50p tax thing, should we keep it long term?

[Pob255]

That is my point, I'm not saying someone who used debt for their lifestyle is the sole person to blame, not at all. Just that I'm sick to death of people saying "its someone else".

Thats why when I see the size of our defect, I think we all have to do something to reduce it. I never voted for Labour, hell I wasn't old enough too when they did most of their damage, but I'm none the less going to do my part repaying it.

Umm and yet you keep blaming the Labour government . . . are they to blaim for the deficit, in part but not wholely.

One of the major issues is that we're now a consumer culture, are whole economy is propped up by the fact that we spend money and buy stuff from each other and this is the legacy from the Conservative government who pushed us into it while helping in crippling manufacturing in this country.

The big problems is that everyone seem to think too short term and selfishly while at the same time willing to blame everyone else for their problems.

As you said before

But we didn't. We spent, and spent, and spent, with nothing much to show for it. This helped drive our economy, and people were buying stupid things they didn't need on credit cards. PCs, TVs etc. If you've bought one of those and you've got un-secured debt, you are part of this economic downturn.

Which puts it squarely as the fault of the general population and the banking industry for lending money to people who couldn't pay it back.
Neather of which is the governments fault and the moment anyone tries to say stop that, then they are accused of being a nanny state trying to tell people what to do.

You cannot have it both ways.

And you cannot complain about the deficit without realizing that government spending was propping up our economy when this whole crisis started and without it we would be a whole lot deeper in the The main failing seems to have been the idea that it would of all blown over in 6 months, the economy would be back, strong, paying off the deficit wouldn't be a major issue and cuts could be more gradual and shallow.

The problem is that consumer spending is what drives our economy, so telling people we have to reduce spending has a knock on effect.

So were all going to have to put up with long term cuts and higher taxes to pay for our short sightedness.

I agree with kalniel that this 50p tax is just a psychological thing and PR exercise.

ps I don't think labour is great, they up in so many ways, but Don't think the conservatives are any better, this whole "if labour wasn't in power this would never of happened" is frankly rubbish they would not of been discouraging people from spending while slashing public spending before this all started and when it did start our economy would of been in tatters.

The only thing I can see in the long term is a major change in governmental system to something that actually supports long term goals and doesn't have to pander to short sighted desires and the desire for power.
Just don't ask me what that system would be, the closest example I can think of is from hitch hikers guide to the galaxy, where the government is just a front to keep the people happy and whole universe is actually governed by a single man who doesn't know he's actually running it.
But that would be open to abuse by the people who are running the man who's running the universe.

[kalniel]

I actually wanted to vote against a 50% tax for anyone but had to settle for Against the 50p rate, with income below £150k since that's closer to what I support than Against the 50p rate, with income above £150k.

Your own income is either at or above 150k or below 150k, it can't be both

I think that misreading is also why TA was thinking Hexus is a rich bunch, when it's not

[Lucio]

I believe that % wise, our tax contributions should be equal. Where you account for those with a lower expenditure, is your tax exempt threshold. For example, the recent moves to increase tax exempt earnings to £10,000 a year should be applauded, and I'd hope in future that it's driven higher, to support a minimum living wage that you can earn tax free.

I'm also in favour of more direct, and less indirect taxation for similar reasons, the recent rise in VAT to 20% hits the poorer people harder than the rich.


I also believe that it's the higher % rates that leads to the levels of taxation fraud that we see, and that if properly packaged, a cut in the % rate will actually yield higher tax returns for the government.

[roachcoach]

Actually, with the need for new revenue streams I'm disapointed reviewing prohibition hasn't cropped up.

It would be interesting to see how much they would make, if you could go to the supermarket and buy some weed as well as a bottle of whiskey. I mean go to waitrose to buy some organically grown, purple durple from selected farmers, as well as your bottle of single malt.

Obviously anyone who went to asda for the skunk and bought jack daniels is a druggie.

If it brought in the income of tobacco, we'd clear the deficit extremely quickly. Not including the new income tax stream from those suddenly finding themselves in legitimate work.



Of course, the politicians lack the fortitude to ram this through despite claiming to have the strength to make unpopular decisions.

What annoys me is they don't even have the guts to openly debate/investigate it. THAT'S the kind of thing meriting an 'inquiry' or a 'think tank' as opposed to the inane crap they cover at the moment.

[cptwhite_uk]

I believe that % wise, our tax contributions should be equal.

I agree with everything you said bar this. This only works when people are earning comparatively similar wages (i.e. wages are averaged to be above what is currently considered normal > raising from say £25k (now) to £35-40k as a typical wage), otherwise you're effectively asking lower paid people to subsidies the people who are currently paying the higher rate of tax. Thus making the rich richer and poor poorer.

If you want to make the tax percentage of everyone "fair" then let's make the starting salaries fair in the first place.

I think this is the point I'm trying to get at, I feel people will suggest capitalism with find it's own level for what a job is "worth". However I just think there's to many other factors which distort the true worth of a particular profession. I'm pretty sure an electrician is as essential as a dentist, yet he probably earns far less on average. The value of certain roles in the modern job market is vastly overstated and understated in various areas, I realise that's hard to quantify as it's a qualitative assessment, but I think it's fair to say many would agree on that point.

