Jeremy Corbyn

[salcombebabe]

I see so many posters saying they won’t vote for Labour as they don’t like Jeremy Corbyn - why? If the Labour policies are good then why not vote for those rather than the leader?

^madeyemoodysmum

The top 10% of earners make up a huge proportion of tax receipts.....alienate them into taking their wealth elsewhere at your peril. Its all very well hearing JCs elaborate plans for services and benefits for those in need but this doesn't work if you drive the big income generators overseas at the same time.^

The IFS says the top 1% of UK taxpayers pay over a third of all income tax (and a great deal more of other taxes such as CGT). And 42% of UK
adults currently pay no income tax at all.

I’m not sure if I’m in the 1% but I pay quite a lot of tax and if Corbyn put the top and middle tax rates up as high (or higher) as he says, I would go part time. Why pay for childcare while I work to pay a 65-70% marginal tax rate (inc NI, loss of CB, TFC, PTR)? I would be better off in every way downing tools for 2-3 days a week. Which means of course less revenue for the Treasury to pay for all this “free” stuff....

The trouble with communism is that it’s not enough for the government to direct how large sums of money get spent - the government also has to direct how the money is earned.

The government would literally have to tell each individual in the country what they have to do and how long they have to do it for and what they would be paid.

Then if highly trained and educated people tried to leave the country to live/work elsewhere, you’d have to close the borders. If people tried to get around the system, their colleagues and neighbours would have to report on them. And if people still refused to play ball, you’d have to lock them up.

Logically, you end up with East Germany.

@considermesometimes, the economy is crashing now.

What is an economy? It's the ability of people to earn a living. That is going. I don't give a flying fennec fox however many figures the government comes out with saying things are all rosy at the top. That's all it is, playing with figures at the top. This UN report is our reality.

We need change, real change, not more Blairite Labour papering over the cracks. Complete redesign of systems against need. Complete paradigmatic shifts. We won't see any of that by what would actually be another Blairite whitewash of Labour. Nationalised access to broadband is a good policy that actually gets to grips with the need for access to IT in the modern world, recognises it as essential modern communications infrastructure, and attempts to deliver it to all.

As for the concern about forcing part-time parents on to business - again at some point you have to ask yourself what is the priority, the ongoing drive for more profits for the few, or a world that humans can actually live in. Thanks for confirming what I'd suspected for years, that all this concern about needing to find full-time work is actually a direct attack on part-time and flexible work that works around families and people though.

This narrative that the only thing that matters is more profit, more business, more work for people, more skills, all for less reward is going nowhere. It leads to the destruction of our society. It leads to slave labour and 3rd world levels of existence. We need something different.

This seems to be a good simple explanation of how economies work and the difference between the situation in the 1970s and now.
phys.org/news/2017-10-wealth-redistribution-tax-key-economic.html
Interested people could also look at the OECD who have many publications on this issue. There's a load of links from here www.oecd.org/inclusive-growth/inequality.htm

And for goodness sake @Windowboxgardener, we're not talking about communism. Corbyn is not proposing communism. I'm not talking about communism. No one is bringing back communism. Do you think the OECD is a communist organisation?

As someone said to me upthread, there is a vast middle ground between the two extremes. Let's go find us some.

ImGoingTo, that socialist system does not work and never has anywhere and most people in the UK don't think it works which is why ti sunlikely we will have a Lahbour majority in December.

Labour has tried this before and it did not get elected. It was only when Blair turned it to the middle ground that is won elections in recent times.So you would need to convince Tory voters like I am of those policies before there is a chance of a Labour victory.

I also think we need change and a much smaller state and much less state provision of just about everything but like you I also find no part represents my view points so I have to compromise on the current veyr middle of the road high spend fairly high tax Tory party.

I pay an awful lot of tax and it always seems to get higher and higher. Gordon Brown put 1% on national insurance for high earners and said it woudl fund teh NHS for a generation. We are all still paying that extra 1% but what happened to that promise? Perhaps we could let people opt out of certain state services in return for halving their tax bills? I would be up for that....having only seen my GP once in 12 years....... and saved the state a small fortune by educating 5 chidlren privately from age 3 - 21 without even student loan recourse on the state tax payers. Perhaps I deserve a medal from Corbyn. I even cashed in my pension at 55 and paid 45% tax on most of it.

I suppose East Germany makes a change from Venezuela.

@Xenia, your tax hasn’t got higher and higher. If you’re the age you say you are, you were paying 33% under Thatcher, I know I was and that was the standard rate. Your rationale is precisely the reason few people can stomach the Tories, you make Thatcher look left wing.

That socialist system is working right now in many countries in the EU, it has worked here in the past, and various modern economists are calling for it desperately. They can see, as anyone working for a living in Britain can see, that the alternative is not working here.

If the UK state continues to follow this 'we need a smaller state' attitude it will find out that it will indeed end up with a smaller state, as regions gradually seek independence in disgust at its ineptitude. States are organisation and the ability to work together cooperatively. Britain is losing both as its inequalities grow.

