to ask all of the 1% here (anyone earning over £20'000) what you are doing to help the 99%?

[ethnicalMarion]

If your earn over 20k in the UK you are part of the 1%. Aibu to think that this 1% should be helping the 99% of the world more?

blimey, calm down yellow dinosaur, OP may not have got the figures quite right (and I'm not sure) but it's a good question. I earn about that (or rather maintenance+ my wages almost (but not quite) comes to that much). more like 18 actually, and I not only manage but I feel very fortunate too.

Minimum wage is as "hard earned" (often harder) than the money that is earned higher up the pay scale. Being able to command a higher salary is a huge privilege.

I speak for myself here but I don't do enough for others. I would like to do a lot more but with my resources.

unsurprisingly people only agree with redistribution on wealth if they are the ones that stand to gain

Really?!
Not sure about your evidence of that.

Given that UK taxpayers give almost £13 billion in overseas aid via tax and donate approximately £80 billion to various UK charities directly, I'd say we do quite a lot actually.

AnyFucker Sun 25-Jan-15 12:08:45

mind your own fucking business

This. And a damn sight more than 1% of it.

Oh - and this is a shitty goady inflammatory thread that serves no purpose at all except to wind people up. Which I suppose was your intention all along. Too cowardly to post in your usual name OP?

What the high earners do is pay 40pc tax on their earnings so that the low earners pay no tax! And I don't think high earners should be obliged to help out anyone!

If you don't want to be on a low wage, do your research into well paid jobs, see how you become qualified and go for it. Don't expect others to bail you out if you decide to take work in a low paid sector!

Unfortunately not in that position anymore but pretty sure I used to pay tax and National Insurance to help others, not to mention donations (which I still do even though I don't have any income)

OP, are you really that niave to believe only 1% earn over £20K?

I would imagine the true top 1% are paying huge amounts of tax and taking hardly anything from the pot. That's good enough. Well done on them for working hard to get to that point. If they contribute to charity, it's even better.

What do you think they should be doing OP? Lots don't do anything extra to help themselves, why do the higher earners need to do it for them?

Correctness of OP' s figures aside I am pretty sure we are in the top 1% so I'll answer.

We pay tax and employ others providing them with livelihoods. We spend money in local shops. On top of the economic help running a succesful business provides the country, we donate to charities, I'm a trustee for various charities and a volunteer at others, take a large haul of groceries to our local food bank each month.

We completely appreciate how privileged we are and do try to help those who aren't both by donating cash and our skills.

unsurprisingly people only agree with redistribution on wealth if they are the ones that stand to gain

OP, why do you say that? Because has anyone on here said "I begrudge paying my taxes" or "I don't think British tax payers should give international aid"? Do you only think voluntary redistribution of wealth counts as redistrubution?

And do you genuinely think that people on £20k in this country are rich? Do you really not acknowlege that £20k will buy you more in other countries than this one? Or do you think that income is the only thing that matters when deciding what consitututes 'rich'?

Are you deliberately not 'getting' the differences between same income levels in different countries in order to insult what are classed as poor people in this country, or aren't you thinking htis through?

I'm being inflammatory to point out the fact that the average UK person is in the 1% of earners?

Don't think paying tax for international aid counts, just makes the richest in poor countries richer.

What do I do? Not enough. Like most people.

I don't think that the OP is interested in any kind of meaningful debate

Mostly use the money I earn to pay tax (towards schools, nhs and benefit) and the huge student loan I had to get to get the training that allows me to earn just over 20k a year. I have one night out a month or so and not a lavish life stile but I do live in the South East near London so having a house to live in is £££.
I think op should roll this out at dinner party's ;)

Earning 20k in the UK might put you in the top 1% earnings globally but given the cost of living in the UK 20k doesn't result in much spare cash for redistribution to families earning $1 a day on other continents. However I choose fair trade when I can and politically I do not support neo-liberal unbridled capitalism that forces worldwide wages down and destroys the environment.
Can the OP suggest what families on just below the average UK income should be doing to support others globally? Because failing to pay our own bills isn't going to help anybody.

oh and our family income is higher than the £20k mentioned. Including NI, DH pays half of what he earns in tax. Pretty much everything we buy we pay VAT on.

That's a lot of redistrubution going on. Granted, most of it is redistrubution within the UK, but still - I'm a firm supporter of redistrubution, we also donate to chairty, but even if we didn't, we hand over a lot already.

Or OP, don't you think tax counts?

An almost flawless goading effort. Well done. 9 out of 10

I'm not in the UK, but 10 % of my DH wage goes directly to a Church run charity.

I over pay my 'help' - I don't need them, but they have families they want to educate and feed, so by employing them, I'm helping them directly. I pay them what's considered a UK minimum wage.

Yes, people in any country are rich when you are looking at this globally.

That the rich have higher costs might be true of any income-based scale in any country

Yes, people in UK are rich, and benefit from clean water, universal health care, education, and enough adequate housing. So many people in the world have so much less.

Disinclination to help, as it is voluntary, not compelled through taxes is fine. There should, perhaps, be no pressure (or compulsion) for the rich to do more. And that's the same, morally, whether looked at globally or nationally.

I pump anything spare into foreign economies by taking a large number of exotic holidays*

*disclaimer - i don't really as my 22kpa isn't enough to provide shelter and sustainance for my family and my debts are spiralling

I've raised a perfectly valid thread that is statisitcally correct and was intended for a meaningful debate. Many have been rude and unpleasent to me and has really got their backs up.

I do nothing and am happy with that.

Of course paying tax counts, we don't get to choose whether our money gets spent on international aid or on the local meals on wheels service.

I think that this thread shows that people do,believe and are redistributing wealth. Did you read it or is it national make a pithy yet irelavant statement day?

Why should the higher earners help?

I don't want help. I want to help myself.

ethicalmarion, this is such a stupid question. You can't compare £20,000 in the UK with £20,000 in Cambodia, for instance. Different countries have different economies, different standards of living, different basket amounts of goods to compare (plus a whole host of other comparisons could be done -e.g. even the Big Mac index). Also, doesn't something called purchasing power parity come into it? It's not something you can compare. You could be in poverty living in the UK on £20,000 but extremely rich in another country. Where's the comparison? What's the use of plucking some silly statistic out the air like that? At the very least you'd have to index everything and compare that way but even that would be a back-of-the-envelope calculation.