I don't think you can even consider equal percentages for vastly different salaries and consider the system fair, when this underlying inequality in top rate pay exists (and will likely always exist). At least tax brackets allow the government to put some kind of buffer in place to extol a single person's unfairly higher wage for the good of all.

If these rich people feel they've got a bum deal, well, basically, they haven't. They're got a crap load more money than most of us, and they should stop moaning about it. If they think they've got a terrible deal in the grand scheme of things, then please, become a postman, work in a supermarket, drive a minicab, work in administration in a small to medium company, or a general grunt in the public sector. They'll soon realise what a privilaged existence they have.

How anyone earning £50k + has the audacity to complain about being hard done in life is beyond me.

[Lucio]

I agree with everything you said bar this.

Did you miss the mitigating factor? The basis of everyone getting a fair minimum living wage and paying tax on everything above that.

[Kata]

Currently the top 5% of tax payers pay approximately 50% of total income tax; and probably are responsible for creating the companies that pay a similar amount of the corporate taxes. The great unwashed, who seem to want the very people who fund their laze-about subsidies, would not be smart to get rid of them.

[cptwhite_uk]

Did you miss the mitigating factor? The basis of everyone getting a fair minimum living wage and paying tax on everything above that.

You didn't state that explicitly, or at least that's not how I understood your suggestion. However how would you quantify such a level, how does it take into account individual circumstances (children, where you live, other dependants, single or married etc.)

In any case, while it's obviously a desirable goal to attain, you'd still have people earning many multiples above it's value and to ask everyone to pay the same rate above a certain threshold still leads to vast inequality, regardless of whether you're able to comfortably live or not. You should settle for a Ford Focus 1.6, a holiday once a year and a semi in suburbia when it's the norm to drive a jaguar, a holiday home in florida, a 4 bed detatched and go on holiday to far flung corners of the globe twice a year.

It's not a case of being able to live comfortably, it's more a case of everyone being able to live and roughly have the same opportunities and living standards, more or less.

I simply have a tough time, when I've full at it all day at work to justify someone earning 10 times my wage. The idea someone is more "responsible" thus earns more I can accept, but the differences in wage we see simply don't justify the difference in pay.

[roachcoach]

In any case, while it's obviously a desirable goal to attain, you'd still have people earning many multiples above it's value and to ask everyone to pay the same rate above a certain threshold still leads to vast inequality

Note: 'the rich' and 'the poor' in quotes because such terms are a bit ethereal and definitions will vary from people to people, I'm merely using them as generalisations.

We have inequality now in the shape of different tax bands only it's 'socially acceptable' because it's 'the rich' getting made to pay more in terms of income tax. The envy/myopia of the masses often blinkers them to this fact.

Equality is a sword which cuts both ways. Something neatly forgotten by the common attitude of 'so long as some else pays, I don't care'.

Now I'm nowhere near the 50% rate and unlikely to ever be (I shouldn't think, something will have gone drastically right if that ever happens!) but I'm not kidding myself for a moment that I'm hard done by or that 'the rich' are getting off scott free and being carried by 'the poor'. There are always exceptions, some people are really hard done by and some people really are evading almost all tax, but the system should not be fundamentally altered for exceptions.


The whole concept of income tax is a weird one anyway if you think about it abstractly - you're effectively penalised for being successful. As Saracen said, there are many ways to make sure well off people pay more tax than the less well off (VAT was an example iirc) whilst not stifling a drive to get improve oneself. It seems at odds with common sense that the better you do, the harder you are hit. Perhaps one for a philosophy student.

[TheAnimus]

Umm and yet you keep blaming the Labour government . . . are they to blaim for the deficit, in part but not wholely.

Sure we can, it was trending down when they came in to power, reducing, they, some 10+ years before these problems began, changed that trend, and spent spent spent! With little now to show for it.

One of the major issues is that we're now a consumer culture, are whole economy is propped up by the fact that we spend money and buy stuff from each other and this is the legacy from the Conservative government who pushed us into it while helping in crippling manufacturing in this country.

I'm not sure how they crippled manufacturing. But explain to me, how is a spending money and buying stuff from each other different from manufacturing stuff and buying that from each other? Why is one more stable than the other?

The big problems is that everyone seem to think too short term and selfishly while at the same time willing to blame everyone else for their problems.

Absolutely, we've had a legacy of people wanting services now, from the state, and paying for it tomorrow, this is not sustainable.

As you said before Which puts it squarely as the fault of the general population and the banking industry for lending money to people who couldn't pay it back.
Neather of which is the governments fault and the moment anyone tries to say stop that, then they are accused of being a nanny state trying to tell people what to do.

You cannot have it both ways.

