To think that there is no hope here?

If the cost of living wasn’t so high, the state handouts wouldn’t be needed.

But when the state sells its infrastructure off to the highest bidder (trains, energy, manufacturing, health service etc), when there is no limit on house prices and the rental market, when waiting times for the NHS are at an all time high and understaffing is rife- it means people cannot afford to live on just one salary alone, it means sick people can’t get better and back to work.

Rents for a 3-bed family home in many parts of the south east cost the same as the take home pay of the average UK salary. It’s unsustainable.

The fix isn’t less benefits, the fix is more affordable living.

Ah, lovely Mumsnet on a Monday morning…it warms the cockles of my heart.
I honestly don’t recognise any of the sentiment you talk about OP. I’m a higher earner (top 0.5%) and I happily and gladly pay my high taxes. I wouldn’t leave England if you doubled my salary…not even if you tripled it. I mean to be fair to you, no one but my husband knows how much I earn so I don’t face any of the jealousy or whatever it is you’re talking about in your post. I benefitted from a state education, I benefitted from free health care. I benefitted from child support when I was younger and poorer.
Teachers and nurses and police officers don’t work any less hard than I do..I would say most of them probably work harder. So yes, I’m happy to pay high taxes to fund their inflation based pay hike because somewhere along the line I fell in a lucky bush…and I never forget that.

Really? You wish the wealthy would leave?
I don’t think people really understand what that would mean for a country.

You were complaining quite forcefully that you didn't like it when m people on this thread said how they felt about things if they were higher earners.

If you don't live here you probably don't have a good picture about life in the UK at the moment. So you won't be in the best position to judge if their views are valid or not.

OP, we have family and friends living in countries in Europe, Asia and North America. I can tell you that things are going downhill almost everywhere. Economies are struggling and the far right is rising. It’s a global, or at least western problem, not a UK problem. We briefly considered relocating last year, but as soon as you spend more than a few weeks in a new country, you begin to see the cracks.

There are some growing economies, but there you’d have to put up with corruption, slow or inexistent public services, inequality etc. These might not affect you directly if you’re relatively rich, but it can be draining to witness on a daily basis.

🥱

It really is time the ablists refreshed their material.

Which is it, reliant on the state or net reliant on the state, you keep swapping between the 2?

Someone who takes out £1 more than they put in is net reliant.

Surely as we baby boomers die off, our much envied, vast accumulated wealth will be inherited by younger generations. That should go some way to reduce means tested benefits perhaps? Unless of course we’re all paying for private care homes.

Also, pension awareness has been raised for younger generations, with auto enrolment being far more the norm now.

They can’t. PIP doesn’t support alcoholism and alcoholism isn’t a disability as described by the Equality Act 2010. You can only get PIP for a health problem or disability caused by alcohol, and then it would have to be significantly to qualify for the higher rate mobility component of PIP which pays for the lease of the car. It’s nonsense and usually accompanies the statement that the tax payer is footing the bill for the motability car, which is also not true

People are asking about the constituent parts of the statistics. Does it matter?

Of course it matters!

Are you including pensioners/children who are not going to be net contributors in any system?

Are you including all public sector workers, as many of these stats do? If you want public services, sadly in the absence of indentured servitude, you do have to pay the people who are delivering it.

Are you including parents of school age children, users of the NHS, recipients of adult social care?

If what you really mean is “I wish we could abolish the NHS, close state schools and dispense with adult social care, and bring in compulsory euthanasia for 70 year olds”, fair enough but be honest about it. You (and Nigel Farage and Rodrick Jenkin) want to live in a very different society to most of the country.

Take a look at Dubai if you want to emigrate, you won’t find what you want in Europe, Canada, or Aus/NZ.

I was addressing the "points" the OP made, so not sure what you mean by "proper picture".

Yes, I'm having an amazing time here, thank you very much.

People are asking about the constituent parts of the statistics. Does it matter? The point is regardless of who sits within that figure, it is unaffordable and way too high. The billions in shortfall to fund it and the need for radical measures that our welfare state never thought it would need to do, is very telling. 52% and growing is unsustainable regardless of who make up this figure.

@Taxed it does matter, because whether there is a solution, and what that looks like, will vary massively depending on “who sits within that figure”.
Solutions for the pension bill will be different to solutions tackling working-age health-related claims. it’s much harder to “clamp down” on pensioners than on those of working age who have poor mental (or physical) health, which of course it’s why the latter groups are usually the target of politicians’ soundbites.

But as you say, taxing those in work gets harder as their numbers drop, and so a tax on assets rather than work seems appealing. But then how do you assess what’s taxable? You can’t tax the value of someone’s home because they’re living there, but if you tax cash savings you deter people from having savings. Can you tax properties whose owner doesn’t live in them? Shares? Pension portfolios?

