charges depending on the length of the inquiry and if it progresses to court action, there will be additional costs from the Court and Custody Services also know as Temu Justice for Sale)
To report a murder press 1 and pay £25
To report a rape press 2 and pay £20
To report a non fatal shooting/stabbing/other attack with a weapon press 3 and pay £15
To report a dwelling burglary, just eff off and sort it out yourself
To report anti-social behaviour, get out there and give them a smack in the face

It is interesting that you assume your claimed agree responses are working so not posting. It is equally possible they are just too embarrassed to respond openly because the majority strongly disagree with you.

having read your responses I have to ask - how much did you pay for university 35 years ago? You say you’re retired, I’m guessing you’re not at state pension age yet, but will you claim it when you are entitled? If you graduated 35 years ago you’re approaching now the years when you will start to take more from society - will you be using private healthcare for every possibly ailment? I guess what I’m asking is do you really believe what you’re saying? Or is it the usual call of your generation that you deserve it for working hard but the younger generations don’t deserve half of what has been provided to you because they don’t work hard - in the world your generation created by the way.

Personally I don’t think you’ve truly thought through the implications of what you’re suggesting. Anyone can become chronically ill or disabled at any age. What if you were to have a serious accident tomorrow? You can never work again, never make a single penny more. What if you cause that accident tomorrow someone who is 20? They’ve not had a chance to build up significant savings and you’ve ruined their life. Or there’s no support for families/children so the birth rate plummets even further. Who exactly are you paying to provide these services for you because you can afford them? There is no future generation. And wages - you say those who work hard should be compensated accordingly - lovely so wages up for people like carers, bin men, firefighters… or is that not how you want to measure hard work? How about, since your new “society” is all about being responsible for yourself, the most essential people get paid the most? Really if someone does a job you can’t live without you’re going to have to pay whatever they ask.

at the end of the day, society used to be the way you described, and we moved away from that for a reason. But as you suggest, if you don’t want to live in a society like ours you’re free to leave.

oh, and in case it matters I work full time as a specialist nurse. Am I hard working enough to have a valid opinion?

there we are then

Any Rand has written extensively on these thoughts. Lionel Shriver also writes about them. They're interesting thoughts from the past.

This

Have you looked at other models of education? In countries where they don't have privatised education parents (who would otherwise pay for the likes of private school fees) pay into mainstream education instead. Meaning that ALL children have a much richer educational experience and there's greater parity across educational opportunities. And more provision for sen children within schools. The problem we have here is elitism where private schools enable the wealthy to channel their resources elsewhere to boost their child's opportunities (which are already going to be greater than a child living in poverty) and leave other children to struggle. It creates a gap between wealthy and poor and then the cycle continues. There's no reason why the wealthy can't have their children in mainstream education and pay for that education without feeling that someone living on minimum wage should be doing the same.

Or child reaches adulthood, the parents get old and die. I guess the OP would be quoting Scrooge at that prospect... "If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

If you privatize basic stuff the cost of that basic stuff will rise because business are meant to earn money, so calling the police, going to the doctor etc etc is going to be unafordable for most.

If you create a society like that nobody will work traditionally less paid wages works regardless of education and experience because they will force you to pay higher wages if you want that service. Want some bread? 100 quid the loaf just in case I have to pay to call the police or the doctor. Don't want to pay it eat grass.

Taxes will increase, even if you pay for less stuff, because the salaries of those who work in whatever you want to cover with those taxes will increase, because if you don't pay them more no one will do that job. Want the police? 5000 quid. The salary of the two officer, plus the investigation, plus the report and the consumables such the car, the fuel, etc etc.

With all of the above money will depreciate in value, inflation will sky rocket and only the ones with land that can be harvest and farms will make a decent living, because they will have what we all need, food.

Those bad apples that scam the system today will continue doing it, because it is in their nature and their will find a way to scam the rest.

You are proposing a mad max society, thinking that your plumber or the cashier in the supermarket would agree with your thoughts. Allow me to tell you that that is not going to happen. Because the plumber will leave your pipes leaking and the supermarket will have to close after being raided a few times and no one will want to work for less that a decent living wage.

I'm not even commenting in the disabled, the elder, etc because what you think is a kind of economical eugenesia and disgust me.

Oh don’t be ridiculous, literally hundreds of years have shown what you propose does not create a fair society. The evidence is there- now grow up.

A good solid 30% of people are absolutely brainwashed and bamboozled by information on the internet. I saw someone yesterday saying with 100% confidence that clouds do not exist in nature but are all the result of all the world's governments spraying chemicals from planes. He'd done his own research...

This is your self directed learning in action.

The reason these people are so prone to falling for this utter guff in the first place is that they did not place sufficient value on their formal education and did not learn critical thinking skills.

Many of them get by and can earn a living because formal education did manage to impart some skills in them, but if there was no formal education at all, one dreads to think of the seething mass of totally unemployable gibbering conspiracy idiots we would have on our hands.

Capitalism introduces the idea of welfare. First Poor Law was 1601.

There used to be private 'police'. They were called thief takers and wildly inefficient.

The reason you've got healthcare is because rich people didn't want to keep dying from poor people diseases.

The reason you've got education is because that army you want to use as a human shield needs people who can string a sentence together.

So once their parents are no longer around, people with disabilities just...die?

Haven’t read the whole thread.. but just curious about the boat people? Who’s paying for them?

Or the government for that matter? Or the royals? Or our various contributions as a nation to other countries for aid?

However could I have guessed!

I used to work for a charity that provided medical assistance to families. The charity was commissioned by the local authority and I was paid a small salary to work a small number hours per week to provide this assistance to families locally. Later the local authority decided they would only commission the service for families living in certain postcodes. There was no provision made for families outside of those postcodes. No free or paid for service, they were just expected to go without.

I had spent a considerable amount of time training to do this job because I cared and wanted to help people - all people, not just people living in certain houses or people with or without money. I ended up doing hours and hours of unpaid work a week because I couldn’t bear the thought of families suffering because of a lack of service for them.

so YABU. People working in caring and service professions deserve to be paid a reasonable amount for a reasonable days work. But those sort of people would massively struggle with the concept of being unable to help people who can’t pay (especially if those people are children and aren’t responsible for their parents financial choices)