To be confused by 'high earners' complaining about taxes?

but then how many businesses have amazon put out of business etc

It's all to do with skill. Jeff Bezos is the reason many people have a living and can pay their bills and look after family. He creates employment and jobs. He ran the business well, did good decisions to make it the tech titan it is today.

A relative of mine is a SWE at Amazon. They get paid very well.

@ForestFlowerFairy This is a side topic but you are probably entitled to both New Style ESA and PIP. They are not means tested. Have you checked? Many hospitals offer Macmillan caseworkers to help you check eligibility.

It is nothing to do with skill.
It is the fact that the people at the top of companies only earn their £££££ because of the people at the very bottom.

Do you think Jeff Bezos (Amazon) would be so successful now if he was still working from his garage (or whatever his humble beginnings were)?
He is super rich because there are people working all hours in shit conditions and on shit pay doing the shit work for him.

without the govt, capitalism would be victorian england with the vast many very poor and only a few mega rich so would you prefer that model instead ?

Yes and they do it and get paid for it.

It doesn't matter whether it's a job that many people can do. The point is that people have to do it if the high earning non producers are to be paid.

it’s okay if you are a communist I guess

Ah but many people can do it, so it's not a unique skill to offer.

I mean they wouldn't mass quit as they need their jobs. And they agreed to their pay as part of their labour contract?

WIthout the low paid doing the labour, making the product and delivering it, the people above them are nothing. They would have no products to sell.

I don't understand what you mean. If someone is low paid and in the private sector that usually means it's a low skilled job that many people can do.

I think you missed the point a little.

Because if there were no lower paid people making products and delivering services, there would be no products and no services to sell, so no profit made, no business and no CEOs, directors and shareholders.
If people weren't labouring for low pay, there would be less profit with which to pay CEOs, directors and shareholders.
Its all well and good contributing investment, management skills, strategy, but if you've no producers you've nothing to profit from.

The staff would be replaced. And if they all mass quit how would these staff pay their bills?

These days, ‘high earners’ include school teachers earning around 50k according to the tax system, not just CEOs in 400k!

High earner sell their services which society seems to value and pay for?

What would happen to Amazon's profits if all the warehouse staff and drivers just quit?

Where do exports fit in your mental model? My high earnings are ultimately paid for by people in Europe and Asia (but not really the UK) because that’s where my clients mostly are. I don’t see how the average UK taxpayer gets to claim credit for that.

Yes comrade, all money is OUR money and the wealthy are just holding it for us until the People’s Committee reallocates it. By this logic my hairdresser owns 0.0003% of Germany. Strong Eastern Bloc energy—next step is queues for bananas and a five-year plan for all Google salaries.

I hope not. I hope that money would be ploughed into public services. So if you’ve been raped you so t have to wait years to give evidence in trial, if your child needs a CAMHS appointment they didn’t have to wait 3 years, that we had money to open specialist schools again so my child and classmates weren’t regularly punched in the face by someone clearly not suited to mainstream education, that flood defences could be built to protect homes, that we had enough police that we could catch shoplifters, I could go on all night.

These are basic services that are not being provided to me from my sky high taxes. I think we have a right to be annoyed.

How does the labour of the lower paid create the profits of the higher paid? I don't understand what you're saying.

This is exactly where I am, income streams without having to work work of almost 6 figures. I could also work for a six figure salary……but when there is no mortgage, savings, pension and investments and there is volunteering I want to do - with the tax burden it doesn’t make sense.

It is wrong for a high earner to complain about taxes.
They don’t pay any more than anyone else on their basic income; they only pay higher rates on their higher wages (which is fair enough).
If they don’t want to pay high rates they can take low paid jobs: they will work just as hard but will earn less and pay less taxes.

Everyone's taxes pay for these things not just the taxes of high earners, so we shouldn't phrase it as 'high earners pay for...' as though they are the only ones playing a part. Obviously they contribute more, and obviously we need their contribution. But equally they need the contribution of less privileged people who's labour creates their profit and who's money buys the product that made them wealthy.
This isn't a thread about why we need high earners, it's a thread suggesting we are all interdependent and carrying each other.