to think 51% tax is ridiculous, and already to be planning to move to Asia

[hedgiemum]

Namechanged. Married to someone who earns well in excess of £150,000 a year, though neither does he earn 7 figures.
He is still quite young in his career - a recent promotion to a senior position, but has not been earning this kind of money of long, so we still have a mortgage and haven't saved large amounts (what we have saved is through his pension which is no longer going to be particularly worth doing.)

He phoned me a minute after end of budget to say he'd watched it with his boss whose reaction was that he would move the company (not a bank, but in finance) to Asia. Probably Hong Kong - 12% tax rather than the 51% we'd be paying here.

Seems like a kneejerk reaction, and clearly we can afford to pay more, but boss doesn't feel he'll get good productivity from staff if they are getting to take home less than half their income. Plus it decreases ever-present risk of them being headhunted by companies in lower-tax economies.

AIBU to be PLEASED (I used to hate tax exiles.) Partly because it just does not seem fair. Partly because this country has been run so badly by New Labour of whom we had such high expectations, and the medical care we have received has been shite, the local schools are shite, the roads are insanely busy and yet is costs so much to live here.

Oh god. I am supposed to be marking. I can't even begin to work out my refutation of that post. Someone numerate clever needs to help me out.

The good thing about less frequent rubbish colelction is that it sort of forces people to recycle more. There's not much incentive if you know that all your rubbish will be removed in the evening. If you knew that your wheelie bin was going to honk to high heaven in two weeks' time, you might be more inclined to compost for example. Also having only one bin forces the recycling of things that can be, to reduce volume.

bertie - just think how much they are costing the NHS with their unhealthy drinking habits. Tsk!

they were probably smoking too. Doouble tsk!

For those who have posted on this thread that they 'deserve' their ridiculously high salaries - this aregument does not sit well with me. I have a good salary - I am well educated and have worked hard. I believe I deserve to be comfortable. But do I deserve to earn many multiples of what some one else earns for an honest days work? I'm not sure. Now expand this out to a very wealthy banker. They could earn let's say 30 times what a shop assistent earns. Do they really deserve this? I find it hard to see how any amount of skipped lunch breaks, or years studying / working hard could justify this level of inequality. No-one's time imo is worth so much. I also believe that there will be a big readjustment in the years to come. For every tosser who wants to piss off to hong kong, there will be many many bright young things willing to step in and take there place - probably for a reduced income as so many are now unemployed.

SJIOTW - yeah why dont you tell my paediatric neurologist consultant friend that her salary isn't justfied. grow up.

I think the whole business of what we deserve is a total red herring TBH. You might be where you are due to good education, good planning, determination. Or you might where you are due to all those things or none of them plus good luck. And you might have all those things and bad luck and be earning peanuts. And as for hard work - many people work hard and don't get very far. Forget who 'deserves' what. It's irrelevant. Not to say somewhat distasteful IMO.

And once that is out of the way, what are you left with? People who one way or another have lots of money, a greater majority who have enough and some who don't have enough and need help. So it is all quite simple. The most comes from those have most. Even heavy taxation is going to leave the very rich with more than the moderately rich. So where's the problem?

Don't forget to factor in national insurance as well - lets face it, this is like another tax that is taken away from what you earn.

Companies are already moving their activities from the UK to overseas locations resulting in a loss of more UK jobs. My former employer has closed its activities here and transferred them to the US. A high taxation economy tends to be seen as a problem by business.

bertieboo - many people to very valuable and stressful jobs. They deserve to be renumerated accordingly. When it starts getting into the hundreds of thousands then I do not think it can ever be justified. Cop the fuck on

This looks like a good time to introduce the concept of "value added".

The hypothetical banker in your example earns 30x the shop assistant, because he has a much higher value added (in terms of money), not because he works 30x harder.

