To believe that if Labour wins we wont be hit with 98% taxes?

But in Sweden all people get affordable childcare, paid sick leave, great infrastructure etc. In UK when you're a higher tax payer you lose child benefit, tax free childcare, funded hours so you're basically not entitled to policies that your taxes pay for.
Than on top of income tax we have high council tax that doesn't exist in other countries.

various charges based on income levels etc and run education more as a business model, plus it may help improve the quality of education too.

I read the title of this post and I knew it was you. Yes you, distinguished person. No we won't pay 98% tax under Labour, no, Labour don't hate women ( think you mentioned that before) no, Labour don't plan on sinking Britain to the bottom of the sea or anything else you can come up with.

So how would it be paid for?

Chances are the private sector would provide the service instead

Yes because it's part of the divide between the various levels of wealth

All the debt since 2007 up to where the added Covid debt in 2020/22 was added on was incurred due to 2007.

Was it? Wasn’t austerity supposed to be to reduce the debt? Yet it increased. Please don’t try to tell me that if debt’s being repaid interest will virtually double, particularly at virtually non existent interest rates. I wasn’t born yesterday.

You do understand the 2007/8 crash created a recession we have yet to recover from? All the debt since 2007 up to where the added Covid debt in 2020/22 was added on was incurred due to 2007. The recession debt incurred wasnt done and dusted on 1 Jan 2008.

Honestly, you know the poster was talking about people who were too young or didn’t have the resources to buy in 2007 when they mentioned the difficulty in buying a property today. It’s disingenuous to go “well they could have bought in 2007”- utter rubbish because if they could have, they would have therefore they did not because they could not and now it is even worse.

Teachers in 2007 of course. 🙄

The debt our grandchildren will be paying off isn’t that incurred in 2007.

@Blossomtoes
”To be fair those people could buy a decent property in 2007.”
Really?! Even the ones who were in Year 6 at primary school in 2007 and are now 27 year old teachers in 2024?

A recession is just a depression with credit- the ability to go into debt. Bailing out the banks created a huge public debt that our grandchildren will still be paying off. Funny coincidence don’t you think that it was only the entities that pay dividends to MP investment portfolios got bailed out? While individual small business owners and homeowners were not only not bailed out, but expected to contribute to the bailing out the “too big to fail” lot.

We, Great Britain and UK, do not live in a vacuum. There is no way we could have not bailed banks out - there would have been terrible worldwide repercussions and potentially wars with other countries.

Iceland managed not to bail the banks out. With a much happier ending.

There is no point trying to understand OPs posts.

@Araminta1003 ,

No, we couldn’t have done it alone, you are right. We needed to get the global response right.

Also there are different ways to bail out banks, it isn’t all or nothing.

But the basic principle stands, people want to accumulate wealth through risk taking but not lose it when they gamble and lose.

This leads to both unfair and economically suboptimal outcomes.

I don’t understand your post. In your thread title, you’re saying that you DON’T believe Labour will charge people 98% tax. Yet in your OP, you seem to be saying that you think Labour will charge 98% tax.

Also, as other people have pointed out, Labour won’t be charging people extremely high taxes - mainly because it would be very politically damaging and it wouldn’t make economic sense.

“Imagine if the banks hadn’t been bailed out and there hadn’t been QE. Yes, we would have had a massive recession, but asset prices would have collapsed, allowing people like normal lawyers, teachers, junior doctors to actually buy a decent property, just like my generation could. This was a choice, not an obligation.”

We, Great Britain and UK, do not live in a vacuum. There is no way we could have not bailed banks out - there would have been terrible worldwide repercussions and potentially wars with other countries.

I repeat - we do not live in a vacuum. The current young person who has talent and the middle aged properly rich is very mobile and the rest of the world would welcome their assets and talents. So whatever we do tax wise has to make sure we keep both cash and talent in the country.

I doubt very much that teachers would still be teaching. A bankrupt government wouldn’t have been able to pay them.

@Blossomtoes,

I don’t agree.

Great wealth has always been built out of creative destruction. That is how capitalism is meant to work.

Teachers would still have been teaching and lawyers would still have been lawyering (maybe less so £1mio/annum Magic Circle lawyers….).

It would have been grim for the best part of a decade, but we would probably be on a far better growth curve now. Look at the 20s, the post WW years and the 1970s, all were grim, but renewal is important.

If you want to try and banish recessions, capitalism is not the path to go down.

Imagine if the banks hadn’t been bailed out and there hadn’t been QE. Yes, we would have had a massive recession, but asset prices would have collapsed, allowing people like normal lawyers, teachers, junior doctors to actually buy a decent property

To be fair those people could buy a decent property in 2007. Nobody would have been able to buy anything if the banks hadn’t been bailed out. Our entire economy would have tanked and our currency would have been worthless. It wouldn’t have been recession, it would have been depression.

@DistinguishedSocialCommentator ,

‘Dont forget the cost of materials, labour and land has shot up - so you can pay 2003 prices, can you’

These costs are a very small percentage of desirable properties

‘Also, property buying is a risk as prices can also go down

If it was that easy to make money, why does not every do this’

Those who can afford it do. The phrase ‘housing ladder’ comes from this!

The issue is we have had a pro asset monetary and fiscal policy, which has benefited those with assets, including property and disbenefited those on a wage (nurses, teachers, doctors etc). Quantitative easing, COVID grants etc have all stopped capitalism doing what it should-recycling wealth to new risk takers and people with skills.

Imagine if the banks hadn’t been bailed out and there hadn’t been QE. Yes, we would have had a massive recession, but asset prices would have collapsed, allowing people like normal lawyers, teachers, junior doctors to actually buy a decent property, just like my generation could. This was a choice, not an obligation.

What we have is a form of crony capitalism where the existing wealthy are protected and wealth is harder and harder to make from scratch.

(Not building enough houses is another policy specifically to encourage House inflation).

You can tax worldwide assets at 1% but you would always have to allow for deductions for debt and agreed exchange rates etc and it quickly becomes very complicated (and what about ISAs etc) - rich people tend to have international investments and are internationally mobile and sophisticated in diversifying their risks. Plus tax too much and off they are gone. Just look at places like Switzerland where some cantons do charge 1% wealth tax - they lost all their super rich to cantons that do not.

The tax man is always better off taxing the sitting ducks - that is rich elderly pensioners sitting on assets when they die. But unless we get a cross party consensus they are not going to do it for fear of losing voters.

You dod recall the financial crashes and massive hikes in interest rates.

I do actually. And I also know that as a long term investment property is about as safe as it gets. I also know that it makes far more financial sense to pay a mortgage than rent. And finally I know that I need somewhere to live.

@DistinguishedSocialCommentator

I chose £2m because it's roughly the start point for the wealth of the wealthiest 5%.

If a wealth tax was 1% on assets over £2m that'd be just £5k a year for someone who owned £2.5m in assets.
Yet it's estimated it would raise £16bn a year.

Which is because the top 1% have £3.5trillion of assets.

Everyone who can, does. Look at the market for BTL mortgages. Nothing offers a guaranteed return, but real estate is the nearest thing.

I own my house, BTW. Before you do one of your assumptions about how I must be a precarious renter living on benefits.