To be sick of politicians using 'fairness' as justification for tax rises?

[Itchthescratch]

Fairness is completely subjective and I notice that this is often shorthand for giving more money to those that contribute the least.

Of course there will always be those that can't contribute much due to factors outside of their control, but we are kidding ourselves if we pretend that there aren't already lots of people that are scraping by doing the bare minimum (sometimes even less) and making completely irresponsible decisions knowing the state will ultimately insulate them from the consequences.

I personally know people that have had lots of children that they can't afford and can't parent properly simply because they wanted to. They are now on an incredible amount of money as the two child cap has been lifted. I know people that have stopped working because they weren't much better off than being on benefits and they couldn't be bothered with the hassle. I know young people that are already planning to stay on disability benefits their whole lives for mental health issues as they want to stay home and game.

Is it really 'fair' to charge the rest of us more to subsidise all of this?

I did come across this stat after reading on, sorry. But how does this prove these NEETs are taking advantage of the state? Is it not more likely that many simply cannot find employment despite enormous efforts and the remainder are genuinely disabled - we are seeing a massive decline in health as evidenced by many studies. I'm not saying people who take advantage don't exist but I do wonder if there are that many of them. Of course there will be more in disadvantaged areas where unemployment is high.

These things are almost impossible to definitively prove without either admission from those abusing the system or high level surveillance which is completely impractical. The reality of distinguishing between genuine claimants and chancers is really difficult, especially when people know how to game the system. I know about these young people through their parents who are my friends and are often frustrated with the situation themselves.

Obviously you can choose to disbelieve me and believe that all of the claimants are genuine. I think the poll shows that most people though do agree with me because they also have contact with people like this in their lives. It's not a theoretical concept that needs to be proven to them through studies and research. They have seen enough evidence of it with their own two eyes.

Everyone is at the mercy of governments. Some people just have more difficulty dealing with that human vulnerability.

You didn't educate yourself, you don't employ yourself, you don't police your neighbourhood yourself, you can't operate on yourself.

You can, if fortunate, earn and accrue a bit more money to give yourself more options in tough times. Yes, and that's worth doing.

But the best protection against the human troubles people routinely face - crime, ill health, unemployment, bereavement - is a strong society.

There's academic research, it's all known, the things individuals 'believe' are often not in line with known facts.

People believe there's a lot more benefit fraud than there is.

All these people who know extremely hard working high earners and lazy benefit scrounges surprise me.

I know a landlord who has semi retired at 50 and who has given his very entitled 13 year old daughter property (presumably as some kind of tax evasion). I know a woman who works 3 jobs and is likely to be doing so until she is 70, she is not rich at all.
Personally, I’d like to see the retired lazy 50 year old taxed till his pips squeak and the hard working woman receive as many breaks as possible.

Totally agree.

No, there really isn't the level of academic research into this area that you imply. I don't want to detail the thread again but you only need to look at the PIP fraud statistics and the lack of good quality, peer reviewed research on the matter to understand that we still have very little idea about the scale of abuse of the welfare system. Data matching etc doesn't work for all kinds of abuse and more intensive investigative work isn't funded or resourced.

Some people are a lot more at the mercy of governments than others.

Once you reach a certain age you do have a level for autonomy over your education and employment. You can make good and bad choices. You can make lifestyle and dietary choices that improve your chances of staying in good health. You can earn enough to fund private healthcare and even travel abroad for surgery if required. We have a lot more power and autonomy than you imply.

I do agree though that a strong society is essential and that we must do all we can to prevent this being undermined. We need the social contract to remain intact and for people to believe in the welfare state as a concept. This is eroded as costs spiral and ordinary taxpayers pay more and see less for this money. Polls have consistently shown this. Supporters of of almost all the main parties think people are taxed too much.

We take home £43K after tax - she is paid £50K in benefits.

So, to be clear ‘personal responsibility’ exists among the powerful (you literally write ‘their own responsibility’), but not among society writ large? Where is the distinction?

And collective responsibility for what? To help those who have suffered misfortune and destitution. Absolutely. To support those who want to work but can’t find a job? 100%. But to allow literal generations to get away with not contributing to the best of their ability for no better reason than we enable it by not querying it. That’s not behaving responsibly. It’s fiscal suicide for all which is patently unsustainable.

I wonder how often, in the issue of extra hours for staff on zero hours contracts "fairness" and individual concepts of "morality" are applied.

Mo is a refugee who sends all his money to his wife and family in a war torn country.

