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?

When I worked for the public sector 1/3 of my salary went in stoppages, Tax, NI, Superannuation.

I didn't begrudge Superannuation because that was for Pensions but the rest ??

Now I run my own business and can keep more of what I earn.

It's very simple really you either want to live in a society where the majority of people have a decent income and people who are sick or unemployed are supported, or you want to live in a society which doesn't support it's weaker members and the majority are slipping further and further towards poverty, in order that you pay less tax. As Mark Twain said if you demolish a school you have to build a couple of prisons.
Go and live in Dubai, and you don't have to support anything- but the people around you (who you don't see much) live in abject poverty, your choice.

It always amuses me when politicians talk of "fairness" and "those who have the broadest shoulders take the most load".

Yet every year the MPs vote themselves a payrise.

Now they are on "recess" until 1st September.

It begs the question "who's running the country ?"

But -have you not seen? - the majority of people are now “weaker” as you say. And there is also the extremely unfair and increasing situation whereby some on certain benefits are considerably better off than those on modest incomes.

You can’t blame people for doing what is economically best for them - but you then can’t blame others for thinking that it is absolutely not fair.

We actually do want to move away.

DH is very talented and works across ME and gulf clients from Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Saudi, Doha and Bahrain. He finds the quality of life there good. We've visited there on holiday and had a fab time. We loved it and found it such an amazing place. We found the region to be a place where my DDs can wander around freely without fear of being randomly assaulted simply for being a woman.

We're hoping to move so we can structure our affairs tax wise and give our children everything we have (and not the crappy UK government)

All good if human rights abuse doesn't trouble you. I advise that you don't look too deeply into what is happening in Sudan if you're planning a move to the UAE. You might find it hard to sleep at night.

It's sad to hear about. But let's be honest, it won't really affect my day to day. My priority is to my family, our children and to better their quality of life. (There are also other countries there that aren't the GCC)

They’re in abject poverty?
Well probably slightly less abject than they would be if they stayed in their own Asian country with almost no income.

What has happened in your life to make you think things generally are fair?
You have been extraordinarily lucky that's all I can say. The majority of people are not on benefits, so where do you get that idea from. People game any system that is set up, that is human nature , but it is a tiny minority and we have far bigger problems than the benefit bill weighing on the tax burden- crumbling infrastructure, education,pensions, nececessary huge increases in defence spending. Benefits are a drop in the bucket.

I mean you can tax wealth and limit benefits. You can encourage job creation and better support people who cannot work. You can find better ways of supporting the nhs through insurance or tax and also not have people dying in the street. It’s not either/or and it does no one’s argument any favours to pretend it does.

What I would say from my second hand experience of the benefit system is that it rewards professional benefit claimers who put their time and effort into their claims and it punishes the people who it was meant for that have fallen on hard times and do not know how to navigate it. I presume this is on purpose as it saves money overall. I guess it also serves governments of any colour for the general population to have scroungers to look down on.

This is the crux of it. I’ve lived in, and married someone from, the ME. The alternative for many people from (say) remote parts of Afghanistan or SE Asia is inability to support even a basic standard of living for their family. A job that we rightly call slave labour by Western standards often means those people can educate and feed their children at home. I still pay money to our former nanny for her children, and DH pays the Bangladeshi lady who looked after him in his home country! This is a huge part of the reason why even a subsistence level of benefits, housing or work in the West is so inviting. It’s more nuanced than just “GCC bad ugh”. What’s their alternative?

And in a much less nuanced way, what’s the alternative for people who don’t particularly want to fund state largesse with their “broad shoulders” particularly when the spoils are not shared with us (funded childcare, child benefit, personal allowance) and public services are stubbornly terrible, no matter how much we’re rinsed? I’d rather maximise my net income to try to get disabled DS the care he needs privately than rely on non-existent NHS services.

I suppose if you see taxation as "rinsing" then you'll never be happy with your lot.

Taxation in the UK is excessive relative to the quality of state services, which is why it feels very much like rinsing! I’m in a profession where it’s quite “easy” to earn 90 to 100k once qualified, but progression (which involves hard word, extra hours, no genuine holidays where you’re off the laptop the whole time) means a marginal tax rate of 47p in every £1 I earn. My bonus does not actually give me materially higher disposable income. And yes boohoo, tiny violins out etc, but the UK does actually need people who strive to earn more, rather than just bin off their career when the salary tops out. I’m happy to pay reasonable tax, but less happy to work like a donkey when the only material reward goes to HMRC!

Even that would not be so bad if we had nice things like GP appointments and modern, clean hospitals, if the government weren’t removing children’s legal rights to education while gaslighting the nation, and pissing net zero cash up the wall. They’re a cabinet of absolute amateurs and fraudsters who wouldn’t understand optimal tax take even if Laffer shoved his curve up their arse.

