'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.

I'm so sorry that many people aren't as wise or astute as you op...you don't seem happier for it.

I am quite defensive about this as I used to claim benefits partly due to poor life choices but I had a debilitating mental health condition which meant i had very poor judgement. I did work hard at school, had great grades but depeession, abusive relationships kept dragging me back.Luckily it has been managed well and I now work FT for the NHS, own a home with an amazing family. I only own my own home as mum died.
Im.incredibly lucky but thousands aren't and im happy to pay taxes to support them. The kids are the innocents and need support..can't help their circumstances.
Please dont begrudge the poor a chocolate bar op...life is tough enough as it is.

Sorry i meant " as mum died i got an inheritance...not through being extra astute and saving. "

so why then we import cheap foreign labor en masse? care home workers, distribution centers, fruit pickings etc? these are all NMW jobs which Brits don't want to do because they are better off on benefits

It shouldn't be a choice. Take away their benefits and these jobs will miraculously be filled. Oh and remove the option for being perennial students to avoid facing up to life.

What I would do is set up a large housing scheme for key workers (nurses, teachers, firefighters, police etc and anyone else doing socially useful stuff so to include supermarket workers, social workers, care workers etc etc). I would get the Government to invest via pension funds too and get normal people to invest. These workers would then be guaranteed long term low cost housing. But only whilst they work there plus 6 months. Would be for British citizens and does with leave to remain and families would get priority. I would encourage people to invest some of their SIPP in it too. It would be a very steady but low rate of long term return.

A lot of benefits are wasted on propping up the housing sector and paying extortionate rents. Someone has to find a long term solution.

We need to take the best from other countries. Housing from Singapore, pension funds from Canada etc and come up with our own.

Also potentially some sort of semi nationalised construction scheme with incorporated training.
The building does not seem to be happening in a targeted way without it.

The government doesn’t have any pension funds. NHS pensions and state pensions are funded using current tax take. Nothing is invested.

@Weetabixw - the point is a new scheme going forward and using it to invest.

And that’s another looming crisis: a huge liability for future taxpayer as the long term obligation is approaching £5 trillion. Need to move to a defined contribution scheme for public sector workers.

Then their salaries would have to be raised and how do you propose making the transition? Where does your (unbelievable) £5 trillion come from?

The younger generation are more focussed on secure and affordable housing, hence my point of wrapping up the two!
The unfunded state pensions are an urgent and massive liability and do need to be addressed.
Sounds very blue sky, I know, but these things can be addressed.
If the Ontario Teacher Pension Fund can be successful and invest why can’t we?
Sustainable ethical investment is a growing thing.

Article
https://www.if.org.uk/research-posts/can-the-uk-afford-to-pay-pensions/
transition would be new employees would be on a defined contribution scheme.

@blossomtoes
it’s not something that I necessarily support, just another example of a looming economic problem which is not being addressed by government. We just keep kicking the can down the road.
i suspect state pensions will need to be means tested in the future too.
edited for typos

In addition, we have a large younger generation who feel disenfranchised and hopeless so we need big structural changes and motivators for them, if we expect them to work and fund us all into our dotage. We need to work on giving them security and hope.

Ontario and most US state teacher pension funds are funded by contributions from the employee AND the employer. I used to work as a legal analyst for TIAA-CREF, the Big Daddy of them all holding about $45 BILLION in assets, in the mid-1980s. Contributions, once made, were portable with the employee so people could relocate and change jobs but 'their' fund was always their own.

Not like the UK's unfunded liabilities, which are essentially a Ponzi scheme underwritten by taxpayers.

The problem of moving to say the NHS pensions being invested is that those payments into the pension fund currently are used to pay out to the current retired NHS staff. If we were to invest that money we’d leave ourselves with a big black hole. Same problem with the state pension.

Public sector wages are not consistently lower than private sector, and public sector productivity is far lower than private sector. Makes it look like on the whole private sector wages are a good deal. It’s the pension scheme that makes the public sector a far better deal. If you cut the pension scheme to 5% employee contribution/ 10% employer contribution and defined contribution scheme this would be fair.

Here is the modelling:

policyexchange.org.uk/publication/public-sector-pension-reform/

So prey tell me how my lifestyle/choices could have prevented me having a baby with intrauterine growth restriction who was born premature and needed £100k worth of treatment in picu when they got RSV?

Or how my friends lifestyle/choices could have prevented her having a baby with a genetic condition that means special schooling and life long care?

Or how my grandmothers lifestyle/choices could have prevented her getting rheumatoid arthritis in her 50s requiring 30 years of expensive treatment?

