Can someone explain to me why/how the Labour government has directly made them worse off in the last 15 months?

[MotherofAdults]

Can someone explain to me why/how the Labour government has directly made them worse off in the last 15 months? I see this claim a lot on these pages, but I don't understand why. Sorry if I sound stupid, I am just trying to get clear.

I totally understand that the cost of living keeps going up - that inflation keeps rising (3.5-3.8%?) and that mortgage interest remains relatively high, but I don't understand why or how this is the fault of the current government? What have/haven't they done? Are people angry that they haven't curbed inflation? What should they be doing?

If we could avoid mentioning the things that didn't actually happen (eg the Winter Fuel Allowence cuts) and speculation about what the next budget will do (doubling of council tax, rise in minimum wage etc), that would be really helpful. I am looking for actual changes made by this that have directly affected your financial situation since Labour got it.

16 year olds are going to vote in the next election. If lots of them do vote and one can get to them and have a vision online and via social media, that may be more important than anyone currently thinks anyway. I would be putting my efforts there increasingly, not appeasing pensioners.

Weirdly though it was the press and people with elderly parents who seemed to be outraged at the Winter Fuel issue. I didn't expect it to be so negatively received at the time as I know a few pensioners who opted to not receive it and didn't know why they had to jump through hoops to prove they didn't need it when people struggle to get PIP.

I wasn't really putting forward a fully thought-out proposal as much as making the point that if we focused the "them and us" acrimony that seems so rife and divisive at the moment on that kind of wealth level, society might feel a more cohesive place than it does right now.

The positions of a person who can't quite afford private school and one who can at a push is so much closer than the person who just can and the wealth of someone with £200 million. We are squabbling in the cheap seats.

We will squabble even more in the cheap seats if we piss off the truly rich because the US and Italians will just sell them a golden passport anyway. So what exactly is the point? Those who are still here and sitting on millions and millions are probably those who are willing to pay a substantial amount of tax anyway. All those who do not want to pay and do not feel they owe society anything left a long time ago, did they not?
The ones I have a real problem with are those sitting in tax havens and wanting to pay nothing but have a negative influence from a far, hoping to get Farage in so they can come back to a tax haven.

It would be complicated - but what's the alternative - continue to let the billionaires accumulate wealth while 99% of the population struggles with day to day living costs and public services continue to disintegrate?

People may not believe me from my posts on here, but I am not a socialist - I'm a left leaning centrist. I like capitalism I like having nice things and being able to afford to do nice things.

I am from a working class background, my mom and dad are unusual among their siblings in owning their own house and not living in social housing and I was the first in my family to go to university. My childhood wasn't one of poverty by any means, but there were times when I got free school meals, holidays were a week at Pontin's and I didn't get to have expensive hobbies. DH was similar, and at times really did feel poverty.

Our household income now puts us in the top 2%, and we've worked hard to get here. My kids get to do expensive hobbies, we go on a couple of holidays a year and go to a lot of gigs / shows / festivals. However, we recognise just how privileged we are and we make sure our children understand that.

As much as I enjoy our lifestyle, I also want to live in a tolerant and fair society with a decent social safety net, where children get a good, free (at the point of use) education, where people can get universal, good quality health care, afford to live in decent, secure housing and have enough money left over to have some fun and a work / life balance. I want the elderly and disabled to receive the care they need and be able to put the heating on without worrying that the bills will bankrupt them.

I want the next generation of working class kids to have the same opportunities that we did and I want the gap between those who have the most and those who have the least to be a whole lot smaller!

If I have to pay a few hundred quid more a month in tax for that to happen, then so be it - I may have to go down a star on my holiday hotel, go to a fewer gigs and shows and fewer meals out, in my view, it is a price worth paying.

But the top 1-2% of earners paying more in tax on their income, is a whole different conversation to what should happen to the billionaires. That level of wealth is not just obscene, it is gained on the back of the rest of us as they buy up assets and debt to add to their balance sheets and exploit the people that work for them.

The acquisition of that much wealth is not about having the cash to spend, it is that the wealth is a measure of status and success. If we can create a different measure for status and success, the wealth is no longer a goal - anything over £200 million of personal wealth would compound interest / stock gains quicker than it can be spent. Yes, there would need to be discussions about how that is defined, but just because it is difficult doesn't mean we shouldn't have them.

It's not about changing the rules of the game to take so much off Jeff Bezos that he can't have a $50 million dollar wedding, it's about playing a different game altogether. One where there is no incentive hoard wealth to the levels that the billionaires do because when you get to £200 million (or whatever the cut off point is) the measure of success becomes how much you make for society rather than how much personal wealth you gain by taking from it.

I know it's a utopian ideal and one which will probably never happen, but we have to start doing something otherwise the whole thing will collapse and we'll end up in some kind of post apocalyptic, war ridden hellscape.

I'm starting to think we should have a global sacrifice a Trillionaire day, make them do some form of Squid Game, then we can split the riches. One every 2 years should do the trick.
I've edited because Google tells me there are no trillionaires, although I feel sure I saw a news story just last week. Billionaires would do, there are 2700 of those globally.

I know several wealthy families (not £200 million wealthy) who have left and other families who are seriously debating it.

ETA and as you say the seriously rich have left anyway. What we don't want to be left with is the just the poorer citizens and a policy of living of income and wealth tax with no wealth left to fund it.

People tend to see ‘the wealthy’ who should be taxed more as those who earn millions. The government thinks differently, it looks like Labour is setting the definition of wealthy at £46,000. Those on £46,000 also tend to be a lot easier to tax too - on PAYE, relatively immobile, etc. Taxing millionaires/billionaires always seems very attractive but is fraught with more unintended consequences (including loss of political donations…)

We are squabbling in the cheap seats.

