To be fed up with all the threads about high earners feeling poor

[trekking1]

It's always the same condescending "I've worked so hard and only have a 3 bedroom house in a great location and an expensive car", as if 1. that's not a lot 2. people who make 5 times less do not work as hard!

And the suprised pikachu face that having a degree did not magically get them a 500k job. That is not how capitalism works folks

a single parent on £51k has less than a two parent family in full time minimum wage jobs. And she will get no help with rent, childcare, etc. in many parts of the country £50k wouldn’t be enough to pay rent and childcare never mind everything else.

check your privilege

I think people in lower income also work hard but they maybe choose wrong choices or simply not lucky.

for example A worked hard in her school, study soo hard and get into top uni. Meanwhile B not working too hard in school, choose not to go to uni and get pregnant. A have a good career and B only have minimum wage job. Both work hard in their own field. But B made a wrong turn in life.

Pausing your career for a few years does not mean your career will go away, that's ridiculous

I find it useful to bear this in mind:

1. Things are worse for most people, so even the well off are feeling the pinch.

1. A lot of well off people believe that 'poverty' (or not being able to spend what you like how you like) is something that only happens to other people and it is ultimately their fault. They have this belief because it means they can tell themselves they are entirely deserving of their good fortune and don't have to check their privileges.

1. People that come from a background with some degree of money and power always get their voice heard with more traction. The current situation is no exception. They are used to being, and know how to get, heard.

1. If the noisy middle classes are moaning, certain ears might be more inclined to listen. It's not ideal, but can be leveraged for change.

People on low incomes and the working poor, have been demonised and stigmatised for years in this country. We need to fi d a way to get ourselves heard

Don’t look down , look up.

we are encouraged ( newspapers, media etc) to blame people who claim benefits… even those who really can’t work

we subside our mps at the bar in London, we pay for London houses for them to commute… they don’t mention this every day.

m the media puts forth an agenda paid for by the rich …. Look at the direction

You need to understand the difference between gross and net income, which would reduce £50k substantially.

I'm pretty sure someone on £50k will receive very little, if anything, from the government in terms of support.

Living somewhere commutable where you can get £50k jobs most likely means significant housing costs, and if and DC, money spent on paying someone to look after them.

So yes, I do believe someone on £50k will be feeling the COL increases, and has every right to rant on MN about it.

There may be no net loss to the Treasury as a result of removing the cap on who can benefit from free childcare. At the moment there is a cliff edge where you can be worse off earning over £100k than under it because you lose the childcare subsidy and lose your tax free allowance.

People, particularly women, with young children are very likely to go part time or avoid moving to higher paying (often more demanding) job if it would push them over £100k. So the government loses tax revenue from those taxpayers being disincentivised to increase their income. Cliff edges in a tax system are never a good thing.

I’m in a position where working an extra day or getting a promotion would lose me a significant amount of money for this reason. If I did work the extra day I’d pay an extra £10k tax. And whilst I’m not complaining I’m only left with £2k a month after childcare costs as a single parent so not really filthy rich at the moment.

All of this makes sense to me.

We need to look after high earners or the talent leaves, we have so many people emigrate to Dubai and other places because we over tax the high earners

I am not a high earner

However, I do not see the point to crippling the high earners with tax on income.

Work should always pay and there needs to be salaries to aspire to

Jacking in your career to go on benefits for years absolutely would destroy many types of careers, including mine. You must have a very sheltered existence

You don’t understand my life or have any empathy for me. Stop with the sneering and just recognize you don’t understand other peoples problems. That’s ok - you can just not comment on any threads where you don’t understand the situation.

Rather than trying to tax higher earners more, the government should start being creative with ways to raise more money from taxes.

Starting firstly with reforming inheritance tax, and then look at ways of taxing the super-rich, not increasing tax for higher earners on PAYE(!), and extracting more money from corporates.