That socialist system is working right now in many countries in the EU

And to make it work, everyone in those countries pays much higher taxes. Yes, including everyone on the basic rate. Fancy a basic rate of 35%? Because socialist systems don’t come cheap!

The alternative is a continued descent into lawlessness with no public services and a state in name only, if that, with continued inequality poverty for most.

Choose. But choose in full knowledge of what you are wishing on other people.

Thanks also..
But why was it planning to move to rotterdam?

Cam has used it as a company moving due to brexit..
We have now established its not going anywhere. But I'd like to know the brexit related reason that it was going to move according to cam.

That socialist system is working right now in many countries in the EU

Not really. Many have huge unfunded pensions gaps, thanks to governments making promises they cannot pay for. Many have horrific social problems that we don’t read about in our newspapers. Germany for example has far worse levels of homelessness than we do.

I can't stand this strand of the Labour party.
It's depressing to watch. They do not represent my views or opinions. He was always good at the fight never the solution.

Homelessness seems to be a growing problem across Europe generally. Population is rising, and homes are not being built to reflect that rise.

And to make it work, everyone in those countries pays much higher taxes. Yes, including everyone on the basic rate. Fancy a basic rate of 35%? Because socialist systems don’t come cheap!*

Once you've used up your tax allowance Tax + NI add to 30% anyway don't they?

@ImGoingToBangYourHeadsTogether I think you will find that several of these European governments have gone to great lengths to debunk the myth that they are socialist.

Circa 32% (ca. 11% county and 20% municipality tax which is the Swedish average): from 18,800 kronor to 468,700 kronor

No matter if you earn basically nothing or 35K, you pay 32% in Sweden. There would be no support for this in the UK. Please do say if you disagree.

I didn't quit follow this one.... "@Xenia, your tax hasn’t got higher and higher. If you’re the age you say you are, you were paying 33% under Thatcher, I know I was and that was the standard rate". UK top rate is currently 47% tax and 2% NI = £47%. How is that less than 33% or even the 40% upper rate Lawson brought upper rate tax down to? Also we have much higher stamp duties, insurance premium tax, VAT is high, I have paid inheritance tax, £3600 council tax a year -taxed to the hilt. It has gone too far. Also the aboltion of the single person allowance for higher earners, loss of child benefit for some of us single mothers,etc

@Xenia, 33% was the standard rate under Thatcher, I never attained the heady heights of higher rate in those days but I seem to remember it was up to 98% at one point. Ergo you’re paying less tax than you were in the 80s. If you can’t follow that, I wonder how you manage to earn the fabulous amounts you claim.

I see - I don't think so Lawson brought the upper rate to 40% including NI. It is now 47%. As I say it has gone up and up.

Also the band at which you pay 40% has not increased anything like with inflation so that is another way tax has gone up and up.

The Government of Margaret Thatcher, who favoured indirect taxation, reduced personal income tax rates during the 1980s.[18] In the first budget after her election victory in 1979, the top rate was reduced from 83% to 60% and the basic rate from 33% to 30%.[19] The basic rate was also cut for three successive budgets – to 29% in the 1986 budget, 27% in 1987 and to 25% in 1988.[20] The top rate of income tax was cut to 40% in the 1988 budget. The investment income surcharge was abolished in 1985.

Basic rate is now 20%, higher rate - 31 years later - still 40%. So not higher at all.

I think you will find that several of these European governments have gone to great lengths to debunk the myth that they are socialist.

Well yes, they are not immune to the same movements that we are seeing here, that America has already had. The movement back towards the 19th century levels of inequality and imperialist attitudes towards one's own seems to be travelling west - east. So far some EU countries, at least, have travelled less far along that road. I'm hoping we can all start seeing sense. Britain should know better, as we've got all that history of squalor and hardship post-Industrial revolution and pre Keynesian redistribution to look at.

@ImGoingToBangYourHeadsTogether I'm hoping we can all start seeing sense. Does it not occur to you that perhaps they have seen sense and realised that a too heavy socialist model is completely unsustainable and is driving industry, investors, entrepreneurs and job creators out of their country?

*top heavy

People bringing up the 80's or thatcher in these types of conversations can be dismissed, we are a globalised economy now, the stats back up that the cons reducing the tax limit actually increased tax income, that is before we can extrapolate that recently to France when the mobile rich jumped ship.

If it really was a simple task of just increasing tax it would have been done in many countries since the global financial crash, there is a reason why even china is now following neolib principals during our new labour years and offshoring their shit to africa.

Anyone pretending there is an easy solution to this is just as gullible as the daily mail readers thinking immigration is the route of all our problems.

There is a reason why Corbyn being hailed as principled and a breath of fresh air has been fence sitting for so long he has almost become the fence.

Chattybum if that is the case, and modern economies require a large part of the population to be kept in poverty with no assets or legal rights: then 1) the rich can stop being so sneering towards them and 2) it is not worth it. Which is the conclusion many are reaching. Let the wheels of time turn.