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?

Read the room. You’re on a site called Mumsnet where most of us are … drumroll … mums. Who don’t take kindly to the notion that eg a woman staying home on maternity leave or being stay at home parent to a disabled child is somehow not “contributing” enough to society. Sod off.

We can pay civil servants well, look at Singapore! I'm just saying they don't also get to vote.

No
Your sex

A choice of Gender doesn’t change brain function

But you’re only dependent on others because the shareholders of the organisation are refusing to pay a living wage. It could be argued that the shareholders are the ones that are “taking” since their living on the proceeds of others labour!

This thread is fucking mental😂

If the family unit is net positive (doesn't matter if child carerer is male or female) then the couple get to vote. Not difficult to understand. In addition, more than x2 children then Women don't get taxed.

What if you work for a private company but most of your business is providing services to the NHS or another branch of government? Where I work we make about 20% of our annual turnover from various public sector sources - do I have to do a sum to remove some of the taxes I pay from the calculation?

🥳
well said
but I’d ignore it’s clearly a slow day for OP 🤪

um, most of the intelligence services are technically civil servants.

what about teachers? They are funded by the government?

or nurses in nhs hospitals?

Why are you responding to your own OP, OP?

The problem is that so many jobs are minimum wage that even if you work full time, you still get a benefit top up. So you’d take their vote away? Just because they’re minimum wage… don’t you realise that a whole load of those workers are vital?

We need people emptying bins, cutting grass, litter picking at the side of the road. We need carers, the country would literally have people dying in the street and in their homes without carers. We need shop workers, we need delivery drivers.

What is your vision of a country if all minimum wage workers stopped doing those jobs? The country would fall apart. But you’re essentially saying that, for society, those jobs are worthless so you don’t deserve the vote?

No. I am a high rate tax payer too.
But denying people a vote in a democratic country for being , unwell, disabled, old, losing their job, being pregnant, fleeing violence having to start again, being a carer or other reasons why people can not be a net contributor at one stage of another is not a world i want to live in.
We all pay tax anyway, not everyonr pays income tax but we all buy things and use public services and should be able to vote.
Have you not read any history books at all?

Why? What help is political knowledge in voting? The vote is predicated on the idea that all citizens - whatever their intelligence or education or wealth - have a right to a say in who governs and collects taxes. Political knowledge has no bearing on that whatsoever.
But you are joking! 😀What's worrying is that at least one poster agrees with you!

When she is barefoot and pregnant there shall be no divorces

They're at minimum wage because gov keeps importing low cost people to do to those jobs. If the jobs didn't get filled they'd have to raise wages. Think about supply/demand.

But then they'd be a net contributor and eligible to vote. Otherwise, why do the job?

They'd get paid well. Just not be able to vote.

Ooh I missed this! If I stop paying tax then our family will certainly become net negative (I earn about £200k and DH doesn't work) so do we then lose the vote? I guess I'll accept that.

Edited to add - actually wouldn't mums not paying tax be a massive incentive for families to have SAHDs? This would be very radical.

Interesting thought experiment but you can't be serious.. how are you measuring how much public services people have used? How much pavement they've walked on, road they've driven on (or has the benefit of being a passenger on etc). And are school costs being counted against the parents who chose to give birth or the children who benefit from the education over their lifetime? Are you counting the cost of policing only against criminals or the victims of crime? Does someone receiving carers allowance have that count against them, or are you allowing for the fact it would cost the state more in providing care of they weren't around? Are you taking into account that a lot of higher rate tax payers get that rich by employing people in such low wages or hours that they have to rely on state benefits as well?

Anyway, obviously it's right that more then half the population (the 'mean' earners and below) are net recipients from the state, because otherwise the state would be making a profit ie overcharging on tax. So I'm not sure what moral point you are making really.

I added a screenshot showing current voting results. I assume you can't see it on your end yet as it has to be approved. FYI 21% agree with me so far.

Not instantly. You'll keep voting while you're net positive.

Take those fucking flowers away from my post OP🤮.

I get your frustration, but I think your post misses the point. Limiting the vote to net contributors won’t fix anything when the real problem is that Labour’s budget and 'growth' policies actively reduce the number of contributors while simultaneously rewarding dependency. An economy with too few people paying in... What could possibly go wrong?

Labour won’t go anywhere near the genuinely wealthy, so instead they are perfectly happy to raid the 'broad shouldered' middle to pay for their own bad decisions. The reality is many benefits are too generous because they’re barely linked to what someone has put in, they’re open-ended, far too easy to opt into, and increasingly detached from any expectation of moving on. Just look at the size and direction of travel of the current benefits budget. Meanwhile many people who work and don’t qualify for help get hit from every direction.

If the Government wasn't bad enough we have an electorate that votes based on jealousy, entitlement and slogan rather than reality. They wont accept the reality that money is limited, and the Government doesn't have the backbone will to tell long-term non-contributors that the current system isn’t sustainable. I am not sure they care as long as they think the government is sticking it to anyone with more than them.

That wouldn’t happen. Those jobs have been minimum wage long before immigration became a hot button issue, and will continue to be minimum wage even if all immigrant disappeared from the UK.

There are “menial” but vital jobs which will always be minimum wage and the people doing them will barley ever be a net contributor.

So, answer based on that. Do you see the people doing those jobs as a waste? Do you see them as people not contributing to society and do you think the UK would be a wonderful country without people in those roles?

Or an “Assisted Dying “ Bill which originally was intended for those who had terminal illness, to relieve their suffering but now seems to be touted as it could be used by anyone who felt themselves to be a burden, poor or a bit depressed