The Uncivil War

Conflict occurs at all sorts of levels within society. Politics, court cases, domestic rows, terrorist attacks, street violence, and more. At the moment, there is a particularly interesting struggle occurring between the providers of our welfare state and the recipients of it. What you might call a financial conflict.

As mentioned in my previous comments, central and local governments are now ringing every drop of taxation blood out of the employment sector to pay for cash strapped public services. 25 million full-time workers are effectively propping up a 70 million population with their income and business taxes. 

There are naturally many complications within this simplistic interpretation, as most people contribute some taxes AND benefit from some services at the same time. The question remains, however, whether this notional fairness is currently being converted into a much more polarised conflict between net contributers and net beneficiary groups. As one lady working in a school recently said.

"I don't know why we bother, we'd be better off on benefits".

But here is another curve ball.

In a society where the old social contract idea of shared rights and responsibilities is at best shaky, new methods of financial redress have expanded to muddy the waters further. Our thriving 'compensation culture', for example, sees billions of pounds being regularly redistributed, not through the taxation system, but through legal processes. Here, individuals and groups often successfully claim that their problems are traceable to the activities (or inactivities) of other individuals and groups. These monetary settlements can be significant indeed.

The NHS is apparently spending around 3 billion pounds a year on negligence payouts (source: AI Google).

The questions are indeed difficult.

And the answers, more so....

Just an opinion.