To think that there is no hope here?

[Taxed]

52.6% of UK individuals are reliant on the State (that is 35 million people). Only 47.4% are net contributors. How did we get here?

AIBU to think that the UK is now a declining economy that will never recover if this continues to be the case?

I am 49 and a high earner (just shy of the top 1%). My husband is also a high earner and we are thinking of leaving. We don't know where but we know we have to as the situation in the UK is getting worse not better. The only thing that is keeping us here is our son, who is still in secondary school. I am actively encouraging him to consider a future outside of the UK.

I genuinely feel that being ambitious and successful is not worth it in the UK. People hate you for it and want to see you penalised. They think that whatever you do to earn the money it must be easy and a breeze. That you are greedy and need to be made to pay for doing well. Just last week, I heard that the government might be thinking of implementing a charge, payable by high earners, to access the NHS. Everything is about taxing the already heavily taxed even more and few want to face up to the fact that this is unsustainable when you have most of your people relying on the State to live.

People complain about the immigrants but they make up a tiny proportion of 35 million.

I feel disliked for doing well and just can't see a future here and it is making me angry and sad. I believe in having a welfare state, in helping those who are in need but 52.6%? The country is on its knees when most of its people are in need. That is like a developing country not a developed and thriving economy.

Sorry for the long rant. I'm just tired, sad and have just about lost hope of enjoying life in the UK.

In low paid jobs they don't usually hire enough staff now already. Foreign call centres already take jobs away. Im old enough to remember 'computers will take jobs away' they changed employment and jobs appeared in other ways. we were promised lots of leisure time I imagine AI will do the same, change how we work.
There are jobs that can't be outsourced, usually the shit pay ones.

but yes, can't see the point in importing more people, unless into required jobs and not receiving support.

This is not an airport, you neednt announce your departure, off you pop.

Imagine being in the top1% of earners and angry not enough people live in poverty. Embarrassing

Yrs ago, for a short time I was on benefit. In those days the system was fair, benefits were easy to access, and adequate. Fortunately I do indeed have no idea what life on benefits entails, because we all know it must be horrendous.

So the solution is for companies to raise wages. And therefore tax, I guess.

I mean, yeah but you have to ask yourself…

Where would you go and more precisely where can you go?

It’s very hard to just find another country. The problem is it’ll never be your country.

I'm a freelance copywriter, and have been for around 15 years.

Until AI, I had clients queuing up for my services. I had more work than I could handle.

AI has decimated my industry - ChatGPT et al provides shitty content that's often incorrect and certainly lacks nuance, but for many clients, that'll do because it's free.

Thankfully, I have a couple of loyal long-term clients that I've managed to cling onto, but I'm genuinely worried about what I'll do if they disappear. There's just nothing out there. My industry has been virtually wiped out.

And for context, I can't get a traditional employed role as I care for three people in my household, one of whom has dementia and cerebral palsy. I need to be self-employed as I mainly work at night and don't sleep very much.

For me, AI hasn't changed how I work; it's obliterated my potential to earn a decent income. I was a high earner previously, but had to go self-employed due to my caring responsibilities. I'm one of those people who OP is so scornful of.

Why?

Do you think this would be without consequence, for claimants or for taxpayers? Who will pay for the systems or people monitoring it. How will we account for humane adjustments with any kind of precision without it costing a fortune?

I can't help remembering David Cameron's wife commenting on their son's particular needs for nappies at age 6/7, if which he seemed to have no idea, when I read this.

This country is the best country and it's home. It's just currently run by low level morons unfortunately. And a civil service that seems to be unable to be controlled even by itself. But we can't just bail out just because things are getting tough. Britain is still Britain and there are I think (and hope) a lot of people still in this country with the right values and sense of what is right and good and sensible. We just need to keep buggering on and hope for something better in 2029.

For what purpose? To make it obvious someone is on benefits? To make them feel they can't be trusted with actual money? To embarrass them whenever they want to purchase something? Think about it. It is othering someone who needs help from the state. If you think it will stop fraud, then first you need to understand that benefit fraud is is pretty insignificant in relation to the amounts paid in benefits in the UK.

