is there a war on the poor?

ICBM

So Philip Green is going to pay back £363million of the £571million shortfall, and the government are going to let him off the rest? Why? Apparently that's only about 10% of his total worth, he could easily afford the whole amount.

And as someone pointed out on the BBC last night, if he'd invested the money in the same sort of way that the pension fund would have - which he probably has - it would be worth about twice as much today, so he's barely paying a third back.

Perhaps not quite scot-free, but he's still getting away with it.

fields5069

If you want to get all psychological, I think there is a war on the poor, but it's not just the poor in terms of money but also a lot of "middle Britain" who believe half of what the Daily Mail write. They have been beaten down and beaten down, and I think there's a very good reason - control. I know it's anecdotal evidence at best, but the fight seems to have left most people and they are ripe for control by propaganda.

Dominic

Sporky said:

Thing is, if there was an actual war on the poor, who'd win? You'd think the rich would with all their resources, but I suspect the armed forces are mostly made up of people from lower income backgrounds. That might be prejudice on my part, of course.

The comfortably well-off, however, would just tut from the sidelines while quietly resenting that the whole affair made it much harder to get a decent Petit Chablis or plasterer.

Categorically wrong - 
Point 1 -the rich can buy muscle with "all their resources "......it's why you see "celebs"and Gangsters with a posse of minders
Point 2 - It's the plasterers who are drinking all the decent vintage Petit Chablis 
            -don't underestimate what building tradespeople earn - most do better than a provincial solicitor
             CUE ;  HARRY ENFIELD ......LOADSA MONEY !
  In all seriousness - there is an acute shortage of good 2nd fix carpenters in NW London because there is a certain site in 
 Highgate N6 where 3 of my friends are working where the carpenters are on £385 per day before overtime with a guaranteed 18 months work and the gas fitters are on £420 per day .....they all work a 6 day week .
There are over 60 carpenters on that site alone .

hotpot

fields5069 said:

If you want to get all psychological, I think there is a war on the poor, but it's not just the poor in terms of money but also a lot of "middle Britain" who believe half of what the Daily Mail write. They have been beaten down and beaten down, and I think there's a very good reason - control. I know it's anecdotal evidence at best, but the fight seems to have left most people and they are ripe for control by propaganda.

  Great post. Divide & conquer is the one thing this divisive government really excels at.

Cirrus

webrthomson said:

HMRC’s latest set of statistics highlight that the top 1% or earners, those lucky enough to earn over £160,000, pay 29.8% of all income tax, some £44.7 billion pounds per year. This means that they pay more tax than the bottom 50% or earners (https://fullfact.org/economy/income-tax-are-top-1-really-paying-more/)

Now I'm just a simple country chicken, but when people use these kind of statistics to illustrate inequity in one way or the other, I get a bit confused. Because there's no ideal, objectively correct model for progressive taxation - it's always going to be a compromise.

I mean, "top 1% or (sic) earners, those lucky enough to earn over £160,000, pay 29.8% of all income tax".

Well, what does that mean? is that good? Is that bad? What percentage should they be paying? What percentage of all the earnings made by the 100% do they make?

"This means that they pay more tax than the bottom 50% or earners"

Again, is this good? Is this bad? What's the ratio between the income of the top 1% vs the bottom 50%? Obviously the top 1% is going to pay more tax than the bottom *however many* percent, because, well, they make more money. If the top 1% only paid 1% of all income tax, and the bottom 50% paid 50% of all income tax, then everyone would be paying the same number of £s in income tax whether they made 11k/ year or 20 million a year. Obviously that wouldn't be fair.

So, when you see these statistics, I think they're only ever going to fire up whatever idiological (a bad word in recent years, but it needn't be) views you already had on the matter.

So, what would your ideal income tax system look like?

For me, I have two utopian ideals.

1 - A higher tax free allowance than the current one, set at a level that can actually be lived at based on average rent/ house prices, cost of food, fuel, etc. Below this level, no tax. Everyone needs at least this amount of money to live comfortably in the UK, so let's not take away money from this sum. Maybe it could even be means tested based on area, dependents etc. Let's automate that using TECHNOLOGY.