It used to strike me as tone deaf when my sister said to me that she was 'skint' (she and her DH have around 100K plus betwixt them a year, with 2 teenage DC), as I am on disability benefits, live in a run down HA flat with my ND twins...
But, I have got less myopic around it, as it's all relatively. Dsis and her DH have worked their butts off in challenging careers and their lifestyle has adapted accordingly. Her idea of 'skint' is very different to mine, but we are at totally different positions on the socioeconomic scale and I'm fucking proud of her for getting to where she has after our truly awful, abusive and impoverished childhood.
I've never been particularly materialistic nor acquisitive, so I'm okay getting by on the financial support the Govt provides for someone in my position.
I feel for anyone struggling financially. And what that looks like for every household will differ.
Sure, there's posts that make me think "Shut up", but that's more about whatever is going on for me (for example, if things are tough financially my end).

My partner works in tech and if he’d have taken years off to raise our kids then he’d find it harder to find another job and would be have to take a huge pay cut when returning to work. This is because he’d have a big gap in knowledge about the latest tech and techniques.

He’s a man, but this is why women who have children are always disadvantaged, and why many choose to keep their careers even when paying high childcare costs.

Its not as easy as just saying, pause your career.

See this is part of the problem, seeing minimum low wage workers as having those jobs because they took a 'wrong turn'.

As many low waged and minimum wage workers are needed and relied upon as higher waged and higher tax paying workers. Without the higher paid the taxes don't get paid - but without the lower paid the work society wants and needs doesn't get done.

If no one took a 'wrong turn' as you put it, then there'd be no support either professionally within the industry or services like cleaners, childcare, elderly care etc. They are valuable roles to society, but clearly not valued.

Both are mutually reliant - but only the financial contribution is ever considered or respected. I mean if no one took a 'wrong turn' and worked in these jobs and everyone earned I don't know £150k a year, there'd be a lot of tax paid - but essentially what for because there's no one in the lower paid jobs doing the actual work like child or social care and the knock on to that is less people again available to make that £150k because they are at home looking after their own children/elderly relatives.

The idea that anyone can have an exec level job if they "work hard" and "make the right choices" is laughable. It's insanely nieve.

Also the real problem isn't how much tax you pay or the fact you don't get nursery funding either. It's how badly the Tory party have literally fucked everything. At least now people on £100k might stop voting for them.

I knew someone who was getting 3k a month and spent all her money on takeaways and eating out then complained she had no money

It wouldn't destroy them, it would just slow them down. Not the same thing. You can't exaggerate to prove your point and expect to not get called out on it

Getting back in to some industries would be the problem. My partner has known women be unable to get a job after a break to have children. That’s the reality for some industries, like tech. Just because you don’t know that doesn’t make it true.

YABU. Lots of different people with lots of different circumstances are on the internet. Scroll on if it’s not for you there’s nothing to be be offended about - their experience doesn’t diminish yours.

I would agree with you getting angry by people complaining they pay their taxes for “benefit scroungers” (they’re not) or saying NMW is too high (it’s not); or telling people they are poor because they are stupid. But your complaint is people having more money than you existing on the internet. That’s daft.

Because people from all walks of life work hard but the inference is they haven't and that's why that statement offends. Truth be told those on lower incomes often work harder than others.

Why would you laugh your arse off if people die of starvation? Is that the kind of thing you find funny?

There are also lots of people who did put a lot of work in at school and may have previously been high earners but are no longer because shit happens.

We can't make assumptions about personal circumstances.

This

Now many of the tory voters are getting a taste of the medicine they expected lower income households to swallow for years and they don't like it one bit. The hypocrisy is very real.

Make the rich richer and pay taxes, and employ other people, and do their jobs. Absolutely no job in this world exists entirely in isolation from the rest of society.

^^ this. You can have a very large salary and still end up with nothing at the end obf the month and nothing to show for it. I have a 'higher ish' income but I've no money at all. No savings any more. No holidays, no new clothes. None of the things that are ' resdonable to expect.

Why? Childcare and housing costs and no access to any govt support what so ever. I'm also stuck in this position because I need to work to pay my half of the mortgage. So I can't pause my career. Yes, we could sell up and uproot our kids to live somewhere cheaper but that's not very practical.

I am highly privileged to have a house that I will own in 30 years time. But that's it. I'm overdrawn every month. It will get a bit better when the kids get older but right now it's pretty rubbish. Just seems no point to