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've RTFT, thought it all over and concluded that @ClarkeandNewman has basically won it, in terms of cogency, background knowledge and persuasive arguments.

Spot on.

So glad we have you on this thread to give your verdict. Shame the poll doesn't reflect your judgement. Seems most people believe I won the argument. Lucky we live in a democracy.

A lot of private companies profits are dependent on taxpayers for their fill... That never seems to be mentioned.

Hmm. All of our kids’ needs would be more likely to be met under an insurance-based system like in France or Switzerland. I mention those because I have direct experience of both, but I understand that Germany also has a similar system. The NHS will never improve while patients are unable to choose their health provider. The only incentive the NHS has is to do less/nothing, because it costs less.

I‘m not sure what you’re not sure about? We are not at immediate risk of a balance of payments crisis, but we got a taste of what happens when fiscal credibility is in doubt under Liz Truss. There may come a point when the IMF concludes that the UK’s debt is unsustainable. Presumably this mean some tinkering and restructuring/haircuts, but either way the recovery plan won’t be pretty. I don’t see how we can credibly finance the deficit with our current level of public debt, and glacial growth. Meanwhile everyone wants their own personal gravy train to keep rolling..

Yes but what does all that actually mean? If you could explain the factors that might cause concern among politicians and economists, why they may believe that the UK economy has become so unstable that something so drastic as an IMF intervention is imminent, we may be able to understand your worries. You'll correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the last time the IMF took action in regards to our economy was fifty years ago, in 1976. So why now?

Any insurance based system would surely involve the most financially vulnerable having access to either no healthcare, or a limited version of what’s available to everyone else.

If what they’re able to access without insurance is a basic version of what I can get by having insurance, or a higher level of it, that isn’t meeting everyone’s needs, it’s medical exclusion.

I cannot imagine how much more difficult my family’s life would be if we were in that position and unable to fund our way out of it. The desperation that would leave someone with.

It’s bad enough that there are kids in my son’s school who have to wait forever for funding sign off for sensory equipment, for example, that we can just…buy. That there are families getting 0.3hrs of PA support, when we can afford to uplift the package we get by paying ourselves.

I don’t think that problem needs exacerbating.

Try finding a private accident and emergency department, private roads for any major destination, and a civilisation using the rule of law which enabled you to get rich without paying for those things through taxation- stop talking nonsense you benefit hugely every second of you life from things which you don't privately fund.

Meanwhile everyone wants their own personal gravy train to keep rolling..

Including those with £400k incomes apparently.

Another example of what Marx (never explicitly) called false consciousness. The normalisation of the belief that for the subordinate class, the requirement for basic needs to be met is a "gravy train" while those who professional to be hugely wealthy expect a personalised healthcare system to be designed for them to the detriment of others.

Objectively, that's outrageous. So why is it barely questioned?

Does anyone seriously believe that when (say) a person becomes seriously ill in France and has no insurance, they just give a Gallic shrug and let them expire? Of course not, it’s fearmongering leftist nonsense.

If the NHS passed muster, countries other than Venezuela would copy it - conspicuously, they haven’t.

And since my “gravy train” involves a household paying roughly £15k in tax a month, while claiming a massive £300 per month for a disabled child (which will never add up to the £30k I’ve already paid out of my net income for stuff the NHS won’t do), then presumably it’s in everyone’s interests that I do remain on it.

The Dutch system is also insurance based. Nobody is on the street dying. The performance of the system is far superior to ours and yet posters will insist the NHS is the only way. It's like the rest of the world doesn't exist to them. Just Britain and America. They know they don't want the American system so clingy desperately to a failing NHS.

Incroyable.

Oh dear! 😂

Perhaps you've misunderstood. My phrase was a gentle way of suggesting that you are confused about how the IMF works.

I'll be more blunt for you - It doesn't "come knocking". That isn't how the IMF works.

Does that help?

I believe it’s more difficult to access, involves more paperwork (which frankly I have enough of) and would likely require revenue that we don’t have, which would be gathered through higher taxation, which is apparently what the issue is currently.

It’s great that you contribute so much, but personally I’ve also never been a huge humble bragger.

If helpful, we’re on higher rate for both DLA elements (ie, more than £300pcm) and still have to pay for equipment and support if we want it quickly.

As I’ve said, imagine knowing your child needs that support and not being able to fund it.

Exactly. It seems to have escaped their understanding that you can raise the tax take painlessly by encouraging business and entrepreneurship so people are successful and earn more.

They do seem to lack a basic understanding of economics and human nature.

The NHS is the reason my son has his autism diagnosis.

It’s the reason my mum has survived cancer, twice. It’s the reason she survived a stroke last year too.

It’s the reason my stepdad is getting his back repaired.

It was the reason my FIL, and grandma, had a “good death.”

