| Yes - I think the idea of 'citizenship' feels increasingly abstract and outdated to anyone who only rarely noticeably interacts with the entity they pay taxation to, typically solely in moments of extreme crisis. 'Noticeably' here meaning I'm excluding ambient aspects of life, like walking on a government-maintained pavement. I would argue those 'non-essential' services - those which you actively notice benefiting from - are extremely important for building institutional trust in the state. For young people entering the workforce today, who (for example) are a demographic that have a lower requirement for the services of the NHS, it must be genuinely confusing and alienating to be paying (what I believe is) a historically high tax rate. Citizenship, as an idea, does need to demonstrably benefit both the state and the individual. Otherwise, the state is basically asking people to draw on their reserves of empathy to have a reason not to act like a dick. That will, unfortunately, have much more varied results than empathy alongside tangible incentives. The cost of not providing those 'non-essential' services may ultimately be larger, and more difficult to calculate, I think, than are calculable today. How you provide them without the cash to do so is a question I'm not smart enough to answer. But people have now - completely anecdotally - gone a very long time with low tangible incentives toward citizenship being provided by the either the state or local authorities, and the vibe is very, very bad. I don't think this is restricted to the UK, either. The OECD’s 2024 trust survey found only 37% of respondents across 30 countries were confident their government balances the interests of current and future generations. [1] [1] https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/oecd-survey-on-drivers-... |