The best thing the very rich could do is spend as much as they can on products and services sourced in the UK...
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The best thing the very rich could do is spend as much as they can on products and services sourced in the UK...
I think a lot of you are misreading the idea here.
It's sometimes known as a citizen's wage or guaranteed minimum income and has been mulled over by economists for centuries. The idea is not that everyone earns just the same small amount regardless of what they do, it's that everyone gets that amount of money, and it's in addition to any money earnt from a normal job.
The vast majority of people would far rather live in a nice house, have nice cars, and earn 30k a year to do this - hence they'd go and get a job.
The main advantage of the scheme is in one fell swoop you can get rid of all the bureaucracy of personal allowances on income tax, tax credits, jobseekers allowance, income support, incapacity benefit, child benefit, state pension and much much more.
The savings from scrapping personal allowances go someway into funding it.
And the layabouts? Well, they're always going to be layabouts no matter what you do. An easy source of income if they can't be arsed to do a job: crime. And how much does that cost to reduce?
Where is the money coming from to pay for this? Extra tax on higher earners?
If everyone earned £1500 extra, we'd just have inflation. Suddenly people who could only afford £100/month for a flat could now afford £1600.
What's the point? It just seems like minimum wage whether or not you can be bothered to turn up to work to me.....
Yes, the benevolent rich folk argument. Are you seriously going to defend a system whereby the welfare of people in Pakistan is dependent on excessive working class spending in Northern England?
And are you honestly seeking to defend Beckham's untold personal riches in the face of millions of destitute people barely surviving?
Here is what troubles me about the argument you are making: you are not a capitalist. The greatest deceit of capitalism is fooling people that they are, or have a chance to be, part of the capitalist elite. You are not, and neither am I. We are wage slaves, forced to work ridiculously low-paying jobs by the aforementioned "market conditions". Slavery used to be part of market conditions too once upon a time. But then the oppressive government went and ruined that bit of industry. The same arguments were put forward: how could we ever survive without slaves doing the work? You'd bankrupt the country!
You seem to imagine that every multimillionaire is somehow deserving of it, rather than profiting from blind luck. And then you compound this belief that they "earnt" their money with the expectation that wealth is best placed to benefit the world in their hands. What evidence do you have for that?
States at least come with some sort of accountability and processes for redress. Putting great wealth and power into private hands is simply not a good idea.
Unless of course the "states" are colluding with the bankers/industry to create this wage/slave scenario...
The question everyone should ask is...where does money come from?
The OP is describing the Cuban salary system. Like any such system, it totally breaks down when the elite see themselves as worth more than the plebs. Even in our limited implementation here (income support blah blah blah) the obvious brokenness of human nature comes into play (MPs trying to hide their obscene second home expenses)
We do need money unfortunately, it is really the only way to save your 'production' and then transfer it at a later date for goods and services. What else are we going to use to trade with each other when a lot of us in fact produce fairly intangible products, I work for a large telecomms firm, we don't manufacture much do you think they should pay me in telephones and routers and then I have to go out and trade those items for food?
It just doesn't work, we do need money, however I am not convinced we need rich people. Tax them and tax them hard I say and make it illegal to own business and property in this country if you don't pay tax and close down all the loopholes. They may leave the country in droves to go suck some other place dry but I am just not convinced we need them. If they leave then we the people can take thier assets and businesses no problem, call that payment for the time they had the benefits of this society.
Just to be clear here, I would personally set the super rich tax at say 400 or 500% of the average income so say the average is £25k then you would only get people in the 100k+ plus range being hit with it. I would not want to see an incentive to work hard removed but I would like to see some limit on making just obscene amounts of money, particularly in cases when there is no observable production. I would also include clauses that give some tax benefits to the ultra rich bases on things like how many employees they have and what the average salary of those employees are to encourage further redistribution of the weath that everybodys production generates.
I would like to see a fundamental change, I am not convinced that we should be aiming for growth and profit all the time, I think really there are some instances where we should be aiming for sustainabillity.
I also think that whatever we do there is an even more pressing problem than even this recessiona dn that is the looming retirement of the baby boomers which is going to cost the current working generation massively. i don't think the op's idea really takes into account the aging demographic and the exponential rate at which the costs of such a scheme would escelate because of that.
Personally, I am considering leaving to move to a country witha younger demographic where I can just avoid all this pain. After all, it wasn't my piss poor planning and management that caused this mess.
Might have gone a little OT there in places...
Pretty daft idea really, if everyone is guarranteed a half decent salary no matter what they do then there is no incentive to better yourself, if people don't better themselves educationally or career wise then the country would lose out as a whole.
money = division/class = rich/poor = poverty.
In my eyes where there is money there is poverty.