AIBU to think if you're a net negative in tax you shouldn't be able to vote?

[SBGM247]

Trigger warning: strong political views / rant incoming. A shrinking group is expected to fund an expanding system. The system increasingly penalises work while rewarding dependency.

AIBU to think the modern state is a parasite, and that only those who are a net positive in taxes should be able to vote, rather than forcing working people to support an ever-growing dependent class?

Currently ~21% of working-age adults are economically inactive, meaning not working and not actively seeking work (according to a research brief from the House of Commons). Democracy is broken if voters can vote themselves benefits paid for by others. Representation should be weighted toward those with demonstrable responsibility and contribution.

Currently, the state is extractive and hollowing out the middle class. As anyone that has the eyes to see and ears to hear will know, dependency is rising and and demographics are changing at a rate not seen outside of wartime.

To address this simply, I think if you’re on benefits you should lose the right to vote until you’re a net positive. That would restore equilibrium.

This is essentially Chesterton’s test of a society.

"An honest man falls in love with an honest woman. He wishes, therefore, to marry her, to be the father of her children, to secure her and himself. All systems of government should be tested by whether he can do this.

If any system, feudal, servile, or barbaric, does in fact give him enough land, work, or security that he can do it, there is the essence of liberty and justice.

If any system, Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Green, Reform, or technocratic, does in fact give him wages so low and conditions so insecure that he cannot do it, there is the essence of tyranny and shame."

If the state could stop turning people into dependents that working people have to pay for, that would be great. The state is bloated, fixated on wealth redistribution rather than wealth creation, and actively working against the people it is meant to represent. It is incapable of creating the conditions for wealth, stability, and independence. This is managed decline, and we need some adults in the room who have read a book. AIBU?

Sorry, I missed this reply before.
Whilst I do not entirely disagree with your point about fiscal collapse, I see the issue a little differently.

One of the problems is the 'squeezed middle'. Successive governments, despite what MN likes to think, still aren't 'taxing the rich'. What they are actually doing is taxing the middle. It is, in fact, part of the problem that governments simply cannot bring themselves to actually properly sort out taxing the actual rich. The difference in income tax to be paid between earning £30k and £125k is substantial. The difference between £125k and £400k is non-existent. There's a whole upper level getting taxed no more than if they earned £125k. That's, frankly, a nonsense.
45% of 125k leaves you a lot less to play with than 45% of £400k.

The graduation is poorly spread. And the fundamental reason for this is, indeed, that governments don't like taxing the rich. Not the middles, the actual rich. I think people have difficulty separating the two.

Governments have set this up into a battle between middle and low, whilst the actual rich skate off into the distance, hiding everything they can, using the legal means available to the actual rich.

Pandering to the rich is still prevalent in governance. UC is, in fact, pandering to the rich. It's absolutely ludicrous that the government is subsidising the big four supermarkets by 'topping up' staff wages with UC so companies can keep expenditure low.

Generations of wealthy individuals and organisations have held governments to ransom. 'You do this and we will leave'. They've got more sway than the £50 - £125k earners who say the same thing.

We are all kicking at the wrong people, and that absolutely suits the government who have, in reality, never really stopped being in the pockets of the very rich, however good some are at pretending to the contrary.

Billions of pounds of this country's money flows into the coffers of the very rich. Billions are lost in legal tax 'avoidance'. Governments focus on scapegoating the benefit fraudsters whilst ignoring the greater sum lost to tax dodging at the upper level, because those at the top are not easy to touch.

The poor buggers in the middle get financially shafted. The poorest in the country are held responsible. The richest hoard. This imbalance creates the fiscal system you've outlined. Too little coming in, too much going out, and a blind spot when it comes to high-level taxation.

I absolutely think we should 'tax the rich'. The problem is that we aren't. We are just falling into the easy trap of thinking £150k pa is 'rich' in today's money. We're taxing those people to the hilt already. The government has not discouraged the ceiling in the average income individual's perception of 'wealth'.

I didn’t vote for her in
but here’s what Google says on why people voted for her

Margaret Thatcher was voted in as Prime Minister in 1979 primarily due to widespread dissatisfaction with the incumbent Labour government's handling of the economy and a series of crippling public sector strikes known as the "Winter of Discontent"
. She secured subsequent re-election victories in 1983 and 1987 due to a combination of factors including the "Falklands Factor," an improving economy for some voters, a divided opposition, and her strong, decisive leadership style

• 1979 general election: Margaret Thatcher won a working majority of 43 seats.
• 1983 general election: She increased her majority significantly to 144 seats.
• 1987 general election: She was returned for a third term with a reduced majority of 102 seats

Im no supporter of her
she imprisoned without trial and
sold off council houses and that’s a couple of hed disastrous policies. The later of course is having severe effects on people and council spending budgets today

The point is she made promises of reduced inflation and a better economy. At that point in time after ‘The Winter of Discontent’ people were desperate for change.