It’s the reason my sister survived a double haemorrhage childbirth.

Nobody would claim it’s the most effective right now; it’s been ran firmly into the ground, but ignoring the many (many) things it does and has done for people, is the epitome of ungrateful.

It's failure to treat my grandfather effectively contributed to his death. It has undoubtedly done lots of good things but this doesn't mean that another healthcare system wouldn't have done this and more. Objective measures tell us there is a better way. Being blindly grateful won't help people like my grandad in the future.

That’s pretty much always been the case though. It’s not a new thing.

The question isn’t whether there are more effective health systems in the world. The question is whether we trust the same people who awarded PPE contracts to their mates to replace the system we have with one that will be the best value, or whether we believe that the people bringing in these changes will see it as an opportunity to line their own pockets.

This is the point. When you are reliant on a healthcare system for your day to day health needs, you do massively worry how they would transition from one system to another and whether you will suddenly find that you need is not funded and is unaffordable. It would need a massive overhaul of health insurance as it currently works.

I mean, fairness is in the eye of the beholder, is it not? We all tend to evaluate things that are unfair to us personally as more egregious than unfairness meted out to others - you only have to watch young siblings (or adult siblings when their parents estate is being dealt) to know that.

As it is, the entire Western / developed-world economy is built on the exploitation of and unfairness dealt to inhabitants of the developing world, so I really don't think we get to complain all that much about how unfair our economies are to us personally. Funny how that works - perfectly happy to fill the world with blood and misery to benefit ourselves, but the moment that structural unfairness is turned on us it's suddenly not ok.

I wonder what we'd all be paying if we truly counted the cost of everything we own and expect to have, and everything we should be contributing but our economies are structured to avoid?

I also think endless growth is not possible, nor the way forward. The young people I know who are opting out of the work-tax system don't believe they even have a future to work towards. My generation is the first to have gone backwards; their generation's prospects are ... what? Not exactly inspiring - staring down the barrel of WW3, or at least a highly militarized unstable world going forward, resource wars, existential-threat-level climate crisis, population collapse, and an industrial revolution type disruption via AI all at the same time.

There is a clear lack of leadership and will to face the very real challenges they will bear the brunt of long after we're gone, so honestly why should they bother if we - the older generations - don't care about anything but getting what is fair to us? We've basically screwed our kids into the ground and now seek to punish them for a very human response of saying - effectively - fuck you and your system, I'm going to enjoy life while I can. Take away benefits, watch the chaos get worse, not better - survival trumps all else, which the wealthy would do well to remember.

TLDR - you need to look at the causes of people opting out and get serious about actually making a better world, rather than moaning about tax adjustments.

What do you think is misleading about it? I'm not suggesting we can stop pandemics or economic crashes (although we should try), but I am saying we shouldn't blame those that didn't cause them for their impact.

Welfare spending (not including the NHS and health care which I think you've included in your 36% of government spending statistic) has largely remained unchanged as a percentage of uk GDP since the mid 80s - so for the last 40 years rather than the last 10 years as you stated. I can't see that growth in the first part of this decade has any significance to these figures unless I'm missing something? What is growing as a percentage of GDP is NHS spending. Should we cut that as people get sicker? I don't think that would be sensible at all. Benefit spending is in a similar vein. As people become more disabled I do think we need to spend more on looking after them. Other areas of welfare have been cut as disability spending has risen, hence why the figures are overall stable.

@paternosteria ,

Economic crashes will always happen but 2008 was entirely foreseeable and avoidable.

Bankers firstly lobbied hard and achieved the rolling back of separation between investment and retail banking. In the U.S in 1993, Clinton repealed Glass Steagall under intense lobbying by the financial sector. In the Uk the equivalent was the ‘big bang’.

I find it highly questionable whether the banking bailout in the form it happened was necessary or inevitable. For many years, the government effectively paid many bankers hundreds of thousands or even millions (each) in what must be the most generous welfare scheme ever conceived.

You can argue that these weren’t government payments but how many people running small businesses would like to have their debt guaranteed by UK PLC. And what would these bankers have been earning had the bailout not happened? The answer is nothing as they would have been unemployed.

There were definitely other ways to support liquidity whilst, at the same time, not allow banks off with, effectively, no penalty at all. Yes, we would have seen a more extreme recession. But can capitalism work without periodically derisking the system and taking the pain which is the corollary of this? I would argue that it can’t.

At some point, politicians need to realise that we cannot just keep building debt. And, at that point, very painful choices will have to be made.

If we are lucky, maybe AI will come through or we will get limitless, almost free, energy from fusion. But, are we going to rely on these? And, even if they do come through, who wants to bet against politicians blowing it to court short term popularity?!

You can see why China, with its long term plans which are actually serious, and its dependency on engineering is outcompeting The West.