Quote:
Originally Posted by Escapee
Not true in all cases, since leaving school at 16 I have not received any free education, have not been in hospital, I pay road tax on more than one vehicle, my council tax funds the police and I have had a private pension since the age of 20, and I'm paying in the maximum amount I can. I don't consider myself to be that well paid, but I have spent the last 15 years either close to or in the 40% tax bracket, my earnings over my 32 year working life has exceeded £600k so the tax I have paid must be approaching £200k, so it will be more than a few years of pension before I have taken out more than I have put in  |
Nope not true in all cases. As I mentioned there are a few contributors to the state but most of us are not among them. After all we're also running a deficit.
If you look at the average person then they'll have the cost of education to 16, around 12 years of free education. Then the state pension until they die. That's if they never use NHS services and never receive any state benefits (outside of the pension).
I tried to look up what the cost of schooling for an average person is but it's quite hard as it varies a lot. Still it
appears it costs, on average, around £4,284 for each pupil per year in a primary school and they're there for about 6 years. So about £25,700 for that. Secondary schools, on average, is around £5,200 a year for 5 years so £26,000. The
average cost to bring a child though the basic education system in the UK is £51,700. That excludes the two years of college.
As for a pension then if you were to receive it at 67 and live until the average life expectancy of the UK (81) then at £113 a week you would receive around £82,200.
It's too hard to work out these numbers for any specific individual as inflation, where and when they went to school, how long they'll live, what services they've used, what they've paid in etc is all too complicated to work out.
Still you can see how easy it is to be a net recipient from the state. There we can easily run up costs well in excess of £100,000 from only the state pension and education. You estimate to have paid over £200,000 from taxes but to be near the 40% mark you're some way above the average national wage (£26,500). I would also say the average person will use the NHS at some point at which time costs are also incurred.
I should point out I am not saying there is anything wrong with being in this situation. Most of us are. It's just worth remembering that when people say they've paid in and never get anything out then most of them are wrong. There aren't many people in the UK who can genuinely claim they're subsidising other people via the tax and benefit system. Also remember the biggest budget items are the NHS, Education and pensions. As an example the NHS is £97 billion a year, Pensions £74 billion a year, Education is £51 billion a year whilst Jobseekers allowance is £5 billion a year. Even the cost of debt interest is £48 billion year.
I should also point out that it's gets more complicated when you factor in VAT, working which can help increase GDP and generate more wealth etc.