The top 10% of taxpayers contribute 60% of income tax...

[MsPinkMarshmallow]

I'm fed up of hearing that "high earners" will be targeted by the next budget.

The top 10% of taxpayers pay 60% of income tax.

Don't piss them off. They'll just leave the UK or work less so they're taxed less.

Some more stats: in 2024-25, the top 1% of income tax payers earned 13.3 per cent of total income and paid 28.2 per cent of income tax

35% of adults in the UK pay no tax at all

More from the Taxpayers Alliance here:

https://www.taxpayersalliance.com/briefing_share_of_income_tax_paid_by_percentile

<stands back and awaits kicking>

Society is still far more meritocratic than it was 100 years ago. When hardly anyone would have married outside their social class. Now with plenty of kids going to uni or apprenticeships and the majority of DCs in comprehensive style education, they do mix a little more than they used to. However, it is unrealistic to expect a really bright person to spend their life with a person who has a much much lower IQ, hard to connect at that level. Same with height etc., most people do pair up with others they are somewhat similar too and compatible with values, looks, intelligence wise. However, the increased mixing including across races is a good thing for the gene pool. Less imbreeding, more likely to have healthy children too.
I would say the above is actually progress.

Where I believe we have a big problem is broken families, that has increased many fold and is a huge cost to both the taxpayer and to children’s mental health. Most kids are happier in a family with both parents, it is easier for them, it is easier for the parents, if they have a good supportive relationship. As a society, we need to be teaching our kids better loyalty values. If you have a DC you should support it both financially and emotionally etc long term. If one looks at the wealthier demographics, a high percentage are still married.

Where I believe we have a big problem is broken families, that has increased many fold and is a huge cost to both the taxpayer and to children’s mental health. Most kids are happier in a family with both parents, it is easier for them, it is easier for the parents, if they have a good supportive relationship. As a society, we need to be teaching our kids better loyalty values. If you have a DC you should support it both financially and emotionally etc long term. If one looks at the wealthier demographics, a high percentage are still married

Children are happiest when families don't argue, don't cause stress and definitely there is no violence.

As you say "IF they have a good supportive relationship" unfortunately too many parents stay together "for the sake of the children" and cause a great deal of harm.

On divorces, the number is the lowest for 50 years, i wonder if wealthier people stay together because of the financial loss divorce brings, money covers up a lot of ills.

In the 50s, the number of single parent families was 10%, its now 30%

Having lived in Sweden, we could do a lot worse than make our divorce laws less confrontational, encouraging the absent parent to still be apart of the childrens lives.

Nationalising makes things worse, not better - although Labour tried to hide that by pretending LNER started making a profit after nationalisation, when in fact the public subsidy more than doubled 🙄

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/8062346df3e7a761

Typical socialist lies. Socialist ideology doesn't work: it makes everyone poorer (apart from the Party leaders), every single time.

Oh dear!

The last 14 years of Tory rule, shows that the "everything privatised is right" dogma, is extremely costly.
Some industries work best nationalised and others work best in the private sector.

Trains and water are the two most obvious examples, perhaps you can justify the extreme salaries handed out to water CEO's ?

Along with the numerous botched privatisations across the NHS.

All failures & now costing the tax payer 100s of billions to put right.

Thank you for this. It's make me pause and question my dogma

To be fair, you seem very reasonable compared to the pp i was replying too.

I happen to think that most parties have decent ideas and most inc Labour, cock things up.

I was a bit snarky and rude as well. I need to stop being like this on MN. We all have our lives. We can debate the issues without being rude.

That's very rude.

My view is reasonable, politely expressed, and arguably more insightful than yours.

Re-assess your own prejudice.

Nothing rude at all.

Your post stated that nationalisation is a failed Socialist policy and that the only way is privatisation.

"Nationalising makes everything worse" Your words.

Then "Typical socialist lies. Socialist ideology doesn't work: it makes everyone poorer (apart from the Party leaders), every single time"

Quite how nationalisation makes party leaders richer, i don't know?

Capitalism seems have have made Boris, May and Sunak very much better off, as has numerous tory minsters going off to work as directors in the city, whilst still drawing a Govt salary.

As i said, some industries work best in the public sector, others do not, this "All or Nothing" approach is what has got us into a right mess.

Thats hardly "prejudice" is it.

Allowing private companies that may be based overseas to control your utilities, energy, transport network seems crazy. They can set their own prices/agenda and sell off the asset without worry. They have no interest in the consumer except getting the highest return for the least effort.

The taxpayer simply couldn't afford to pay for all the new trains required over the past 20/30 years due to the health and safety laws, disability access laws, etc. We basically had to replace the entire fleet of trains which cost billions. The ONLY way to achieve that was to use private finance via train leasing companies. The taxpayer was also on the hook at the same time to update stations, platforms, etc to comply with disability access laws and H&S laws, plus the massive improvements required in the crumbling infrastructure of the tracks, bridges, viaducts, etc.