OK I see where you got that figure from but the IF doesn’t provide a source either. I suspect it’s a guess. It’s pretty obvious that there will be a bulge in pension liability over the next 15/20 years then it will fall as boomers die. The oldest boomers are 80 now and very few of them will still be here in 2040. Gen X is a much smaller cohort.

Saying it’s because they’re better off on benefits it’s a facile argument. Care home shifts are generally 12 hour shifts including weekends. If you have children that is an impossible job unless you’ve got an amazing support network of family/friends. That’s why carers are generally very young girls or older mums whose kids are older.

Fruit picking is generally in the arse end of beyond. Workers live in caravans. It’s impossible for most people to commute. Again, what do they do if they have children?

People do work in distribution centres but again, you have to live near one. The staff turnover of all three sectors is terrible because the conditions are terrible. So if they want to fix that they need to improve pay and conditions.

Even retail and hospitality jobs are usually zero hours or a small number of hours on a fixed contract and hours will change week to week. Mums need to know their working hours so they can arrange childcare. They couldn’t afford to put a child in nursery every day just to cover the one day they might get hours.

Rather than sticking the boot in, we should be understanding the reasons that (very often) single mothers can’t work 9-5 all week. For most, the jobs just aren’t there.

Public sector wages are not consistently lower than private sector

Omg they are! If you compare a sector where there's movement between two very comparable roles eg the tax authority vs comparable private sector tax advisor roles, the government tax authority roles are appallingly paid - 50% or more less. Even allowing for more generous pensions the pay is terrible.

Well what I was imagining is a cooperative style housing development for key workers with nurseries on site and GP practices and local schools. With subsidised housing linked to keyworker status. As that is where a lot of the Angst is coming from for the younger generation. I would absolutely exclude all anti social elements from such a development (and that is where it would be more right wing). The former however should completely appeal to the socialists.
When that generation retires they would then move into retirement housing, also invested in via their jobs.
There would also be the option to upskill and transfer across keyworker sectors.

However, my ultimate aim would actually be to blur the lines between the dichotomy of state vs private sector. As that is where our political system appears to be stuck at for generations. Which is entirely unhelpful.
The difference in pension schemes massively feeds that insecurity on both sides.

But what makes this fair? Why should ‘key workers’ get the accommodation and not say, a teller at a bank, or a barista, or a childcare worker, all of whom are essential and all of whom are on a the minimum wage? Why should other taxpayers subsidise housing for those that might be on a better wage than them? Private sector workers, say a junior solicitor or a painter and decorator, or an investment banker might not be on your list of ‘key’ workers but the taxes they pay are essential to the successful working of the public sector and so they are ‘key’ to the economy too. Housing costs in the UK need to fall for EVERYONE. No worker deserves cheaper housing any more than other workers.

If we’re making dorm style accommodation it should be made available to those currently claiming housing benefit in order to save money for the taxpayer.

why then we import cheap foreign labor en masse? care home workers, distribution centers, fruit pickings etc? these are all NMW jobs which Brits don't want to do because they are better off on benefits

No, its because the way those roles have been structured by employers makes them not feasible around a family, they only appeal to young single workers who are temporary/seasonal economic migrants who will save as much as they can to take home where the money will buy them a house.

Realistically, shifts that don't work around schools plus typical wraparound hours, are very difficult for parents of children under 11 to do.

Eg fruit picking- farmers want long shifts, expect you to live in huts on the farms. The farms are nowhere near population centres/homes and the pay is poor so doesn't pay enough for people to afford to travel there for the work.

Care homes - incredibly long shifts that start too early for breakfast club drop offs or end at a time thats beyond when after school clubs close, an expectation your shifts will change or that you must expect unpredictable shift patterns.

If you are a family that need reliable income, seasonal work is a nightmare and it doesn't work to take the jobs & claim benefits in between. There's a lag between a job ending and when you receive benefits, and these jobs don't pay enough for people to save. You also have to commit to nurseries/wraparound care on a termly basis, so could end having to pay for it after the seasonal job ends when you can't afford it.

20 years ago i took a job in a factory as a student. When i started, the shifts were 9-5 and lots of local people were employed.
The following year they changed to a two shift model, 6am to 2pm and 2pm to 10pm, and recruited a load of easterm europeans to fill the extra shifts. The local work force couldn't take the shifts and lots ended up leaving - quite a few were single parents/second earners and they couldn't do a 6am start because there was no one to get their kids up and to breakfast club or collect them from wraparound.