Ed Balls pledges to raise taxes if Labour win election

Tancred

penrhyn wrote: »

Good to see the range of views, even if some are to the left of Chairman Mao.

You seem to forget that under Thatcher the top income tax rate was 60% until Lawson insanely reduced it to 40% in his ridiculous giveaway budget in the late 80s that contributed to the current deficit.

Tancred

Generali wrote: »

Presumably these rich people won't be exempt TV licence, VAT, stamp duty, excise duties etc. They'll be paying more than 75% of their incomes to the Government! I reckon I'd be looking to move to a 3-4 day week and reduce my earnings rather than working my Arsenal off for a Labour Government.

So what? The point is that they still have plenty of income left over!

Tancred

michaels wrote: »

No wonder NI is such a 'popular' tax for chancellors raising more revenue as it is always forgotten, the actual rate is 62%. Quite why it makes sense to tax extra pounds earned between 100 and 120k at 62% but those earned above 120k at 42% is not really clear to me - perhaps Tancred can explain?

NI can be refomed and reviewed, I have no issue with that. But I see no burning reason to abolish it altogether. If you have a consolidated tax then that would hit low income pensioners a lot, who would have to pay a marginal rate of 32% instead of 20% - doesn't seem right to me.

lostinrates

Tancred wrote: »

No, this is where you are wrong. The concept of 'worth' is entirely subjective, and immensely influenced by market forces. How do you quantify 'worth'? As I said before, the level of pay is largely awarded according to how much responsibility and accountability an individual is given by his bosses. It has nothing to do with 'worth', 'hard work' and other non-quantifiable, abstract concepts. The bosses have to award certain levels of pay because that is the only way they can recruit and retain the chosen individual, who is reckoned to have the right skills, experience and background to take on the responsibility of the role. If bosses could pay a CEO £25k a year they would, of course! But instead they have to pay him £1M. It's purely to do with the market, not any concept of 'worth'.


.

n.
1. The quality that renders something desirable, useful, or valuable: the worth of higher education.
2. Material or market value: stocks having a worth of ten million dollars.
3. A quantity of something that may be purchased for a specified sum or by a specified means: ten dollars' worth of natural gas; wanted their money's worth.
4. Wealth; riches: her net worth.
5. Quality that commands esteem or respect; merit: a person of great worth.
adj.
1. Equal in value to something specified: worth its weight in gold.
2. Deserving of; meriting: a proposal not worth consideration.
3. Having wealth or riches amounting to: a person worth millions.

I'd say noun definitions 1-4 all can be to 'worth' of salary. 'Worth' to a business or an employer. The fifth could to, but might equally apply to how ones partner might feel about oneself (or in some case wish they did) or how one feels about friends, family, peoe you know or admire).


Adjectives one seems to relate to Forbes 2 to everyone (or noone:rotfl:) and 3 I believe speaks for itself.

Tancred

lostinrates wrote: »

I'd say noun definitions 1-4 all can be to 'worth' of salary. 'Worth' to a business or an employer. The fifth could to, but might equally apply to how ones partner might feel about oneself (or in some case wish they did) or how one feels about friends, family, peoe you know or admire).


Adjectives one seems to relate to Forbes 2 to everyone (or noone:rotfl:) and 3 I believe speaks for itself.

Ok, but what is worth to one person may not be the same to another. I'm looking for a more detailed and quantifiable definition. Ultimately, 'worth' is a value bestowed upon an individual according to certain criteria which are important to the agency bestowing this worth, but not necessarily to the outside world as a whole.

lostinrates

Hang on, it seems the debate can progress from the circlular a little and there is some progress

Tancred wrote: »

Fairness is not something I would consider subjective..

Tancred wrote: »

Being fair to all is an abstract concept - how do you define that? I don't think there can ever be an agreed definition, as people will have different interpretations of fairness, therefore any further discussion on the issue is pointless.
.

I think it would have saved a lot of time if we'd all been able to move to that point before!

Of course fairness is subjective.

Now, that accepted and that the chances are neither you nor I are right in what is fair.....is it better to go for best result or pursue one camps idea of fairness?

danothy

Tancred wrote: »

Being fair to all is an abstract concept - how do you define that? I don't think there can ever be an agreed definition, as people will have different interpretations of fairness, therefore any further discussion on the issue is pointless.
And, by the way, you are still a prat.

Yet your argument is based on fairness. I weep for humanity. If a state of taxation can't be agreed to be fair by all then there can't be a fair state of taxation. You saying it's fair for the rich to pay more is therefore false. It would be fair for no-one to pay any tax. That's not abstract.

Tancred wrote: »

An extreme example, but if the government of the day had a choice of allowing everyone to die or execute 1% of the population, based on some given criteria, what would be the most moral choice? Surely the latter - unless you are willing to prefer the death of 60 million more people.

This is an example of a false analogy, as you are creating an excluded middle ground (excluding a scenario where no-one is killed, conceptual middle ground again, try not to get confused). This isn't therefore an applicable analogy, as the middle ground in the scenario you are trying to be analogous to shouldn't be excluded.

Tancred wrote: »

I never advocated executing them, you muppet! I was giving an example of a difficult moral choice. I've already stated numerous time why the top 1% need to pay more tax, so I won't repeat myself ad nauseam.

