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.

Not going to happen. Too few productive and self reliant people. Too many getting extensive handouts.

Re the disabled child - in many societies pre welfare state the child would simply be abandoned on a hillside or in a rubbish heap, as the romans or Greeks did.

https://www.vindolanda.com/blog/roman-women-and-children-part-3

it wasn’t until really quite recently in the U.K. that people started to object to babies dying in the street and foundling hospitals became a thing.

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So if you’ve got a considerable percentage of the population living without healthcare how do you plan on keeping yourself safe from risk of disease? As all the private health care in the world won’t keep you safe from unchecked and untreated disease vectors. We are a herd like it or not.

What a pathetic, nasty attitude to have. What a sad life a person would lead if they had this outlook on the world.

Of course wages would not be the same. Somebody who has paid to learn to be a doctor will earn higher wages to recognise his efforts.
Someone who wants to lie in their bed all day gets paid nothing.

Oh dear God, I’ve read some horrible viewpoints before but this one is just the worst.

Yep.

My son had cancer 2 years ago. One of the online groups I'm in is largely American and it is full of terrified parents sick with worry not just about their child but about what insurance covers and potentially having to sell their house. I don't want that to become my society and it is scary that some people do want that.

Maybe look up how many children are diagnosed with cancer each year. It's never your child...until it is.

I think the flaw in this idea is that it assumes life is entirely predictable and that everyone starts from roughly the same position. Neither is true.

Almost everyone believes they'll be able to work, save and provide for themselves until something happens that they never saw coming. A catastrophic illness at 35, a child born with profound disabilities, a road traffic accident, redundancy during a recession, dementia in later life, or becoming a full-time carer for a spouse. These aren't moral failings or poor choices; they're ordinary risks of being human.

The other problem is that many of the services you've listed don't work as consumer products. Policing, for example, isn't just a service for the individual who can pay. If my neighbour can't afford to report domestic abuse, theft or violent crime, that doesn't stay "their" problem it becomes everyone's problem. Crime doesn't respect property boundaries or bank balances. The same applies to infectious disease. If healthcare depends entirely on ability to pay, illnesses go untreated, outbreaks spread, and society as a whole bears the consequences.

There's also the issue of children. They don't choose the circumstances they're born into. In a purely pay-for-yourself society, a child born to poor parents would receive worse healthcare, worse education and fewer opportunities from day one. That isn't rewarding hard work, it's entrenching disadvantage before they've had any chance to make their own choices.

Then there are people who simply cannot "save enough". Someone born with severe disabilities requiring lifelong care could never realistically accumulate the millions that such care can cost. Are we really saying their quality of life or even whether they receive care at all should depend entirely on the wealth of the family they happened to be born into?

Ironically, I also don't think this would produce the efficient services you're imagining. Private companies exist to make a profit. They would naturally focus on low-risk, profitable customers and avoid expensive, complex ones unless they charged enormous premiums. Healthcare, pensions and policing all suffer from this problem. The people who most need the service are the people who are least commercially attractive.

And finally, societies aren't just collections of individuals making private transactions. They're communities. We all benefit every day from living among people who are educated, vaccinated, policed, housed and supported when things go catastrophically wrong. Even if you never claim a penny in benefits, you benefit enormously from living in a society where other people aren't left desperate, uneducated or untreated.

Of course welfare should be efficient, fair and not open to abuse. Most people would agree with that. But abolishing the safety net altogether wouldn't simply punish the feckless it would punish the unlucky. Any system that cannot distinguish between those two isn't a particularly just one.

Well I guess if we were a little less selfish and paid a little more tax we could have better services - substantially cheaper than the private equivalents

to make that simple to understand - a private company needs to employ more people to run their marketing and advertising. This costs money that isn’t needed for a central government funded service. So the private service must cost more.

foe more context - the average pharmaceutical company spends more on advertising than on developing new drugs

rather wasteful

One place to look if you want this - AMERICA - take a look at how they’re faring, step into one of their hospitals, go and witness the relationship between the police and the public, go see the systemic racist inequality there. No doubt you’ll be voting reform. Ignorance beyond belief

Yes you could read some Victorian history books if yoi would like to know how each to his own pans out. Or see how life is in sub Saharan Africa eg the DRC.

Let’s bring back the workhouse why don’t we? Or leave things open for whoever has the most guns to be in charge. Even rich people recognised that having a underclass was not such a great idea as it tended to lead to them getting robbed and violently assaulted.

