Do you think our 21st century society can actually afford the full welfare state ideal?

[TheOtherBoleynGirls]

First things first, I want us to have a full welfare state. I think being able to provide everybody in a country with equal education, equal healthcare, and an equal safety net in times of trouble and illness is the absolute ideal.

But looking at the state our economy is in, do you think that dream is still achievable, with the right taxes and financial management, or do you think it might be a post-war ideal that is economically unviable for a country in the long run?

YABU - we can afford it if everything is managed correctly

YANBU - it’s a great but inevitably impractical idea

We can afford it, we just have to prioritise it.

Weird examples. Surely thrush is an illness?!

I don't want to fund a lot of stuff we currently fund.

of course if you have a broken leg, I think we should pay to endure a full recovery.

tattoo removal? Hmm...no. IVF...? No. That one upsets a lot of people.

also, can council tax be per person, with parents paying for children obvs.

I’m not sure sneering and nit-picking in an attempt to make the poster look silly, rather than engage with the argument they make, is really the way to go in winning others over to your side.

Do you work for Starbucks or Amazon by any chance.

We can, but not with the current system, both of the welfare system, taxation and government spending elsewhere.
I also genuinely believe that until there is adequate help available to low income workers and private renters, who are often amongst the poorest in society but don’t get support, it will never be a vote winner.

It’s completely truthful to say those on just state pension, disability benefits, free school meal levels etc deserve more. But it’s also true that someone on nmw or just above in private rental is often even worse off, but aren’t entitled to any help. And yet when things such as the increase in national insurance were proposed they are classed amongst those that should contribute more.

I think state pension and the way it’s prioritised for increases above and beyond everyone else is the only thing that isn’t sustainable, or necessarily justified, simply because the numbers don’t add up.

also, can council tax be per person, with parents paying for children obvs.

This will affect the lower-middle classes the most. Another poor tax. The poor shouldn't have children!
And yet, the most essential keyworkers who couldn't work from home during lockdown were from these economic groups.
It's not the rich who work in the hospitals, nursing homes, supermarkets, pick from the fields, work on the land (not talking landowners!), collect refuse, work in the factories.
And you want to tax them more for having children? (Children we need to run society!)

@EmmaH2022 you could equally say infertility is a medical condition, hence IVF. I chose a few examples of things that are relatively cheap and easy, with over the counter solutions that any competent adult can resolve.

Tricky.
In the 70s we were still a manufacturing nation that attracted foreign investment.
This meant that we invested and received investment from abroad in our industries, we created jobs, our employees spent their money in our own economy and the employers re-invested their profits in our economy. Other countries bought our products and the money came to us.

Today, we manufacture hardly anything. We assemble a foreign country's product. The profit goes to that country. Our wages aren't being spent on goods as much of our spending is on rent and energy.
Profits are going back to foreign parent company , particularly as we now only buy foreign products.

We generate little wealth.
As we no longer belong to EU, we now have a smaller platform to trade with.

Very tricky. Even James Dyson moved his vacuum company abroad and he's supposed to be staunchly British.

I think healthcare / social care are potentially unaffordable just because people are living longer and much more is possible medically than was the case when the NHS was founded. You could probably spend 100% of tax revenues on healthcare and still not provide state of the art healthcare to everyone. Clearly there’s a middle ground somewhere and maybe the NHS could do better than it is if better funded.

There’s a question of how much more tax revenue you could ring out of a struggling economy without causing it to struggle further. You might get a few more % out of people or companies on income and also increase capital gains / inheritance tax etc but our income tax rates are quite high already (45% income tax plus 2% NICs + 13% employers’ NICS at the top with spending generally then being subject to VAT and many semi- recent graduates also having a 9% deduction for student loans). To really increase tax revenue you’d probably need to increase taxes for those in the middle many of whom are really struggling or collect more tax from multinational corporations or very high net worth individuals in the UK. I’m not sure that that would raise enough to fund the NHS sufficiently to provide good healthcare to a population whose demand for healthcare is going to steadily increase. That’s particularly the case when there’s a need for huge government funding to go on subsidising energy etc and when the cost of providing a reasonable level of living to those claiming benefits will increase due to energy and food prices increasing.

Money is an artificial construct made to help society function in the way we deem appropriate - to reward things we value

So yes of course we could make it work if we wanted to

We are just caught up in the concept of growth through planetary destruction which is clearly madness

do you think it might be a post-war ideal that is economically unviable for a country in the long run?

The country’s a LOT richer than it was when the welfare state was born.

Okay, if we say it's a medical condition

is it one we want to pay for?

my late father had an astonishing amount of money spent on trying to save his life. The best outcome was bed bound in a nursing home. I wouldn't blame the government one bit if they think people should use insurance for that.

I think I've got pneumonia again. I'm okay for money. I don't mind if people think I should pay a fee to be seen (though I assume the NHS won't see me f2f).

for OP -
Equal education - where does that stop? Age 16, 18, 21?

Thanks for some interesting responses.

@Chessie678, that has echoed what I have been thinking sometimes, and what I meant by us being a very different society. Health and social care is a radically different landscape now than it was in the 40s and 50s. Of course, though, I doubt any politician would come out nowadays and say they want to genuinely cut provision in the NHS, it being something of our sacred cow. Though maybe one day, one party will have to suggest something radical.

True, but if our health, social, education and policing bills are all higher too, that surely doesn’t always help?

@EmmaH2022 I’m coming round more to the idea of some co-payment or insurance for healthcare. I don’t see it being sustainable at the current level of need or expectation. But it’s a cultural shift and that’s difficult.

What if you were to throw a tax on land holding into the mix?

I wish universal income could work but I don't see how. All this tax the rich stuff doesn't seem to translate into that money actually reaching the masses, governments just spend it on stupid shit. The ones who appear to be on the side of taxing the rich just seem to want more money to piss up a wall serving their own interests and it never gets to where it should.

You mean like building companies holding on to plots for years? I can literally see one of those from my window. It's massive - though I'm pleased the building hasn't started yet.

I'd put corporation tax back up to pre Cameron levels as well, but Corbyn said that and I guess no one was happy. Maybe they'd think differently now?

I know with people who retired at 55 on a teachers pension and are still going and drawing at 85.

Of course it's possible

I used to live in Germany, where we had:

Full parental leave for a year
Practically free childcare (40 euros a month)
200 euros/month child benefit (per child)
Rent control
Great sickness policy/pay
Very cheap university
Could see GP on the day, great healthcare
Excellent benefits for unemployed/disabled

And just in general, there was a sense that things should not cost too much and there should be a good work-life balance, not everyone working all hours for low wages to pay high housing costs etc.

Yes, taxes were higher. People think it's worth it to get all that and I imagine a lot of Brits would too, but it will never happen because so many people here are just allergic to higher taxes even if they would benefit from them.

IKR? The basics of having rubbish collected, clean streets, violent criminals in jail...no party wants to do it.

Yes we can afford it.

If we manage public funds properly and we tax companies appropriately.

All 4 of my grandparents retired before or at 55. All 4 have now been retired longer than they worked. Quite unbelievable.