Would people prefer to pay no tax under a pure capitalism system ?

[Swirlythingy2025]

Just wondering what others think due to a politics debate with collegues, if we lived in a society with pure capitalism and no state involvement, would people actually prefer to pay no tax at all?

It’s just as silly as anarchy.

Id be loaded if this happened tomorrow, but what if I lost my job, or got driven into by a drunk driver on the unmaintained roads and became disabled, what then?

Almost all things necessary for a stable healthy productive life aren’t actually profitable - Health care, Law enforcement, the ability to have wide ranging public transport to get to this employment, etc. So whose
providing those?

How will the capitalists make money without the infrastructure to get employees there, keep them healthy, transport and deliver their goods?

Are we suggesting that Amazon et al will start Maintaining all the public transportation infrastructure? I think not.
Or that they’ll build it all and then charge us to use them - well that’s not capitalism,
they want the roads for their businesses, not us.

Who enforces health and safety & employment legislation? The government can’t afford too in the courts it won’t have, so bye bye any workers rights or fairness! Farewell sick pay! Does anyone honestly think companies provide that because it’s right???? Do the years of history before the 20th century where no one did a thing until they were utterly forced to by law just go unnoticed? Consider for a moment the
Water companies current behaviour, and then consider the likely behaviour if It’s unregulated…….

Who are we allies or at war with? The resource providers for our merchant masters I assume, but what if they disagree?

Efforts purely on the basis of humanitarianism- gone, no profit and those of us that would like to try will be too busy earning our pittance, trying to pay to get to work and sustain ourselves on the unregulated prices charged, by literally everyone.

Pure Capitalism, a genius idea for the hard of thinking!

I was privately schooled. As was my husband and son. We have private healthcare too. You could say effectively we are paying tax twice.

I'm happy to do that.

Society is inequitable, like Kier Starmer I found myself in private education despite very poor parents and that stood me in good stead. I have a degree and a decent wage despite a childhood of hunger and insecurity.

I firmly believe in social mobility, I know the goal of many politicians is to keep an ill educated mass who are easy to manipulate, allowing them to firmly establish themselves as a ruling class.

To me a good and just society is the one that allows the brightest and best from any class to flourish. That takes care of its elderly, it's sick and it's weak. That holds education in high esteem. That rehabilitate it's offenders where possible. That does not discriminate on the basis of age, sex, colour or appearance. That does not work people into an early grave.

I'm happy to pay a good chunk of tax so that we can all thrive. I just want that tax spent well and I want it to achieve Scandinavian levels of quality of life.

A zero tax society only benefits the selfish and the wealthy. It is utterly immoral for people to fly round in private jets whilst others starve.

Well there are different ways you can administer these things. You don’t have to have a US system. The reason most people resent paying taxes is not because they disagree with tax per se, they just have a (probably often accurate) perception that the money is being wasted. Maybe the government needs to have less of a monopoly on these services.

Another interesting option is tax on assets but no income tax at all. It encourages people to work more and to hoard less.

Taxing on assets would simply give a big boost to the services dedicated to hiding assets.

I personally feel like the problem we are facing as a society right now is that people do not want to pay any tax. The same society that educated them and who they will turn to in their old age or ill health is where they do not want to contribute.
The vast numbers of people emigrating leaving an even smaller number of tax payers mean that we need a solution quickly.
A few posts touched on the Middle East. They have introduced VAT and road tolls - there is taxation there but in the form of stealth taxes. They also have little to no employment rights and a high cost of products whilst services are very cheap at the cost of a mass labour force that are paid very little. Those that emigrate are happy to continue allowing this to happen as it saves them money in their pocket. Not sure how society can continue functioning in a fair and just way.

Yes, a big one would be roads. They'd soon turn to rubble and nobody would want to shell out for more, in case someone who hadn't paid took advantage.

@Municipalwe already have to pay for the maintenance of our own road ourselves as it’s a private road but you’re right, I’m not sure how we would pay for the main roads etc. Perhaps things like road tax would remain? As for the police- the public sector is not fit for purpose. Far too much money spent in red tape and management. It all needs reform and I say that as somebody who has lots of family and friends in various parts of the public sector and who until recently worked in the public sector myself. There are good people in the public sector but bad systems.

The state getting too big disempowers people. Yes there is an upside, which is that life is safer, but there’s a downside too: people lose the impetus to solve their own problems and look after their own communities.

I guess there would still need to be a small tax for services that are needed equally by everybody: police, army, street lights, justice etc.

But lots could be paid as a service when/if needed: education, health, roads…

Also, it is not that people don’t want to pay tax, it is that a majority of people think they pay tax when actually they receive more than they pay in.

The UK is a relatively low-taxed country when compared with EU and OECD countries.

If people want good public services, they have to pay for them. Since the 1960s politicians have chosen to keep UK taxes relatively low instead of investing in infrastructure, in education and healthcare and in public housing. The results of spaffing away the huge North Sea oil revenues - by cutting taxes instead of investing and creating a sovereign wealth fund - have worked their way through the system to give many of the problems faced by country today. Crumbling schools and hospitals, shortages of qualified staff (or rather, a shortage of money to pay these staff decent wages), outdated infrastructure, dilapidated Victorian public buildings such as courthouses and prisons, 7 million people in England waiting for NHS treatment, people unable to find a GP or dentist and much more.