The shop might be earning 100K revenues in a good month. Take out overhead expenses etc and it makes maybe 50K profit. Shop employs 2 assistants, who earn 2K a month. Also, does it really matter who the shop assistants are? There are zillions of young, pretty, girls with a charming smile out there.

Now consider a trader who single-handedly generates 2 million per month for his bank. His costs to the bank are his desk, computer, phone line (all negligible) and his salary/compensation. Also, how easy is it to replace him? How many other traders are there out there who will make that kind of money for the bank?

Regardless of how hard he works in comparison to the shop assistant, with such a high value added, is it really a surprise that he makes 20K per month?

"When it starts getting into the hundreds of thousands then I do not think it can ever be justified."

If they couldn't be justified, employers wouldn't be paying these salaries.

What, do you think they like throwing money at these people?

Riven- In Spain most people live in town in 6, 7 or 8 storey blocks of flats. Their big wheelie bins fill up pretty fast as you can imagine... Also in the summer in 30-40 C heat the stench and rats would be hideous.

Aplause for the intelligent response SJ.
Thick people always seem to resort to bad language when threatened. Your original post was so weak and ill thought out, and you know it, that you have decided to lash out at me instead.
By the way, my first line was me being sarcastic, just in case you missed that.....
And its really easy to hide behind a ccomputer and be rude.

Riven - It's not a question of "how much" you throw, but a question of how healthy it is to clean away garbage much more frequently than twice a month.

Really. Are we even discussing this?

OK - so by your logic then - any of these magnifcent traders can go on to negative salaries for all the money that have lost?
I do not think we should all earn the same - I think people should be rewarded for working hard. I just think no one is entitled to or deserves obscene amounts of money.

Cote- shop assistants are more likely to be earning £1000 a month than 2. Also, I employ someone (my cleaning lady) even though I earn a pittance. Employing people is not the preserve of the rich. In this low wage area, I almost consider it a duty to employ a lady who would get no other work otherwise.

You still don't get it.

People don't get rewarded for working hard.

People get rewarded for the money they make for their employer.

The message behind my post - and I stand by it - is that we are all part of a larger society in which there should be greater equality

Cote, and another one to add,

People also get rewarded for the scarcity of their skills.

Please refrain from patronising me. I was merely adjusting a detail. And, yes I happen to believe that many others would step into their place if a trader left. And I do think the question of whether they should be required to take negative wages if they lose money for their employer is a valid one.

'Some councils do have fortnightly rubbish collection. They also typically collect green waste, food waste, cans and glass and paper for recycling, provide streetcleaning and weeding services, collect bulky items and provide local refuse dumps. All mostly free at the point of use.

Mine collects all of the above other than glass. I have also had a new road surface and new streetlights on my street in the last year. My library has just been completely refurbished.

I would love a fortnightly rubbish collection. I do not need it collecting weekly, we have at most 2 small bin bags in our wheelie bin a week.

Neither of us are in the 150K band, we earn roughly half that as a couple at the moment and live exceedingly well. I would gladly pay a higher tax than I do on what I earn now, because I perceive myself as well paid and I know I am lucky to be in the position I am in.

Equal opportunity is a good thing. But once people have made their choices re education, career, working hard etc it is totally unreasonable to expect their compensation to be equal.

A nurse will never make as much as a corporate lawyer. That is a fact, known to both the nurse and the lawyer before they made their career choices. A shop assistant might not even have a career, and should have thought about that eventuality when she decided not to train for a career that would reward her efforts better.

Maybe part of the problem is that society seems to place value on the wrong skills - we should be paying better wages for those that take care of us and educate us (as nurses, carers, teachers, and such) instead of some other career paths.

I haven't seen anyone talk about WHY we tax....a "high" income tax rate isn't a "punishment" for those who have money or a "reward" for those who don't have money.

Taxes are a way of equalising the discrepancies in the standard of living in our society through the provision of the welfare state. Its all part of being a COMPASSIONATE society. Whether the money from taxes is well spent is another argument altogether.