MSE News: Super-rich must give more, says Nick Clegg

temporary1

"James O'Brien's Blog

Wealth Tax

Posted by James O'Brien on August 29, 2012 at 14:16PM

There may well be some compelling and convincing reasons why sacking soldiers is an 'economic necessity' while taxing society's richest more is the 'politics of envy' but I haven't heard any.

What I have heard is a succession of self-serving and spurious suggestions which don't stand up to scrutiny and, tragically, get swallowed wholesale by many people who mistakenly believe they are beneficiaries of the status quo rather than victims.

For example, the super-rich will emigrate if we ask them to pay more tax. Really? I know a few. They are no more likely to hand over more cash to the public purse voluntarily than anyone else but it's horribly unfair to suppose that the majority of them value their family or their friends or their country or their home or their culture markedly less than people with less money. To be temporarily downgraded from stupid rich to silly rich won't be warmly welcomed, obviously, but neither will it prompt anyone to turn their backs on all they hold dear. Unless, of course, they hold nothing but money dear in which case we should probably let them go.

Similarly, these are the people who, we are told, generate wealth so if they are really feeling the pinch let them generate a little more! Using, presumably, people whose education has been paid for through taxes, who will get to and from work using transport infrastructure paid for by taxes, treated when ill by a health service funded through taxes and all in a country protected and served by emergency and armed services paid for with taxes.

Having seen that fox shot easily by anyone with a brain, eyes and social conscience, your 'politics of envy' promoter will probably reach next for the benefits bill. While few - but by no means none - of them will be deceitful enough to bandy about the total numbers without revealing that the huge bulk goes to pensioners, most will encourage us to rail against the injustice of (wait for it) '!!!!less, workshy layabouts with plasma screen TV's' who expect us to subsidise their lifestyles. And they will be succesful because we're more likely to know someone swinging said lead than we are to know an accountant architect or businessman benficiary of epic 'legal' tax avoidance. The problem is closer to home, but it's nowhere near as big. So even to mention it in the context of a wealth tax is not only emotionally dangerous - it encourages nastiness, discrimnation and abuse, just ask a disabled person how their life has changed since the scrounging rhetoric stepped up a gear last year - but also economically stupid. The national equivalent of moaning about the price and ineffeciency of windscreen wash while there's an enormous hole in your petrol tank.

So if we can't blame the poor or the unemployed or those damned 'public sector' workers with the audacity to teach our children, treat our ill, put out our fires, catch our criminals etc. who can we blame?

Easy! Foreigners. Especially poor or sick ones or those unlucky enough to live under rancid regimes in abject poverty. Get angry about how much we give to them in 'aid' and you won't have the energy or inclination left to get angry about the country's top earners getting a tax cut in the last budget or the countless billions siphoned away from the public purse by the very rich people who will, remember, take ALL their money ABROAD to FOREIGNERS if their taxes are raised. This is the most potent and the most fraudulent weapon in the 'politics of envy' arsenal but it boils down, in essence, to this: why should we take more money from Richard Branson when there's a starving Ethiopian child over there who just got fed with food we paid for?

Which leaves us - or rather them - with only the purest form of 'politics of envy' rhetoric left. The apparently sincere belief that it is somehow significant to note that the people most outraged by an unfair system are the people most damaged by it! Funny how none of the people in favour of a wealth tax would have to pay it, they might say if they were being particularly myopic. This is not only palpably false but the intellectual equivalent of questioning why victims of burglary don't like burglars. The equation of wealth with 'success' is the inevitable and frequently-voiced upshot of such a position and really closes the debate down conclusively. Replace the word succesful with valuable or useful and all becomes clear. People who are not wealthy are often extremely valuable and/or useful, really wealthy people are for the most part useful or valuable to society only in so far as their money trickles down so you actually make 'succesful' wealthy people more 'valuable' by taking more of their money away from them. They should say thank you.

If you can think of any other reasons why we are so broke we have to sack soldiers but not broke enough to redistribute money that will never, ever be needed by its current owners do get in touch."

http://www.lbc.co.uk/james-obriens-blog-3514/entry/81/8999

Knowing the fundamental difference between right and wrong, good and bad, fair and unfair and altruism and selfishness, is nither predicated by one's economic status, nor by one's impermanent political endorsements.

