Hunt out of touch?

[BluebellsBluebell]

£100k is 'not a huge salary'. Fair comment. Yanbu

Does this show Hunt and the tories are out of touch. Yabu

Both comments are true. £100k is not what it was thanks to inflation and static income tax thresholds. Hunt is out of touch because the very fact £100k is no longer 'huge' means that min wage is pitiful.

£100k is not a large sum to Hunt, he can find it in the loose change down the back of his sofa. That's how he was able to just hand over £100k of his own money to his local constituency party tokeep him in his job which found itself short of the readies. Those cheese and wine evenings in Surrey are very expensive you know, it's not as if they get their snacks from Iceland like ordinary plebs. Got to keep the standards up.

It's about 3 times the national average.

If people are struggling on it, then it does show how badly the Tories have managed the economy

before house prices went bonkers my dad always used to say never borrow more than 3.5x your salary for a mortgage. Banks would only lend that maximum, sometimes only 3x your salary.

If you do a Rightmove search for Surrey for houses circa 300-350k, they are not the sort of houses you’d expect someone with a “huge” salary to be living in. Flats, masionettes,some ropey looking small semis in a rather rough looking area of Guildford.

Which does speak vol7mnes about the housing market and how salaries haven’t reflected the change in house prices.

I think that is a bit simplistic. Tax thresholds have frozen due to debt getting out of control. This is due to the borrowing to fund COVID relief packages, furlough etc. costed billions, as did the vaccine role out and additional spending on the NHS. You can quibble with the usual tropes about PPE contacts for mates etc. but we borrowed in unprecedented quantities to get through that. Additional money sloshing around in the system has predictably fueled inflation, and this was turbo-charged by the invasion of Ukraine. I'm not sure what a Labour government could have done differently, other than maybe some rhetoric about broadest shoulders carrying the heaviest load, sounding great to their cheerleaders, but without too much deviation in actual policy.

So, we have frozen tax thresholds to attempt to control debt, hyperinflation and interest rates rising which is the only real tool to control inflation. I think the government have done a reasonable job given the set of circumstances dished out to them.

There aren't many circumstances where you are just given a £100k salary. It requires expertise, years of hard work and experience. Often, they deserve that. A hospital consultant or such like deserves to be able to buy that range rover and eat at nice restaurants. Their salary reflects (well it should) their hard work, expertise, and their worth to society, and they are duly rewarded.

So I think it is right that the chancellor points out that £100k isn't the ticket to paradise that people think it is, and that people at that earnings point aren't just fair game to clobber for tax.

I think, taken in the context of him talking to his constiuent who was asking about the free childcare hours, he was 'fair'. There are a lot of high earners in surrey who feel upset about not qualifying for free hours.

I live in his constituency, on a far, far lower salary than that, but i dont have nursery fees and i recognise that having to find 21,312k is going to make most salaries not go as far as you think during that time.

And yet, with debt spiralling out of control, Hunt decided to cut NI

Asking what would Labour have done is absolutely pointless as they were not in power.

The Tories have screwed the economy and no but Labour whataboutery will change that.

@randomchap Hunt has an ambition to simplify the tax system and rid us of the imbalance where people who get their income from pensions and/or an investment portfolio pay basic rate tax at 20%, whereas someone who gets exactly the same income from employment pays a a higher rate of tax due to NI. The freezing of tax thresholds very much offsets the NI cut, by stealth, which is sneaky because a large proportion of voters don't really understand thresholds.

I don't agree that the Tories have screwed the economy. My opinion is that they've had two huge economic events thrown at them and they are firefighting the economic turmoil they have faced. They are by ideology, at least in theory, a low tax party, but have been forced to raise taxes. Even economists disagree to how much this is warranted.

By the way, pointing out that an alternative government would have faced the same headwinds and made similar decisions, give or take the odd percentage here or there, and political rhetoric, really isn't whataboutery. Whataboutery would be sounding off like a pub bore about Gordon Brown selling off the gold etc.

The problem isn't that 100k is a huge salary, it's that's far too many people are nowhere near a decent wage.
And that even 100k doesn't go anywhere near where it used to, if you have a mortgage, commuting costs, childcare fees.
There will be people earning less who have more disposable income because they either get top up help from the state or have fewer outgoings or live in a cheaper area. And there will be people on 100k who are swimming in cash because they don't have nursery fees or train fares etc. It's all down to personal circumstance. But I think he's right in that there people with this income who don't actually have much left over when all bills are paid.

He's an experienced enough politician to know how important it is to make himself clear and how tone-deaf such comments are to many people.

If that was lower earning person , they would be told don't have more children than you can comfortably afford . Or live with it , not go complaining their their MP .

Its not tone deaf. He was talking to a constituent about the loss of childcare help at cliff edge £100k. Do you know how much it is to send a child to nursery full time? Especially in the SE?

I now people are genuinely struggling in absolute poverty, but that doesn't mean that we can just continue to rinse moderately successful people indefinitely and write of their difficulties as being "tone deaf."

And it looks like the context of his conversation was important here.

Seems like he was saying people on 100k may still need help with childcare costs???

If so then surely his comments are better than saying “100k is a huge salary people don’t need any help with childcare costs” (which are crippling). Now that would have been tone deaf 🤷‍♀️. Childcare costs are preventing (mainly) women from returning to work.

And who's fault is it that the housing market is completely messed up and unaffordable as well as everything else, the fucking cuntservatives that's who

Yes but those with more money expects to be assisted so that they can continue to live in the manner to which they want to be accustomed.
All us peasants are supposed to toil away and do without so those rich cunts can stay rich

@0sm0nthus Do you not think hard work and high achievement should be rewarded? Do you understand inflation and thresholds work? The 60% tax trap? The childcare cliff edge?

Maybe you do, maybe you don't. Maybe saying things like "cuntservatives" is just more fun than nuanced debate.

Do I think the already wealthy should be rewarded for being rich?

I understand what you're saying why don't they sell the house buy smaller or cheaper or rent which is what most normal people have to do . No one is entitled to certain lifestyle if they can't afford it ?

He's talking salaries not household income.

Yes this.
The point of government assistance is to mitigate the damaging effects of power and wealth. The fact that money goes to money, privilege and wealth compounds and accumulates creating vast inequalities which are unfair and damaging to everyone.

The cuntservatives only want to maintain and entrench existing power structures, elevate the already rich and Powerful, crush the rest of us.

I think the context of the conversation is important.

But as commented, he's an experienced politician and knows exactly who his likely voter base is. His seat as an MP (let alone as Chancellor) is under threat - which will be why he's spent £100,000 of his own money to fund his campaign.

He is appealing to a demographic.

Send for Lee Anderson. He'll show them how to feed a family for 30p a meal. Then they can spend their usual shopping cash on childcare fees.

But potentially could be the same thing.

He is appealing to a demographic
Yes, birds of a feather flock together.
Broadly speaking the more wealth and power you have the more you only identify with those in the same category as you and look down on those beneath you.

Aye, bring on the useful idiot. Rattle his cage and he will do some tricks to amuse the plebs and hopefully get some of them on side so they vote against their own interests.