to be glad that Hollande has finally introduced his 75% income tax rate?

[longfingernails]

Now even more of the best and brightest French people will be driven away, and London is a natural destination for them. Also we are able to see what a disaster Red Ed style socialism is, without having to experience it ourselves.

An arithmetical note for our French friends: 75% of 0 is 0.

And I wouldn't describe any state as a 'nanny state' because it's a term adopted by the terminally hard of thinking and as such meaningless.

*sorry, not 'adopted' but 'used'. It's just stupid talk.

Trickle down can work even if the gap is getting wider - people in this country are unarguably better off now than in the late 70's - see here

People in the late 70s could afford to buy and heat a home on one wage. Not so easy now.

Wallison

a) I didn't say that rich people were stigmatised. I said that there is a stigma attached to being rich. Not quite the same thing, and the latter point has been proved by many of the posts on this thread. Wealth generation is a good thing for a country. But maybe you wish we were all subsistence farmers.

b) Tax revenues = services and, yes, money for other people. Only a lot of tax money seems to go to private contractor mates of the govt on half-arsed projects that cost £millions, and the money is never seen again. Oh really? On what are you basing that assumption? The largest chunk (20%) of public spending is on public pensions.

c) Though I can't see any possible reason for bringing the Nazis into this discussion, Britain hardly has an unblemished history itself.

FFS indeed.

Yes, Cameron is living proof of the stigma attached to being rich. I really feel for him and all of the other toffs forced to send their children to Eton where they have no hope of being the ones with influence and power in the future.

Please. Read. What. I. Wrote.

Or don't. We are never going to agree.

Go on then, give me an example of the terrible stigma attached to being rich and how the rich suffer because of it. Nb saying 'Wallison on mumsnet thinks they are cunts' doesn't count.

For the third time, I'm not saying that the rich suffer. I'm saying that the country suffers as a whole if it is not viewed as 'a good thing' to earn a lot of money.

The percentage of tax payers who are net contributors is very small - I'm sorry I can't recall the figure, but niceguy2 quoted a different one near the beginning of the thread re the contribution of income tax paid by the top 1% of earners - why is it necessary to be constantly berating those who are providing much of the funding for our public services?!

If they don't suffer, then how are they stigmatised?

I said there is a stigma attached to being rich, that is, the concept of, which IS in fact proved by statements such as 'Wallison on mumsnet thinks they are cunts' (and the hundreds of other similar ones you come across on here day after day).

If someone said 'the poor are cunts' there would be an uproar. But from a purely economic perspective, and we are talking economics here, the rich contribute more to society. So, again, why are they so maligned?

NB PLEASE don't read that as me thinking that the rich contribute more full stop.

Actually LOL at Not everyone with money is a megalomaniac hiding in a Volcano lair and wiping their arse on fresh kittens

Sorry nothing sensible to contribute apart from that seems to be an insane amount of tax and as a business I would look elsewhere to, for example, open a major new production facility if my top people wouldn't want to work there.

Ah, so there is a stigma attached to being rich because of what I write on Mumsnet. Woohoo - didn't realise I was so powerful. Honestly, will you just listen to yourself while looking at all of the advantages that being rich gives to people? Not even seeing a teensy little bit of that? Last I heard, the PM wasn't a binman, or a cleaner, or even the son of a binman or cleaner. Nor are any of his mates in the cabinet. Or his mates in the judiciary. Or his mates with their fingers in the public sector purse aka outsourcing. Or his mates in banking. Obv all of that is negated by what some screaming leftie on a talkboard says, because after all I run the world.

Ffs.

Again.

It's weird how I, and others on this thread, can write about what is positive for a country economically and what you read is something so completely different. As I thought there was no point trying to explain..

Imagine for simplicity someone was previously earning 5 million euros a year.

Yes but who is paying that 5M ?

The populus.

If you want to pay loads to footballers and very clever gamblers derivative traders, do go ahead.

Just not my cup of tea.

do we need more overly paid people coming here, pushing up mortgage and rent prices

we need fair pay for all the gap is getting wider and it is not just those at the very bottom that are struggling now

My DC's primary school is full of little French children, whose parents moved over here some years ago. It's great having them. Also reflects worsening climate for French Jews, of course, and I doubt if the quennelle controversy will do much to improve the situation.

freudian how do you fund fair pay for all - i have looked at rentokill's annual accounts here, chosen as it has a lot of low paid people ie cleaners etc. The average salary cost of all, including the directors is £17,512. The 11 directors get around £3m pounds.
If we pay them nothing and share the rest across the rest of employees, we get £17,515 per employee.
The company made a loss in 2011, so no return to shareholders - in 2010, the profit before interest (after tax) was £26.7m, shared between all workers is an extra £200 pounds each.
So even if the fat cat directors, the lenders and the owners get nothing, the additional pay is around £203 per head
The question therefore is, where does the money come from?

75% of High Court judges attended an independent school. For the Supreme Court and Heads of Division, that figure rises to 90%.

They have quite a lot of clout though, no? If you're looking for influential people, you look at the top, not the bottom. And if you look at the top and find, in a country where 6% of pupils go to independent schools, that 75% and 90% respectively are from that background, that to me is evidence of pretty much a closed shop.

I am old enough to remember the 97.5% tax that Labour introduced. I am also old enough to know several family businesses that closed up and the family moved abroad.

Labour spent the money then thought the rich would pick up the tab. The rich bought an airline ticket and left the average to lower paid to pick up the tab hence the 35% basic income tax.

If you're old enough to remember it, then you're old enough to know that it was 83%, not 97.5%, surely?

income tax was 83% but if you include NI then the effective rate was 97.5%