to be utterly incensed that the gap between the very richest people and everyone else in society is getting wider and wider?

[Mintyy]

They are rich. Why can't it stop there?

Why do they have to go from being multi millionaires to billionaires to multi billionaires?

I wouldn't find it so hard to swallow if the opportunity to earn more was open to everyone, but it most definitely is not.

The fact that the gap between the richest and the poorest in our country is widening enormously really sickens me to the back teeth.

Hah.

Why, of a person is infuriated by the gap between rich and poor would they seriously discount much of the world? They'd think we were greedy for having more than one pair of shoes and, yes, the fecking internet in some places (that I have seen).

This "let's talk about poverty, as long as we ignore the developing world" is utterly staggering.

*if

Charley, yes, that would be great. I don't know if I'm misremembering this, but I'm sure they were going to add it to the curriculum. Much more useful than some other stuff taught.

YANBU minty

But you'll find the majority of people here support society being unequal, because they believe that people's right to be stinking rich trumps the right of everyone else to live in a society which isn't shit.

and if I hear the phrase 'hardworking people' one more time I may have to take my samurai sword down from the wall and go harvesting Tories

Stinking at the top?

narcissistic

I was just trying to point out that the unfairness in the world economy doesn't justify the unfairness in the UK economy.
Have we to wait until the world's poor are equally poor before we start to do something about it ?

I don't think we could ever have an equal society, but we could have one that is fairer than it is now.

What isn't mentioned above is that when the wealth of Philip Green/Richard Branson etc is mentioned, though of course they are super rich, they don't have all that money in the bank available to spend. Most of it is the value of their shares in businesses which they have created. When that business does well their paper wealth goes up, but so hopefully does the number of people they employ and the investment their business makes in the economy.

Also remember in the noise about the rates of tax that the top 1% of taxpayers pay nearly 1/3 of income tax in this country, so the idea that they are all successful tax evaders doesn't wash.

Sure some rich people are "greedy" but often the same ambition that drives them to make ever more money is what got their companies started in the meantime. Also what do you suggest entrepreneurs do? Once they have got to a preset level of money they just disappear or maybe shut their companies down? Giving it away may be the answer, and many rich people do give money away, but for most I think there has to be some continuing level of motivation.

I'm not rich, I'm not defending the super rich (of who incidentally there are very few in numerical terms), I'm just trying to redress the balance of some of the comments above which are ill founded.

edam You don't understand marginal tax rates. The poor don't pay the highest marginal tax, the highest marginal tax rate (60%) is paid by those on £100,000- approx £115,000 because of the taper effect of losing the nil band.

This is actually part of the strategy of the very rich who wish to draw the ladder up, and stop people breaking into their ranks.

As a society we pay far too little tax though, but the nil band should be about £20K, and it should probably go (completely, no taper) at about £150K. Progressive tax is the fairest system, but we currently start the progression too low, and up it too low too - but then just stop. We should have increasing rates (maybe in 5% increments) from 20% to at least 50%. It's ridiculous that someone on under £40k should be paying 40% tax. The higher rates should be reserved for people on over 60K, the highest rate should kick in around 120k and then the loss of the nil band would affect only the very highest earners.

"As a society we pay far too little tax though"

Why? Do you think people would vote for higher taxes for all? Not higher taxes for everyone who earns more than you, but higher taxes for everyone? It's not a vote winner IMO. People want the best of both worlds, low taxes and loads of services. Well it can't work like that.

Mintyy, YAsoNBU.
That is all until I have RTFT.

Handy for Pret-a-Porter not to be paying their taxes though.
Anyone else just see the channel 4 news?
The government should be bashing the big companies for their tax not just picking on the individuals who struggle to pay theirs.

In a capitalist economy there will always be different scales of wealth. There will always be the super rich wanting more and more. I don't really care about them.

What does worry me is that the a good standard of life for the average family is becoming out of reach. Particularly when it comes to home ownership.

There should be a stop to foreign investors milking the property market, the housing bubble needs to burst, and I speak as a house owner (no mortgage), I do worry about the next generation.

Higher taxes are not the answer, we already pay high taxes.
Better controls are needed.

OP,

Just to make you feel a little better:

Someone who earns £150,000 pays £59,858 in tax each year (i.e. 40%)

Someone who earns £31,866 pays £7,236.40 in tax each year (i.e 22%)*

My concern is that: if taxes are increased for higher earners, they will be encouraged to move abroad where taxes are lower and the UK will lose a major source of revenue. Apparently top earners pay a third of all income tax (according to The Telegraph).

