'Taxes are the price we pay for a civilised society'

[Bargepole45]

Having just paid an enormous tax bill, I frankly am fed up with hearing this. There are lots of civilised countries that have a far lower tax burden than the UK. It's just a form of blackmail designed to make contributors believe that there is no other way other than to pay sky high taxes to subsidise people's crap life choices.

Have too many kids and can't afford them? No problem, the state steps in. Have a terrible lifestyle and don't look after your health at all? No problem, the NHS will treat you. Spent all your money with wild abandon and have nothing left to pay for your care when you get old? Don't fret, the state will fund the same care home as someone that has saved all their life.

Don't people understand that these 'safety nets' just facilitate reckless behaviour? We can have a civilised society where people aren't cushioned from all of their bad decision making. I say this as someone from a background where I didn't have much money and I am so fed up with people pretending that poor people don't know that an apple is healthier than a chocolate bar or that it's a good idea to actually attend school. It's insulting and disempowering to keep making excuses for people that simply aren't incentivised to make different, better choices.

Then quit your job and live off benefits, if it's such a good deal.

Stop whining and crack on.

Scandinavian countries are mostly much richer than us too though so they can pay higher taxes and still have quite a lot left to fund a decent standard of living. Put bluntly, there is just more money to go round.

People are increasingly doing this so it's hardly the gotcha you think it is.

You do realise Reform supports the lifting of the two child benefit cap?

I do think it’s interesting how so many have complained about the increases to employer NI but in other European countries social security taxes are higher for employers which helps fund the healthcare

Yes, for its birther policies (paid only to those with parents born in the uk iirc), but they do take a firmer line on other benefits. No disability for mental health issues. Not something I’d support but with Starmer chickening out of his perfectly reasonable welfare reform he’s sending a message that he’s simply not up to tackling this.

OK, OP. You said 'far lower tax burden', not 'fairer system'. You also said 'civilised ', so let's have examples. Because the rest of your response to my post suggests you have got nothing.

It’s not a great idea given someone has to pay tax.

.

Then join them. Go for it.

It's not a great idea because life on benefits is shit.

It's complex and based on lots of things.

Income, rent if you're not a home owner, number of children, childcare costs, whether someone in the household is in receipt of disability benefits.

You could be a low-earner entitled to claim or not.

I saw a thread on MN with a single mother with 2 children, one in receipt of DLA so no benefit cap and mum working part-time but in receipt of £3700 in benefits a month due to high rents.

Other threads with people who were high-tax payers discovering they were entitled to a small amount of UC due to childcare costs and wondering if they should claim it despite not needing to and some posters encouraging them to claim as they were' entitled'.

And at least one of the thread-starters saying they would start claiming as from September 2026, all UC claimant families are entitled to free school meals regardless of income and the OP said it would save them money.

Living on benefits is rarely mandatory or permanent.

And what exactly would you like us ageing folk to do about that?
I am fucking sick of always being blamed for societies financial problems.
My dh and me worked for a combined total of 90 years and always paid tax and ni. Quite happily paying for other peoples pensions and benefits.
We're not living a life of riley neither are we claiming any benefits.

But if someone cannot complete a task due to a disability, they cannot complete it. It isn't helpful to try and categorise disabilities into "real and worthy" mobility impairments vs "need to buck up their ideas" mental illnesses etc. A lot of rhetoric relies on the fact that the public understanding of mental illness is based largely on anxiety or depression (which in themselves can be incapacitating enough). A lot of people with psychotic disorders, severe OCD, severe eating disorders etc cannot safely or reliably function, and that is not some kind of pseudo-impairment they can overcome with a mindset shift, nor with six sessions of NHS CBT.

This makes me think of other countries that some are demanding. Benefits can be more time limited and contribution based.

Did you save during your working lives in order to retire?

I think the issue is that long retirement wasn’t a thing while many people who are now retired were working. They didn’t realise how much they would be expected to save but thought the state pension would meet all of their needs. Future generations realise they’ll have to fund virtually all of their retirement themselves and so are putting much more by.

@lazyarse123 it’s the truth though, we have an ageing population which means more older people vs younger people.

Why are you scared to acknowledge that?

I am fucking sick of always being blamed for societies financial problems

Acknowledging a truth isn’t blaming….

How does cash help
them?

The majority of people in the UK agree with the poster. Labour is out in force on mumsnet ( and SNP), botting away here to make it seem the poster has odd views.
They are not, they are entirely pedestrian.

Folks with low incomes can see that taxes are being squandered. They can see the mismanagement of Starmer and Co. We are not stupid just because we earn minimum wage.

If we scare off all the big earners we lose. They pay the majority of the tax and without them, the UK dies. Not just losing taxable earnings, but also losing our talent, our entrepreneurs, our highly qualified people who are wanted everywhere in the world.

Exactly how many are giving up work and going on benefits? Possibly some mothers who would rather stay at home once maternity leave is over but if this isn't the reason for giving up your job then UC come down hard and say you shouldn't have quit your job. I suspect like those who proclaim they are moving abroad most don't quite their jobs either. A lot of hot air to be honest.

Labour is out in force on mumsnet ( and SNP), botting away here to make it seem the poster has odd views

Do people really think it’s just labour to blame and we haven’t had years of low productivity, wage growth, shit services etc?

So if you acknowledge that wages are higher and the outcome is a higher standard of living, why are you blaming your high tax bill on the 'feckless' scroungers on benefits, when we know that in the UK the tax payer is also subsidising big businesses with these welfare benefits?

Tax credits are the biggest employer subsidy ever created. It changed the dynamic of the relationship between an employer and a worker in modestly paid work. Before tax credits ( and there was such a time), sometimes workers had to accept a hard knock in pay. Sometimes it was employers who had to put their hand in their pocket and pay out. It worked. And the taxpayer did not pick up paying the employer.

how much tax ends up in the hands of private landlords dueto housing benefit?