Britain is increasingly a nation of takers. In the past few years we passed a crucial tipping point. More than half of British households are now net recipients of state spending, meaning that they take more than they receive. About half of London’s social housing is occupied by immigrants, with statistics suggesting that a large proportion of migrant households will be net recipients, not contributors, over the course of their lifetime. The biggest burden on public finances are the elderly, with an average of £6000 more a year spent on pensioners as compared to children. The young are burdened with student debt, higher taxes, and worse economic opportunities than parents and grandparents, who receive many free services, and “triple-locked” inflation-busting pensions.
Housing inequality is the most brutal bifurcation between classes and generations, with owners realising huge gains, and cashing in twice over by taking out by-to-let mortgages on properties expensively rented by young people struggling to get on the housing ladder.
This is only the most literal “rentier” model of economics in Britain’s ever more debt and rent-based system. The global rich are heavily invested in Britain’s speculative property bubble, bringing short term benefits to the Treasury, but doing long-term harm to young professionals in the capital. Rather than the “innovation” promised by advocates of free market economics, contemporary UK capitalism is largely rent-seeking, cashing in on lucrative government contracts and seeking to monopolise passive income streams from land, property and debt. We see this from the ruinous PPE contracts of the Blair years, to contemporary outsourcing, and the legacy of Thatcherite privatisations in the privatised utility companies in areas like rail and water.
From the bottom rung of society to the pinnacle of privilege, takers and scroungers predominate and set the tone. Yet even on the radical fringes of politics, let alone the moribund centre, there is no serious recognition or confrontation with this fact.
Whilst the Left bashes the rich, and the Right go after welfare dependency, nobody will touch on more structural questions. Health, pensions and social care eat up a huge proportion of what we call the welfare state, much of it concentrated on an elderly population too sick or frail to work.
The high level of general redistribution is an inevitable artefact of an unequal and stagnant economic system dominated by passive rentseeking and low productivity service economy jobs. As resources concentrate at the top, the state will have to impose ever higher taxes on a shrinking pool of workers just to stop our national standard of living from collapsing. As the very wealthiest find ways to opt out of paying their share through tax exile, or offshore assets, the burden of redistribution will increasingly fall on high paid workers — the most productive and vital part of the economy. We will bleed top talent overseas, even as welfare attracts low-skilled dependents who will compound the problems.
What is needed is a restructuring of the British economy itself
Going after wealth itself, as the Green Party proposes, would only redistribute a short term rush of cash to the state, and cause a mass exile of the wealthiest, whilst decimating those most invested in the national economy. It would do nothing about our basic and fundamental problem — low wages and a lack of assets amongst the British working and middle class, especially young workers without inherited wealth.
What is needed is a restructuring of the British economy itself, such that assets and incomes are more fairly distributed in the first place, and are earned and increased through productive investment and labour, rather than debt, speculation and rent-seeking.
Foreign money and the flood of foreign labour will have to be locked out of Britain’s property markets. New housing must be built, and set aside for those who contribute. Investment and jobs must be more widely distributed so that opportunity extends beyond the South East. The way that welfare and pensions work must be systematically rethought, and the social insurance principle restored, so that those who give more, get more.
Such a transformation is more than a technocratic exercise, it means a moral and cultural shift away from selfish accumulation, and towards a society defined by duty, reciprocity and shared contribution. At the extremes of passive wealth and welfare dependency, taking has become a moral poison, corroding the characters and communities of those who grasp rather than give. If Britain is to have a future, we will need to stop asking what our country can do for us, and start thinking about what we can do for it.