Then a fixed rate above that - whatever is required to raise money needed. Maybe it'll be 30%, maybe 50%, but everyone who earns more than the sum needed to survive comfortably pays the same rate and hence your earnings to tax ratio is always constant - if you complain you pay more tax than the average, you are objectively a selfish bellend and you undergo compulsory lobotomisation.

2 - Universal basic Income, and all earnings are taxed at the same rate because bro, you're not going to starve this week and you'll have a roof over your head.


The current, progressive tax band system seems predicated on the idea that either they'll punitively tax you for success, or for people in lower tax bands that they need to lower your rate because they're taxing a sum money you actually need to survive happily - depending on your outlook/ political persuasion. Both are silly states of affairs.

These might seem extreme but it'd see the end of ambiguous statistics about % of top earners vs bottom feeders. And I think that's a price we'd all be willing to pay. 

CabbageCat

Cirrus said:
If the top 1% only paid 1% of all income tax, and the bottom 50% paid 50% of all income tax, then everyone would be paying the same number of £s in income tax whether they made 11k/ year or 20 million a year. Obviously that wouldn't be fair. 

That (as you kinda suggested) is not a given since "fair" is not something people can agree on. One could perfectly well say that "fair" would be a set price to be a user of UK facilities - like there is a set price to get into Thorpe Park. Sure, I can see why you would say it but I don't think "Obviously that wouldn't be fair." is right. 

Cirrus

CabbageCat said:

That (as you kinda suggested) is not a given since "fair" is not something people can agree on. One could perfectly well say that "fair" would be a set price to be a user of UK facilities - like there is a set price to get into Thorpe Park. Sure, I can see why you would say it but I don't think "Obviously that wouldn't be fair." is right. 

I will concede that point, and you're quite right - my outrage at the idea is a moral outrage and hence subjective - that if there was a fixed, unbending price to use UK facilities, it'd either be priced so low the state couldn't function or so high a large percentage of the population would be unable to be a part of society.

Snap

I think a fair point to make, is that the people who are in the top 1% of earning, contribute nearly a third of the whole tax take. I think it is hard to argue that demanding they contribute more is reasonable and/or fair. They certainly won't pull on 30% of tax funded resources. They are paying in, far more than they (probably) get out.

Hammer the rich is a tabloid friendly mantra, that attempts to empathise with a cultivated culture of envy (sorry for sayiong it, couldn't think of a better phrase). In the round, looking at the whole economic cycle, it doesn't work as you end up drivin high income out of the country. That just puts pressure on everyone else who;s left.

To get into the top 1% of earnings, your earnings don't have to be ridiculously high either. Yes, they are high, but not what we would understand as super rich.

I'd have a flat rate of tax, with a higher threshold. I fundamentally disgree with increasing the rate of income tax with increased income. I don't think you should have proportionally more taken by the government beacouse you earn more. We all seem to forget we pay national insurance (tax) too on top. That means that anything over the 40% threshold, you are paying over half of your earning to the government. Disagree totally with that.

57Deluxe

Yes  - Gibson have made their hystorics(!) and NOS far to expensive for us poor to buy now...

digitalscream

Snap said:

We all seem to forget we pay national insurance (tax) too on top. That means that anything over the 40% threshold, you are paying over half of your earning to the government. Disagree totally with that.