If not a tax in some form on wealth/assets, where else can a government look for income? This is a genuine question- surely why the current government keeps talking about the need to grow the economy- other countries with similar economic and demographic problems have found them very hard to get out of, like Japan.

Quite frankly, it's troubling that someone who gets paid as much as the OP apparently does, has such a poor grasp of stats and maths despite many people on the thread explaining it to her.

I really hope the OPs wealth isn't in finance or the UK is probably more screwed than we realise.

But what is the trend? In 2010 the number was 53.5%. You can’t just pluck a single statistic and say this isn’t sustainable.
I agree the number is too high, but there’s not point looking at it in isolation.

Hang on. You're replying to a poster that doesn't even live here! And then accusing people of being Russian. Presumably because you just don't agree with them, which is usually the way it goes on here.

I’m more worried about the fact that nurses go to food banks as they are not paid a proper wage and that teachers are leaving the professions in droves. Legal aid lawyers are being paid very little and young people do not want to enter the profession impacting how people with limited means might be able to access their rights. Lecturers going on strike as they too have seen limited rise in their pay over years. These people are also tired and sad. I understand your point that the country is on its knees abd congratulate you on your financial success but the lens through which you present the issues (high earners are being taxed too much) is not the thing I’d focus on. You mentioned maybe moving to the US. I’m sure things will go well there re taxation but not so much on women’s’ rights and anything related to ideas of rule of law. Best wishes.

We left the UK, we were both high earners, we had zero issue with the amount of tax we paid, or with what taxes fund.

The US is an interesting choice, have you looked at the number of workers in the US who pay no income tax? Some years it is as high as 40%. I lived in the states for a short time, my taxes were higher than in the UK, there were fewer net contributors, taxes were also spent far less efficiently. So the USA is a very very odd choice.

100%. I've lived and worked abroad for a long time and nowhere is perfect.

I cringe to death at these threads by high earners screaming about how they'd be better off earning less. For the record, we have a high household income but I grew up in a household entirely reliant on the state. I can tell you, you would not be 'better off being less successful'.

No. No you can’t.
please don’t believe this tripe. It keeps getting repeated on social media and it’s wrong.
ive supplied and bought cars from Motability for decades.
Let me explain how it works. Motability are a fleet provider, like ones that supply company cars. They are actually the largest in the U.K. and as such command large discounts from manufacturers. In a similar way enterprise rent a car or hertz do.

the end user needs to be in receipt of the higher rate of mobility (note mobility not motability) payment on their PIP. This is incredibly hard to get, there’s often threads on here where people are worried as their review is up and they are often brutal.
so once they get through that, they are in receipt of the mobility element. This payment can be used to go towards taxis, public transport, buying a new car through the scheme or not, running a second hand car. Whatever the end user chooses to do. From memory it’s £77 a week.

if they choose to use it to lease a Motability car, the payment will not be enough to choose anything flashy or large. It will result in the end user topping up the lease payment each month from their own income. £308 a month (no deposit and fully maintained) does not get you much these days.

At the end of the lease the car is handed back to Motability, the end user kisses good bye to any extra they’ve paid towards it. And the fair wear and tear is brutally harsh, with the end user expected to pay for anything found. If during the lease time they lose their enhanced mobility payment, the car must be returned within a few months (again forfeiting any additional payments they’ve made).

if we get to the nuts and bolts. Motability scheme is a contributor to the motor-trade economy. They keep new cars being manufactured, sold and maintained. They then keep a supply of used stock coming back into rotation to be sold. These are not free cars, It’s a contribution towards mobility in whatever way the end user decides is best for them. Most end users have to substantially top up the contribution to lease a car suitable. This means many people find the scheme too expensive to access.

No one owes you anything in life. The State is supposed to be a safety net not a way of life.

Agree about housing though. Although penalising landlords seems to have backfired.

I bet half of these high earners are living in their mum's basement.

Wonder what basement is in Russian? 🤔

Of course the constituent details of the figures matter. You clearly know zilch about economics.

Good luck on your travels! 👋

Yes you probably won't get a proper picture of life in the UK in the last year if you live in Aus. Hope you're having a lovely time over there though!

So you want people to ‘put their backs into it’ while working for wealthy employers who pay themselves massive bonuses and dividends to their shareholders while paying such shit wages that their employees have to be topped up by the tax payer to be able to just about break even ? And then to hand over a significant portion of that wage in rent to greedy landlords who are raking it in via UC to the point where they increase their rents in line with annual UC increases ? It’s easier to blame the ‘lazy’ workforce than to look at actual facts.