What a ridiculous post - maybe you would like to explain how you can’t be forced to live here and they should just move ? You most certainly can be forced to live here if you don’t fit other people’s immigration criteria and Brexit made it that plenty of middle high earners who would be quite happy to go elsewhere simply can’t if they need to continue earning a living

Silly answer. I don't even drink at all.

Or alternatively look at Scandinavian countries consistently voted the happiest in the world and very accepting of a large state and high taxation.

May have missed this but who pays for prison? Just wondering if a good robbery will get me free basic services for a decade or so?

Let’s have a nosey at your finances then Op.

You must think you and yours would do nicely out of this arrangement. No redundancies. No cancer. No disabilities. No housing issues.

Im sure if you thought hard enough you could actually move somewhere where this is close to the set up you describe.

How would this someone pay to be a Doctor? Where is the money coming from?

Alcohol is taxed quite highly, wouldn't want to pay that eh?

Ah I see. You just want to bash benefits don’t you? You want to bash disabled people. Dont be afraid to say you hate disabled people. Own it.

But be careful, your health and circumstances can change in the blink of an eye.

Out of interest, you say “Nobody would be forced to live here”. But where should we live? Where do you suggest us British citizens go and move to? What visas would we need? Which country would be able to support me living with a disability that stops me from working and getting a stable income? Which countries would support me?

You try it out and see if it works well for you, OP, then come back and let us know.

Go private for all your medical and dental care, also eye tests. Work out what a per capita share of the defence budget and multiply it by the number of people in your household, so you know how much it would cost you to provide your own private army etc.

A lot of public transport is subsidised as fares don't cover the cost of the rservice, so check how much subsidy your bus/train service gets and put aside an equivalent amount for every journey your household makes. If you have school-age kids, set aside the equivalent of private school fees for each one. Make sure you don't overlook anything, like a penny or two for every mile of pavement you walk on, the street lights, and your share of the cost of maintaining and improving the road network (contrary to popular belief, this is not paid for from vehicle excise duty or fuel tax).

You might need help from environmental health, or trading standards, so factor in some money for those, and for the planning department that stops people building whatever they like, when they like.

Need an emergency ambulance? That'll be a few hundred, I reckon, before you even get to A&E, and finding a private A&E dept might be tricky. Best stash away a few quid in case your house catches fire too, so the private fire brigade can come and put it out.

Paying for your own share of keeping miscreants and villains in prison is a bit trickier. Maybe every now and again you could keep one locked in your house for a few months, just so you're paying your share of keeping everyone safe. And good luck with finding a private security firm with the resources of our police forces if you're a victim of a crime that needs investigating.

Once you've worked out how to do all this, and more, please come back in a few years and tell us how it worked out.

Health insurance doe work in large parts of the world as part of a wider system - the wider system being backed by tax payers support - even USA has medicare. However the US system issues are so well known any US medical drama covers the many pitfalls with their system.

Historically in this country we've had long periods with little to no safety nets - after the monasteries were got rid of afterreformation- monasteries having become the previous system of welfare and health care - we had period of lots of begger and crime then we moved to limited parish help then eventually work houses - they were massively unpopular and not actually very ineffective.

It's likely some of the econmomic stagantion is due to demographic shift - most economics seem to stall when deaths and births flip over - there a corresponding demogrpahic bomus when the economy has lots of young people. We are already in a period of relaly low birth rates - why would we make it even worse by making it impossible for anyone to have kids.

Plus schooling - no doctors or other HCP even goiung to be needed by you OP - no people to run infrastucture- infrastructure tends to get build sewerage and roads beacuse of government investments.

Will that doctor be educated by the state?

I too yearn to live in pre Victorian England. Perhaps we could reintroduce workhouses and asylums for all those disabled and workshy people? Reintroduce debtors prisons for all those people who live beyond their means. Send all our children out to work? If we are really lucky a few people will die off from cholera and consumption.

Your latest contribution is mind blowing ignorant.

You sorely underestimate the cost of paying for all the services one may need!

Also- can you please explain how the funds woukd be raised to increase wages for the millions of lowly paid workers who we all rely on to survive every day? Cleaners, shop workers, teaching assistants, hospitality workers etc etc. Because they hardly earn enough to pay any taxes, let alone save the hundreds of thousands of pound they'd need to survive in your world.

There have been so many brilliant points made in this thread, and you havent addressed one of them.

You really are uneducated and dense.

GB News and three Daily Mail have done a right number on you. Try some books.