The top 10% of earners pay 90% of income tax already. Screw the rich and see the tax revenues fall. Taxation is not the issue.
When you consider the grief it seems to cause to try to outline a mere 1 or 2% savings you can make to the budget, I can't see how you'd save £125bn. The only way of doing it is to make an extra £125bn. Like any business, that might require short term investment to reap longer term profits. That investment could be made in various ways, but surely education and infrastructure is a good start. Once you've said that you want Tident, no reduction in the armed forces, no reduction in police, the roads are in a shocking state, the Health Service mustn't be touched, etc. etc, then you've clearly got a major problem. And then you mustn't tax multinationals or they will move, rich people ditto - I just can't see where the money is supposed to come from.
No idea. 50%? 60%? It all depends where the threshold is. If you're paying 50% tax and you still end up with £2 or £3 million left over at the end of the year, what is so sacred about a 50% tax threshold? Equally, you can't go back to the bad old days where some people paid 90% tax as this is surely just communism under a different name. It's by no means easy. As I have said, I don't mind people being wealthy. Life is intrinsically unfair and tax is no different. The only thing you'd hope for is that people for whom fate has dealt a good hand would have the good grace to not complain that it isn't even better than it is. That the poor should complain about their tax as they are stuck in a trap which means that they never seem to get any richer, is considerably less annoying. It is not a bad plan, though, to consider the the things that many people now take for granted. People expect to have a massive TV, all convenient appliances, frequent EasyJet holidays abroad, unlimited chatting on mobile phones, frequent new clothes etc. etc. - all things that 30 years ago or so they wouldn't have had. Even the less-well off have these things. Should they really be complaining too?
But what you are advocating is 100% tax once you get to plenty plenty; they don't need any more so why take more? Its the pound and pence amount I'm interested in. 1m a year; 10m? At what point does it become obscene enough that 'we' take all 'their' money?
Clearly, if you took 100% of them in tax, they wouldn't have anything left over, let alone plenty plenty. They would no longer be rich. I'm not against people being rich. The £ and pence argument is irrelevant. If you win the lottery here, the state immediately subtracts 30% in tax. You might consider that grossly unfair. The Swiss lottery this week stands at CHF 23m - say £16m. So if you win, you'd immediately say bye bye to about £5m in tax. But that still leaves you £11m. What is there to whinge about? It's not as if you suddenly need all £16m. Similarly, if you pay your tax bill and still have say, £200k left over, I can't see that the fact that you've forked out nearly £200m gives you anything to whinge about. In what sense have have really "earned" £400k in the year? That you should have £200k to do with as you choose is fine - what's wrong with that? I just object to people focusing on what has been taken off them that still leaves them with considerably more than enough.
100% of the 3rd plenty only. Eg First £million 50% tax 1-5m 65% tax >5m take the lot!! That the kind of thing?
I work with some guys who have hundreds of millions. Yet they work harder and longer and demand more than anyone else. Wonder why they have hundreds of millions...
At £500 per hr its not that bad... they make the most of everything available, rather than sit and moan and bitch at someone else having more or what they don't have...bleed bleed bleed...oh and they value less family and success in business more you make your choices, they make theirs. THAT is Thatchers legacy
Now you are starting to loose me. The revolving door of exec and non-exec directors awarding each other huge salaries and bonuses via 'independent' remuneration committees is becoming far too common.
So left wing is good and right wing is bad? I thought extremism was the problem. Oh no, I'm going to get run over for being in the middle of the road!
Well, that and a dysfunctional housing system and economy, a lack of significant manufacturing industry, privatised utilities that are forever being hammered by their watchdogs for malfeasance but which take not a blind bit of notice of that fact, a culture devoid of any real depth other than the spirit of money-grubbing, in fact, instilled a single-minded desire for most people to chase the money at the expense of any true standard of living (loads'a'money!), use a minor war as the most expensive party political broadcast ever. ... Hmm. You're right, she's done much to over-haul this nation. I say dig her up so I can shake her hand.
Forget left wing or right wing, anarchy is the way forward, everyone can do whatever they want as long as it doesn't have a detrimental effect on anyone else. No one can complain about that can they? Not unless you're one of those tossers whose always worried that you're missing out on something or want to control what others are doing;-) On a serious note, I don't believe any political party can offer me anything but I do believe in using my vote. I rarely know who I am going to vote for until I look at the ballot paper, I then pick the least likely to win (excluding the BNP) and vote for them.
At every election even the most obscure, bonkers fringe candidate gets a dozen votes or so, and I have always wondered who on earth would be perverse enough to cast the ballots for them. Now we know!
We all know the answer to that. The 'hundreds of millions' in value have been created by the work of loads of other people, not just their own work obviously; and the guys you mention are the ones who have mastered the trick of diverting into their own pockets the fruits of other peoples' labours. That is how people get rich.
so why doesnt everyone do it then? The point I was making, and you and some other will choose to avoid, is we have choices now which in the past were removed because of our background, or class or whatever. The introduction of a 'you can do it, you can own it, the power is with you' has tranformed this country from one of failing power and ridicule around the world to one of gaining authority and strength in many ways the failures Loz in particular is describing needs to be placed very clearly at the feet of mssrs Blair and Brown. They raped the country, stole from eveyone and squandered it away.
