Trophy Children

It strikes me that there is an all pervading expectation that adults have an ordained right to have child as and when it pleases them. No questions, this is an absolute, I want a child, I want it now so why are you not making it happen? Nature of course is very complicit in this and more often than not, sometimes to all-round consternation, pregnancies come along easily. That is for most young heterosexual couples. Just because perhaps it can be too easy to conceive we mistake that as a right to conceive. Now children are great fun, through them we can rediscover and enjoy once again our childhood, through the contacts made around children we can slide easily into new social circles with multitudes of opportunities to boast, display our child or parent skills and engage in all manner of one-upmanship contests and with a child as entry ticket we can exalt in all manner of events and occasions. Should the child's needs clash with your ongoing adult life there are plenty of opportunities to park them out with all manner of educational enrichments to boot. Or failing that option then just parking them infront of a TV or a computer console will ensure you can get on with those essential adult tasks with the minimum of distractions. So good to have children around, it feels right, familiar and is after all what every other couple expects. You are conforming to the social norms. You have child, purrr.

When child mortality was so high in the past, the supremacy of new life, any new life, was paramount to the survival of the nation. We are in a different era, there are too many of us on this planet, beyond what it can renewably sustain but we each want to add our child into the pool, to reproduce and further increase this pressure of just too many people. We have outgrown our planet. The sanctity of life is no longer a prime issue, instead we should be thinking deeply about the quality of the children we already have and even more so about those children that might come in the future. Those that are born to carry our genes forward, what should we set as a benchmark when considering all the deprived children, the maimed children, the children born with life challenging abnormalities, the children yet to be born or at the moment of conception? We should want all our children to be self-confident, enthused and full of hope as they launch out into the world. Sure children are highly resilient and can overcome the most dreadful of beginnings but they do carry those emotional and physicals scars, from that childhood, into their adult lives to pass on reflections of their horrors endured into the next generation. So with a reduced pool of children going forward we should want to encourage that the most assured and confident children carry our genes forward and not the scarred and maimed.

We should be aware of a range of concerns that impinge on whether or not the children we choose to have occupy this pole position of assured and confident. Same sex couples are biologically incapable of having a child sharing genes from both partners. Surrogate genes are just that, apart from many other issues, the motivation and or selection of genes thus acquired has to be questioned. I go further, the right environment for a child to grow is within that tension between the male and female roles. Only here can the child truly explore and understand this complex relationship and learn where they fit within these complimentary but almost opposing models. When career choices and or the ability to afford a home pushes back the mothers age for a first child beyond the early thirties in to the forties and even further on into the sixties, the risk of foetal errors increases as does the inability to readily conceive. If the career is the first choice then the honour of creating the genes to be passed on should move over to others fully committed to the mother role. Nowadays the stable family unit is no longer the norm instead serial partners with half-siblings are the new units. There are many strands to why this is occurring. The key issue is that a family unit that has overcome the tensions that arise between the male female bonding is a stable model and a good environment for child development. A pairing which, for whatever reasons, fails, leading to separation and new pair relationship to be formed, damages the children involved leaving them scarred, confused about their identity and their self-worth. This does not bode well for their development or their induction of future generations. Just because a woman is a natural mother with an inexhaustible appetite for yet another baby to care for, does not automatically mean that she is the right choice. Beyond some number there are just too many children in one family to be given full attention and the woman's body cannot recover from successive pregnancies, leading to runt babies. A final thought, we be protective of our gene pool and make sure, short of breeding for specific characteristics, that inherited defects, such as cystic fibrosis, are not passed.  

Nothing could be further from my intention that any couple wanting to have a child should be prevented. Perversely, such is life, the most unlikely child parent circumstance may well turnout an exemplary child. The State can and does choose to influence how society responds to issues. Often using taxes as a way of nudging behaviour in a direction. So I have nothing more in mind than that. A nudge, a financial incentive, where the outcome favours the emergence of a self-confident, enthusiastic and hopeful new adult. A tax regime with a nominal tax credit for any children during the first three years. After the third year the child tax credit cranks up significantly until a substantive level is reached only to taper off from sixth form until it ceases on graduation. However there are key criteria. The genetic parents must still be in a viable live together relationship, else it reverts to base nominal level. The benefit for all children in the family tapers off sharply with each succeeding child after the third.

