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

I think you'll find that the terrible state of the economy & country is the fault of Labour / 'the war' / covid / immigrants / the disabled / the poor / the woke / the left / the lgbt+ community / junior doctors / the unions / other [delete as appropriate for this weeks scapegoat].

If it wasn't for the them spoiling all the tory plans we'd be living in a utopia don't you know?

Potentially they could, but to use a situation where there's only one income coming into the house (or two much smaller incomes) to counter an argument about salary levels is not logical. A £100k salary could equally equate to a £200k household income.

For people not familiar with his constituency, its been a safe Tory seat for a long time. Labour are not the opposition here, but the Liberal Democrat is providing some traction at the moment. There have been some boundary changes too which might unsettle him.

He wasnt going to get far telling the core of his vote to stop moaning. But it's interesting that he isnt going to change the childcare cliff edge despite the platitude.

I think its all relative. Someone earning 40k will live within their means, smaller house, no holidays perhaps, etc.
Person on 100k, bigger house huge mortgage holidays etc.. Will also live within their means. depending on the person a person earning 100k could overspend and have not a lot left at the end the month . Either way, I'd love to the that problem of earning 100k!!

So why do we bother with any benefits? If nobody is entitled to a certain lifestyle?

It's interesting. Single mums on benefits, living in a mouldy room, relying on food banks and unable to buy shoes for their kids, Tories will line up to call them feckless and say they don't know how to budget their weekly pittance. 100k pa in Surrey and 'unable to manage'? Well, the State should help, obviously.

The guys got 14m quid in the bank, he's not just out of touch he's long over the horizon

It doesn't materially affect your argument, but to be able to spend £300 - £350k on a house you would also need to provide a 10% deposit nudging you up slightly to the £390k max.

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 logic was that NI paid for pensions, so it would be bizarre to make someone receiving a pension continue to pay for it. But agreed, the link is now so tenuous that it'd be more sense to merge tax and NI. However, lots of loose ends to tie up - at the moment if you're not earning because of childcare, you get your NI paid for you, for example. And it would cause hardship to suddenly increase someone's tax by 10p or even 8p in the pound. So it needs to be done gradually.

It's a high salary. How it fits into your lifestyle and what you spend of it on what is what varies but doesn't detract from it being a high salary, especially when less than 5% of working people will ever achieve it.

It's quite horrifying really for the chancellor to make such a statement, and rather baffling when there's wage related disputes going on around public sector salaries. How can he claim junior doctors are fairly compensated, for example, whilst simultaneously saying £100k is tough?

So how does he (and the rest of the government) justify such woeful public sector salaries? Even in wealthy Surrey, there's a need for teachers, nurses, police etc. Somehow they're expected to manage on less than half of 100k?!

So if they're finding they can no longer fund their lifestyle on 100k, they need to make changes. Just like those of us on a quarter of that amount! I have no sympathy whatsoever.

£100k is 'not a huge salary'.

Well it is more than 96% of the population earns.

And it is almost double the average salary of 80% of the population... and almost three times the average salary of the UK population. It is almost four times the average salary of the bottom 25%.

At one time it was estimated that multi-millionaire Hunt was the wealthiest MP sitting in the House. A man with so many properties that he forgot to declare them all to the proper Westminster authorities.

This is the same Hunt who failed to invest in the NHS during his 6 years as Health Secretary, and who imposed the pay and conditions deal on junior doctors that resulted in them leaving the UK in droves. The results of his incompetence are plain for all to see - record NHS waiting lists, too few GPs, too few hospital beds, obsolete equipment that frequently breaks down, crumbling and leaking buildings, too few doctors, nurses and healthcare technicians, rationing of mental health provision, a near-collapse of elderly and social care ....

And now he's the man who, along with his techbro PM who is married to the daughter of a gazillionaire, tells us that everything is going so well that he's going to cut taxes (while at the same time claiming that there is no money for even the bare essentials of public investment), reduce public spending even further and drive desparate people into the arms of private healthcare, private dentistry, private education etc. where they can be ripped off by his chums and donors.

Well it is more than 96% of the population earns. And it is almost double the average salary of 80% of the population... and almost three times the average salary of the UK population. It is almost four times the average salary of the bottom 25%.

Absolutely. The optics of this are appalling to the majority of the population.

Sure we'll just let the poor starve .

tells us that everything is going so well that he's going to cut taxes (while at the same time claiming that there is no money for even the bare essentials of public investment), reduce public spending even further and drive desparate people into the arms of private healthcare, private dentistry, private education etc. where they can be ripped off by his chums and donors

Everything is going fabulously- for them and their chums and donors. The rest of us do not count, we are mere fodder to be fed into the machine that keeps them wealthy and Powerful.

Ah so people are entitled to a certain lifestyle after all.

But £100k isn’t a high salary. You would not be able to afford a £500k house - which would be minuscule in the SE) on that salary, which given that you have probably slogged your guts out to get there is pretty falling..

so many people in this country fail to understand that the wealthy are those who have gained through house price inflation and those who have inherited wealth.

Worth nothing that ONS define full time employment as 30 hours a week or more.

30 hours is not a full time salary really - assuming you work 9 to 5 and take an hour unpaid for lunch, that is a 40 hour week if you are working five days a week. And lots of jobs are many more hours than that in practice!

I don't know why they set the hours level so low - it means that my colleagues working a four day week are categorised as full time by the ONS in their metric when they are earning 80pc of a full time salary. If everyone working a four day week went full time, then average weekly earnings would jump sharply but the metric wouldn't capture that.

Hunt is obvs still an idiot but just flagging that the figures aren't quite what they seem.

I think the replies here are going to be skewed as a massive amount of MN think 100k is quite average ....whereas in RL ....it really isn't even in London and Surrey!

Do you really think those earing that figure can't downsize they are so desperate for help that they ask the country help . Jeez .

So how do public sector and minimum wage workers live in London or Surrey then?

Should they have to live in tichy tiny houses? Should those on £100k salaries - which they only get from flogging their guts out all of their life to build a career have a shit life in this country? Is that what kids should aspire to? Don’t you see a problem with that?

Sorry, please ignore my previous post. I didn't read carefully enough.

What help are they asking for? Childcare? Cause giving free childcare to those earning over £100k actually pays for itself in improved productivity and increased taxes. But jealous little socialists can’t handle this fact.

You’re assuming a first time buy with those figures. It’s highly unlikely that anyone on a £100k salary is in that situation, those expensive house purchases are likely include several years equity from a property purchased in the past. The vast majority of homeowners couldn’t afford their house if they were starting from scratch. Certainly those who bought 10/15 years ago.