AIBU to believe rich people should contribute much more?

[marcusian]

A bit tongue in cheek, but given that its almost impossible for poorly paid workers including care workers and nurses to strike, and that the government have given people earning over £100K a massive pay rise, what other ways could the most wealthy be made to pay?

My idea: - a new LUXURIES tax (think 50% VAT) on things ordinary people cant buy, like superyachts, airplanes, £10K+ dining tables, a box at wimbledon, £500+ handbags, £100+ football boots!

AIBU - No - they should pay more and heres my ideas how they should do it!
AIBU - Yes - leave wealthy people alone, its not their fault

Exactly. It's all relative..Thankyou.

That's not to diminish the issue if global inequality, but just to recognise that it is complex and multi- faceted (well, far more so than just people chanting "tax the rich").

Good job I've not done that then eh.

But let's face it, it's a great start

Not like we can tax the poor.

Also no one squealing about how we should leave the poor rich people alone as suggested an alternative.

Except chanting let them make their own money.

Talk about ignoring the complex and multi faceted

I'm sure Topgrub is being compensated for the sterling hours they are putting in on MN (almost 36 non stop by my rough calculations) across this and another thread or two, but by whom? And I am beginning to suspect that they are a relay team.

Op said a 10k dining table, not dinner

Can I suggest that anyone posting here avoids using the @ tag to Topgrub because, as a trial exercise, my next post will use it. And I am sure there will be a response within minutes. It is 11.30pm, and I am waiting for a call about an ambulance IRL, so watch this space. It may take a few minutes to write my post; please bear with me.

"Not like we can tax the poor.
Also no one squealing about how we should leave the poor rich people alone as suggested an alternative."

How about tackling the almost 9 Billion pounds lost in benefit fraud in one year alone?
Oh no, I forgot, it's only wealthy people who suck the system dry.

Topgub · Today 23:17
Good job I've not done that then eh.
But let's face it, it's a great start
Not like we can tax the poor.

@Topgub
All KK had to do was shift the tax bands to reflect inflation at the lower income earning levels to protect the poorest paid from paying more.

@Topgub

But low earners in the UK are much richer than low earners in say Sri Lanka. So, in agreement with you, and because the unfairness of wealth vs poverty can’t really be limited by country or border. How much redistribution of wealth tax should each of us pay including low UK earners who are “rich” to most people living in poverty worldwide?

How much do you earn? How much are you taxed? and how much more do you feel you should personally be taxed on your “wealth” and assets to make up for the wealth gap between you the next (+ following) lower earners? what would be a fair figure to you? Both for the rich and for people like you? And how much of your income currently goes to charity and fundings for people with less means?

Because most of the time people who don’t earn a lot complain about rich people hoarding money and it needing redistributing but what they mean is give it to the poor people in this country so they can increase their own personal wealth with no forward plan to pass that money forward to the poorer people in this world (most of which are out of the UK). So pretty much take money from the very top, bring it to the bottom of the very top of the worldwide wealth pyramid and pretend you are making the world a better place for everybody when in reality you have only made it better for the citizens of some of the wealthiest countries and just increased the gap with rest of the world.

So, most of the time, people who ask for wealth to be redistributed are thinking of their own situation and how it will be bettered by the redistribution of this wealth and never really question that they actually are also at the very top of a much bigger unfair pyramid and that to be fair, their wealth and assets should also be redistributed to people on the bottom, but the thing is similarly, they don’t want to part with the little they have even if that little is 100x than most. The difference is that the low earner in the UK will look at the rich who is already paying loads of taxes and probably also indulging in ample charity donations but has a 100x more than him and say “that’s not enough, you should give most of what you have nobody should have 100x than the average person!” And forget to look at the fact that they have 100x more than somebody else and yet passing none of their wealth back to them.

It’s a continuous cycle sadly. As, if you took things globally (which one should), the UK should have to pay a huge tax to each lower earning country to equalize the field for all as a financially better country, but I doubt people would be happy. (Especially as a big incentive of Brexit was to keep UK money into the UK.)

So I don’t believe success is in endlessly taxing to the point you make not working or working less/earning less more compelling, but in stopping inherited wealth so as to stop increasing the gap between rich and poor.

Topgub sleeps... I could be wrong.

<please excuse the black humour. I am keeping myself awake while waiting for news on the arrival of an ambulance to take DMIL to hospital after a fall at 7am today. She has been lying on the floor in her care home for 17 hours so far with possible fractures of pelvis and shoulder and faces a six hour wait to be assessed by a doctor. She is 93 and has dementia. But she is safe and is being looked after, so in today's NHS, not a priority>

Once you are earning over £125k, you no longer receive the personal allowance of £12k, so actually pay more at 20% than most.

YANBU. Since this government got in, the rich have become richer and richer and richer at the expense of the vulnerable. There were stats on how the richest quadrupled their wealth even after the first four years of the Tory / Libdem coalition.

Before ever deciding what other people can and can't buy with their money I'd focus on myself and really examine whether I'm actually putting enough energy into my own success.

Too bad that people with disabilities can’t do that

The way that this country is currently run, disabled people are shat on from a great height. Most PIP claimants get 0 points. The assessors tell lies. Usually this is overturned if you are tenacious enough to appeal. But the government saves a lot of money turning away genuine claimants because many of them have enough problems without the added stress of an appeal.

Reading the last few pages the problem seems to be people not paying the tax they should or taking from the system when they could be putting in.

So not about taxing the ‘rich’ more. But about closing loopholes that allow people to get away without paying tax, or less tax than they should.

Trying to find away to get the ones abusing benefits at the other end is far more difficult, because it usually ends in people who are in genuine need being worse off.