The NI rate drops to about 1% at around the same threshold as the 40% rate comes in, though, so although there's a small gap in the middle where higher-rate tax and the higher NI rate overlap, there's no significant point where you pay 50% of your wages (I don't think so, anyway).

jellyroll

I think semantics plays a part here. If the current rules were considered as being that the "Basic" rate of tax is 45%, with those earning less than £150k enjoying a discounted rate, we'd all be much happier

robgilmo

webrthomson said:

In answer to your question – no there is not a war on the poor, lets back that up with some facts shall we:

1. Taxation thresholds now stand at their highest level ever – you will need to earn £11,000 this year to be liable for income tax, this has risen pretty much every year since 2010 to almost double what it was under the last Labour government (£6,475 in 2009/2010).
2. Due to the increases above 3.4 million people have been removed, completely, from income tax since 2010. (See here)
3. HMRC’s latest set of statistics highlight that the top 1% or earners, those lucky enough to earn over £160,000, pay 29.8% of all income tax, some £44.7 billion pounds per year. This means that they pay more tax than the bottom 50% or earners (https://fullfact.org/economy/income-tax-are-top-1-really-paying-more/)

While the mantra of “tax the rich” is not new there are a few things we should think about seriously if that is the path we want to follow:

Rich people have highly portable skillsets and the money to move from vexatious tax regimes – you should read about the 1970’s 98% tax debacle (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1433643/Labour-remains-haunted-by-the-sound-of-squeaking-pips.html)

Rather than continually thinking the world is best served by redistributing wealth would we not be better encouraging increases in income – every pound redistributed requires much more than that pound to be raised to allow this to happen. Incentivising work, through better pay and training, is a much more cost effective method to help those on lower incomes than redistribution from wealthy to poor.

So if you earn up to 11k a year you pay no tax? Big deal? try living on 11k a year, apparently 3.4 million people out there are trying to, so, what do you have to earn? National living wage? whats that 7.25 an hour? Try living on that, you cant. The top 1 percent or earners earn a hell of a lot more than 160,000 a year, a hell of a lot more, and that's just earnings , their assets are worth a hell of a lot more than that. You cannot encourage increases in income unless the people who hold the country's wealth part with much of it, which they wont, you cannot simply ''make more money''. Redistribution of wealth between rich and poor (shall we include assets such as land, property etc? I think we should) is exactly the same as creating better pay because who pays peoples wages?, but lets be honest here, retrain everyone on low wages to enable a better income? Who will work the factories that are owned by wealthy people, work the land to feed us, work in restaurants? work in recycling centres, deliver your parcels, serve you in supermarkets? No, lets all retrain for managerial jobs and make all these jobs redundant, that's a great idea.
For the rich to exist you need poverty, that's as simple as it gets.

Cirrus

robgilmo said:

you cannot simply ''make more money''. Redistribution of wealth between rich and poor (shall we include assets such as land, property etc? I think we should) is exactly the same as creating better pay because who pays peoples wages?, but lets be honest here, retrain everyone on low wages to enable a better income? Who will work the factories that are owned by wealthy people, work the land to feed us, work in restaurants? work in recycling centres, deliver your parcels, serve you in supermarkets? No, lets all retrain for managerial jobs and make all these jobs redundant, that's a great idea.
For the rich to exist you need poverty, that's as simple as it gets.

Thing is, those jobs are already on course to be taken over by robots.

When that happens, the question becomes, what the hell are most people going to do? In a genuine post-scarcity society, where machines do the vast majority of the work, how can the current economic systems and social structures survive?

Take it to a logical extreme - a machine is built that can create anything, including other machines that can build anything

At that point, you either say, well everyone can have what they want. So we all live like kings, use up all the planet's resources, the psychopaths and mad people use their machines to create terrible armies and we all die.

Or you say, well, The person who invented/ financed/ built the machine owns it. He puts every other company on earth out of business, and charges for use of the machine. Nobody has any work, anarchy reigns, society collapses. Unless that person rigs a system that ensures his riches still have value, and everyone else can eke a living off the machine. Food for thought in that one, I think.

robgilmo

Cirrus said:

robgilmo said:

you cannot simply ''make more money''. Redistribution of wealth between rich and poor (shall we include assets such as land, property etc? I think we should) is exactly the same as creating better pay because who pays peoples wages?, but lets be honest here, retrain everyone on low wages to enable a better income? Who will work the factories that are owned by wealthy people, work the land to feed us, work in restaurants? work in recycling centres, deliver your parcels, serve you in supermarkets? No, lets all retrain for managerial jobs and make all these jobs redundant, that's a great idea.
For the rich to exist you need poverty, that's as simple as it gets.

