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The 50% Tax Rate
Comments
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Ditto.
Noone objects to paying something to pqrdef's 'unfortunates', but it's palpably obvious to anyone that the benefits culture in the UK goes far behond the unfortunates and is designed to cover the lazy, profligate, dysfunctional and selfish.
I have no objection to pay a good level of tax to pay to keep NHS hospitals open, even though I never use them. I have no objection to paying tax to pay to educate the nation's children; I after all benefited from it too. And - to an extent - I have no objection to paying a subsistance income to help those who lose jobs, for a limited time.
But to continue paying over the odds to perpetuate a culture of indolence, crime and entitlement is an evil I don't want to be part of. It's not part of the Britain I used to love.0 -
More details please. Remember your working man on £25K (which you say "you cannot live on") is paying 32% marginal, including NI. The lower paid who are losing benefits are paying an even higher effective marginal rate. Are you proposing a regressive tax system? Are you planning to "decimate the tax revenues of the UK" as bendix puts it?property.advert wrote: »40% as a maximum rate of tax is a limit some can live with though a 20/25% flat rate would be far better. CGT should be reduced as well.
I was against it myself before I read this thread. But frankly it's not reducing anybody to penury. It's psychologically punitive, but only if you don't question the presumption that people making so much money are actually worth it (for which the evidence seems rather scant).property.advert wrote: »We cannot go on with this ludicrous 50% rate.
People can of course avoid tax by giving money away to the deserving causes of their choice instead of hanging on to it all."It will take, five, 10, 15 years to get back to where we need to be. But it's no longer the individual banks that are in the wrong, it's the banking industry as a whole." - Steven Cooper, head of personal and business banking at Barclays, talking to Martin Lewis0 -
If people leave, that's just people. They don't usually take their slice of the economy with them. They take their talents, if they've got any, but talent is rarely irreplaceable. Other people fill their shoes.One point though . . when you have taken all these high earners out of the workforce (and, presumably, sent them over to other parts of the world where they will continue to create wealth for other nations) and when you have completely decimated the tax revenues of the UK
For example, there's a continual drain of top actors and writers to Hollywood. It doesn't follow that the money we pay to the writers and actors in British TV now ends up in the US Treasury. We just replace the departed people with other people.
Exporting jobs would be a different matter, but I wasn't talking about exporting jobs
Are you really trying to say that reducing top earnings will hurt the economy? You're joking. People paying less tax doesn't hurt us if we're paying them less in the first place.(because it is those on above average wages who pay the bulk of the the UK's taxes)
But of course they always forget that we're paying them, that they're largely parasites on the production of other people."It will take, five, 10, 15 years to get back to where we need to be. But it's no longer the individual banks that are in the wrong, it's the banking industry as a whole." - Steven Cooper, head of personal and business banking at Barclays, talking to Martin Lewis0 -
:rotfl:I can promise you that people like me don't want to be like you.What motivates people like pqrdef is either envy at best
What motivates me is threads like this, and the hatred that shines through them. Because it's hatred directed at too many people I've known - parents, relatives, friends, former colleagues, and the people I grew up amongst. I saw nothing to despise in those people.or at worst some kind of wooly-minded well-meaning nicey-niceness which - when thought through to logical conclusions - is fundamentally stupid."It will take, five, 10, 15 years to get back to where we need to be. But it's no longer the individual banks that are in the wrong, it's the banking industry as a whole." - Steven Cooper, head of personal and business banking at Barclays, talking to Martin Lewis0 -
And I thought bendix's argument was economically illiterate and pathetic. But this is just desperate.property.advert wrote: »The one who hates the fact that you can shop in M&S and Waitrose, thus keeping their staff in jobs; that you don't have to fly economy, thus subsidising their cheap holidays; who forgets that your spending actually creates jobs and the fact that your very business may actually directly put food in their mouths.
Tories say this stuff to each other and believe it, but do they really think anybody else does?"It will take, five, 10, 15 years to get back to where we need to be. But it's no longer the individual banks that are in the wrong, it's the banking industry as a whole." - Steven Cooper, head of personal and business banking at Barclays, talking to Martin Lewis0 -
If you want to turn somebody into a benefit scrounger, just face him with the certainty that he can work like b*ggery all his life and still end up at the bottom of the heap with nothing to show for it.But to continue paying over the odds to perpetuate a culture of indolence, crime and entitlement is an evil I don't want to be part of.
