IELTS Writing Task 2 Government and society Essay Topics

Position

Partly agree: clinics, schools and basic transport should not be raided to fund incentives, but a service budget that ignores whether any employer is left in the town eventually has fewer wages to tax.

Body paragraph 1

Point

A grant that lowers a firm’s tax bill does not staff a ward or keep a bus on a Sunday route.

Explanation

The firm may hire, and it may also book the grant and leave when a cheaper site appears. The clinic cut is immediate. The jobs, if they come, arrive later and are not obliged to fund the nurse who was already needed.

Example

A town that paused repairs to two school roofs in order to offer a ten-year rate discount to a warehouse that then employed fewer people than the brochure promised.

Body paragraph 2

Point

Public services still need a local tax base, so refusing every private project can shrink the very budget the first paragraph wants to protect.

Explanation

A council that blocks a workshop because it is "not a hospital" may be right about this year’s priority and wrong about year five, when the hospital’s wages are paid by people who no longer have work in the town.

Example

A coastal district that kept its clinic hours only after a small boat-repair yard, refused by the previous council, was later allowed on a vacant site and hired locally.

Conclusion

Protect the services people cannot buy one by one, and judge each investment offer by the jobs and the tax it actually produces, not by the slogan on the bid.

Position

People should stay free not to vote. A fine raises the count and lowers the meaning of the count, unless the real problem is that voting was made physically hard.

Body paragraph 1

Point

A legal duty can pull in people who would otherwise be ignored by parties that only campaign where turnout is already high.

Explanation

If the people who skip elections are poorer, younger, or live further from a polling station, a parliament built only on those who arrive will not hear them. Supporters of compulsion are pointing at that silence.

Example

A rural seat where the polling station moved twelve miles away and the postal deadline was easy to miss, so the result reflected the town and not the villages.

Body paragraph 2

Point

A forced ballot does not force attention. It forces a mark, which can be blank, random, or sold as a favour.

Explanation

The freedom not to vote is also a way of saying that none of the options cleared a basic bar. Counting those absences as a problem of laziness hides a problem of choice. Make the station near, the form short, and the hours long before you fine anyone.

Example

A voter who ticks the first name because the fine is due at the end of the week and she has not had time to read a single leaflet.

Conclusion

Raise turnout by removing obstacles, not by punishing absence. A higher percentage that includes unread papers is not a stronger mandate.

Position

A basic income removes the worst of means-testing, and it is expensive in a way that can squeeze the services people still need on top of cash.

Body paragraph 1

Point

A payment that does not depend on a form lets people refuse dangerous shifts and still eat.

Explanation

Means-tested benefits often stop abruptly when someone earns a little, so a short job can leave them poorer. A flat payment keeps the floor in place while wages rise. The advantage is the missing cliff, not the romance of free money.

Example

A carer who can take two paid mornings a week without losing the entire benefit that covered the rent.

Body paragraph 2

Point

Paying every adult, including those with high salaries, spends money that could have staffed a clinic or cut a waiting list.

Explanation

The rich recipient does not need the sum, and taxing it back is a second bureaucracy. If the payment is large enough to matter to the poor, the total is large enough to force cuts elsewhere unless taxes rise sharply.

Example

A finance ministry that funded the payment by freezing recruitment of school nurses, so the cash arrived and the vaccination session did not.

Conclusion

The advantage is real for people trapped by benefit rules. The disadvantage is that a universal cheque is a blunt way to buy that advantage.

Position

The feeling comes from decisions taken far from the street they alter, in language that never names the bus, the rent or the fine. The remedy is to publish the local consequence beside the national vote.

Body paragraph 1

Point

National debates are often conducted as personalities and slogans, so a resident cannot see which Tuesday will change.

Explanation

A housing bill is a queue for a flat. A transport vote is the last bus. When the news covers the insult and not the timetable, people conclude that politics is a sport. The cause is the missing translation, not a mysterious public apathy.

Example

A voter who could describe a leader’s quarrel and could not say whether the bill just passed would lengthen or shorten the wait for a council home.

Body paragraph 2

Point

Require each national measure to be posted, in plain lines, as its effect on a named local service, and let councils answer questions on that sheet.

Explanation

The solution is not another civics lecture. It is a one-page note: this fare, this clinic hour, this tax band, who to write to when the note is wrong. People engage with a decision they can check against their own week.

Example

A city that printed, next to a national energy vote, the expected change in a two-bedroom bill and the office that would handle complaints.

Conclusion

Politics feels irrelevant when its results are written as theatre. Spell out the local effect and the feeling has something to attach to.

Position

Parties look like closed meetings about careers inside the party, and schools can help by teaching how an ordinary decision is made, not by recruiting for a side.

Body paragraph 1

Point

Young adults stay out because joining often means evenings of internal votes before anyone discusses the rent or the bus.

Explanation

A party that rewards people who already know the rulebook feels like a club. Social media offers a faster opinion with no minutes and no envelope of dues. The cost of joining is time and embarrassment, and the benefit is unclear.

Example

A twenty-two-year-old who attended one branch meeting, found the agenda was about officer posts, and did not go back.

Body paragraph 2

Point

Schools can run a short unit in which students follow one real local decision from proposal to result, including the people who objected.

Explanation

That is not campaigning. It shows that influence has a door: a consultation, a budget line, a vote. Students who have seen the door are more likely to use a party, a union or a residents’ group later, and they are less likely to think shouting is the only tool.

Example

A class that tracked a library-hour cut, wrote to the councillor, and then compared the final vote with what they had been told at the start.

Conclusion

Membership falls when parties look sealed. Schools help by opening one real decision, not by picking a team.

Position

Mostly negative if the list is a spectacle of names, and positive only when it is used to show whether people at the top actually pay the rate the law describes.

Body paragraph 1

Point

A public record lets journalists and rivals check that "the rich pay their share" is a calculation and not a slogan.

Explanation

Without figures, a debate about tax is a debate about manners. A list that shows income, tax paid, and the reliefs claimed lets a reader see a gap between the headline rate and the cheque. That is a democratic use.

Example

A report that compared declared income with tax paid for the top band and found large reliefs nobody had voted on in public.

Body paragraph 2

Point

A list of names invites harassment, and it pushes income into forms the list does not capture.

Explanation

The neighbour does not need the surgeon’s salary to judge the health service. Once names are public, the practical response is to move money to a company, a trust, or another country. The development then shows less, not more.

Example

A specialist who transferred private work into a company the week the register was announced, so the personal line on the list fell while the earnings did not.

Conclusion

Publish patterns and reliefs. Publishing household names as a ranking is a negative development dressed up as honesty.