She didn’t need to make any promises about the welfare state at that time because there was so much more going wrong

Now, however, the focus has changed

Thatcher started the trick of bribing people with their own money. The problem was it ran out.

Thatcher started the trick of bribing people with their own money. The problem was it ran out.

You missed a bit.

Labour is bribing voters with the wages of workers (dressed up sticking it to the rich (broadest shoulders)) while leaving the truly wealthy to grow their fortune and increase their influence.

Don’t be so obtuse. It shows we have people who want to destroy democracy and disenfranchise many people in our society. We need to know about these attitudes and, yes, hatred.

Not as lazy as your total lack of contribution to the well being of the society you live in beyond paying your taxes. Leeching even.

No it doesn't.

What it does show is that MN is clearly not the place to have a theoretical intellectual debate as too many posters get triggered or offended and for some reason seem unable to grasp that disenfranchising vast numbers of the UK electorate and turning the electoral system back to the 1700s is quite simply never going to happen.

You are at best naive if you imagine that this thread was occasioned as an intellectual debate. Indeed the OP back-pedalled, claiming it was intended humorously.

Dh & i earn 6 figures each and pay loads of tax.

DC got really sick as a baby. Loads of time in intensive care. Will have cost tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds. now on regular medication that costs the nhs thousands a year.

Ive broken a foot & two fingers, had a c section and a complicated "natural" delivery.

Do we lose our vote because Dc and i got sick & used up all our "goodwill"

I gave OP the hypothetical earlier of a hard working, high tax paying person who gets an illness that costs the NHS more than they’ve paid in tax (despite having paid far more than post people) and he confirmed that yes, they would lose their vote. For the ‘betterment of all’, apparently.

When I asked what net benefits there were in them losing their vote, considering the money their illness cost has ‘gone’ either way and the same tax had been paid either way, he couldn’t name any.

As it wouldn’t change the money gained or lost by the system, but would remove your individual right to vote, it’s simply a punishment for illness as far as I can see. What a decent person OP is.

Quite! I have lurked and read a lot of threads about how burdonsome and/or scrounging sick and disabled people are, but I think this takes the biscuit.

I was "in deficit" from the minute I was born due to the health conditions I was born with. I did, however, (thanks to the love and care and sheer determination of my parents) grow up to lead a fulfilling life and work my guts out for 25 years until my health took another dip 3 years ago following a stroke. I do still work, but nowhere near the amount I used to.

Saying that this is just an "academic discussion" or "a bit of fun" just doesn't cut it. This wouldn't have been acceptable just 10 years ago and it all helps nudge us along path where it becomes acceptable to ostracise and demonise certain groups of people as a subhuman underclass who don't deserve representation, quite apart from being completely unworkable!

I agree completely, @ThingsAreNotWhatTheyWere - the basis for the whole thread is that people’s value is solely based on how much tax they pay, and that only people who contribute financially to the State have any right to any say in government - and I find that abhorrent. Every human being has value.

People fought long and hard to extend voting rights to ordinary people, because decent people know that pretty much everyone deserves to have a say in the government that makes the policies which shape their lives. I say pretty much everyone because I know that people in prison do not get to vote whilst serving their sentence, and I have no real problem with this.

It may be a theoretical discussion (by an extremely ignorant, right-wing and goady OP), but it could still be upsetting to people in the groups that he has said should not be allowed to vote because they aren't net contributors, e.g. people with disabilities.

Pros: Very low or no taxes
Cons: Living in a religious autocracy that uses slave labour and where women have fewer rights than men

No OP I don't, it's a very Americanised way to view life, your value is dependent on your income and I think we should resist that culturally not want more of it!

Just not true at all, maybe it's a geography thing. DH and I, all our friends are pretty much higher tax payers nobody would agree with your statement.

If your view is representative of those “allowed to vote” then absolutely not. They’ll only vote for their own interests rather than the greater good.

This is how we get those 2 tier societies depicted in sci-fi movies.