Yep - it's that 'careful mate, that foreigner wants your cookie' meme.

But instead of a construction worker sitting opposite an immigrant, its someone on the bones of their arse sitting opposite someone who has managed to send their kids to a private school and the billionaire is saying "careful mate, that waster wants to take your kids education"

Exactly. Most of us are facing similar pressures, not at exactly the same level, but far closer in the bigger picture than gets acknowledged by divisive talk.

A lot of the tech billionaires are new money and the US pretty much sets the scene. It is not like we can control it other than having an open conversation with the US and EU about their obligations towards society and a move towards some sort of reasonable global wealth tax, in civilised societies.
In the long run, most billionaires realise that money alone does not make them happy and care more about legacy and what good they can do for society, so they become immortal. It is just still early days for these tech billionaires. A lot of the upper class Brits do do their bit for charity and want their legacy to continue. Personally, I am not jealous of them. As long as they do pay income taxes and stay here I am OK with it.

Most of the billionaires are here as ex-pats, non-domiciled or immigrants - though ‘immigrant’ has a different meaning and generally just means ‘where I spend most of my time when not on my yacht or my other homes’.

Yes. And £46,000.00 is wealthier than someone on £36,000.00 but they still face many similar issues.

The real joke is that if there had been a local state school with similar provisions and skills to have sent her to I wouldn't have hesitated. The disparities on what is on offer in London for education, SEN etc and the rest of the country is ginormous. Choosing to spend so much on education was not something I took lightly, but a necessity due to my location. If I lived in London no doubt it would all be in the bank gathering interest. It's far more grey than people in Labour make out when you have private schools taking on 30% SEN kids and grammars, for example, only 2%.

Anybody I know with serious money lives in Monaco however
They do have trust set up in the UK to honour family name beyond the grave.

No, they didn't. It was only their money that left the country.

The super rich leaving the country if taxes are increased is a myth that has been disproved time and time again.

An US style requirement to file a UK tax return on global earnings if they want to remain a citizen will stop most from leaving as they would be no better off, and it would only impact those who have a very high £100,000's income, if the tax thresholds were properly reformed.

People who want to have the privilege of UK citizenship, should contribute to the betterment of UK society. They should not be allowed to make money off the back of UK workers and consumers and then squirrel that money away in some offshore Caymen Island account!

Why do we keep talking about "most of the billionaires"? There really aren't many ...

If there were three then two would be ‘most’.

Yes, of course. But that's totally missing the point.

There are about 3000 worldwide, about half of them in the US and China.

The problem with asking the question about how Labour have made life harder is that there are a lot of Labour supporters who will not see anyone else’s POV and dismiss any sort of experience.

In their eyes Labour can do no wrong and any issues is blamed on the Tories or on businesses or on the top 1%

People need to read the question and stop dismissing someone’s direct experience because what is being made harder is something they wouldn’t do

The problem with asking the question about how Labour have made life harder is that there are a lot of Labour supporters who will not see anyone else’s POV and dismiss any sort of experience.

I agree with this; the OP even said she didn't want to hear from certain groups.

What is distressing to me is the current level of polarisation and othering of people in different situations or with different views, and an undercurrent in so many places that someone else has to suffer to make them feel better.

https://taxjustice.uk/blog/scale-of-extreme-wealth-in-uk-revealed/

• There are 156 billionaires in the UK.
• The 350 richest individuals and families on the Rich List hold combined wealth of £772.8 billion, more than the GDP of countries like Belgium, Argentina or Ireland.
• The UK’s 50 richest families hold more wealth than 50% of the population.
• A wealth tax of 2% on fortunes worth over £10 million could raise £24 billion a year.

Taking it at its most simple form, £10,000,000 in the bank at 4% interest would make £400,000 a year. Current tax rates plus a 2% wealth tax would £366,000ish, so they would still be making £34,000 in interest a year and not touching their capital.

But in reality, people who have £10,000 000 in wealth make a lot more than £400,000 a year on that money, so a 2% wealth tax would affect them even less!

That's a well put-together summary at first glance.

Note the volume of wealth held by 50 families. Just 50. So not all that much point for the rest of us to be squabbling eh?

The Victorians had that cracked, up to a point. Look at how many of the ultra wealthy of that time had an element of philanthropy to their spending, recognising that their wealth could be put to good use. In London great swathes of affordable housing were bult by the wealthy, along with schools and hospitals. That was repeated in the industrial north - with universities, hospitals and galleries in places like Manchester. On the housing front, some even went as building entire villages - Bournville, Rowntree, Reckitts, Lever...

Now at one level none of this was entirely altruistic, as well housed, entertained and treated workers would always be more productive. And rent paid went back to the employer, creating a loyalty and dependency that benefitted the employer as well. That recognition has gone, with employees being, broadly, dispensable and to paid as little as possible. That's not just capitalism, as the Victorians were as capitalist as they come. The welfare state has absolved employers of having to consider some of these things, and Government's ever increasing reach along with shorter and shorter term thinking by companies means that its always someone else's problem... IMO

2% wealth tax is high. If I put 100 in the bank and get a return of 4% I get 4. With my marginal tax rate. I am already handing over half of that pretty much.

So if I had to pay 2 per cent on 100 as well, I would get nothing? Who is going to stay for that.
Clearly I am not a billionaire, but 2% wealth tax is completely barmy? I mean you do have to let people get some return on their money?