what do you expect for free?

ninky_2

Sapphire wrote: »

The things that affect the wide majority of people, and not just sections of the population, so things like healthcare, green spaces, policing, fire service and road maintenance. Also state pensions for those who have paid tax and national insurance for decades (thereby funding things like other people's childcare, though they may have no children themselves, housing benefits and so on, throughout their working lives). I don't object to paying for these things with my (i.e. taxpayers') money.

but you could say that all things impact on the majority of people. or at least they did before we developed structures by which people accepted they had to provide these things for themselves.

i'm sure if we didn't have a culture of public green spaces but instead had pay-as-you-go schemes, or large green areas the better off could afford to use but the poor couldn't many on here would say "why shouldn't the parks be for the rich, we pay for them?"

there are actually quite a few green spaces you do have to pay to use. this one for example http://www.waterpark.org/. so why should this one be pay to use and the lake district free?

why should a footpath be free but a prescription not?

blueboy43

ninky wrote: »

there are actually quite a few green spaces you do have to pay to use. this one for example http://www.waterpark.org/. so why should this one be pay to use and the lake district free?

why should a footpath be free but a prescription not?

We happily live in a land were there are private property rights balanced by public access to specfic designated area plus public access to "uncultivated land".

I wouldn't fancy someone coming into my garden and having a kick around.

90% of prescriptions are free (kids, etc, etc)

The charge was introduced just after NHS started to plug gaps in funding and prevent frivalous prescriptions.

michaels

Ninky - I think you are confusing public goods that are provided this way because of economic externalities preventing the market from supplying in an optimal way such as clean air (one polluter can damage hundreds of others but there is no easy way for them to price and charge for their loss) and parks (again no easy way to charge all users for the benefits they receive from having the parks from both their own use and in giving the local kids some where to 'hang') and private services that are provided by the public sector for political (in the widest sense of the word) reasons. For example private health care systems do exist and even systems where the cost of healthcare is met from taxation there is often private provision like in France.

N1AK

ninky wrote: »

yet i suspect we all expect certain things free of charge (or at least paid for by taxation).

all of these things cost something to provide and yet i suspect we all feel they should be free for us to use. don't we?

How on earth can you consider it 'free' if it is paid for by taxation? You could perhaps say that it is free to those who don't pay tax, as a universal benefit.

Trying to imply that someone is being hypocritical by (for example) expecting the government to control the level of carcinogens a company can emit into the atmosphere, while at the same time they wouldn't support a scheme to give free BMWs to JSA claimants is facetious.

When people take umbrage with 'a sense of entitlement' they almost certainly are referring to peoples beliefs that they individually are entitled to benefits/items etc that fall well outside of a reasonable definition of necessities.

chewmylegoff

ninky wrote: »

i'm interested in why people almost universally think it is good / necessary for green spaces to be owned by the public and free at the point of use.

pretty socialist thinking round these parts - no?

on that basis you could probably argue that having an army is "pretty socialist thinking".

presumably wanting to not have to pay for oxygen is a socialist concept is it?

Poosmate

B_Blank wrote: »

Agree. I would like to add defence too.

Policing shouldnt be free but should be a public service. It should be budgetted for locally. So if me and the people living on my road want to clump together and get a policeman to patrol up and down the street then we should be able to do this.

Those who cant/wont pay for their policing should get none except for pro-bono police work which can be charity funded and run.

Interesting. Did you see on the news the other day that to keep 1 police officer on the streets 24/7 requires 5 actual people?

Say they were paid £20k pa each (would you do it for that? I guess someone would) that would be £100k per year between how many households? And what if 60% of the street wanted to pay but the other 40% didn't? How would that work?

Poo

DexterA

I'd like to see free education, healthcare, housing (obvioulsy not 12k a mont Kensington ones) and open spaces.
Tax removed from juices too.

vivatifosi

DexterA wrote: »

I'd like to see free education, healthcare, housing (obvioulsy not 12k a mont Kensington ones) and open spaces.
Tax removed from juices too.

Don't agree with free housing, but I'm with you on the rest of it, including the removal of silly VAT from healthy juices when it's not on a packet of Doritos. Not that it'll happen though.

thriftybabe

ninky wrote: »

there is much talk on these boards of a sense of entitlement within certain sections of the population - the idea that they expect to get things for 'free'. e.g. housing, schooling, healthcare.

yet i suspect we all expect certain things free of charge (or at least paid for by taxation).

take 'green spaces' for example. or footpaths. if you were charged on entry at your local park or to go rambling on a country path would you be angry?

what if you were charged for quality of the air you breathe? or to window shop in the local precinct?

all of these things cost something to provide and yet i suspect we all feel they should be free for us to use. don't we?

Our local has been charging us to get in since last year. Have no problem with it. What has to be done has to be done! They charge for me but not the kids and it is only a £1.

The_White_Horse

anyone on benefits should be banned from using parks or public footpaths. scum.