Sure I can! So why were banks so eager to lend is a good question, some blame the 'greenspan puts' the artificial use of low rates, ment someone had to look for somewere to stick the money. Then a lack of regulation in the US market, the fact they don't have something as simple as APR, and were lets be honest awful sales types people on the ground, then those who bundled them up into complex packages, ignoring correlated risk, the incompitent ratings agencies..... Its a long list, there is room for a lot of people on it. But at the very top, as a brit, we have to have Labour.

I have no problem with the idea of credit. I have a VERY useful credit line, I used it a lot last month when I went on holiday, I paid for my mates tickets, hotels, etc. Everything went on my airmiles reward card, it made divying up the costs afterwards easy. All of us have cash in the bank, but using the credit card has many benefits. The thing is, everything we did, everything we bought, we paid off, in full, immediately. It was a sustainable lifestyle.

A lot of people are upset because they've been living beyound their means, and they now can't continue doing so. The same is very true of our state.

And you cannot complain about the deficit without realizing that government spending was propping up our economy when this whole crisis started and without it we would be a whole lot deeper in the The main failing seems to have been the idea that it would of all blown over in 6 months, the economy would be back, strong, paying off the deficit wouldn't be a major issue and cuts could be more gradual and shallow.

Erm, government spending was propping up our economy? When? During the boom years? That's when the government spending was increasing the most.... Come the time we could really use a bit of investment we don't have any money. Look at austrialia, they had the conseratives in power before, they actually had money to spare, and now they've got the lefties, who can get some keynesian stuff going on to help the non-mining sectors.

We did it the opposite way round. We made the bubble larger, and so the bad times worse.

The problem is that consumer spending is what drives our economy, so telling people we have to reduce spending has a knock on effect.

That is because it was un-sustanable, see above.

So were all going to have to put up with long term cuts and higher taxes to pay for our short sightedness.

I agree with kalniel that this 50p tax is just a psychological thing and PR exercise.

Indeed Our quality of life will be worse.
But why signal out some people to pay soo much more, its not as if someone on 150k doesn't pay more of a percentage of their income as someone on 50k. Thats what gets me, its vindicitive, and its against those which are likely to help the economy most.

...Don't think the conservatives are any better, this whole "if labour wasn't in power this would never of happened" is frankly rubbish they would not of been discouraging people from spending while slashing public spending before this all started and when it did start our economy would of been in tatters.

But, we wouldn't have such a big defecit, we wouldn't have to be cutting so heavily public services, during the 'bad times' because they would have already cut a lot of it during the good times.

The only thing I can see in the long term is a major change in governmental system to something that actually supports long term goals and doesn't have to pander to short sighted desires and the desire for power.

Indeed. Look at our former PMs, they've pretty much washed their hands of everything, blair walked away at an almost perfect time.

They, just like the worst CEOs take no responsibility for failure.

Just don't ask me what that system would be, the closest example I can think of is from hitch hikers guide to the galaxy, where the government is just a front to keep the people happy and whole universe is actually governed by a single man who doesn't know he's actually running it.
But that would be open to abuse by the people who are running the man who's running the universe.

Hmm my kind of lizard.

[Bugbait]

Your own income is either at or above 150k or below 150k, it can't be both

I think that misreading is also why TA was thinking Hexus is a rich bunch, when it's not

Yeah, I read the poll options as "50% higher tax should be applied to those making above/below £150k".

[Blackmage]

I don't think it should be long term, Some people have worked hard to earn the money they do, to me it's like a sort of punishment.

[TheAnimus]

Your own income is either at or above 150k or below 150k, it can't be both

I think that misreading is also why TA was thinking Hexus is a rich bunch, when it's not

I think no one reads the poll title, just the thread title and poll options..... A lesson there!

[aidanjt]

If people were responsible with credit rather than squandering it, we would have no debt to repay.

You also wouldn't have any money, or any economy.

Did the majority of people in the 50p bracket create this issue, probably not, they tend to not need credit.

No, but the majority of people in the 50p bracket created the system and benefited from it enormously.

[malfunction]

In some ways I'm torn on this. Anyone earning more money (and actually paying all their taxes) pays more tax - as a real number - than anyone earning less anyway. This I'm fine with. The thing I struggle with is how it's justified to take 50% of your earnings - even if it is only on earnings above £150,000. I think my main objection is the overall level of tax we all pay - income tax, capital gains, duties, VAT and so on - I find it hard to believe, even when you take defence, the NHS, schools, etc into account that the government isn't in one way or another either siphoning cash off for their own benefit or simply peeing it up the wall on things that we don't really need.

Personally I think the tax free allowance should be raised considerably to help out people with lower incomes. If they did that I'd be more than happy to see it balanced with changes to where the 40% rate cuts in.

[Bugbait]

I think no one reads the poll title, just the thread title and poll options..... A lesson there!

The wording is still a bit ambiguous:

50p Tax Rate are you: For the 50p rate, with income below £150k
50p Tax Rate are you: For the 50p rate, with income above £150k
50p Tax Rate are you: Against the 50p rate, with income below £150k
50p Tax Rate are you: Against the 50p rate, with income above £150k

"with income" could be taken either way depending on your initial perspective.