Sweetleaf wrote:
If that much is going to taxes then why would there be a need for chairity?
That's exactly how many taxpayers in the UK feel. They feel that so much of their money is being wasted in taxation (most people pay 30-40% on income tax straightaway, and that's without all the other taxes they have to pay on top). Many NHS hospitals offer such poor care that many well-off people simply go private or go abroad bypassing the often lethal bugs that infect state hospitals. The state often does not take care of those that really need help because they fail to qualify for benefits through sheer honesty, and those that do claim benefits sometimes have no entitlements to them whatsoever. They can get away with it due to the bureaucratic, tick-box culture that we have.
It's tip of the iceberg stuff, really.
And then you have a justice system that is a shambles because people who commit crimes are not properly punished but are encouraged to commit further crimes and are sometimes even directly rewarded for doing so - i.e. the bad kids get taken to Alton Towers, whereas the good kids get nothing.
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I would assume that money is going to public services
A good deal of it doesn't go to the frontline (i.e. the bits that people actually use), but to administrators, managers, consultants, bureaucrats and so on. The biggest irritance in the NHS is the insane target-driven / managerialist culture that exists there, stopping GPs, nurses and other medical staff from doing their job properly. Don't get me wrong: the NHS can be very good when it's allowed to be but it can be appalling.
Have you seen some of the disgraceful slop they serve in many NHS hospitals? A chap called Mark Sparrow brought this issue to wide public attention with his blog "Notes from a hospital bed". Google it.
This is all out there, in the public domain.
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I would have to look into their system and how citizens of that country feel about it before I judge wether I think its a good system or not but still what would be the need for chairity?
The government even funds some of the larger charities through taxation anyway, so in some instances they aren't even really charities any more.
People will fund those charities they deem necessary - like the RNLI - but most people donate to many of the larger ones out of ignorance, mostly.
Last edited by Tequila on 16 Aug 2011, 12:02 pm, edited 2 times in total.
16 Aug 2011, 11:24 am