Oh FFS - how can anyone get upset over a theoretical intellectual debate that is never going to happen in reality. We are simply not going to go back to the 1700s where voting rights were restricted to men owning land, along with rotten boroughs etc and if you get upset or triggered by this then a) you need to get over yourself b) theoretical intellectual debates are clearly not for you and c) please don't cancel culture prevent the rest of us from being able to discuss whatever we wish provided it doesn't incite hate or violence on others (simply being offended doesn't count!).

Lastly if the disabled are genuinely worried about their rights and support being eroded then they should be more worried about the current democratic process creating a fiscal collapse whereby a democratically elected Government's powers and decisions are removed and overridden by institutions such as the IMF or European Central Bank.

Have a look at what happened to Greece:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_government-debt_crisis

Have lived in Dubai before for 6 years and while it is not perfect, it was overall fine. Very safe, good quality of life, good money and closer to home! With the increase in racism here, UK is not much better!

I came for the comment section 🤗

Well since we're in the business of backing up our arguments by referencing the fortunes of other countries, I see your Greece example and raise you Iran and Afghanistan in the 1970s versus today.

Anyone who thinks voting rights can't be taken away is naive in the extreme.

Thanks @SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius, I agree. I also hate the net contributor and net beneficiary (or the even more charming net taker) concept, although I get the wider issue, but when it's loaded with a veneer of moral superiority, it's so reductive!

Which statement? My response to the poster who was effectively saying things are not that bad, other countries are worse. Or the bit about the unsustainable welfare state.

I defy any sane person to say that the size and direction of travel of the welfare state is sustainable if it continues to lean so heavily taxing the middle, rather than growing the economy and reform (not the political party). Once more for those in the back, you cannot tax your way to growth.

Most people are happy to contribute to a welfare state that is a safely net not a lifestyle choice.

Such nihilism @TheCompactPussycat , this appeal to “luck”. Love, loyalty, and obligation come before abstract ideas of justice. Calling inheritance “luck” is pure cope, a way of avoiding the biological reality of financial, genetic, and emotional inheritance, and the obligations that flow from it, whether to pass it on or not to (in the case of negative patterns). It’s used to shift responsibility and duty away from families and towards the state. That’s the real argument being made. There's an element of luck in all lives but it isn't luck who your parents are, nor the family of origin. Those are the results of decisions of a group, by people bound together.

The idea that birth is “luck” only works if children are interchangeable units. In reality, they’re the biological and cultural continuation of countless generations. The biological reality is simple. Children receive what their parents can provide because that is how families work. The idea that the family we’re born into, our talents and our parents are merely a matter of luck collapses under even basic scrutiny. A child born into a stable, educated, disciplined family is not the beneficiary of chance, but of accumulated choices and pressures stretching back decades or centuries in a generational struggle for survival and meaning. The child deserves it in the same way the parent deserves it, because it’s a torch passed on, a duty and an obligation.

You could no more swap them at birth than an IKEA manual could produce an 18th century Chippendale cabinet. The word “luck” is being used to make a moral argument that children don’t deserve what their parents give them. Parents have every right to invest in their children and to decide that their children deserve it. That does not give anyone else the right to redistribute it or write it off. If, like me, you didn’t have parents who could do that, then yes, that’s hard luck in the sense you should get over it and get on with it. But it doesn’t create a moral claim over the investments other parents make in their children’s education and upbringing.

If you want to operate in reality rather than a beautiful lie, you need to accept that outcomes are unequal and often shaped by circumstance. Treating outcomes as unjust leads to central planning, which requires coercion and destroys freedom and responsibility.

As Roger Scruton put it, calling it “luck” turns gratitude into resentment, obligation into entitlement, and families into obstacles to fairness. That framing invites the state to step in, and that is cruel to children and cruel to people, because it teaches them that nothing is owed, nothing is earned, and nothing really means anything.

The argument reminds me of the ending of Withnail and I. It’s all luck, right? Nothing means anything, right?

“I have of late – but wherefore I know not – lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilential congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”

So to wrap up this rant. Wealth and debt are generational. Individual choices and external events clearly matter, but starting points are heavily shaped by what is passed down, assets and liabilities included. Each generation has a duty to do better, give better, and leave something stronger behind.

The “luck” argument is a dead-end. It's nihilism and cope dressed up as fairness by intellectuals driven by a will to power over the state, who consistently appeal to those on the fringes, not to solve their problems, but to legitimise intervention on their behalf.

So far the poll on this post...
->180 votes from people who understand that.
-> 634 votes from people who think the state is coming to save them.