I sense howls of protest, discrimination, fault, blame, victimisation but society does have to make choices. It has to promote what is in its best interest, not the individual interests. Individual respond and make life style choices based on the freedoms they perceive society offers them. Singles parent should not be on the choice list, IVF should not be there on demand. Serial Partnerships should not be on the same footing as a longterm stable marriage. The trophy child should be confined to history. We have to make choices. We should choose carefully to ensure the children we do have emerge healthy, bright-eyed, confident and eager to take on tomorrow's world, carrying us along with their enthusiasm.



ps: Initially this was just going to be a post in https://somersetspiess.wordpress.com/ just airing some passing thoughts. But the more I considered the more I realised this is a mainline political theme that strikes at the core of our society. So this Blog is the better location. I hope you find it.

Tax Array

Time for another dig deep session. It verges on an Alice in Wonderland incredulity the number of organisations, the variety of assessment / claims forms and the bewildering variety of benefits out there where the government, in some guise or other, pays money back to its beleaguered citizens. These byzantine arrangements, all arrived at with impeccable credentials of fairness, equity, non-judgemental compassion and social egalitarianism ends us up in this current mad house. Duplicates of civic servants or quasi scrutinising the minute of income, assets, disposable wealth and interpersonal relationships to arrive at not so dissimilar views. Yar, this person is in need of financial support to get through.

Some times, just occasionally, the sticking plaster on top of the sticking plaster approach to crisis management fails. This is where we are now. We have to dare to lift up the corner to see right back to the origins and be prepared to discard the past. There are the majority of people that sit within the norm sufficiently well as to not raise concerns. Then there are people that are well below the norm and, compassionately, need special considerations. Then there are those above the norm that require particular attention.

Below the norm people from time to time struggle. Whether from their own duplicity, bad luck or simply an act of god, they fail to cope. So often it comes down to failing to make financial ends meet. It is in all our best interests that they get some immediate relief, a crucial chance to sort themselves out. Extend them that lifeline to get back on their feet. Moving on from there, from whatever the cause, we cannot let any citizen slide into destitution. We just cannot stand by as another human fails to cope, to find the basics of shelter, food and clothing. Two situations then,  the first, hit the crisis button and immediate temporary relief whilst indepth investigations as to cause and remedy are conducted and your self-recovery attempts are monitored. Your crisis, your solution with the state in the background with advisory help. Not a state orchestrated rescue plan or a state ordained way of life, see also From Cradle to Grave. Second situation, you fail to manage your own recovery and slip further into the financial abyss. Until that point when others decide you need to be taken in. Given the minima of security, shelter, food and clothes in a community, with respect for privacy, for the family unit, though not necessarily your own personal private space. A scaling of support dependant on your willingness to help yourself and help all those possibly undesirables you now find as your companions, but always with that encouragement to work out your solution to your own problems. Shades of the workhouse. Inescapable, but a workhouse comparison diffused with compassion and support for the individual to find their own solution.

If we consistently fail to cope, it is right and proper that others begin to make decision on our behalf. It is the price of getting it wrong. One key questions is whether we are paying our way or living beyond our means. Your view is that you are perfectly entitled to a settee, or a wall screen HD TV, or convenience foods or an annual holiday. Others, that is the we of our society, may well judge that your life expectations are out of kilter to any realistic income. If you are unable to earn enough to pay for your desired lifestyle the State will make up the difference. Great. The downside is that the States view of what is required to sustain you or your family will be set eventually very low. A crutch for those in need but, and a very important but, not so comfortable that any one would choose to depend on it. There has to be that bottom line incentive, to get yourself out of your difficulties. It is your job, not the States job. So a sliding scale then, with interventions all along the way, from sustaining you in your present life style for the short term to a gradual reduction to a bare bones basic. Until the final support of some community based last resort shelter. Achieved simply with a tax credit as an income source. Scrap all the other benefits and allowances and special needs. We, this our society, decides a norm, below the norm, tax credit, on the norm, tax neutral, above the norm, tax debit.

