AIBU to want spending cuts rather than more tax rises?

There is fair taxation, and there is punitive taxation. DH has a teeny business, but it's very specialist and they charge a lot. It's not scalable, and you can't send a novice/trainee to look at a job.

The shareholders are the general public though - where do you think most people's private pensions are invested?

do you have any pension at all?

if yes, then you are a shareholder. So you should hope the shares do well, otherwise you're screwed in your old age

For all UK citizens, and especially for those people on benefits waiting for hand outs

They do pay fair taxation. More than fair.

But you can't stop them moving money internationally and expect them to stay in the UK.

"Profitable" for who?

If paying fair taxation stoos a company "function", it's not actually that well functioning.

and kill our Finance sector for good. The most profitable sector of economy which brings over 43bn in tax pa

It always boils down to taking money from the unemployed, disabled, children or elderly on these threads. Then the immigrant bashing starts.

What an unhappy way to live.

Why do they need that level of liquidity if they're rubust companies? Why would they not have some level of stable holdings in the UK... as all wage paying companies are bound to under PAYE system anyway?

We need to allow businesses to function.

Otherwise we will become as poor as the USSR and Cuba.

Did you know that when Yeltsin visited the US and went into a supermarket, that's what made him realise how harmful communism was. Allegedly he said 'my god, what have we done'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_visit_by_Boris_Yeltsin_to_the_United_States

Relationship between intelligence and income is not linear of course, but there is a strong correlation.
I take your point about academia, I'd consider this vocational, and it's still a very small percentage of population.

I worked a lot internationally and for multinational businesses. I can see a very strong correlation between intelligence, drive and ambition and career progression/money achieved. Of course there are examples of bright people struggling and very occasional thickos at a higher level. But in general, the more intelligent and driven you are, the better you earn. Your example of African doctors confirms this - she was a middle class in her own environment. We can't compare lifestyles across different countries.

And this is one of the issues we have with politicians - a super smart younger person has much better options in private business than in politics, without all the issues of being in public eye. This means that those young bright stars just don't enter politics anymore and we have the likes of many of our current MPs who are blinded by ideology without any understanding of consequences of their actions

ETA: as to define high earner - it's 100k+ for me. Individually, not household.

If the UK introduces exit capital controls, those foreign institutions face the terrifying prospect that their liquidity is suddenly "trapped" or subject to bureaucratic delays. They would immediately stop routing transactions through London, causing liquidity to dry up instantly.

Frankly, that has to be an option. There is a huge cost in looking after anybody that is unviable independently. If you ask me the question "Am I prepared to fund what it costs to rear your handicapped child to adulthood and support them to their demise, I'd probably say no. Very apologetic to be cut and dried here.

Not the Caymen Islands! 🤣

What are you actually talking about? People taking their money out the country to "retire" or sending it to family out of the country isn't a secret.

Where do you think benefits come from?

I will do me thanks. What’s your problem with the Green Party of England?

Well you claimed that it's happening, so I'm giving you the opportunity to give some detail instead of just spouting populist thought-terminating-cliches..

The (legal) mechanism will do.

Newspapers are quite good at investigating this kind of thing though, so a story would also be good.

If you're actually basing your opinion on facts...

I didn't say stop them, I said regulate them.

So we need to think of the poor struggling share holders, but f*ck the general public... sure.

Do you even know how this works?

Do you know that a lot of British businesses aren't owned by British citizens? even the most iconic ones. You can't really stop them from moving profits abroad then unless you nationalise them. But this will lead to a full and certain economic collapse.

@nearlylovemyusername

Define 'high earner'?
My salary is well above the UK median and my household income over 2x the median. I'm fortunate to still be comfortable despite the rising cost of living. But I don't draw a six-figure salary.

Your attempt to imply that I wrote what I wrote out of envy or ignorance may say more about you than me.

I've moved a lot and lived among a lot of highly educated people. In my experience, those with the highest-spec brains have tended to go into science and often ended up working very challenging lab jobs with ridiculously low salaries and not a lot of status. Very few scientists become 'high earners'.
Those who went into banking tended to be of two kinds: either they were really good at maths, or they had slightly above-average intelligence, a strong sense of entitlement, and they cared about money. One professional mathematician I know who is also really good at understanding social processes (a very different thing) works for peanuts for a polling firm. One mathematician I've know who did very well in banking was brutally (and somewhat self-servingly) naive about politics and policy. Intelligence isn't all one thing.

Possibly the hardest-working and one of the smartest person(s) I know is a doctor in an African country; she has a middle-class lifestyle in terms of local purchasing power but would be poor in Europe. Another really smart person I knew, also a doctor, died in poverty because she was also a, wise and b, depressed, and worked 'only' as a locum. She said she was wary of the power patients ascribe to doctors, she didn't want to be the demigod in a white cloak.

Point being: to claim that there is a linear relationship between intelligence and income is, well, not very smart. But is IS a very convenient way for the haves to pretend they deserve their wealth, whatever may be going on with the have-nots, and that is why it posses me off. @Goota

How?

Ermm... because half of all UK residents expect all sorts of benefits that they aren't paying for...