Middle earners punished

[Eucalyptus321]

I am feeling so disheartened and frustrated by how middle earners are constantly suffering at the hands of ridiculous government priorities. My husband and I have a greater household income than other families we know but have less cash in hand due to increased taxes coupled with the fact we receive zero benefits like child benefit or tax free childcare etc. ZERO. If they want middle earners to fund the country thought tax then at least support us with childcare costs. It’s a joke that two parents earning £99k each get childcare funding but parents with one £101k salary and one £25k salary receive nothing. I just need to speak to people who understand the burden of raising a family amidst the current financial climate and then the potential of further tax rises!

Its not BUPA who will come and scrape you off the road if you get run over

This right here is a key problem with the crabs in a bucket mentality Brits have. We seem to have lost any aspiration and tear those down who do because it’s ‘unfair’. People forget that wealth and skills have legs and can leave. They say “well bye then” but don’t realise that hampers the taxes collected and our productivity and innovation. It’s quite infuriating.

Im a public sector worker and a lot of my friends earn over 100k. I don’t begrudge them as I don’t want to work in the city, work the hours they do nor do the qualifications they have - something a lot of people won’t admit to themselves when they sneer at highly paid workers. It’s often about choices.

I know most of them (like yourself) are now looking to leave which is an economic loss to the uk. We are in for a really shit time as the years go on, the handouts can only go on so long.

The thing is - the top 1 per cent actually covers a MASSIVE income difference - billionaire's and those earning more than 100k - so actually the fairest thing to do would be to create more tax bands at the top. And tax businesses that don't pay tac through loopholes - google and amazon etc. Saying you earn 100k so you earn more than 99 per cent of the population and should pay more is just race to the bottom economics.

This Government lacks the courage to tax the super rich - and do major reform - that’s the problem.

Also if they come from a developing country they probably massively benefit from our police and defence services (in comparison to their home country) something that often goes unnoticed but makes a massive difference to having a safe and peaceful life. I think a lot of people come to the UK and just believe it's magically safe but actually it's safe because we spend a LOT of money on these things.

We have plenty saved up here and abroad. My DH will get a redundancy package. I'm not against universal healthcare at all. Just the NHS. Many other countries do it better with hybrid systems.

In any event, when you are paying higher tax - aren't you only paying higher tax on the bit above the bracket? So its not as dramatic as all that.

If I went, say, from 40 to 70k I would still be better off, even now. I'd love that. (I'm not on 40k btw, its just an example).

Nailed it.

Yes, but a lot of people don't seem to understand progressive tax.

London isn’t the UK. Nationwide an absolute maximum of 5% (probably more like 3%) of households will be earning £120k + a year.

“Middle earner household” would be more like a household earning say £45k-£80k.

Liz Truss tripled my mortgage payments. The Tories have given me nothing but misery from 2015 until they were booted out. I get great pleasure in watching Tories squirm. They didn't care about us. Kemi was fuming "good".

You must have been benefiting from an extremely low rate before that then (presumably also under the Tories)

Until they gave away public money to their rich friends for PPE that the NHS never received. What about the lies around Brexit oh sorry that never happened.

Exactly, no one is begrudging those kids help, but a much better way of doing it would be to use the money outside the home, eg additional support in schools to break the poverty cycle. I’m afraid a lot of the money will just be squandered by people not responsible enough to keep to the family size they can afford.

Rachel’s “just think about the kids” speech wouldn’t be ringing so hollow if they also thought about the kids in their approach to the grooming gangs, or kids attacked and raped by the asylum seekers.

Actually none of that is relevant to your mortgage payments. You were benefiting from extremely low mortgage rates under the Tories

Teachers were once respected in this country and was able to buy their own homes. Now they go to food banks. Tories don't like the public sector remember that. They hate the unions.

There’s good reasons to hate the unions - a lot of them are just trouble makers - they have a history of acting against the wider interests.

Maybe if we had less pressure on basic housing in this country, less pressure on schools with numbers, language barriers then we could afford to pay teachers more and houses would cost less

Wrong!

the Bank of England base rate was low to get bolster the economy and get people spending. Inflation was weak and recovery from the crash was slow. The fact that growth was weak was actually a tori failing. Low mortgage rates were not a policy decision rather an unintended consequence of low growth

^ oh and before you say base rate isn’t what mortgages are priced on yes that’s correct but overnight Sonia mirrors BR and swap rates are impacted by the future BR cuts or rises as well as inflation

I honestly think profit making is incompatible with ethical healthcare.

I also think people are hugely naive about where that could lead to. My American friend had her fist child in the states. Slightly complicated natural delivery, but no c section or anything. A few extra days in hospital til baby thriving and feeding well. She had health insurance through her employer. The excess and the items that weren't covered cost her $20k.

What most people consider to be decent savings would be wiped out pretty quickly with a few hospital stays.

The country voted for Brexit. The PPE thing was rightly fraud though. But do you not think in a time of national emergency ministers would use their contacts to try and procure material?

The NCA is investigating

Firstly, if governments want people to have children, then childcare has to be free - for everyone, regardless of income. And it should be delivered by government, just as schooling is delivered by government - that would prevent businesses making small fortunes from subsidies.

Secondly, and this is a big one - wage increases have to stop being done as a percentage. It needs to be done as a flat £/$ amount. Because when you do it as a percentage, then the disparity between top and bottom grows ever further apart. They could do this by looking at minimum wage, calculating the increase they would need to cover cost of living, and come up with an amount that is then applied to everyone. That is truly fair, and would eliminate the problem of the "working poor".

Thirdly, the entire tax structure has to be rebooted to get rid of every tax loophole that the truly wealthy (the one per cent) use to avoid paying any tax at all. People who are PAYE/PAYG are not the ones making massive gains through those loopholes. This would be the hardest one to implement, because the people with the most to lose in this situation are the ones who seem to have unfettered access to politicians. Possibly the simplest way is to implement a top-tier luxury tax on everything that is truly a luxury. The "mansion tax" is a start in this direction.

The current system, which seems to pit people earning 100,000 per year against people earning 25,000, only benefits governments and the truly wealthy. They are basically encouraging us to fight amongst ourselves for scraps, and overlook the true rorting that is going on. Until we stop doing this, band together, and tell governments that none of this is acceptable, nothing is going to improve for any of us.

I agree! There’s a reason we have some many regulators in the uk (ofsted, fca etc) you cannot trust business to act in an ethical fashion. Profits will always come over people.

you can see it with private schools, safe guarding is woeful, bullying done by affluent children is turned a blind eye to

There's more to healthcare than just NHS vs America. I support universality..not just how it's done here

You are either deliberately misrepresenting the order of this conversation or can't follow it. If you click 'show more' you can see that what you've self quoted there followed me saying what our nursery fees were. The most someone would pay in my area of Inner London is £2k and as you say yourself even someone not in receipt of the tax relief for childcare has some hours subsidised.

15 free hours age 3 and above. Apart from that they pay full whack unlike you. I am not misrepresenting anything. I live 40 miles from London and the cheapest nurseries are more than £2k per month here for those that aren’t getting tax free childcare or funded hours.