Today, Suze asks:
Should we have to pay for basic needs such as food, water, and shelter?
I’d say broadly “yes” to this.
I don’t want to have people starving, or homeless, say, in society. I recognise that “society” as a whole is better off by not having these things, therefore I’m willing to pay that they be alleviated. In much the same way that I am prepared to pay for the maintenance of schools or hospitals, say. I am better off because these things exist.
But… there’s always a but… if you take this to the extreme, it becomes impossible. By “extreme”, I mean “everybody has their needs supplied for them”. If that were the case, why work? And if nobody worked, there’d be no tax take, no money to pay for people’s needs.
So I think the state should provide a level of care, a safety net to allow everybody to live a dignified life, but at the same time there needs to be an incentive for people to try to do better for themselves.
Probably everybody agrees with me so far. I think you have to have that view, otherwise you’re saying that it’s okay to have emaciated corpses on the streets. The difference will come in the state’s generousity.
As Suze says, “basic needs” as opposed to extravagant needs? The problem with that is that we’d all come up with different basic needs. You may say that tampons are a basic need, but they’d be no use to me. Nappies? Same thing goes. But vital if you have a newborn. I’d be happier for someone independent to set this, or for a formula, than I would for a government. People in receipt of such benefits tend to be the first punchbags when the government of the day wants to save some cash. Or to fund a pre-election giveaway.
That is the situation now in the UK. I’m speaking as an involved party rather than as a bystander, since up until a year ago I was living on disability benefit. If you just take food, mortgage and local taxes (bins emptied etc.) as “basics”, the benefit only paid about 70% of that. No power, no heat, no going out, no buying new things, no phone, no internet, none of that. There’s a notion that people on benefits live in palaces – it’s not true. It’s not possible. Look at the numbers – anything like that is publicly available, if you can be bothered looking. The end result is that my pension pot evaporated. I’m starting again now from zero.
But getting back to the question, how about a formula? How about taking the average wage (which is known), then halving it? You know, high enough that you can survive, low enough that you want a job?
Mister Bump 
The welfare state was designed for the very reason that children and elderly can’t work, adults can have accidents and get ill through no fault of their own. Bones dug up of our ancient ancestors prove humans have long cared for each other; the healed thigh bone proving that an ancient chap was not left to starve and die of his injuries, but was cared for by someone.
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The issue for me is how much support is a right, and how much is a privilege. That’s a difficult one.
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Yes it certainly is with no easy answer.
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I loved your answer to my question…I tried to keep it generic enough that multiple people would really think about it.
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It’s interesting that some societies are going to the point where the state is giving everybody a vasic wage, so essentially covering the essentials. I’m sure some Scandinavian country is doing it But I can;t see how that would work unless the wage is so low…
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I’d like to see something like a universal basic income – that’s the tax-free income, and anything earned above that is taxed at a flat rate that’s high enough to make the place work well (health, education, etc.), but low enough that people are willing to pay it.
Easy to say, not so easy to do because everyone’s used to the divisions – how does business pay tax, for example? And yet, the UBI is a personal tax system, not a business entity tax system – and businesses should be willing to pay the flat tax rate on all earnings, and only the workers (those who get paid, including the business owner) get the tax free element and taxed above that level …
Everyone wants a piece of the pie, but the pie is so large and complex that the only ones living comfortably are those who have the money, energy, and knowledge of the system to enable them to take the bigger grab.
Just another opinion from the lower ranks, the unearning and unable to earn after a lifetime of earning and paying tax, yet too young to claim any form of benefits until all the savings are gone, all the assets are sold, and the only options left are for the streetwise or the garbage dump.
Not that I’m a cynic, you understand
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I like the idea of a UBI, but do you think countries could afford it? And would it replace benefits?
I could imagine you’d save a lot of money if you could make something universal rather than tested.
Anecdotally, I hear broadcasters telling me that the UK is taxed at its highest ever, yet I also hear voices saying they’d be willing to pay more, because services are so bad.
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If all the other benefits and hand-outs were stopped, the UBI would save a lot of money. People wouldn’t have to contend with updating their details with the social security structures/processes. And no one gets looked down on for being a ‘beneficiary’ of the state. Any money a person earns is taxed at the flat rate.
Business taxes should be similar – there are too many of the biggest businesses that pay no tax apart from through the employee earnings. A flat rate shouldn’t be too tough to handle, and with all the cost of managing taxes like GST or VAT gone – hey, more savings. Would never happen though. Too many people think immediately of the higher earners not paying their way, forgetting that the tax-free component applies to those earners, too.
As for the bottom layers of workers, those who do unskilled labour, why shouldn’t they be part of the earners rather than the working poor? I’ve done those jobs, and despite working hard, long hours, there wasn’t enough money to keep working – couldn’t afford the car, the rego, the insurance, etc. I went to school so I could earn more money.
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Find an effective way to identify and remove welfare abuses and the result would improve tremendously. Bur a universal basic income? I think not; too many capable of providing baisc needs omn theor own would abandon the effort , witness how during support extensions of WuHn19 how unskilled workers, which there will always be, opted not to work. One other remaining difficulty for managemeet of welfare program necessities is that we continue to try to tie them to government administration: if ever you want something ruined, let the government “manage” it.
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There will always be abusers. In any system. Jeff Bezos is an abuser of the tax system because he avoids paying it.
I think you take sensible steps to stop abuse of any system, after that you have to shrug and treat everybody as genuine. It worries me more that somebody is starving, than somebody living in a palace.
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Love this! It isn’t very clear where to draw the line between too much and too little support. In the US, Republicans and Democrats seem to constantly battle over where to place the line. Decidedly irritating, but we don’t seem to have a choice.
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It’s difficult to draw the line, but as a stab, we have a statistics agency which will readily tell us the average national income, also we have a living wage, so… a proportion of one of those? But, you know, a fixed proportion. Not one that politicians will meddle with year on year.
I mean, it strikes me that if we have a living wage, and that wage is considered to be the minimum needed to live, then that’s a reasonable level.
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