A significant amount of people take more then they contribute

[Bluesheeps]

i appreciate mumsnet takes you out of your social circle.
But I find there’s s mad level of entitlement.

Probably because dickheads like the OP wang on about how terrible it is that people take more than they give.

I've worked all my life, eat healthily and don't smoke or drink. I was also born with a life-limiting condition which means I've spent a lot of time in hospital.

I'm so ashamed. Please accept my apologies, and please provide bank details so I can recompense you for the money you've spent on me.

If you'd had a serious road traffic accident, been airlifted to hospital, in intensive care, months of intensive rehab, lifelong care needs, you would have "taken" plenty from the "system".

But luckily for you, you haven't.

As a PP said - if you don't need to take from the system, you win the game.

You have paid for and benefitted from police, fire service, education, roads and pavements, parks, bin collection, social services, law and order, street lighting, crime and homelessness prevention (via benefits and housing services), GP, A&E, ambulance service etc etc. You win!

People don't automatically go to hospital because they don't eat healthily. By the way.

@orangeleavesinautumn you don't owe the country anything. Everyone is just happy you are here and well op seems to have some empathy issues.

@OhNoOhNo - 🙄🙄

don’t drink or smoke and I eat healthy so have never been to hospital

Not all hospital admissions are realised to these things, you know.

The top 1% contribute the most to the tax 'take' because that's the way it's structured. But only looking at 'I pay the most' as an argument misses the point that the entire system - our whole society - is becoming increasingly iniquitous. Trickle down economics does not work.

I hope you're talking about million and billionaires that fleece the country with their tax arrangements and do things like set up fake companies to tender for gov PPE contracts and deliver nothing whilst raking in tax payer money during a national crisis. Or people who have private jets who pollute more as individuals than entire communities of poor people. Then we can agree.

If you think I give a shit that a single Mum dare complain she has anti social neighbours and not enough bedrooms when she should be honoured to have a cramped council flat in a deprived area, you've got another bloody thing coming.

This is the price we pay for a low wage economy.

Wages driven down by below inflation rises, means eventually, most either don't pay tax or don't pay very much.

So in order to avoid too many beggars on the streets, govt has to have more and more housing and wage support, which in turn leads to cuts in public spending to compensate to fund it...

...Lower overall tax take means less public spending on education health etc.

None of this is rocket science BUT it is what we willing vote for and doubtless will do so again at the next General Election, regardless of the opinion polls.

the Tories still have significant support and even if they do lose, Labour are hardly left of centre or even centre, they are basically where the Tories used to be under say Major, even a few days ago, unable to say they would fund pay review rises fully, wont spend more on the NHS and wont build council housing.

And how many of the higher earning "hard workers" benefit from the fact that their company pays the cleaning staff a pittance? How many are only able to work at all because somebody else does their childcare for next-to-nothing?

As PP has said the British economy is driven by businesses which are only sustainable because the owners pay shit wages, which then need to be topped up by the government.

You are still getting lots out of the system. Welfare and health care are not the only things that are provided by the state.

No need to feel any guilt at all

i used to be a net contributor. High earner, no drain on resources. I understood that’s how benefits and taxes work, Thais who can will always subsidise those who can’t.

then I had children with a chronic health condition and I’ve not done the maths but I fully believe I’m now a taker from the system.

that’s how it works

I think you need to be more specific OP about which demographic of people your judging with this post

I think we are almost all net takers, and the net contributors are actually big companies and industries, rather than individuals

There are a lot of individual net contributors.

someone upthread suggested 1% - I am not sure if that is official, or an estimate, but we do have all sorts of benefits we don't really pay in full for, think of things like the legal system, the armed forces, etc. We benefit from the existence of the armed forces, not only as a deterrent to aggressors and a source of our security, but as a support when things go wrong, think of how they stepped in to save the Olympics, and to bring people home when the flight paths closed after the volcano in Iceland, and how many of them staffed covid vaccine centres, etc and how the legal system protects us by its existence, and then add that to education, health, roads, flood defences, emergency services, environmental health, etc - all of which we all benefit from- I believe it might well only be about 1% of individuals that are net contributors.

Do you think I am wrong?

I read somewhere that, on average, anyone on above about £60k is a net contributor for that tax year. I'm not sure what you need to earn on average to be a contributor over a lifetime and obviously it varies based on things like cost of schooling, healthcare required, use of public transport, etc..

The issue we have is that the system relies on people contributing what they should and taking what they should. Far too many people just do what they can get away with and that's a problem whether they earn nothing or billions. People who are taking more out the system because of something that is not their fault like illness or disability are exactly what it is all designed for and not an issue at all.

Except for the companies and industries that deliberately choose not to contribute because their shareholders are the squeaky wheels.

Take Boots the Chemist for example, you would think that a well established and well known company , visible on every high street , employing thousands of people, trusted by millions would be proud of its British heritage, history and status built from their humble Nottinghamshire roots.

But in 2010 Boots the Chemist suddenly announced that they were re registering the company accounts in Switzerland, a move that left the Treasury with an estimated £100,000,000 hole in expected tax revenue that had already been planned for .

That was 13 years ago, the maths works itself out.

It is not just Boots, many other companies use the same sort of loopholes , yes of course they are answerable to their shareholders, but the irony is that that huge amount of diverted tax revenue has actually been earned from the money us UK citizens are paying into those companies. I am not an economist, but in my mind we are getting a double whammy hit , the money we have contributed to that wealth and the loss of tax revenue coming back to support our economy.

The very most important way in which we can contribute these days - by far and above the most critical - is by not consuming resources.

I'd look to the rich for consumption issues, not those on benefits. They're living on the bare minimum, use public transport etc.

And expecting the taxpayer to foot the bill in the end. Look at what happened with BHS and the pension fund.

The priority is shareholders first, and the UK taxpayer can foot the bill for everything else.

United Utilities has made lots of noise about how they are going to invest c.£250m to deal with the various leaks and effluence discharges, over the next three years. They've given over £900m to shareholders in the past three years. And when people get sick from swimming in sewage? It's the NHS (and therefore the taxpayer) that carries the can.

The rot isn't new. The only thing that's changed is that it's now totally blatant. Like P&O sacking its staff and replacing them with overseas workers on shitty contracts and less pay.

Snap although I have a him not a her. Maybe we should go on strike and let the state cover all the costs so that we are entitled to more than the insulting amount they give us @Ponoka7

Only the tax take from income tax.

Most people are net takers, it's difficult to find any evidence for where the boundary is but it generally seems to be suggested that it's around the same place as the 40% tax band. That's the point of a welfare state though, everyone contributes (with the richest contributing most) and everyone benefits (with those most in need benefiting the most). A decent society is happy to support it's weakest members.

thank you for your post xx