The tax system massively over complicates life and drives the wrong behaviours. For example, DH’s NHS salary hit a certain cliff edge meaning that his pension fund must pay out a minimum charge of £10k - completely arbitrary, £1 below the threshold and it wouldn’t apply. It’s actually less onerous - and better for DH’s blood pressure - if we pay the penalty to end my current PCP and buy a brand new car via salary sacrifice - £10k avoided. BUT a 2 year old highly energy efficient car replaced with a brand new one we don’t even need? Not exactly sustainable…

And don’t get me started on fiscal drag - it’s so disingenuous that “high rate” is a whisker over average and should be tens of thousands of £ above where it actually is.

It’s ideologically driven - tax for the sake of tax, even if it doesn’t actually raise any money.

We had a Conservative government for almost 15 years. Why would they introduce ideologically driven excessive taxation?

We have poor services because of austerity and, before that, 30 years of neoliberalism. Our levels of taxation are broadly in line with comparable countries. Underfunding public services and keeping benefits low have been long term political choices. Your taxes could be cut or they could be raised and you wouldn't see a corresponding difference in available services because the link between the two has been secured.

I remember last summer there were a lot of low earners on MN very gleeful that the successful high earners are going to be taxed more.

What "public services" do people harp on about?

When has the NHS ever been good. If it was "good" under new labour, it was due to pfi which bankrupted us. I'd honestly rather pay for my own healthcare.

In economic terms, we had Conservative governments that espoused left wing and liberal values. I know people delude themselves about the “extreme right” in the Tory party, but it’s a fantasy. (Restore, on the other hand…) Small “c” conservative principles like reducing the size of the state, lowering tax and personal responsibility have not been championed for decades, more’s the pity.

I am not a Tory cheerleader. I have a great deal of time for Kemi - she’s astute, talented and tactical - but her party has been rightly discredited including by its own traditional supporters, and some of that is because their ideology sailed leftward.

It wasn’t even good then tbf. I was treated for cancer in that time - filthy ward that stank, food was shit, I had to share a nightingale ward of 12 patients (we had 1 shower, 2 toilets, and we were all having bowel surgery). The main difference to today was that we had to listen to building work day and night while a grand new entrance to Trust HQ, including a bloody fountain, was built for the directors’ Mercs to sweep along, using the lovely pfi money from Labour.

When has socialism been otherwise?! 🤷‍♀️

I'm very sorry you had cancer

Shrinking the welfare state and espousing the ideological concept of "personal responsibility" as a means of dismantling the post war settlement and the years of decreasing inequality that followed are very much features of neoliberalism. In fact there's an argument to say that austerity was a response to the crisis within capitalism caused by greater socio-economic equality which was a threat to the system because it offered people too much choice! The GFC was a handy peg to hang austerity on.

Anyway, to cut a long story short I don't recognise your view of the last Tory administrations as in any way liberal or left wing, although I suspect we come from such different worlds we may as well be alien species to each other.

Sorry, didn't mean to imply you had suggested you didn't know significant numbers of genuinely disabled people. I was genuinely curious though as many people who know a lot of "scroungers" don't seem to. I appreciate you're more concerned with the child payments element of welfare spending and wondered if you could explain how much extra people get. Someone (possibly you?) said upthread it could amount to tens of thousands a year. Is that really the case? I don't understand this area of welfare payments at all as I don't have kids and the only people I know on welfare that do have kids have small families.

Yes, it genuinely can work out to tens of thousands extra due to the UC element. There is a general benefit cap in place though that will limit how much extra you can claim but the vast majority of larger families aren't subject to the general cap mostly because they have at least one disabled family member. You can also work 16 hours in low paid work and completely avoid the cap. This is true even if it's just one parent that's working and the other is choosing to be unemployed.

Benefits are carefully worked out to ensure a basic standard of living, no more. The government is not generous In its calculations, no matter who is in power. In essence, if you argue that people get too much money in benefits, you argue that they should live below the poverty line. In the case of disabled people and those who struggle to maintain work, often because of hidden disability, trauma, addiction and so on , that could be lifelong. That's a harsh punishment to advocate for other people just because you disapprove of them.

👏

Yep, people like to trot out the Daily Mail headlines about someone on benefits getting £70k a year... but the reality is far from that. A single person that is sick/disabled now gets just over £600pm to live on (I have not included housing element in that as not everyone gets it). That is a lot less than the state pension, but it seems on here that anyone of working age who is not working should be on the absolute lowest possible. Being skint all the time can also exacerbate existing health problems and cause more.