MobileSaver

temporary1 wrote: »

Knowing the fundamental difference between right and wrong, good and bad, fair and unfair and altruism and selfishness, is nither predicated by one's economic status, nor by one's impermanent political endorsements.

Yawn. As I said, just admit that you're jealous of all the rich successful people out there and please stop this pompous claptrap.

wildman0609

Randvegeta wrote: »

Which world do you live on. 100k is not that much. Sure it's a lot, especially for jealous poor people (I'm guessing you're one of them).

agreed,

if you make the company you work for £1m a year then £100k is easily justifiable. multiply this up a few times, if you make your company £50m a year then £5m salary is justifiable.

does nick clegg not understand percentages? the more you earn the more you pay, simple enough? the sooner people realise this the better. this country needs more people that see rich people and aspire to what they've got, not the people that see rich people and want them to have the same as them.

Pincher

wildman0609 wrote: »

if you make the company you work for £1m a year then £100k is easily justifiable. multiply this up a few times, if you make your company £50m a year then £5m salary is justifiable.

That is estate agent talk. Middlemen everywhere think they should get a cut of the deal, whether it's football transfer agent, pimps or Spanish planning officer rubber stamping property development schemes.

Twenty years ago, a French woman was given a million dollars to seduce and persuade a French Trade Minister to approve a warship construction deal. The corrupt Taiwanese naval procurement officials murdered a young auditor to stop him from whistle blowing. This was in a BBC documentary. They could have got the ship built in South Korea for one tenth the price, but then there would be no kickback: which is where the "justifiable £5m" comes from.

At least this is better than the border guard who take ALL your diamonds, because they CAN.

wantsajob

YoungBusinessman wrote: »

As said, £100k is not that much really when you narrow it down to an hourly rate on a 50 or 60 hour week. I aim to crack £100k barrier by 25. I am 21. Right now i wish we would concentrate on the folk who CHOOSE to be on the dole. There seems to be many people i know not willing to get a job. Sort out whats going out then we wont need to increase what comes in so much.

Would that not affect people like me, who desperately want a job, but find it near impossible due to employer's attitudes towards disability? (Fortunately I have a job now and start soon). Also, how do you propose to create jobs for them? One possibility is we put the working week down to 17 hours a week and increase the minimum wage. (Point being by doing a 60 hour week, you're probably keeping someone out of a job for your own needs). If there's a reason people choose to be on the dole, then it's because work doesn't pay, at least for certain groups of society. Would you rather deprive them of benefits and have them stealing your car and robbing your house instead?

Also the big question. Assuming you are a Young Businessman who puts in 60 hours a week, and hopes to break the £100k barrier, you're in the ideal position to consider taking on an employee to spread the workload and increase the yield. Why condemn a certain group of people without giving them a chance? Why not grab one of those people who enjoy the dole, and give them a reason for living again?! You might even inspire their dole-loving friends to follow them. Remember! Jobs need to be there for people to go to! If even you can't create a job, keep your thoughts on those who "choose to be on the dole" to yourself.

MobileSaver wrote: »

Why would anyone work harder, grow their business or take any risks once they've hit that cap?

Well you've seen what risks did to the banking sector. They lost the banks billions, tax payer bailed them out, and they paid themselves big chunky bonuses to reward themselves for their incompetence.

cepheus wrote: »

Why can't people accept that a sense of fairness motivates people? I don't believe it goes far enough though. Surely, no-one can work hard enough to justify more than 100k a year, so let's have an absolute cap on that.

I disagree. If the rich think the money is so important, where businesses make substantial returns (Tesco, Asda, Morrisons), we need to make sure that no employee of such a company has reason to go cap in hand to the Government to get Tax Credits, or whatever benefit. Why should the Government subsidise employee wages for a company raking in hundreds of millions a year? Likewise, minimum wage needs to be risen to nearly double the current level. The Government could introduce a scheme which subsidises employees for fledgling businesses, through a scheme much like the tax credits one.

heyjohn

Pincher wrote: »

That is estate agent talk. Middlemen everywhere think they should get a cut of the deal, whether it's football transfer agent, pimps or Spanish planning officer rubber stamping property development schemes.

Twenty years ago, a French woman was given a million dollars to seduce and persuade a French Trade Minister to approve a warship construction deal. The corrupt Taiwanese naval procurement officials murdered a young auditor to stop him from whistle blowing. This was in a BBC documentary. They could have got the ship built in South Korea for one tenth the price, but then there would be no kickback: which is where the "justifiable £5m" comes from.

