To wonder if all those gleeful about PIP cuts are going to welcome people with serious mental health conditions as colleagues and employees?

[Somethingthecatdraggedin7]

Given the amount of ableisism I see on MN I think the likelihood of people welcoming people with serious mental health conditions into their workplace is pretty low.
And yes, these people will very likely now be forced to try to work even though their condition makes it impossible. We are not just talking about some lazy twenty year old who expects to sit at home gaming due to his “anxiety” as many people seem to believe is the case. It will be people with significant impairments to social functioning.
Even if they get support to apply for jobs, and even if they then get the position (doubtful) how accommodating will colleagues or customers be if the person seems a bit odd, or gets adjustments workmates deem unfair?
This is going to be a total shit show.

But, if the mega rich aren't paying their share of tax, and hoarding all the houses as assets (in a housing crisis no less!!!) then it's a great thing if they leave! Good riddance to them. It should be made illegal to own homes in the UK if you're never here.

I'd love UBI. One of the reasons I voted for The Green Party at the last election.

@WoodlandLove do you realise the financial implications of the wealthy leaving the UK? Have you looked at the estimates of the loss in tax revenue, the loss in VAT alone is phenomenal let alone all the other taxes they pay. And then of course there’s the huge impact on all the related jobs. You must pay an awful lot of tax if you think all that can be compensated for.

@AzurePanda sorry for this very lazy reply 🤭

But Gary Stephenson explains it far better than I could. If you have approx 30 mins to spare, I highly recommend you watch/listen to this -

Sorry but Gary Stephenson is wrong.

Well, he's a highly qualified economist. As well as a very successful former trader. I'm certainly not either of those things, and barely scraped my GCSE maths! So, I trust him. But, you're of course entitled to a different view.

Looking forward to you replacing the lost wealth, tax and investment then.

The loss from the non- doms alone is £8.9 billion. There are so many mistruths in what Gary Stephenson says it’s difficult to know where to start.

Ok so I had to Google VIPERS skills

@Andwhoisasking are you... still at school?

There are many countries that have a higher tax burden than the UK and yet also have a higher GDP per capita. These include Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.

If they can maintain good living standards with high taxes, why would it be so apocalyptic for the UK to raise our own a little bit. What makes us different? Genuine question.

Had to Google 😂 Unfortunately not. Taxes don’t pay themselves.

Their lower and middle earners pay a lot more tax. Higher earners pay about the same and have access to universal benefits such as childcare. Therefore, there is no lack of incentive to higher earners - like there is here. There are also a lot less state dependents and welfare is linked to overall contribution. Many, many reasons. To be more like the countries you state - it’s the middle and lower earners who need to pay more and those on welfare will be on defined and reduced benefits. If we moved over to the model used by many of these countries, it wouldn’t be the wealthy or higher earners who need to cough up.

Yes, the UK would need to be completely restructured to achieve an outcome like the Scandi countries and Germany is well on the way to achieving UK levels of GDP per capita.

And of course there are countless examples of countries which have significantly lower tax burdens than the UK but higher levels of GDP per capita.

Is that still your view if they are tax avoiders?

Do you have a source for this claim? I've found it hard to get the actual stats. I was surprised by your claim though, so I asked chatgpt to compare tax progression the UK, Germany and Sweden. It stated the following:

Sweden has the most progressive tax system overall, with a much larger share of total tax revenue coming from the top 1%.

Germany also has a relatively high level of progressivity, but it relies more on indirect taxes (such as VAT) for lower-income groups.

The UK has a relatively less progressive tax system, with the top 1% contributing less than in Sweden and Germany, and the bottom 50% contributing a relatively higher share than in Sweden.

This is definitely inconsistent with what you're saying. Is chatgpt wrong? It certainly can happen!

It’s basic economic fact. Go and do the work yourself. I do find it funny that so many people quote the Nordic style and don’t actually understand it. As you’ve proven. Absolutely laughing out loud at AI. Whatever you’ve out in hasn’t accounted for the quirks of the tax system. Oh and yes chat GPT can be wrong. It relies on human input. If the human doesn’t have a clue and doesn’t define the parameters enough - it won’t give a factual answer. Oh and it’s my job working with AI.

Everyone is expected to contribute a fair share - not the tiny minority. Hence the contribution and time defined welfare system.

Yes but the claim we keep hearing is that if we tax the rich we will necessarily end up with a low GDP, a crash in tax revenue and all sorts of other terrible outcomes. And the existence of all the countries I listed are a clear counterexample to that claim. They generally score higher than the UK on pretty much every metric of quality of life.

Yes there are a few low-tax-high-gdp countries, but a) that's logically irrelevant to the claim above, and b) they typically have awful quality of life scores. Give me Copenhagen over the UAE, any day of the week.

If it's basic then cite it. I'll wait...

It would be quicker to state a source than to keep replying like this. I think we all know why you can't won't

@CentralLimit actually I haven’t really heard the claim that the exodus of billionaires / millionaires will significantly hit gdp per capita given the UK’s gdp is what, £2.5 trillion. This may be a side effect but I would have thought the impact will be reasonably small. It is tax revenue and investment that has already suffered and will continue to do so. Particularly as the tax revenue is effectively free money with no associated consumption of public services such as state schools and the NHS.

Australia, Canada, Switzerland, Ireland, Singapore, Israel, South Korea amongst others all have a lower tax burden than the UK and higher GDP per capita. In any event GDP per capita doesn’t measure quality of life or wealth distribution so it’s a pretty clumsy measure.

@Andwhoisasking Totally agree about the tax system in Nordic countries, Denmark’s top rate of 56% cuts in at an income level equivalent to just 1.3 times the average income.

This whole “soak the rich” approach is a myth, it just doesn’t work.