Tax avoidance schemes for the super rich, however, do make me very angry.

*figures calculated using thesalarycalculator.co.uk

If you are good at your job and decide to go for another that pays more, why should you feel bad about it... surely they pay is only there if someone is prepared to pay for your services...

The reason people go from being millionaires to multi millionaires is because they invest their money and dont just give up work when they have enough in the bank. Just like if any other person earns their wage and manages to have some left over.. they don't just stop working because they've earnt enough...

If you had a sum of money and put it in the bank would you expect to earn interest on it? or just leave it under the mattress ...

Can you imagine if all the wealthy people gave up work and didn't earn any more so basically didn't have to pay any tax ... the country would collapse!

The richest 5% of this country pay more than 40% of the taxes for the whole country....

If everyone felt the same they would all shop in the cheap shops and charity shops and never have any luxuries, and they would distribute all of their wealth to the poorer in society .. like the ones who can't afford the electricity and internet to be posting on this site...

Life is just not fair.....but it is they way it is...

Some wealth gap apologists are coming up with very weak arguments here. Of course the global money supply increases in terms of number - that's called inflation. Each new dollar created, however, buys a little less. Money is not wealth; what we need to look at are the percentages of population owning proportions of wealth.

You could easily sit 85 people in a single train carriage. Those 85 own as much of the world's wealth as half of all the other people put together.

The richest 0.7% - 32 million people - owns 41% of all the wealth: $98.7trn.
The poorest 68.7% - 3,207 million people - owns 3% of the wealth: $7.3trn.

Here's a graphic. No-one could claim this is fair, necessary or sensible.

Worse still, wealth disparity damages growth.
The Gini coefficient is a method of expressing wealth inequality - perfect equality would have a coefficient of 0, perfect inequality (one person owning all the wealth) would be 1.
A 10 percentile decrease in inequality increases the expected length of a growth spell by 50 percent.
The world Gini coefficient has increased every year worldwide until around 2005, when it began to gradually fall. In the UK, it's gently declined over the years since then.

However, this masks an inefficiency in the use of government instruments (taxes & benefits) to help equalise national income distribution. The burden of taxes has been falling ever more heavily on the poorest since the condems took office, meaning that the middle sectors gain more equality at the expense of the bottom 10%.

Hear, hear, Garlic

I agree though that a lot could be achieved if current taxation and tax laws were actually enforced and loopholes for the super rich closed.
And I am saying that as a higher rate tax payer - personally, I'd happily pay a higher percentage of tax if I were confident that those whose income comes in 7 and 8 figures did too and if it were to ensure that every single food bank could close
It's a disgrace.

YYY, Pacific (and thanks!)

Seriously, troubleinstore, look at all the blue + red people on the left pyramid. Now look at how much of the wealth they own, on the right.

Are you really telling me that the greens + purples get ALL THAT because they work harder & invest smarter?

Seriously?

Glad that there are some more posters on this thread now. I was beginning to despair.
I knew that you were all out there somewhere!

Thanks for your helpful message Millie.

If you read my thread title, op and further posts, you will see that it is the super rich that I am ranting about. I'm not sure why you think I have an issue with families or even individuals earning £150,000 pa, as I live in a world where people routinely do that.

I realise that there have been threads a bit like this before.
But tbh, I dont care if there is a thread about this every two weeks or once a month.
There are still a suprising amount of posters [which includes ones I would have expected to know more] who havent begun to understand yet.

I tried to find the link from a couple of months ago, but havent found it yet.

this is a great read about why equality is better for everyone.

Countries on a global scale who have less disparity between the rich and poor have less recorded incidence of, amongst other markers, mental ill health, suicide, murder, prison populations, substance misuse and mistrust. Issue is not so much the baseline for poverty of the given country but the gap between the richest and poorest.

Norway and Japan seem to score highest with the UK, Singapore and the USA recording the worst. Norway re-distributes it's wealth through higher taxation and Japan generally have higher wages and wealth is shared this way.

Personally I dont think I have a problem with those who have say £5 million so long as they have earned it appropriately. May be even £10 million, but I would have to wonder how much family time it took to get to that.

Will order it. Thanks.