At least this is better than the border guard who take ALL your diamonds, because they CAN.

You sound like a good friend of mine who works in a large Insurance company, when I enquired about “cuts and kickbacks” in his particular area of expertise he replied, don’t be so obscene there bonuses and when I asked about the abysmal performance of endowment policies he said I keep telling you, bonuses. Still curious I said but how do you justify it? Just because he said we can.
:think:

Randvegeta

Likewise, minimum wage needs to be risen to nearly double the current level. The Government could introduce a scheme which subsidises employees for fledgling businesses, through a scheme much like the tax credits one.

Minimum wage is MORE than enough for a single person to work in most of the UK (excluding London).

I kind of see what you mean regarding the subsides of employees with tax credits when the company happens to be raking in millions, but the ridiculous thing is not that the company is raking in millions, but the government issuing these credits in the first place.

If it were the case that workers would not work at such low salaries if credits were not available, then the market would adjust and salaries would go up.

Minimum wage = approx 12,000 GBP /year. It's not a huge amount of money, but it's plenty for a single person to pay for rent, food, bills, leisure/shopping money, (modest) holiday AND a small amount of saving. This is of course, unless you buy a lot of alcohol/tobacco or live in London.

Double minimum would be around 24k. which is more than the UK average, particularly amongst the youth.

What happens if labour becomes so expensive in the UK? My guess would be everything becomes more expensive such as food and services. High paid jobs would need to be increased also, otherwise many people would be contempt with doing low skilled jobs and earn just as much.

End result would most likely be high inflation until we are back to where we started!

heyjohn

Eellogofusciouhipoppokunu wrote: »

And yet I have worked alongside people sat in wheelchairs, people who are deaf and people who are blind. Let's not even consider how much tax Stephen Hawkins pays from the proceeds of his work.

What's interesting is that it seems people born with a disability strive towards overcoming it and having some measure of independance, whereas people who have injury's or illnesses during their working life are often content to sit back and be taken care of.

People who had a job they can no longer do because of an injury can retrain and do something that is not impacted by their disability. Where there is a will, there is a way.

In general I’d go along with your sentiments however a fair number have been disabled through the level of pain they endure and their opiate levels alone make even something like crossing a road a major mental achievement not to mention the base disability and although Stephen Hawking is a shining example he was already well established at Cambridge when his condition started to take hold. Unfortunately when it comes to re-training, unless the disabled are suitably well self financed they have to pass their Atos medical before they can access Government courses for the disabled (part of the cuts). A bit of a catch 22 situation.
The plus side of this seems to be that eventually the Atos Medicals will become largely self financing, (saving the government £112m per annum and rising) when sufficient numbers of disabled and newly disabled people have had their various Disability Benefits stopped, the increasing number of suicides among them could be put down to accidents in the home, may be that nice Mr Cameron could find a suitably far enough right Oberführer to head a Ministry of Media Witch Hunts charged with the disposal of the disabled and mental rejects in our society and then Nick Clegg could go on to tackle the work-shy who could then be conscripted or jailed for crimes against the state. It could even release more money to inflate the failing bonuses of our poor Banking Sector so they can attract even higher caliber bank executives, but my misguided local MP say’s I’ve got it wrong, it’s supposed to be the other way round.:)

John_Pierpoint

Well at the moment we are busy robbing our children and grand-children with debt servitude..
Logically they should all emigrate and raise two fingers to their selfish parents and overspending politicians.

grey_gym_sock

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

Well at the moment we are busy robbing our children and grand-children with debt servitude..
Logically they should all emigrate and raise two fingers to their selfish parents and overspending politicians.

or they could refuse to pay the debt and stay here. which seems more logical than abandoning the island to foxes and a few billionaires.

it may not come to that. other options include:

(a) more government spending on education/training/infrastructure, to get the economy going, which in its turn will start to reduce the public sector deficit

(b) (getting back on topic ...) higher taxes on the rich. public sector debt and private sector wealth have risen massively at the same time; using the latter to help fix the former is a pretty obvious idea. (but i mean actually raising taxes, not - like clegg - just talking about ppl paying more without raising taxes.) 1 way to do it is a 1-off windfall tax on wealth.