Same with the NHS as the taxpayer couldn't afford to directly replace all the crumbling hospitals, so again private finance in the form of PFI was needed. Yes, it was all a cock up due to public sector procurement incompetence, but the general idea/philosophy was right. Same with PFI used to finance new schools etc - again they were essential and we couldn't use public debt/taxpayer to pay for it.

As for LNER, it's no surprise the figures were fiddled to make it look profitable - at first they were using very old trains which had originally been paid for by the taxpayer, so they didn't have to pay leasing costs. All the other privatised TOCs would be profitable too if they didn't have to pay the leases for their trains!!

It's ALL smoke and mirrors.

I think it was Blair who decided not to go ahead with the plans to replace our ageing Nuclear power stations as we could "import" electric and gas cheaply from abroad! That worked well didn't it? Now, of course, we're scrabbling around trying to keep the old nuclear stations operational for longer than their planned lifespans and accelerating the building of new/replacement nuclear power stations. If Blair hadn't screwed things up, the new ones would be operational by now!

Would still have to close/dismantle the old power stations which we can't afford to do either financially or safely. Tories had 14 years to see about cheaper energy and Gove told us that vat could be removed on energy prices after Brexit. We are still waiting.

I like nuclear, and solar and wind.

You ve completely re written history there.

You'll find it was Blair who proposed Hinkley C, the Tories then postponed it, finally agreeing planning 7 years later, only now financed with Chinese money.

Labour also first proposed Sizewell C too (2007) but the Tories then financed it via China, but then postponed it again and again and again.... they cost the tax payer £100m to buy them out, when approval final given, such were the security concerns

The Tories had 14 years to plan any new Nuclear but didn't propose a single power station, talked about it though!

Its now on Labour to sort this mess out & they ve started with Anglesey.

Socialism does always make everyone poorer. That's not being unreasonable: it's just true.

The USSR,, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Vietnam and China's post-war attempts at socialism (both now have a decent standard of living, but that only happened when they abandoned socialist economics - remaining communist only in name and authoritarianism).

Go on, name a country where socialism has improved people's standard of living (socialist economic practice, not just socialist or communist in name).

As for how socialism makes the leaders of thise countries richer, well just look at the leaders of those countries I listed above - which British socialists like Corbyn admire so much.

The current Labour lot haven't managed to enrich themselves much at the county's expense yet - although I'd interpret the cavalier disregard for taxes such as SDLT as a red flag (taxes not applying to leaders - only to the little people - is classic socialism, which has played out in all those countries). Just a few ill-judged freebies. But it takes time, so let's see what happens over the next few years.

Tony Blair's wealth is values at £60million, by the way, and his son's wealth is valued at £375 million. Not bad. Compares pretty favourably to Boris Johnson's £1.6 million and Theresa May's £5million.

Sunak's family wealth comes from his wife, whose father founded Infosys: an IT company with a £54billion market capitalisation. Mind you, despite that the Sunaks' combined net worth is only twice as much as 22 year old Leo Blair's. I'm sure that had nothing to do with his father's old job though.

Since socialist economic policies are intrinsically harmful to the country's standard of living, socialist governments frequently lie about the outcomes to the population. Again, look at the history of the countries I've listed. It's not a coincidence that socialism is so often paired with authoritarianism.

Labour seem to be following that proud socialist tradition of lying about outcomes, when they announced that the nationalisation of LNER meant that it was now contributing to the treasury... when the reality is that the public subsidy has doubled and there is no surplus. That's described in the article I linked.

I thought we were taking at least about the UK/Europe/Labour and nationalisation? not the Soviet Union et al and the far east?

There is a middle way.

You re taking one extreme and applying it to the UK/Labour, which is as far removed from Communism as you could possibly find.

On rail, subsidy tops 12 billion per year, much of which goes to private companies, West coast got close to 100m in subsidy, returned 67m in "profit"

LNER was nationalised by the UK's top socialist party, the Tories, in 2018, because Virgin, that bastion of socialism, failed to run the railway.

So rather than making us all better off, rail privatisation is actually a massive failure.

Same with water, they bang on about Victorian infrastructure, but thats a lie much of our sewage and treatment systems are quite modern, sewage treatment wasn't even a thing in the 1800s, neither was tap water, all those new towns and developments? all have relatively modern systems.

What hasn't happened is the mtce/upgrades and capacity to match pop. growth, so another complete failure of the privatisation model.

Did the UK have a good health system pre 1948 or a better one, with the introduction of the "Socialist" NHS ?

"Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it"

If you think "the UK/Labour... is as far removed from Communism as you could possibly find", you're not paying attention. Sure it won't be early 20th century communism, but the principles, intentions and actions are the same - so the outcomes will be too.

It's not just Labour recently lying about LNER to make nationalisation look like it had worked better than it did - classic socialist propaganda. Labour lied about or didn't disclose so many socialiat and authoritarian intentions in their manifesto.