The irony is, his logic will be exactly the same as yours. What's his marginal tax rate if he gets a low paid job and loses benefits? What's in it for him?
No doubt you'll want to come the moral angle and say he should do it for the good of the country even if it doesn't do him any good. But then again, perhaps he could say something similar to you.
Of course communists don't believe in benefit scrounging, they do think people should have to work. But if we're going to have social morality instead of "what's in it for me", let's have it at both ends of the scale. (Not like communists have been too good at that in practice. But communism and capitalism both fail the same way - corruption and greed at the top.)
You lost the moral high ground with your first shot - "what do I get from it - Nothing". Too late to get it back now."It will take, five, 10, 15 years to get back to where we need to be. But it's no longer the individual banks that are in the wrong, it's the banking industry as a whole." - Steven Cooper, head of personal and business banking at Barclays, talking to Martin Lewis0 -
I was against it myself before I read this thread. But frankly it's not reducing anybody to penury. It's psychologically punitive, but only if you don't question the presumption that people making so much money are actually worth it (for which the evidence seems rather scant).
You are worth exactly what you are paid and so am I.0 -
Are you really trying to say that reducing top earnings will hurt the economy? You're joking. People paying less tax doesn't hurt us if we're paying them less in the first place.
But of course they always forget that we're paying them, that they're largely parasites on the production of other people.
And you call me economically illiterate?
Who is this 'we' that are paying the top-earners? Do you think Apple pays Steve Jobs millions of dollars a year salary for the hell of it, or do you think it's because he has created billions of dollars of value to not just his company, his employees, the wider society in which those employees spend their money, and of course his shareholders who have seen their shares rise 6000% during his term as CEO?
'We' pay the salaries of top private sector bosses by buying the goods and services they create. If we didnt buy them, the companies would die. It's not rocket science.
Ergo, they create wealth. In those instances where high salary people don't perform, they are sacked. It's the basic tenet of the free market.
They are not parasites on the production of the working people, Mr Marx. Those working people would not be working if it wasn't for the entrepeneurs who created their jobs.0 -
If you want to turn somebody into a benefit scrounger, just face him with the certainty that he can work like b*ggery all his life and still end up at the bottom of the heap with nothing to show for it.
The irony is, his logic will be exactly the same as yours. What's his marginal tax rate if he gets a low paid job and loses benefits? What's in it for him?
No doubt you'll want to come the moral angle and say he should do it for the good of the country even if it doesn't do him any good. But then again, perhaps he could say something similar to you.
Of course communists don't believe in benefit scrounging, they do think people should have to work. But if we're going to have social morality instead of "what's in it for me", let's have it at both ends of the scale. (Not like communists have been too good at that in practice. But communism and capitalism both fail the same way - corruption and greed at the top.)
You lost the moral high ground with your first shot - "what do I get from it - Nothing". Too late to get it back now.
I have absolutely no interest in the moral angle. It's a side issue, and an irrelevance.
People find their own levels advanced post-industrial societies. I earn EXACTLY what I am worth - if i wasn't worth my salary to the people who employ me and to the value I bring to the organisation I work for, I wouldn't not be paid that salary.
You can't argue with that basic truism.0 -
Pure fantasy.People find their own levels advanced post-industrial societies. I earn EXACTLY what I am worth - if i wasn't worth my salary to the people who employ me and to the value I bring to the organisation I work for, I wouldn't not be paid that salary.
Most organisations are hierarchical. A group of people report to a line manager who represents them at the next level up. Almost invariably the line manager gets paid more than his "subordinates". Whether he can in any sense be said to create more wealth than they do is a different question entirely. No point in labouring the issue, it's been done, just see Dilbert and the Pointy-haired Boss.
People near the top, especially, will make the case for their subordinates to be overpaid in order to boost their own case for even higher pay.
I was never worth what I was paid. Didn't stop me using whatever leverage was available. In organisations, you play the game the way it's played. The notion that people are paid what they're worth doesn't even make it into Economics 101 nowadays."It will take, five, 10, 15 years to get back to where we need to be. But it's no longer the individual banks that are in the wrong, it's the banking industry as a whole." - Steven Cooper, head of personal and business banking at Barclays, talking to Martin Lewis0
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