Senga is a single mother to a SEN child but lucky to have childcare from a neighbour.

Edwin is a gap year Chemistry graduate doing a doctorate.

You can offer an additional 40 hours a week ....

I’m going to need receipts for the “richest 1% are increasing their wealth at 15% or more” please. If you are talking income (PAYE) rather than assets, I’m in that category - based in the NW not the SE - and I’m paying 62% on a slice of my income and 45% on the rest. Every single £ I earn is taxed, so I don’t recognise the “legitimately exempt from the tax system” comment.

As for where the flat is, it’s not a million miles from your username and it’s not the cheapest. I ruled out shared ownership, retirement flats, auctions etc. Saving £10k deposit should be achievable in a few years on £28k and yes it’s a studio, but nobody is going to hand out a 3-bed semi to anyone who wants one. I grew up in a council house with a single mum, bought my first house for £84k, used camping furniture until I could afford a sofa etc, moved abroad to pay less tax so I could pay down the mortgage quickly while letting it out. I hate to sound all Norman Tebbit “get on your bike” but it has never been the case that houses were easily affordable or that jobs were always plentiful. It’s not at all easy for young people to get on the ladder these days, but it’s not hopeless either - I see too many people who just shrug and give up.

I'm not sure what this has to do with a "fair" tax system. sorry 🤔
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There are two stories here, both of which have some truth.

The first is that some do choose a ‘feckless’ life for want of a better word. It is possible to be better off on benefits than working, which it shouldn’t be. A large part of this is due to the binary nature of our tax system where benefits suddenly disappear at certain income levels.

The other half of the story, though, is globalisation, QE and low skill immigration. All of the above have benefited the wealthy by reducing their costs for goods and services, while making some jobs not remotely cost effective for people who live here.

Economists will insist that globalisation is a positive in that it increases total wealth. That is true but they will admit that it increases global average pay while decreasing it within nations for low skilled jobs. If you were a Consett steal worker, the fact that an agrarian worker in China now produces steal for twice the wage he used to get won’t give you much comfort.

And we do need to consider why certain jobs are paid so much and where that money comes from. Where is the money coming from to pay magic circle newly qualified solicitors £150k base? Are they really doing super important work or so brilliant?! Personally I doubt it. There are a lot of pro finance government policies (pension investment rules, fees to manage pensions, allowance of mergers which are value destructive to investors etc etc). These are effectively taxes on the middle which are redistributed to the wealthy. We may not call them taxes, but they are.

The resentment of benefit scroungers is obvious. But how much, in money, is it actually costing us. If we could stop all benefit fiddling, how much would it save in taxes. I am betting something, but not life changing.

OTOH, what I think people resent at the top end isn’t people genuinely being rewarded for hard work and skill. I don’t hear many complaints about neurosurgeons or brilliant engineers earning a few hundred k a year. Or even top sportspeople, who clearly have skills which entertain us. What I do think that people rightly resent is sectors based on asset wealth and contacts (finance, lawyers servicing finance sector, top end estate agents, executives hugely rewarded for failure) etc. It isn’t capitalism , it is crony capitalism, where it is very hard to fail no matter how bad you are once you are in the club.

I guess an interesting test is whether you feel more unhappy about the benefit scrounger scamming £50k per annum, or the Merrill Lynch bonus takers of 2008, who lifted billions from a bankrupt company and paid it to themselves, or the compensation of water company executives who freely pollute and mismanage their companies.

Sorry, but I don’t think anyone is on £50k in benefits, either in cash or in kind (e.g. through housing payments), even with the benefit cap being lifted due to disability. It is important to correct this idea to avoid overegging the pudding...

The odd thing here is the way in which you've entirely missed how the phrase "personal responsibility" is exactly what you describe; a "construct designed by the powerful" to normalise inequality and the dominance of neoliberal thinking. It's well documented how that happened, how language was used to normalise certain concepts beneficial to the dominant class. See also the replacement of benefits with "welfare". Note also that I'm not talking about "the poor", a condescending way of discussing the subordinate section of society which encompasses every one of us here, whether you like it or not. And the subordinate classes are certainly not liberated by the tactics of the powerful! Quite the opposite.

Why do you argue against the welfare state as though the idea that it's bad for society is common sense and immutable fact? That argument is purely your opinion and an opinion which has been influenced like any other.

Finally, where is your evidence that the welfare state will "become overloaded and snap under the weight of everyone"? What statistics, trends and patterns led you to this conclusion?