If this is the problem, I can’t imagine many people disagreeing that tax evasion is wrong.

But that’s not quite as inflammatory for some.

@XingMing

Jeeze. How very mean girls. I hope your mil is OK.

@Linning

Yes. As I said. We all need to do more globally. I'm definitely not thinking of my own situation. I dont need more money. I dont think the uk needs more money either. We could definitely afford to pay a global levelling tax

Its a common tactic though. Those who can most afford it saying pfffft. Why should I give up any of my money? Those with much much less than me don't.

Bit hollow

And as usual no one is actually reading what I've said. Too quick to jump to personal offence and join the mean girls clique

I even literally said more than once that increasing wages is far better than taxation.

Much easier to ignore the salient points that can't be argued with though.

Topgub - you talk about there being a "fixed number of top jobs." Do you understand that the super-rich are not salaried people doing any one of "a fixed number of jobs?" You ding buy a super-yacht on a 'salary' fgs..The super-rich have usually created something that didn't exist before. They have maybe created or sold a company or similar. Wealth comes from the way they invest. The super-rich will have taken a lot of risks along the way. No "job" pays a £100 million salary.

@Topgub

I even literally said more than once that increasing wages is far better than taxation.

There's nothing stopping an individual negotiating a wage increase with their employer? We don't need the government to do it for them nor to set rules to make it happen. Doing so just creates an inefficient system, which just be funded, and this requires more tax (relatively) to operate.

And if they're unable to negotiate a higher rate with their current employer, there's nothing stopping the vast majority of people of finding an alternative employer.

Clearly there are a few exceptions to this rule (for example, criminal barristers {whose strike I support, unlike the other strikes happening at present}, although even then it could be argued that they could find alternative employment and the demand-supply curve economics would eventually rebalance the system).

Thanks @Topgub . She is still waiting for an ambulance, and the waitinng time at A&E is over 12 hours to see the doctor.

There are not enough high paying jobs for everyone

That's the bloody problem - if all jobs paid enough for a basic standard of living you would have no one in work and on benefits , no one in work not wanting to turn the heating on . But they don't. Many jobs don't and that includes most of those where recruitment is difficult

Hope that helps you understand why people are not just negotiating or walking to a new job for more pay

This is horrendous @XingMing. I am sorry.

Just to illustrate how fast this deterioration has happened, my dad fell in his care home and broke his hip on the Sunday of a bank holiday weekend. The ambulance was there in 20 minutes and his hip was replaced that afternoon. That was in 2015. How can things have got so bad in just seven years?

Thank you @Blossomtoes . It's now 26 hours wait for an ambulance. It's not that they are not being dispatched; they are being diverted enroute to emergencies. The care home is only 15 minutes from the hospital.

Right now we are regretting moving her to the Southwest. SIL in the SE (who works in care) says her local ambulance A&E is averaging 3+3 hour waits.

That said, I have had exceptional care for breast cancer from the same hospital.

I don’t agree with the recent tax cuts but taxing “luxury goods” won’t raise significant revenue. They are of course already taxed if purchased in the uK. There’s not enough of them to make any difference. Also people can and do buy them overseas. So there’s no point really.

To be honest I wonder if we might be better to allow tax deductible medical insurance as it takes pressure of nhs.

It wouldn’t though because criminal barristers depend on legal aid rates fixed by government. So the market is distorted. Also if no good criminal barristers, people won’t get a fair trial which has economic costs but not immediate obvious ones.

I don’t think people who can afford it say “why should I give ANY of my money away?” I think they say though “I am already giving in fact 10, 100, 1000, 1 million time more of my money than most will ever do in their lifetime, so how much do YOU (person who is complaining about rich not paying enough) give? Do you give as much as you can? Does everyone who is not working and receives from the system is genuinely doing everything they can (within their abilities) to find work and pay their way back into the system and doing everything they can to give back to poorer than them?”

Those with much much less than you usually don’t say why should I give any of my money away, and are happy to tax the rich because they don’t see themselves as rich enough to fall into the group that would be giving any money back, so of course they say “I would pay back if I was rich” but don’t even think about paying even more in taxes or giving away their meager savings or foregoing small luxuries, even though if you look at it from a global point of view, they are on the richest side of poor and therefore should technically similarly do their part to the max and help give back to poorer than them but often very much don’t. Like we say, it’s easy to be generous with other people’s money.

You, yourself, even admit that you don’t do what you can for others who earn less and have less than you, yet are point your finger at the rich (who likely donate and pay more in taxes than you have) so why don’t you do your part first. Why always pass the bucket to the next person higher up? I am happy to pay higher taxes than most because I am in a privileged position but I am not happy to be expected to fill the bucket when so many who can fill the bucket (and ironically wish for the bucket to be filled) purposefully don’t see it as their job to help fill the bucket and when currently more people take from the bucket than give back into it even though many of them have the capacity to give back into the bucket through the work force.

We are all reading what you said but you never give figures even when asked. You are talking about making minimum wage higher but not talking figures (what would be the right increase for you?) , nor explaining why you think that would help the problem or what kind of limitation that could have?

Nobody is trying to be mean but you are talking about facts and pointing fingers but purposefully not quantifying anything, and I don’t know if it’s because you don’t know the figures yourself or if it’s because they wouldn’t add up in favor of your argument but it’s hard to grasps what you are suggesting when you purposefully withhold figures and keep things vague.

I think that’s right. Especially with the whole gender nonsense I think a lot of people are put off anything which seems “woke”. To be fair it also means a lot of people are thinking about things more rather than just taking the “acceptable” position. Which has to be a good thing.