I should clarify these aren't my solutions I'm spitballing potential solutions to kickstart a debate. I don't find the doom forecasting useful unless it precipitates a solution. If we can't do anything about it why worry, if we can great. I think the problem is health, social care and welfare is unaffordable (in widest sense cash AND other resources). One REASON is demographics but reversing that isn't really an option (is it?) so M what woul you do?
I agree re rights and responsibilities being intrinsically linked
I’m sure you don’t find it useful. I take the view that like climate change, people can’t possibly grapple with what it entails until they are aware of the gravity of the situation.
As I’ve said before, I’m not sure that there is much that can be done under democracy as we know it, and within the social order as we have it. EG’s solution while offered as jibe probably would help massively, but that’s beyond the reach of politicians.
So what could they do?
Well let’s look at what needs to happen to right the ship;
1 - we need to stop growing lifestyle related demand on services
2 - we need to grow supply into services, both funding and labour
3 - we need to try to create an economy that can produce decent jobs and survive in a globalised world and to lower the cost of housing
4 - we need to recognise the way the world is going and prepare for it; namely we can’t continue to behave as if in lala land safer under America’s paternal protection.
None of these lead to easily (if at all) sellable political positions.
Individuals need to reassume a great deal more responsibility for the collective, which means getting and staying together, having kids, not making demands on services that arise from freely chosen courses rather than the fickle hand of fate in terms of sickness or whatever.
A connection needs to be reestablished between putting in and getting out. A sense of collectivism needs to be rekindled to inspire the sacrifices needed. We can’t ignore cultural faultlines so that has to inform migration policy in a discriminatory way.
We need to move away from our wealth generating class being ‘anywheres’, loyal to nothing but their bank account and ready to skip off where the grass is greener.
Unless we want standards of living to fall to meet those rising in the developing world, we need to lower production costs without simply decimating wages. We need to encourage people to pay more for western / British produced goods and services.
We need to do all this while rearming and steeling ourselves for a turbulent century.
So absent a grass roots motivator like Christianity, or secular / national identity and traditions, how do you do it? Especially as a well fed elite will exercise their democratic freedoms to message directly in the opposite direction. Not easily.
Policy positions that could be considered might include:
- vastly raising taxes for those who do not have children (with exceptions for the infertile, gay people, clergy, those in roles devoted to the service of others such as healthcare etc). I’m talking a target figure of something like 10k to 20k per year, but then banded as normal to reflect income. Two tier pensions as well. That’s how massive it would need to be I think, so not sellable.
- speaking of pensions, compulsory investment in your own pension in the order of 10-15% of earnings.
- incentivise stable relationships, so massively tax second properties and otherwise disincentivise house price pumping. Immigration needs slashed for similar reasons. Risk the ire of pearl clutchers by rethinking housing for homeless youngsters, along the lines of student accommodation, with personal rooms but shared facilities. Provide life training services on site and make mandatory. Rearchitect the NHS - maintain free at the point of use principle, federate and variegate supply model. None of this is sellable.
- Also tax incentives for marriage both direct and via employers - return of the married man’s allowance although ‘person’ these days. State takes all assets of those who die without children to inherit, adjusted to 50% if they give to nieces or nephews, adjusted to 100% if donated to charities or institutions working on social care in the UK. Conversely, relax inheritance tax when bequeathed to kids - up to a limit i’d need to get my calculator out for. Perhaps just about sellable but very difficult with all arms of the establishment with their guns turned on it.
- frack, frack, frack. Increase the VAT paid on offshore services and levy a tax on intra company use of offshore services to discourage moving jobs overseas. Find a way to tax globalised retail models based on the location of the buyer. Very hard sell.
- revise our education approach to encourage values that support the above. Introduce Scandinavian or Swiss style national services vs whatever half baked pish Rishi was wibbling about. First bit easily sellable to the public, but will prompt a revolt in the educational establishment. Second part not sellable.
- ban under 18s from social media. We have enough problems raising our kids without Chinese and Russian intelligence lending a hand.
Just off the top of my head there. Sound authoritarian to you? It sure does to me. That’s the problem once a society stops doing these things organically- they require authoritarianism to impose. Which is exactly why radicals encourage license to the maximum extent they can, so they can step into the carnage and impose a total system.
You might wish for solutions, but they might not be possible while maintaining all the contradictory things you would like to preserve or support. That where we are I think. When I was greeting about this 20 years ago maybe there was still time but I doubt it. It’s too late now to reverse course within our existing premises I fear. And when you add in the pressure of climate issues that are diametrically opposed to improving jobs etc in their implication, well, democracy in an atomised society held together with sticky tape, is going to really struggle. The door is open for the far left or right, with cheap promises of easy fixes. I can’t see it being easily closed.
Edit - and the above could easily bankrupt us too, especially as the money markets would not exactly be sympathetic.