Before turning to those in tax debit, an aside. It has to be all about our personal choices. If we choose, let events put us in a place, where we are a single parent, that is a personal choice. That choice has financial consequences which flow directly out of that choice. If we are born disadvantaged in some way, those are the consequences we have to live with and those are the limitations we have to find a sustainable life style to live within. That may well mean having to rely on support of the family, friends or community around you. Life does not come with  any entitlements. It is up to you to make the best of whatever the start you are given. It is not the states function to reinstitute you to some idealised lifestyle. Crisis support all the way for those crisis situations, caught out by the freak events of chance. Does your finding yourself in a relationship with a person with abusive traits amount to a crisis or a lack of judgement or necessary caution?

For people earning above the norm they pay the debit tax. Remember be are talking here about a pro-rata tax on wealth creation, see Tax, salaries and rewards and That Extra Mile. The more you have invested in skills or equipment the less you pay and the less you have invested in plant or people then the more. That pro-rata rate also on a sliding scale. We as a society will decide that no one shall take home a disposable income of more than 10 times, or 100 times or a 1,000 time more than the norm, whatever. We as the society set and control the divergence between the poor and the richest. The minority rich can only accumulate their wealth with the acquiescence of us the majority poor. We take pride in the unique opportunities our society offers. Those rich that recognise these benefits and are willing to make their contribution back into the society that nurtures them, will stay. Those other rich who are only interested in ever richer pickings will go elsewhere. When the 100% tax point is reached, that is you have arrived at the maximum rich to poor discrepancy society can tolerate, the options become simple. You either have to diversify and invest into less profitable enterprises or you spend on humanitarian good causes. This is a tax on wealth generation, not on the value of the pile of golden eggs but how much income is derived within this society from those eggs.

Society wins all round, it entrepreneurs are handsomely rewarded. The more successful they are the more the state recoups. A successful society is ripe for harvesting wealth. An equitable society that looks after all citizens is a just and stable society. Citizens that are motivated to self seek solutions are mobile and willing to try new opportunities. Win, win in principle. Our resourcefulness can mitigate the inevitable downsides. Better to try than continue to fail.

That extra mile

Keep circling back to the same topic, so I suppose must be kind of important to get a good steer on it. When is reward enough and more is obscene and socially divisive? See also my Tax, Salaries and Rewards and Higher Aspirations.This is the core question nagging at me. To better your lot is the principle drive that makes people go that extra mile to achieve the extraordinary. We all benefit hugely from all those around us striving beyond the norms to achieve. We want and need them to do it. Maybe even our best athletes are not just seeing how far they can push their skills, to find their own limits. More than likely the distant prospect of fame, notoriety and possible rewards to come are the spur on those so long cold dark mornings when every fibres protests, stay in bed. Switch athlete for skill or expertise, there is in each of us that internal desire to see just how good we can become or far we can go. Excellent. Just not sufficient justification on its own, it needs that added bolster. Fame, recognition and then the dosh that might follow. Reward of an achievement reached is not enough. Fame absolutely, or at least the attention it brings. Without the bonus of creature comforts? Most cases, not.

What we all want is release from the worry of survival from day to period, we want our progeny to have as good or better start and we want to provide for our kin. Good and wholesome aspirations. Incentives enough to push on and try harder. Proper just reward for making that extra effort, to stand out above the crowd of wannabes. But how much reward is adequate and when is it over the top? Enough to have and enjoy a relaxed none caring lifestyle through to your final days. Spared from the haunting, will I, can I afford relief from discomfort, pain, lack of care and nurture. Sufficient so that comparisons to equal or comparable peers is not unfavourable to you. There is a rub, of course we have a predilection to compare ourselves much beyond our actual modest achievements. There is this built in escalator here to be resisted. Lets assume our peers operate a 'higher or lower' wall to approve or contest comparison claims. Next of course we need enough to ensure our progeny receive the benefits of all our hard efforts. Somewhere along the line of a good home, nice clothes, private education, mind-expanding holidays and leisure, connection to similar influential families, protection from the costs of education, helping hand to set up a home and positive introductions to potential employers or clients, somewhere we pass from fair and reasonable to the inequitable. Where your hard efforts so set up your descendants so that, without any effort on their behalf, they can coast on your successes to the detriment of other aspirants.