I can tell you they definitely are. One of the families I mentioned in my OP is on more than this. Single mum with anxiety and 6 children. We live in quite an expensive area though so she gets a lot in HB.

I definitely think the benefits system is required, but only as a safety net. Unfortunately the system does not incentervise people to work because working doesnt pay.
A close relative of mine works 16 hours a week (below the threshold- she just has a meeting with her benefit officer periodically to discuss opportunities to increase her hours- which she has no intention of doing). She has 2 children and with the benefits that she receives along with her 16hours a week pay, she earns more than double than I earn. It makes me furious. But equally why would she do anything different if the system enables her to do very little and be financially stable!?
My IL's dont work. Are completely supported by the state. They are physically able to work, but declare "they're too old for that". They are 60! They've been doing this for 15+ years and will do until the day they die. They live in a 4 bed detached house, with housing benefit covering much of the rent. Have a 2024 plate car on the drive, are constantly decorating the house or buying new sofas/ furniture. They brought the most recent iphone outright for their 17year old son and regualrly eat out, go on day drinking sessions etc. They are very comfortable.
Meanwhile me & DH work more than full time, drive a 16 year old banger, really have to count the pennies to get by and provide for our children- as we should.
The unfairness infuriates us, when we have people in our owns lives who just can't be arsed!
Its never going to be fair, but can you blame people when the government enable them with little resistance!

You were asked to prove your claim that "people know other people that take advantage of the welfare state" and that statistics exist to prove this. You can't. No such statistics exist. Giving numbers of young people who aren't in work or education is akin to me claiming a saw a zebra walking up my local high street and providing the address of a nearby stables as evidence.

Of course there is. Look at Taylor Gooby for a start, or academic research from the LSE*. Plenty of evidence out there on people's skewed perspectives and the way they're exploited by politicians and the media to manipulate public opinion and create damaging policy.

*The LSE found that people overestimate the levels of benefits given to some groups (families, older people) so they don't realise the amount of poverty caused by below subsistence level benefits and believe that the UK is overly generous.

Personal responsibility is a concept that has existed for far longer than the neo-liberal capitalist era we find ourselves in now. You can observe it across lots of culture and over lots of times, it was present in the Ancient Greek idea of 'obligations' and it was quite obviously at the heart of Victorian society for example. The language may have changed but the idea remains the same at its core.

We also aren't all 'poor' on this thread by any stretch of the imagination. I'm not poor in this country and I'm certainly not poor from a global perspective. UK households have the 13th highest median wealth in the world and are far richer than their American and Swedish counterparts. I obviously don't need to explain to you why median wealth is an important measure for the 'average' person.

I haven't argued against the existence of Welfare State. I think it's essential. I have argued against the existence of this version of the welfare state.

Look at our huge levels of public debt. Look how much of that is fueled by welfare spending. That should be all the evidence you need that this whole thing is unsustainable in its current form.

And there is the problem. The collapse of social housing and the rise of the private rental sector. Public money pouring into private pockets. And those of have no choice but to use the private sector being feminised for the greed and amorality of others more powerful than themselves. For the neoliberal housing policy that's blighted the UK for four decades. Now do you see the problem with the phrase "personal responsibility" and the way it's used to chastise people when the very structure of society is designed to keep them powerless?

Well, I can only be amazed at the amount of knowledge you have about other people's circumstances - I neither know nor discuss my financial affairs with friends and family (well, a certain amount with family perhaps).
At least all this "discussion" about benefits online has taught be to be very cautious with who I trust and disclose personal information with.

No constructs need to be designed to “normalise inequality”.

Poverty and inequality are the natural states. The thing requiring explanation is how tremendously prosperous, healthy and safe humanity has become over the past two hundred years through to the present day.

That was done largely by invention, trade, science, capitalism, liberalism. It has led to what is probably the least exploitative elite class there has ever been.

Yes we should redistribute. That is part of the fruits of that prosperity. But some perspective also needed.

I think you should reread your contributions. I think when you see how and by what your thinking is influenced, you'll find it enlightening. Will you be able to do anything about it? No, because as I already said, society is set up to keep things just as they are, and if anything happens to threaten that, there are effective mechanisms to keep capitalism, neoliberalism and the continued rule of the powerful on track (austerity anyone?). But at least you'll gain the self respect associated with knowing how you are being manipulated rather than blindly accepting the rules of your betters and the way they tell you to think. Hate the game, not the played.