Thing is, those jobs are already on course to be taken over by robots.

.

Sorry, that's as far as I got, you are joking , right?

robgilmo

robgilmo said:

Cirrus said:

robgilmo said:

you cannot simply ''make more money''. Redistribution of wealth between rich and poor (shall we include assets such as land, property etc? I think we should) is exactly the same as creating better pay because who pays peoples wages?, but lets be honest here, retrain everyone on low wages to enable a better income? Who will work the factories that are owned by wealthy people, work the land to feed us, work in restaurants? work in recycling centres, deliver your parcels, serve you in supermarkets? No, lets all retrain for managerial jobs and make all these jobs redundant, that's a great idea.
For the rich to exist you need poverty, that's as simple as it gets.

Thing is, those jobs are already on course to be taken over by robots.

.

Sorry, that's as far as I got, you are joking , right?

Just read the rest, sorry for jumping the gun there, that's neither here nor there though fella, not really an answer to the Uk's poverty crisis and world capitalism. 

CabbageCat

robgilmo said:

So if you earn up to 11k a year you pay no tax? Big deal? try living on 11k a year, apparently 3.4 million people out there are trying to, so, what do you have to earn? National living wage? whats that 7.25 an hour? Try living on that, you cant.

Of course you can. That's about £1000 a month. That's pretty much what I live on and I'm perfectly comfortable. If I stopped going on holidays I could probably shave that back to £750. If I stopped going to the pub it would be more like £600 and I'd still be able to shed things like car and frivolities (Netflix, gaming subs, gifts etc).

robgilmo

Really? What planet do you live on? I take it you don't pay rent, bills or have kids? My rent is over 800 a month, doesn't leave much for holidays and visits to the pub never mind feeding and clothing my kids or paying bills, cos sometimes I have to choose between the two.

digitalscream

robgilmo said:

Really? What planet do you live on? I take it you don't pay rent, bills or have kids? My rent is over 800 a month, doesn't leave much for holidays and visits to the pub never mind feeding and clothing my kids or paying bills, cos sometimes I have to choose between the two.

I think the more pertinent question is "what kind of house do you live in?". A single person can definitely live on £1000/month. A single person earning that much would also be entitled to a 25% reduction in council tax.

That same person with a child would get an additional £5,987.90 per year in Universal Credit, Council Tax Support and Child Benefit.

So no...nobody with a child would be expected to live on £11k per year.

(all details calculated using http://www.entitledto.co.uk/ )

Heartfeltdawn

digitalscream said:

robgilmo said:

Really? What planet do you live on? I take it you don't pay rent, bills or have kids? My rent is over 800 a month, doesn't leave much for holidays and visits to the pub never mind feeding and clothing my kids or paying bills, cos sometimes I have to choose between the two.

I think the more pertinent question is "what kind of house do you live in?". A single person can definitely live on £1000/month. A single person earning that much would also be entitled to a 25% reduction in council tax.

That same person with a child would get an additional £5,987.90 per year in Universal Credit, Council Tax Support and Child Benefit.

So no...nobody with a child would be expected to live on £11k per year.

(all details calculated using http://www.entitledto.co.uk/ )

So there's really a war on childless single people then!

CabbageCat

robgilmo said:

Really? What planet do you live on? I take it you don't pay rent, bills or have kids? My rent is over 800 a month, doesn't leave much for holidays and visits to the pub never mind feeding and clothing my kids or paying bills, cos sometimes I have to choose between the two.

No, I don't pay rent. I own. And you're right, I don't have kids. But I do have bills. And if I were limited to £1000 a month I wouldn't live in a house that cost £800 - I daresay not many of your 3.4 million do either. 

But I do live on planet Earth - a pretty expensive part of planet Earth at that. And you did say that people couldn't live on living wage when I'm absolutely sure that people can. Maybe they can't also have expensive things like big houses and families but that wasn't part of the criteria.