So it looks like we can’t afford all the benefits and social services we have got used to having and even worse we will need even more of them as many of us grow older, lose our jobs and live further away from our families. Wirth our huge and growing national debt we need to find some radical solutions to these challenges, so here is one that occurred to me.
Before we had any of our current support services, people managed because they helped each other and no doubt some did it more than others but enough people did it because they believed they had to. We have lost much of that social conscience today and it seems to me very unlikely we can expect that to emerge as a solution to our needs any time soon.
It might however be possible to engineer it, after all we are willing to engineer or at least talk about engineering green taxation to protect the environment so why not a kind of social taxation. The idea is a new social tax that every working age adult has to contribute towards. Let’s say 8 hours worth of effort every month and you can chose either to pay social tax in money or in time. There is absolutely no reason why this should put anybody out of work because there is an almost limitless need for work to be done and the money raised from those who prefer to pay could pay wages to others with time to do more than their own 8 hour contribution.
One advantage of such a system would be to share the load equally and get everybody involved in meeting the needs of our common society. No doubt there are many who would try to avoid contributing and many more who could not get involved because of ill health or parenting responsibilities but by far the vast majority of working age people would be involved. It would have to be managed of course but we seem to be able to manage taxation already so we could manage this if we had the will to do it.
Sure this isn’t the only solution and maybe it’s too radical or just wouldn’t work for a million other reasons but it is an idea and we need ideas if we are going to solve problems. Perhaps you have a better one?
That sounds better than the idea of paying a lump sum upon retirement for a service that we all hope we will never need, but I wonder how much of the tax would be well spent and how much would be wasted on over the top Health & Safety precautions. Would those who paid in time instead of money seek compensation for tripping over other folk’s uneven flooring, or could we go back to the days when if you got injured it was your own clumsy fault? Such a scheme might help to resurrect the social conscience we have lost – but there are bound to be some who would resent it.
Comment by Sue — June 2, 2010 @ 2:05 pm