Just taking healthcare as an example. Austria has twice as many doctors per capita as the UK - so people can see a GP just by walking in, and hospital waiting lists are largely unknown. Germany invests over 30% more per capita in healthcare than the UK does. So every three years UK healthcare investment falls an entire year behind German levels. British patients wait months for a hospital appointment. 300 people a week in the UK die due delays in admission to A&E. In Germany, politicians would be booted out of office if they had allowed situations like these to arise. In the UK, people are supposedly queuing up to vote for a party that intend to make the situation even worse by slashing taxes.

So how about paying more tax in order specifically to facilitate better healthcare? Almost 6 million people in the UK are covered by private healthcare - so 10% of the population (or their employers) are happy to pay over £12 billion a year to private providers so that they can be treated, but baulk at the thought of paying 1% more in tax so that everyone can have better healthcare. Meanwhile, Hunt told the NHS that balancing the books was more important than treating patients, and Streeting's last plan leaves the NHS £10 billion short of what is needed just to keep the current levels of service running.

from my understanding everything would be profit driven, survival of the rich etc basically a victorian type era but without any govt, etc all private services

No I wouldn’t like this as even though I could probably afford to pay for what I need, I don’t want to live in a country where eg there are homeless disabled beggars everywhere and criminals are running amok.

I also don’t agree with purely private healthcare, mainly because healthcare should be prioritised based on health outcomes, not profits. See the US which has a largely private system and by far the worst health care outcomes in the western world in i think nearly every possible measure.

Having said that, i also don’t agree with the current level of wastage - ie benefits should be a safety net not an equality measure (so no, if you don’t work you shouldn’t be able to afford luxury holidays on the taxpayer)

yes in pure capitalism there would be no tax, only other companies doing x for profits etc

but part of the issue has always been who pays the tab

"Would people prefer to pay no tax under a pure capitalism system ?"

There is of course an alternative "No Tax" system....

One in which the government owns and controls everything- housing, factories, farms, infrastructure, hospitals, police and military, education and so on.
Everyone is allocated what they need in order to exist - somewhere to live (in a government-owned complex), somewhere to work (but everyone gets the same existence-level wage), free healthcare, free public services, free education (but according to whatever doctrine the government decides) and so on. Private property is banned; private enterprise is illegal; independent thought is punishable by imprisonment.

Is that what all the "No Tax" supporters are advocating - and if not, how do they propose to provide education, healthcare, housing, infrastructure, transport, defense and policing and employment to those who cannot afford these basics, or are these just reserved for those who can pay?

Good idea! Take back control and only pay for what you need and use! However, perhaps over time communities will find it is easier and cheaper to deliver services they all use if they band together. Even better if they pool resources, maybe everyone could reguarly add to the pot so there is money available to fund these things consitently and fairly.

Perhaps they could call it tax.

I'm sorry, have I walked through a time portal and emerged into a dystopian hellscape? I'm all for an interesting thought experiment, but this is an insane idea. Taxation is essential for the basic functioning of our complex society, without it all but the extremely wealthy would be living desperate lives of poverty and violence.

Interestingly one of the biggest advocates for no tax and zero state support, Ayn Rand, ended up living off social security and received medicare. Two things she argued against throughout her life.

She's the inspiration for so many libertarian right wingers, and yet drew on the state support she very much wanted to deny to people.

Of course no state means no leaders.

That's called "anarchy".

I would respectfully suggest that nobody wants that.

Next.

I don't think there's ever been a civilisation that is completely tax free. It would be impossible to operate.

At a techncial level pure capitalism is about private/corporate ownership and control of means of production, and the freedom to produce and trade without government intervention. It does not prevent the profits being taxed. Conversley, pure socialism is where the state, or society collectively, owns and controls the means of production and there are no profits as such

"I pay my taxes. They buy me civilisation".

It is impossible to have a "state" without taxes. One possible definition of a state is "the area which raises taxes".

The historical, cultural and social journey from hunter gathers to what we could call civilisation and thence nation-statehood axiomatically involves the creation of a monopoly of violence which leads to a monopoly of power.

Good luck if you can find a way to maintain that monopoly if you aren't taxing people.

The police isn’t the interesting one. The fire service is. Rich people can afford gated communities and private security. But their homes are still at risk if the neighbours’ houses are on fire.

Interestingly, the ‘most capitalist’ like Singapore still have self-serving altruism like a LOT of public housing. Keep the workers happy and healthy. The UK does does a piss poor version of both socialism and capitalism.

The police isn’t the interesting one. The fire service is. Rich people can afford gated communities and private security. But their homes are still at risk if the neighbours’ houses are on fire.

Before any of those fripperies, you'd probably want secure borders. I mean I don't think decking and patio furniture are going to stop the Viking hordes.

The UK does does a piss poor version of both socialism and capitalism.

We've inverted the pyramid so the poor sub the rich.