Indeed. I have yet (in over 40 years voting in every single election/referendum since I was 18) to accept why those who understand and accept personal responsibility should be expected to subsidise the fickle who don't.
Yes, I do know there are thousands of hard-working 'recent arrivals' that contribute massively (either through taxes or employment) to the NHS. You only have to look at areas like Paige Hall here in Sheffield though (doubtless replicated throughout the country) to appreciate that there are many more thousands who will only ever 'receive' the benefits of our wonderful National (please note not International) Health Service without them (or their ancestors) having made any contribution whatsoever.
I would suggest that there's lot more local population who receive the benefits from our NHS and benefit payments without them (or even their parents or grandparents) paying any taxes.
However that is the way of things, if you have a system which provides a safety net for those who need it because of no fault of their own and use it to get back on their feet then you're going to find those who abuse it.
However those are a small enough number that the system copes with it. Yes there's changes which could be made to make it less attractive. The problem is that this often means that the system is either more expensive or disproportionately harms those who do truly need it.
Having seen other humans being provided with a house, who have little more than the clothes that they have on and can carry, and seeing just how stark that house is. It is not something that I would ever want to see from my perspective as the person getting it. The reason I was there was to provide that family with some furniture so that their children didn't need to sleep on the hard floor (as council houses only ever come with hard floors) and that they had a fridge to be able to store their food.
It is an experience which many would benefit from seeing, not least those who govern us and come up with policies which impact on those people who vote for them.
There's a lot been said about the harm of allowing Eastern Europeans come in under Labour. However few recall the difficulty in getting building work done due to the significant labour shortage and trades being able to earn hundreds of pounds a day.
Now obviously the increase in the labour market meant that those daily rates fell, harming their income. However they only really fell to about where they should have been and it meant that many more people were able to get the building and home improvements works done.
Much is said about how people coming here take jobs from the British, however if that was true then we'd see million upon millions without work as the population increases.
In fact what happens is that as the population grows so does the number of jobs so as to serve that population.
For instance if you have a village of 5,000 and a town of 10,000 the latter has more shops and more businesses to serve that population and so the number of employees goes up.
Those extra employees then mean that there's more money about and so more people can be employed which means that further jobs are created.
Talk to most businesses and they would say that being able to access a larger market would mean that they can sell more. Now often there's limits to this, in that distance often becomes a barrier (for instance a fish and chip shop is going to be more geographically limited than a builder), however most businesses are generally welcoming of extra people as it means that they are more likely to do well.
However there does come a point when a location becomes big enough that it will attract competition (a case study would be a village shop, if the village is too small it won't be able to survive, yet if the village is large enough you'll see a supermarket come in).
The "problem" for the NHS and our benefits system isn't really with those who are coming here from other countries (which is mostly to work) but rather from our own aging population. In fact without people coming here to work in the NHS and care systems it would be in a much worse state and would have been so for a much longer time.
What do we do to fix the problem of an aging population then? Well short of seeing an age limit (which wouldn't be popular for some reason, especially among those who are most likely to be fairly vocal on the matter of people coming here), we're left with importing the workforce that we need.
Whilst it is true that there'll be a lot of those coming here who do benefit from our system without paying taxes it is also true that there's a good chance that family of theirs will have paid a great price for us to have what we have today. Whether that's the likes of the Polish fighter pilots who were in the RAF and helped us win the Battle of Britain, or those who have seen their countries asset striped by the British Empire, or those who were impacted by slavery, or even those who are little more than slaves so that we can afford to have disposable fashion and cheap stuff.
What have most British people done to have the right to live here? Basically have the dumb luck to be born here.
In the UK we have won life's lottery of being born in the right place in the world. Without that we'd most likely have lost more family members (especially children) due to poor healthcare or poor diet or generally much poorer living conditions. We wouldn't have had easy access to education (I was going to say as well educated, however there are often many who have been educated to very high levels yet who haven't been educated on what life is like for those who aren't like them). We wouldn't have had access to vaccines which protect us from needing further treatments (let alone protected us from death). Chances are we'd be more likely to end up in prison or otherwise disadvantaged because we didn't agree with those who are in power. Likewise we'd be more likely to be a victim of crime or live in fear of those involved in crime.
My view is very much let's help everyone as you'll never know when you'll need their help. Even if that help is when I'm old and can no longer do all that I can currently do. Yes I know that I'm unlikely to directly receive back from those I help, however the better the world is for everyone the better it'll be for me too.
It's why I think that those who have an income like myself (and it's not even in the top 5%, according to an online calculator in in the top 30% of households) can afford and probably should be paying more taxes.
This would likely directly benefit myself, through the likes of better services (such as librarys, education, healthcare, social care and the like) however it would likely also benefit me indirectly through:
- the economy being stronger as there would be more people in employment or at least in better paid jobs.
- better public transport being better (so less traffic congestion and less need to run my own vehicles)
- safer communities as there'd be less need for people to turn to crime but also more police to respond to crime so that those involved in it are more likely to be caught (which then in turn reduces the likelihood of people turning to it)
- better environment through more sustainable measures being implemented
- many other reasons which I probably wouldn't even consider even if I were to think about it
However I'm a political outlier in that the Tories are too mean, UKIP/Brexit parties are too xenophobic and even more mean that the Tories, Labour is too focused on state control, the Greens are too focused on the perfect solution so fail to understand that it'll not work due to people (see HS2 as a case in point), the Lib Dems and the Monster Raving Lonnie Party are probably the closest to my thinking, however even they tend to sit a long way off from where I am.
