to be fed up of the phrase 'net contributor'

[glitterpaperchain]

Obviously there is a time and place for this phrase because we need to have a realistic financial plan and a functioning economy.

But society is more than just money. And I feel like this phrase is really making people view each other in a nasty way, purely focused on whether they provide economic value or not.

There are so many ways to contribute. The people who look after our small children, teaching assistants and 1 to 1s who look after SEN children, many healthcare workers, the people who care for our elderly, they all get paid a pittance but that work is so valuable to our society.

We're more than just our finances and there are many ways to contribute to society, many of which are not reflected in the economy.

For reference, the (individual not household) income required to be a net contributor is £42,600.

In a purely financial sense very few of us are net contributers

Totally agree OP.

A person’s contribution is not limited to their financial contribution in taxes.

Surely this depends on how much you 'take' from the system? Eg healthcare

I suspect this is true because people forget all the things they benefit from.

What about those wealthy “net contributors” who make the world a worse place by manufacturing tons of disposal junk, polluting the air or water, marketing harmful products such as cigarettes, or spreading false or harmful propaganda?

If a CEO pays £150,000 per year in income tax, but his company pollutes a river to the extent that it would cost many millions to decontaminate, is he still a net contributor?

Good point.

Why on earth would you think a healthcare worker of teacher was not "net contributor"? There is a financial balance between what people contribute in terms of tax and what they receive in benefits, which is skewed by our underpaid, overtaxed system.

You don't want to encourage people thinking they are contributing more to the NHS than they get back. That leads to a sense of entitlement (and ableism). The vast, vast majority of us will get the biggest proportion spent on us by the NHS in the last two years of life, so spend all but these two years "in the black."

As a very big net contributor I have no problem with the phrase. I think it’s good we are thinking about such things and it doesn’t stop me holding teaching assistants in high regard.

There’s a huge difference between a teaching assistant and an able-bodied person of 19 or 20 who is claiming benefits. These people should be supported by their families and (hopefully) working. It’s the type of families that don’t support these kids that I find to be problematic.

@glitterpaperchain That's an average. Of course it will vary between individuals - a very high earner with several severely disabled children might not be a net contributor.
Source here:

Well yes and no

Ultimately, pennies in, must be more than pennies out, whether you're a household, an indivdual, a business, a charity or a government.

If you have far too many net takers then that cant happen effectively

So while strictly a financial issue, its an issue that leaches out into all areas of life, choices people make, choices society makes. Nothing is ever in isolation, we are all parts of a system, that system is holistic. So when talking about finances, if peoples personal circumstances and choices mean that they contribute less financially, then that is a problem. We dont have a society that can manage around bartering systems or non financial systems which would mean that someone could offer something else

Source not posting - Google The Strange Death of the Net Contributor on the Institute of Economic Affairs substack.

I think it's a really reductive term. The only time I actually think it's helpful to use the phrase is when people are complaining about "their taxes" paying for people on welfare etc, when they are low earning, to remind them they aren't covering their own costs from the state. People do seem to forget that the majority of people take more than they get from the state.

I pay over £2k tax a month, so I'm a net contributor, but I can afford it and I personally think the rich should be taxed even more

I get why the phase is needed, but it's almost impossible to judge who contributes the most. My mum used to chat to everyone-not something that would ever come up in a conversation about tax etc, but sometimes she really helped people with their mental or physical health. Someone talking to another person instead of hiding in their phone can literally save lives. One person joked she changed the minds of racist people just by being who she was. What of social workers, teachers, police etc who help get children away from bad parents, and those kids grow up to live happy and productive lives?
Many people pay for their own health care/education etc, and again this isn't always considered. But then, I wouldn't want people who have serious health issues to have to feel guilty for needing care.

I voted YABU because I have never in my life associated the term 'net contributor' with the very narrowly defined definition you seem to imagine for it. There are a whole host of ways for being a 'contributor', dependng on the context. Sometimes it will be economic, other times something different, such as 'social' contribution like volunteering, blood donation, etc.

TBH I think ‘net contributor’ is about how much the average individual is ‘taking out’, as much as it is about what you are ‘putting in’.

People aren’t paying enough tax to fund the services they expect. Thats a huge problem.

It’s not that lower paid people are ‘worth less’ in some way, but it isn’t sustainable for such a large percentage of people to be taking more from the state than they put in.

If we did not have net contributors there would be no wages for the teachers, teaching assistants, nurses etc.

They are kind of important ya'know.

Agreed. It normally says a lot about the person who claims to be a net contributor

I agree that it has a place in discussions, but honestly on here I see it used as a way to devalue people who work in low paid and poorly respected roles that are essential and if not essential then important to society.
I do think that there needs to be more recognition of the contribution that people who don't necessarily make a lot of money, but who do jobs that are supporting society, actually add.
Both the high tax payers and the people doing those jobs that support society in other ways are valuable, nothing works without both contributions.

And you can talk about choices and personal responsibility until the cows come home, the fact is we need the low earning jobs for society to function, we need people to choose those jobs. Funnily enough people don't ever have a problem using those services for their benefit, when they want or need to, and ignore the fact that in order for those people providing those services to be net contributers, they'd need to be paying more at source or through taxation to make that happen!

I think the problem is that the “squeezed middle” are becoming increasingly squeezed and starting to begrudge the amount of financial support that other people get which means they’re potentially better off than them. There’s a lot of people with ok salaries on paper but they just haven’t kept up with the cost of living but they aren’t eligible for anything in the way of benefits or financial support.

When is it used other than talking economics?

Perhaps all us "net beneficiaries" should go on strike and see how long all the "net contributors" can carry on making their "net contributions" for

It makes people sound incredibly smug and a bit thick imo.

I was working at a supermarket during covid and my god was it eye-opening. We had people from all kinds of high up professions working there as they were out of a job.

Many of them still bellowing on about how important they are and how much they earn usually and how this job is so beneath them. Yet if it wasn't available for them to work, they would be left with nothing/dependent on benefits. Yet if there was no one working there the majority of people would be left without food and essentials. I was physically hit by customers on two occasions during the madness of covid and received a lot of verbal abuse while there, too. Enduring that while being paid pittance. So it does rile people up sometimes to be reduced to 'net recipient' and how much tax you pay correlating with your societal worth.

I agree with using the term 'net contributor' for practical reasons, but I also agree that, regardless of the context in which it's used, it creates a subconscious dichotomy in people's minds that pits them against each other. They are both valuable and they are both needed, as often times, as OP mentioned, net recipients provide truly rich, valuable contributions to society that enable it to continue functioning. Not all valuable contributions come in the form of GBP.

I think the times when it's useful to talk about people being "net contributors" (or not) only in terms of their earnings and cost in benefits are extremely few and far between and currently it's far overused in economic discussions.

People who are caring for young children, the elderly or disabled rather than earning profits are still contributing value to our economy, doing work that would otherwise cost society far more than many "net contributors" earns. The amount of unpaid labour from people who keep civil society going is vast and frequently ignored. Children in particular are a massive transfer of wealth from parents (and generally more mothers than fathers) to the state.

And then there's corporate welfare that gets framed as being individuals not being "net contributors" when the reality is corporations are making profits by paying their workers so little that it doesn't cover their costs.

So no, OP, I don't think you're unreasonable to be fed up of it.