Inheritance tax is both the final insult and a social leveller. After a lifetime of hard taxed effort the State seeks to take away any residual value. By doing so it reduces your descendants to well off but not excessively so. With the sting in the tale. Why bother in the first place to put money into permanency when none of your kin will get to benefit? If you follow the logic, might just as well paper over with polyfilla and save yourself the time, cost and effort. Then the Nation loses out, instead of accumulating treasures from the past, it gains just puddles of decomposing goo. No, providing we can keep a lid on excessive rewards, then, on past evidence, the second generations will squander their inheritance and in doing so provide opportunities for upcomers to profit from them. Keeping a lid on excessive rewards is the key. Enough to make the extra effort worth while but not so much as to distort the social fabric and threaten the underlying goodwill of all, to see success rewarded.

Finally, having exploited the benefits of living within our society and utilising it as their base to make their fortunes, when the rich complain as the State takes back or regulates the excesses of rewards accruing, they have a stark choice. Either turn their backs on the society that nurtured them on their road to success or accept that this is the price demanded from all those other tolerant people also wanting a chance to make the big time. The makings of a fair and equitable society.

Raising Revenue

When the cost of providing good quality human interfaces, be it social care, restaurant service or answering customer queries becomes the overriding concern maybe it is time to take stock. Why do we use minimum wage staff, school children or third world call centre staff to respond to the complexities of human concerns. Simply because the hourly cost of employing staff is so high. If you paid a good wage to attract the best calibre of staff the services offered would be deemed too expensive.

Humans are remarkably adapt at carrying out complex, intricate, novel procedures and are able to apply these skills to operations over a period of time improving on their technique as they progress. Unlike machines they need variety, change of pace and swapping novelty for repetition. Men have and are being replaced by machines. Any repetitive task with a significant volume are increasingly being turned over to a machine. Humans are expensive to employ and have other ancillary non-productive social needs that make them even more expensive.

The traditional professions to large part owed the existence because of the information acquired over years of application. Yes there were other factors as well but the significant common theme was that they held the information on where to find, who would be able to provide, which consideration would apply. They relied on knowledge retrieval as the foundation of their particular skill. You had to use them as no one else had sufficient day to day recollection to know how to effect this or that. The professional bastion is being challenged by the online world where the very best information can be available to anyone anywhere. Information is no longer the privilege of a few but widely disseminated.

Just three acorns to get across the idea that the labour market as we used to know it is undergoing a silent revolution. It is now fact, we do not expect massive industrial complexes with thousands of people pouring in and out each shift to turn their wheels. This same scaling down of the numbers of people employed is spreading across all traditional work fronts. Yes some new employment industries are being created a long the way, but the slide, the direction of drift is clear. With a shrinking workforce in regular employment, Income Tax on the masses in employment as the main means of revenue generation is overdue a rethink.

Picking up on a theme I explore elsewhere, GB is a great marketing opportunity. High concentration of an affluent articulate population, compact with high density of interconnections and a gifted energetic advertising industry. A product maker or sellers dream. Great, but pay the going rate. Rather than Income Tax we should have Wealth Generation Tax. If you benefit from being in this country and selling to it then you will have to pay a tax on the income that arises. If you are just a distributor, everything manufactured overseas, shipped in and lorried around, a very high rate. If you have invested hugely in plant and or people, a very low minimal rate. If you don't produce goods or services but utilise your position here to make money, and I am thinking of Bankers, Insurances and footballers as examples, then extortionate rates apply.