@Quirkswork 14 years of the last lot's running everything into the ground will take a while to unravel. But yeah, let's name call and try to score points by denigrating the current government and the civil service.

I can't imagine any other country has adverts on TV to claim benefits
But UK has .. yesterday advert to claim UC ..how much money did that cost .. people don't need encouragement to claim UC .
Absolutely ridiculous

I still wouldn't want to live anywhere else
I'm proud to be British still
I think we have a lot to give as a nation
We have just got of the beaten track a bit
There is 4 years before the next election
That's more than enough time for conservatives and Labour to read the room ,and make necessary changes to policies
More than enough time for labour to actually sort this mess out during the 4 years
And more than enough time for another political party to enter the arena ,one not so much extreme in any direction,but center whilst firm on immigration.
We can only hope

I'm right though.

In your opinion.

Well Labour have hardly been a resounding success. They've done a huge amount that is counterproductive to the UKs interests in this year alone. (I do also include the Conservatives in the "moron" category by the way. Particularly Boris heading up the increased migration).

The issues with the Civil Service is well known and hardly surprising.

Many years ago (over 50) DH lost his job and claimed unemployment benefits. It wasn’t easy. An inspector visited us, DH, small child and pregnant me, as was the norm. It wasn’t a nice feeling. As soon as I could I found p/t work to fit round DHs job. We had to share childcare, our families were hundreds of miles away. We were brought up to believe in personal and family responsibility and hated being on the dole.

In the 60s a friend had a baby at 16. Between her mum and nursery the child was cared for so my friend, living with her family, could work and support her child. Lots of families worked collectively then. Twenty or so years later, she could have walked into a council property and claimed benefits til her child, and any subsequent children, became teenagers. Although that’s not the case now, the mindset hasn’t moved on. The rise in single person and single parent households has impacted the housing situation.

Rights and responsibilities in society should balance, but it feels as if ‘my’ rights have overtaken personal responsibilities to a point where we have large numbers looking at what they can get from the state for the least effort.

Why unravel anything by including a hit to SMEs and raising taxes and borrowing. Is reversing growth part of what Labour wanted to do?

The Great Leveller. Get everyone down to basics. "Equality", you know....

I do think it’s easy to work your way up. It’s a cultural mindset. I honestly can say, even coming from poverty, with nothing, spending a year homeless, having to work from a young age as we had little money in the house, with my mother being a single parent with two jobs - it was not “hard”.

Certainly harder than the middle class, private school educated kids in my first graduate job had it. And harder than my foreign student friends at uni hard it. But in a developed country like the UK it was not “hard”.

Plainly they do, and why wouldn't they? If they don't meet the criteria they won't get it.

HTH.
https://policyinpractice.co.uk/blog/missing-out-2024-23-billion-of-support-is-unclaimed-each-year/

Sorry, but I keep reading this nonsense about how people who leave the UK and move elsewhere always go back. It really isn't true - some of us live in those countries where many Brits have emigrated to, and lots of them most certainly don't return - except for holidays.

I'm sure the UK is a great place to live - but so many of you seem to have this attitude that no other place on earth comes close, and I think you are deluded. Your summary of what it's like living in other parts of the world prove that you really don't know much. As for "terrific weather" 😂😅🤔

Inspector? Perhaps because there was a child? Who knows! My 4 months of benefits was in 1985. I think that was Supplementary Benefit, or it might have become Income Support. Can't remember when it changed. Either way I got my rent paid no problem. Wouldn't happen now. You now have to be over 25. A few yrs later I had a year of unemployment and got Unemployment Benefit for a year. That wasn't means tested. Everyone who had paid enough N.I. got it. At the end of a year those who were on low incomes got Income Support, which was slightly less than UB. Everyone else continued to 'sign on' for pension credits, including me for a few more months until I found work. I was never made to feel like a waster, and I appreciated that help was there for me.

Tokens were given at one time and vouchers still are under certain circumstances. But for the very reasons you say, tokens and vouchers were dispensed with. I remember at school, children being give tickets which they exchanged for free meals, it was very embarrassing for some. Children who were living very difficult lives.
The amount of fraud is amazingly low compared to tax fraud, never mind evasion.