They claimed in their manifesto that their plans were fully costed and taxes would rise by £8.5 bn. In just 18 months, they've increased taxes by £68 bn a year, and hugely increased borrowing too.

In the last budget, Reeves and Starmer outright lied about the UK's economic situation to justify increasing tax on workers to spend it on benefits.

We're going further down this road than any of the EU countries. I've attached a graph that shows that our gap in tax rate between highest earners and either average or lowest earners is more than even the Nordic countries. And on top of that, the UK provides far fewer state services and handouts on a universal basis than the other countries. Much more of it is means tested and limited. Ie the UK is far, far more redistributive.

How is it that when 11% of our entire GDP is poured into the NHS, I still have to pay for dentistry, physio and even SLT for my dyslexic DD privately, since it isn't available to me on the NHS?! I can assure you that whilst France might spend a bit more of their GDP (12.1%) on their insurance-based healthcare, I would get all of those covered there. The availability of state healthcare for mid/high earners in France is like night and day compared to the UK.

All that money is deliberately funnelled from one part of the population (mid/high earning workers) to low income groups at a totally different scale to other countries. And like with all historic socialist experiments, ours is doomed to painful failure, and suffering for everyone.

Labour are also - like most socialist regimes - trying to force in authoritarian laws which weren't in their manifesto:

• compulsory digital id (opposed by almost 3 million people in a petition - the highest number of any petition apart from Brexit)
• removal of the right to a jury trial for prison sentences less than 3 years
• proposal to roll out facial recognition throughout the country based on passport photo database

I mean, come on. Does this really not concern you??

We're on a road to hell. It might be paved with good intentions - your intentions seem to be good, at least - but please, open your eyes to where we're going.

Yes indeed, repeating the mistakes of what the Tories have done to the country, would doom us.

I don't believe Reeves raised taxes to spend on Welfare at all, 2 child cap removal costs 3bn, yet you claim taxes increased by 68bn..... some 20bn of that is to give the UK some fiscal headroom, its working too, gilt yields well down, allowing BoE to cut interest rates.
Growth higher in the last 16months than in the 16months prior to the GE, we had a recession in Q3/4 of 2023, so whilst growth was decent in Q1/2 of 2024, only because we were coming from a v low base.

You and me both have been unable to get Dentistry for many years, OT/SALT and Physio all under huge strain BUT this didn't happen in the last 18months did it??
I recently paid 4k to have dental treatment, its an utter disgrace and something i'm really pissed off that Labour are not addressing, during Blairs time, i could get NHS dentistry (just) it vanished under the Tories.

If you want better public services, then they have to be paid for, my DD is in NHS, she has seen in community neuro, waiting lists plummet because Labour increased budgets last year, they recruited more staff, prior to this, the list was 22weeks, its now 2 weeks.

Almost all European countries have compulsory ID
95% of all trials don't have a jury already.
I bet if you were attacked and the person responsible was ID'd through Facial Recognition, you'd have a different take...

I don't believe a Manifesto is a contract, if it is, then every Govt breaks them every time.... the manifesto from 2019 is packed full of things that never happened, i don't recall them saying Liz Truss was going to become PM and trash my pension....

The % difference between tax rates doesn't prove anything, in fact it just shows what a low wage economy we have, who imposed 0% pay constraints for many years?

I'm i concerned? yes, because Labour are not going faster in change and that they have done some very serious own goals - Expenses, WFA and perhaps the Farms IHT changes.

Well, Labour have 3.5 more years to do whatever the hell they want.

Let's see how the economy, the national debt, employment and our standard of living is looking then.

I am still most concerned about a lot of young educated people leaving because there is nothing much left for them here. That brain drain will cost billions in the future and it’s exactly the kind of thing politicians dig their head in the sand over -because it’s a next Government’s problem. For example, uni levy etc, it’s not going to raise money just put Chinese and Indian students off which means less funding here and Germany lapping up some of those workers. Plan 5 is a nightmare, nothing to support getting on the housing ladder. That demographic don’t see the lifting of a two child benefit cap for them, a lot of them don’t even think about having children.
When politicians make policies they really need to start looking at the impacts on everyone across society and stop benefiting certain groups at the expense of other groups. Fairness means being fair to all, in equal measures.

Yes great isn't it.

Mortgage rates down substantially, stock market booming, means my pension has finally making gains over and above the mess Truss put them in.

More money for the NHS too, together with much needed changes.

Growth forecast to grow in all of the next 3 years, debt to fall too, unemployment will increase, AI makes that a certainty but i feel sure Labour will be blamed for that.

Or sooner. Starmer’s struggling. Let’s see.

Given current security briefings, intellectual property theft and Chinese "influence" inside Uni's and pressure on student Chinese dissidents.

Do we really need to encourage Chinese Students?

7000 Indian students over stayed their Visa's last year, many more claim asylum, having come here on study visa's

Shouldn't we be funding Uni's from taxation rather than relying on overseas students.