There are many benefits and are sure to be many downfalls, but we have something worth charging for, the GB marketplace. If our revenue can shift to exploit that rather than adding to labour costs, who knows maybe, just maybe it will be possible to employ skilled persons again to interact with our citizens or craftsmen to fashion prototypes for production overseas..

Tax, salaries and rewards

Money, we all need it, some more than most. So whilst we are talking about £45M winners its time to think and draw four strands together.
Thread 1
Success has to be rewarded and we all need aspirational dreams, dreams that can take us out of the drudgery of every day life and gives us the hope of escape. At what point does a salary or bonus become unacceptable, £1M or £2M or £5M what about £10M how about £50M pa, so excessive as to be condemned by everyone as too ludicrous to contemplate?
We want rewards, we need to dream but where to draw a line, a line which supports a cohesive society and where those without are tolerant of those with an excess. No one wants a polarised society, even the most rich need those without to provide for and give support to their beyond dreams lifestyles and those without have to have the hope that they too can get rich or else they will abandon hope and just take what they don't have.
So, how many second homes, how many luxury yachts, how many private planes, how many private islands, how many years without toil are necessary to justify, adequate reward? When one man (eg Bill Gates) has greater wealth and freedom to dispose of it without scrutiny than a Nation State then we are in a very sick place.
Setting aside the historical origins that gave rise to inherited wealth, another subject for discussion later, reward used to be related to value. Those that worked extra hard, those who took risk, those that had exceptional skills, they were rewarded proportionately. Nowadays a footballer or a 'celebrity' with media ranking can claim silly monies whilst the A&E nurse, the scientist with ten years research, the craftsman with a life long skill, the soldier, the Brain Surgeon are paid, in relative terms piffling amounts. No fair rewards here. Our core values have been turned topsy-turvy by international financial backgammon, betting on south-sea bubbles of huge proportions. How do we get a reality check?
Thread 2
The theory goes that in a free market, supply and demand will level out salaries, so the most numerous tasks with large numbers of people able to carry them out will be paid least and the tasks where there are few specialists persons able to carry them out will become the best paid. So why aren't we inundated with would be footballers, stock market traders and TV presenters and why are science teachers in such short supply? It is not, probably never has been, a free market. For many good reasons, pay restraints and thresholds or freezes, union or public service comparability, market norms and a host of other well intentioned interventions have removed the self-correcting mechanisms that were supposed to work. We ineptly fix salary levels bolstered by claims of fair pay. Plus 'funny money' generated by share values or media ratings have totally distorted beyond any rationale, the right price for the job. We need a re-think.
Thread 3The stroke of genius was PAYE! The huge working underbelly of society was locked into a system that scrupulously, ruthlessly and efficiently took money at source and paid it to the state. There was no escape, if you were salaried, as most were. A large income without effort was guaranteed to the State, leaving it time to go the merry-go-round with those not on PAYE stopping off one tax avoidance bolt hole before stopping off the next in an never-ending cycle. Those with payed little tax, those without paid in full.
Times are changing, those in employment, those receiving regular full salaries are ever diminishing proportions of society. Employed work as a main source of State tax revenue has to be re-thought. Even VAT, the tax on already taxed income, is due a re-think when goods can be sourced with ease from around the world. National boundaries are fast becoming meaningless.
Thread 4
We must stop apologising for having lost our Empire, for having been brought to our knees by USofA, for having been a colonising nation for once having been a world player.
We are a great tolerant and inclusive nation, densely populated from richly diverse origins and offering a wealth of talent and commercial opportunities. Those that want to live amongst us are most welcomed but must pay their way, those that invest with us are will be shielded from payment proportionate to the degree and length of their investment and those that want to just sell into our market are welcomed but will have to negotiate an access to our market relative to the profits taken out of it.
We must learn to have confidence in ourselves as a Nation and to capitalise on the benefits of being such a great trading opportunity for the world. The free-booters can live elsewhere, we can manage just fine without them. Those that do have a rare ability or bring special honed skills or expertise and generate income or investment in the Nations future shall be rewarded proportionately above their fellows at the expense of those that generate large incomes for a narrow sector of society by using few skills or investment in our future.