You haven't stated why they should (or need to) pay more, beyond a false reasoning that they are able to pay more. Again, it is not a corollary that because they can, they should, no matter how many times you say it is.

Tancred wrote: »

No, this is where you are wrong. The concept of 'worth' is entirely subjective, and immensely influenced by market forces. How do you quantify 'worth'? As I said before, the level of pay is largely awarded according to how much responsibility and accountability an individual is given by his bosses. It has nothing to do with 'worth', 'hard work' and other non-quantifiable, abstract concepts. The bosses have to award certain levels of pay because that is the only way they can recruit and retain the chosen individual, who is reckoned to have the right skills, experience and background to take on the responsibility of the role. If bosses could pay a CEO £25k a year they would, of course! But instead they have to pay him £1M. It's purely to do with the market, not any concept of 'worth'.

Worth, in an employment sense, is when it's favourable for an employer to pay an amount for a given set of actions that have value to that employer. If it costs more to recruit someone to do something than an employer can make from that person doing it for them then it's not worth it, so they won't pay for it to be done. It's self evidently 'worth' paying those amounts to the people that pay them, or they wouldn't be paid. The market is a reflection of this, not the cause. It smacks of conspiratorial thinking that you detach market value from worth in your cognitive process.

Tancred wrote: »

So what exactly is your point? I'm not talking about human life, I'm talking about taxation, and ensuring that those with the broadest shoulders pay their fair share. You are deliberately obfuscating the issue by introducing a philosophical argument that is totally irrelevant to the matter under discussion.

Clearly you are confused about what you are actually saying and have previously said. And again we come back to an arbitrary assertion of fairness, but you clearly don't have a firm grip on what it actually means to be fair.

There is nothing but philosophy when you start talking about what 'should' be paid when it comes to tax. There's no inherent truth in your statements. Stop deluding yourself that there is. It's not healthy.

lostinrates

Tancred wrote: »

Ok, but what is worth to one person may not be the same to another. I'm looking for a more detailed and quantifiable definition. Ultimately, 'worth' is a value bestowed upon an individual according to certain criteria which are important to the agency bestowing this worth, but not necessarily to the outside world as a whole.

Worth, financially is market set. You investment value may go up or down..........:D. That's our investments in ourselves, as we see from my example, a lot of investment in me has fundamentally been wasted in financial terms.

In personal terms IMO its impossible to quantify and beyond the remit of this thread to discuss apart from a placatory nod to the value of humanity and the worth of people as people and a concept of nice (and sincere) fluffiness.

(As an aside there is a place for trying to quantify for businesses where its been shown better lifestyle and recognition improves performance thus a better return on the employer's investment in 'man power')

Tancred

lostinrates wrote: »

Hang on, it seems the debate can progress from the circlular a little and there is some progress



I think it would have saved a lot of time if we'd all been able to move to that point before!

Of course fairness is subjective.

Now, that accepted and that the chances are neither you nor I are right in what is fair.....is it better to go for best result or pursue one camps idea of fairness?

I take issue with this interpretation because if you apply certain agreed criteria (i.e. ensuring that the rich shoulder a proportionally greater share of tax) to the concept of fairness then it's well defined and no longer subjective. What I said was that being fair to all was abstract because it describes a state that is extremely difficult if not impossible to achieve, given that such a state would imply nobody losing out and being asked to pay more etc. In any economic model you cannot have that - it is simply not possible. Therefore, to achieve as close as possible to this utopian vision of 'fairness to all' you need to apply criteria to define fairness and then apply it in such a way that as few people as possible lose out from the suggested tax regime. It therefore follows that these 'few people' should be the ones who are best equipped to pay more tax, i.e. the top segment of taxpayers.

AMEN! :wall:

lostinrates

Tancred wrote: »

I take issue with this interpretation because if you apply certain agreed criteria (i.e. ensuring that the rich shoulder a proportionally greater share of tax) to the concept of fairness then it's well defined and no longer subjective. What I said was that being fair to all was abstract because it describes a state that is extremely difficult if not impossible to achieve, given that such a state would imply nobody losing out and being asked to pay more etc. In any economic model you cannot have that - it is simply not possible. Therefore, to achieve as close as possible to this utopian vision of 'fairness to all' you need to apply criteria to define fairness and then apply it in such a way that as few people as possible lose out from the suggested tax regime. It therefore follows that these 'few people' should be the ones who are best equipped to pay more tax, i.e. the top segment of taxpayers.

AMEN! :wall:

And I suggest that the way to make as few people suffer as possible is to keep and frankly To get MORE people resident and paying tax Here. Get non doms back, get businesses trading here registered head offices HERE not in other countries, get people choosing UK as the place to bring their ( whether you like it or not) middle tier professionals and hopefully get them staying here as senior level ones and enlarging European operations in UK and BASING them in uk.


It seems to me that, 30 or forty percent of something, plus the spending, employment vat etc is better than......the loss of substantial parts of that.

How much would you ideally like to see the top rate set at? And where?

The top one percent already pay a third of all income tax income tax. [url]Http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/consumertips/tax/10368203/Top-earners-to-pay-third-of-all-income-tax-despite-rate-cut.html[/url]

Why the top percent why not the top two percent, or the top three percent, or even the top five or ten percent?