'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.

@Weetabixw - because it is a recruitment drive into key sector jobs and giving those people security. A solicitor can choose to work for the scheme, childcarers would be included anyway as a lot of it would include on site child caring. But childcarers in my world, would include highly qualified teachers to oversee early learning to a high standard.

@Weetabixw - a whole lot of the construction trade including painters and decorators would be part of it. That was the whole point. The construction and building industry needs addressing and inclusion into it.

The right wingers do have to acknowledge that with this whole AI thing taking over the world supposedly, it really is a possibility that the State will have to increasingly create and fund jobs for all to keep society going. We cannot have a few AI billionaires enslaving everyone else from a far and a select few getting rich from it. Most who sit on the right and are more small c conservative, will want the individual who puts in the effort to be rewarded and incentivised and looked after, but to also be free and not controlled by foreign superpowers or billionaires.
I was laughing this morning having a discussion with my Sixth Former as they all got into a debate with their tutor over banning social media for teens. As usual, the Government has entirely forgotten about the elderly and pensioners who seem to be being mass manipulated by algorithms and it is having a direct impact on our democracy. They have completely forgotten that the youngesters on the whole are at school and talking daily to responsible educated adults in the form of teachers.

I’m not sure this is a left / right wing thing particularly but there needs to be thought now on how to tax and deal with it as the need for workers goes down.

Housing does need to be more affordable across the board in the UK. The FT, last weekend, had a big article on how the figures are starting to move back into a better balance. But if it were to happen too quickly, I don't think anyone would enjoy the bloodbath.

Unlike some, I remember the early 1990s recession and the pain wrought by unemployment and negative equity.

I don’t think the public sector has a recruitment issue though does it? Only 25% of newly qualified teacher are securing a job in Scotland. Only 1/3rd of medical graduates get a training post.

That’s just one example of a niche sector. If you look more broadly it’s not always the case. My DS took an entry level finance job in a school. The salary was £30k, with an excellent pension scheme. Private companies were offering no more than £22k, which was NMW at the time and 3% employer pension contributions with longer hours and fewer holidays.

High level jobs will no doubt pay more in the private sector but overall, most people aren’t in high level jobs and the pay between public and private sectors are broadly similar. If you factor in pensions, the public sector workers are much better paid.

So just because you don't like the number you believe IF it's guessing? and hope the problem will go away?

Policy Exchange - Public Sector Pension Reform

Unfunded public sector pension liability is £1.4 TRILLION.

you don't compare apples with apples.

Private sector tax advisors are of totally different caliber to your average state ones. The ones at the top of state ladder are well paid as well.
What you also don't take into account is their pension, sick policies, job security etc. And obviously intensity of work and productivity

It’s not a question of not liking the number, I only asked for the source and was directed to a think tank that doesn’t disclose its source either. It’s such a massive figure that it stretches credulity. I see you’ve now directed me to modelling from a Daily Mail approved think tank. I’ll continue to question the source of figures that defy belief.

The Public sector pensions liability is THE steam train coming down the tracks. It’s STAGGERING the amount of money that the UK taxpayers are on the hook for. Think of all of the big companies that have had a perfectly profitable business but have gone bust due to the defined benefit pension liabilities. The main issue isn’t the high contributions paid into these schemes by public sector bodies, it’s the guarantee provided to the employee that’s the real benefit. The employee takes on none of the financial risk. The state takes it all from them. If the global economy goes badly wrong defined contribution pension scheme holders will have no money in retirement, but the public sector retirees will still have to be paid out of UK government funds before the state pension, any other welfare that the government can afford, any other public services the government can afford.

The amount is massive and does defy belief. however, see questions for the treasury
https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2024-11-20/15278/

Because the jobs can only be filled by people who are especially vulnerable to exploitation. There's nothing workshy about not being able to sustain long shifts of back-breaking, dangerous work for a pittance of a wage.

I think a lot of people live in a fantasy where were they to fall on hard times, they would somehow be able to sustain gruelling manual labour in awful conditions whilst being paid next to nothing, because they Don't Take Handouts and Make Good Decisions.

Not because they Don't Take Handouts and Make Good Decisions
but because they don't have choice.

It's not about blaming people who use the system, it's about the system being fundamentally wrong. There must be no choice not to work, no matter how difficult or inconvenient. Apart from severe objectively diagnosed cases any benefits should be time limited and linked to previous contributions. Otherwise we continue on this spiral until it breaks - spend goes on welfare, no money for investing in services and infrastructure, ever increasing taxes kill economy and productivity, rinse and repeat

The most gruelling and difficult-to-fill manual labour jobs are not merely "difficult or inconvenient", though - the conditions are so extreme, especially relative to the low pay, that they are impossible for even most fit and healthy people to sustain.

Benefits = poverty. NMW = poverty. Why should someone choose to do long shifts of back-breaking labour in order to live in poverty anyway? So that people who don't like their desk job don't feel jealous and resentful?

Because otherwise they’d starve. On what basis should we be giving benefits to anyone other than the severely disabled when there are jobs they could be doing?

I actually cannot imagine wanting other people to starve because they aren't able to work 12-hour shifts in a warehouse whilst living in poverty. It's not something I can get my head around.

Would you want your loved one cared for by someone who doesn't care and doesn't want to be there? Or yourself?

Plus, looking at the long-term unemployed around you, are they suitable for a care role? Or any role at all? The only people I know who have been unemployed for 18 months + are unemployable due to addiction or undiagnosed mental health conditions. I'd not trust them to look after a flea, much less administer controlled substances to actual people.

Care is not a job that anyone can or should do, nor should it ever be. It's this attitude that devalues the role completely.

What jobs?

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/jobsandvacanciesintheuk/december2025

Absolutely no one is working so hard or paying so much tax they they get to decide that people should starve if they can't hold down the worst and low-paid jobs in existence. Even the most foaming-at-the-mouth benefits bashers will, statistically, take far more out of the system during their lifetimes than they ever paid in.

Almost no one pays enough into the system to justify what they take out of it. A lower-rate taxpayer who uses the NHS and draws a state pension objectively has no economic grounds to look down upon someone claiming other benefits (remember, the state pension is a benefit too). All that's left is quasi-religious arguments about how "paying into the system" for a magical number of years (that curiously seems to keep going up) makes the state pension the only benefit that is somehow magically earned and deserved.

so here we go - all those idiots working NMW and still paying taxes should quit. Why would they work??
all those with desk office jobs above NMW should be taxed 99% to fund majority of society on benefits.

Sorted

On the basis that they might be desperate to work and can’t. I hate anecdotal evidence but here goes - I know a graduate who applied for in excess of 40 NMW jobs to fill the gap before starting a masters. They applied for a variety of jobs including shelf stacking and were rejected for every one of them. If the state is going to remove that person’s oh so generous £400 a month it needs to force an employer to give them a job. How do you foresee that working?