'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.

Mortgage insurance is available. It was a condition of my first mortgage back in the 90s. It paid out for six months when I was made redundant.

You mention 6 months. I think that is fair but why are benefits not limited 6 months?

Why are some people expected to be able to find work but not others?

Indeed. There’s a reason why the Scandinavian countries are happier than us and this is the sort of thing that makes a real difference. It makes life much less stressful, and people less angry.

if you’re on £100k, paying £4k a month on nursery (because ‘broadest shoulders’, ‘tiny violin’, ‘cut your cloth’) and £1.5k a month on mortgage it’s going to be hard to maintain a happy go lucky mindset.

Now imaging the feeling when you're on proverbial 100k, live in SE with huge housing costs so can only afford one child, but aren't given any free hours whilst paying for her 15hours?

@Weetabixw - the Scandinavians also encourage longer and more equal parental leave so that parents are supported back into work and the idea of full time work and flexibility for parents is deeply entrenched into society. The idea is also that everyone deserves to work and contribute and that is a privilege and a good thing to model for children. Zero hours and anti social shifts also frowned upon.

Agreed. Not sure we can ever pull this country out of the more it’s in and more towards a Scandinavian system.

I live in Scotland where they love to pretend they’re just like Denmark. We have the high taxes on anyone earning over £43k, but those under that pay an absolute pittance and the money handed out to those who don’t work is far higher than in Scandinavia. They’ve got the high taxes right, but virtually everything else wrong.

The Scandinavian countries have a much stronger employment market than we do.

There. Are. No. Jobs. In. The. UK.

I really don't know how many more times it needs to be posted. We cannot force disabled people into work because there are no jobs to force them into. We cannot cut benefits to force people into work because there are no jobs to force them into.

Also, the Nordic model does include benefits for long-term sick and unemployed, but they are paid at a lower rate, which is much the same as our system. We have a contributions-based unemployment benefit that is paid alongside UC to those who have been employed for more than 6 consecutive months. It is paid from your national insurance contributions. You can claim contributions based JSA irrespective of savings/assets/household income as long as you have 6+ months of NI payments.

Why are Labour hammering jobs? It’s not going to help anyone.

the EU average amount of your prior salary that you receive on redundancy is 50%. The UK average is 25%. Woeful.

this is not state paid - I can't comment about EU redundancy payments, but here it varies between one to four weeks pay for one year worked, up to certain limit. It's what employer pays you in case of redundancy.

We are talking about state benefits though.

@Frequency
You can claim contributions based JSA irrespective of savings/assets/household income as long as you have 6+ months of NI payments.

True, but it's about £75/week with no top ups, no housing support, no free prescriptions, nothing at all. UC suddenly looks like jackpot in comparison.
Again, the system encourages wrong behaviors.

Similar to the level of state pension payout as a % replacement of average earnings. The UK's is roughly equivalent to 22% of that across the EU. Obviously, there's a range and very different social insurance payments, plus the greater emphasis on occupational pensions here.

It would have paid out for two years. I found a new job after six months - it took so long because we were in recession. How can benefits be limited to six months? Are you going to magically produce a job at the end of it?

OK, so sounds like state benefits should likewise be limited to two years too then! If workers are expected to find a new job in two years, then why not the unemployed??

What I’m talking about is state paid benefits though. In the eu your post-redundancy monthly income (ie from out of work benefits) is on average 50% of your previous working salary. Here your income drops to 1/4 of your prior income as redundancy benefits for those that previously worked are so low. Redundancy means disaster here. In most other countries much less so.

State pension is very low here compared to Europe because you are trying to compare apples and pears!

Here we have state pension that provides the bare bones of a subsistence, reflecting the exceedingly low amounts we pay in. You are supposed to save and have a occupational pension too if you expect any sort of standard of living when you retire.

In the rest of the EU (with surprisingly few exceptions) instead of having an occupational pension that money is paid to the state, and your ‘state’ pension reflects both you and your employers state and occupational pension payments. So if you want to compare state pensions here with other EU countries properly, add your occupational pension income into your state pension income first.

Very sensible idea. I would add how about basing benefits on number of years contributed.

6 months - emergency for everyone

1 year - minimum of 5 year contributions

18 months - 10 year contributions

2 years - 20 year contributions

What about 0, would you suggest no benefit at all, or just the very bare minimum?

https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/newsroom/british-youth-in-crisis-as-nearly-1-million-not-in-work-or-training
I guess that is the centre right thinking on it.

Fact of the matter is mass youth unemployment is a relative new concept for us. We were quite spoilt here previously, compared to the rates in other countries.

There has been a massive recent rise since Covid.

Now everyone is trying to blame someone for it, mental health, feckless youth, Covid, blame the universities etc, blame the Labour NI etc,

However, ultimately we need a solution and that is Government working directly with business and state sector to create jobs urgently. No point spending on training if there is no job. I think the money should go directly into job creation and incentives to hire young people. If it is such a crisis.

Schroedinger’s welfare benefits: Far too generous when someone else is claiming them, but a pittance in comparison to European levels if you were to fall on hard times yourself and were to claim the same amount.

Why? It was an insurance provided by a commercial insurance company. It had fuck all to do with state benefits. It’s absurd to equate an insurance policy based on calculated risk with universal benefits.

Far too generous when given to those who have never worked. No where near generous enough to those with length records of work.

Everyone who has worked 0 to just under a year gets 6 months benefits.
You then have to have worked 5 years to receive benefits for 1 year And so on as below

6 months - emergency for everyone

1 year - minimum of 5 year contributions

18 months - 10 year contributions

2 years - 20 year contributions

Okay, that would inevitably leave some people with absolutely no funds after 6 months.

It ignores those that can’t work, and therefore wouldn’t have paid in but would need lifelong benefits. It ignores fluctuations in the job market that make it not possible to find work in 6 months.

And on a practical level would lead to people with absolutely no money once their timeframe was up, and how they would then survive is beyond me - if you’ve got any ideas what they do once their entitlement hits 0?

The UK is often considered in the "middle of the pack" or slightly lower in terms of overall tax burden compared to Western European peers, but it is considered high-tax when compared to Eastern Europe, the Gulf, and tax havens.

Only a tiny proportion of the population would be classed as unsuitable for any employment.

Everyone else would have to find a job (if they want money). Any job. They exist but are not necessarily the jobs many would choose.