Do you think you can be a socialist and

[Swedes]

1. Pay for your child to be independently educated?
2. Buy a house in right catchment for the right school?
3. Feign religion to get your child into a faith school?
4. Object to a lottery system for school places with urban areas (ignoring all convenient environmental issues)?
5. Vote Tory? (because some people seem particularly confused)

No, that was a Brown stealth tax - he whacked on the extra 1% (NI no longer capped) without anyone seeing. He's been very clever at that kind of thing. And yes, I work for the pleasure of the work as do most successful people. The ones who don't retire with the money and sit at home but most who loved it go back and set up a second business etc because it's enjoying the work which is their motivation.

So you can be successful without having the sin of Greed.

Also we are born with inequalities of brains, looks, outlook etc ordained by god or else natural. I don't see anything wrong with that nor that some people will earn huge multiples of what others earn. As long as those at the bottom have enough to live on it shouldn't matter a jot if someone earns 200X that. I don't get upset at what Beckham earns

You can also be succesful without earning very much at all.
Who are the ones ordained by God/ naturally superior?
If you are describing yourself in that description, that is incredibly arrogant.
I don't think that people with money are the most evolved spiritually or emotionally or even necessarily the happiest so I suppose it depends what you believe success is.

I have lived in a cave on a beach. Watched the sunset and sat round a campfire every night. There were 15 of us. I felt very succesful there.

"As long as those at the bottom have enough to live on it shouldn't matter a jot if someone earns 200X that"

Unfortunately, Xenia, many don't have enough to live on, or access to the services that might allow them the opportunity to escape poverty.

Just look at the figures for the effects of poverty on life expectancy in the UK.

If high earners ceased earning 100x what someone earning "not enough to live on" - how would that help anyone?

How does it help anyone that they do earn that much?
They just spend the whole time worrying that someones trying to rip them off

I'm also having some trouble squaring your insistance that success is about love not money with your resentment of the higher rate of tax.

It wouldn't help if they ceased earning that much, but it would certainly help if they paid more tax.

Presumably, Swedes, the people at the top of a company can only earn what they do because of the lower earnings of people at the bottom. If you had the same budget for salaries, but paid everyone at the bottom a bit more, the people at the top would have to earn a bit less.

Not all higher rate taxpayers resent the idea of paying more to help those less fortunate. I feel that people like DH and I should be paying more tax. I also think families like ours should not be given child benefit. I don't need it and all I do is put it into a bank account for when my children become young adults. Much better to redistribute it to those who need it most.

Xenia, what dismays me about your posts is not that you agree with the principle of market forces. I've yet to see a working alternative put forward, despite the way it can polarise society. It's the fact that you seem to deliberately detach yourself from the realities of poverty in this country. You know that 'the poor' exist but as long as they are fed it's all ok. Why worry about the fact that they're often working 50h weeks at minimum wage just to put that food on the table. Nor is it 50hours in the pleasant, stimulating environment that you or I might work. Bluntly, it's cold, hard labour.
It's a miserable existence and quite honestly, I'm bloody thankful it's not me.

I've never thought,'well that couldn't possibly ever be me because I'm clever and work hard!'

I actually disagree with capping salaries. I don't think it would do anything to solve the problems at the other end. I think we need to raise the minimum wage across the board. I also think we need to make sure that everyone actually gets it. So no sneaky agency using pro-rata to get around the law. I also think we should scrap tax credit top up things. Generally, people don't want handouts. It is not the taxpayer's responsibility to subsidise salaries because business chooses to pay poor wages. Raising the minimum wage would put an end to this.
Oh and before anyone comes back with the small business argument, IMO, if a business cannot afford to pay its employees a fair, living wage, then it is not viable. Perhaps we could have top up provision whilst a business is in it's first 2yrs of trading but not after that.

cushion, your small business model is what they do in France- they get very good tax breaks for one year I think, but are then walloped for ever more. Unfortunately commercialism and money sense are not high priority in French society nor in the education system, so many people lack business sense. Also, manual occupations are widely respected, but more intangible jobs slightly distrusted by many people. This extends to their handing my the tax office. My sister is a self-employed interpreter and has to pay up to 75% of her income over in tax, charges and subsidies to employed people. Standards of living in France are roughly comparable to here, but salaires and disposable income are lower than here. Also France seems to have a perennial problem with fostering emerging businesses and growing economically as a country (or at least did until Sarko got in...).

"Mumsnet seem to have lobbied for a 1% increase in the higher rate of tax as it was 40% the last time I looked."

Look again - NIC has been uncapped

Bene uncapped at a rate of 1% on your marginal earnings. Not entirely uncapped or else we'd be paying more like 50% never mind 41%.

cc I never said I wasn't concerned about the poor. I said I wanted them fed and housed. I have no problems with the minimum wage and its level. I am not happy about various anomalies in the system e.g which make it not worth some people working more than is it 16 hours a week?

Also anyone who feels they pay too much tax is perfectly free to lob the extra money over here.

Isn't it better to choose which charities you give to with spare money than leave it to central Governments to decide?

The 16hours pw is a problem. It's part of the top up policy which, as I said, i don't agree with. Of course... you can't just abolish it without underpinning it first. There's a whole other issue that keeps many, many families, especially single parents, down and thats lack of flexible hours. Term-time school hours are very hard to come by. Taking the cost of childcare for 2 children off a minimum wage salary would leave you in debt. That's before paying out for any other living expenses. Thousands of women are caught in this trap. They're desperate to work but if wages don't even meet childcare costs then how can they possibly consider it?

Giving to charity is not the answer though. I make regular mothly DD payments to 2 charities. I don't think giving a little more each month would solve the fundamental problem of millions living on or below the poverty line. In reality, only a change in government policy and an increase in empathy and understanding from the middle classes will slowly make a difference.

Quattro - If I were on Mastermind, tax would be my specialist subject. Higher rate tax is 40%

Yes, higher rate tax is 40% and everyone paying the 40% also pays 1% NI on their earnings over the upper National insurance limit therefore your marginal rate of tax and NI is 41%. For practical purposes it's a 41% tax rate. It means you keep you keep 59p in every pound.

Part of the reason why wages are low is because there are so many Eastern Europeans working here that they have depressed labour rates (supply & demand and all that).
Wasn?t it New Labour that allowed them in? That bit of socialist policy backfired!
Thinking about it haven't most of New Labour's plans backfired - the rich have got richer since NL have been in power.

Part of the reason we need so many things to be cheap is because we've been conned into believing that things like food ought to be cheap. Most people now spend a very small proportion of their income on food vs the 1950s (and conversely becoming a lot larger- where's the logic in that). Arguably, Eastern European labour is not he cause of poor wages, but the solution to the need for them. They are also responding to a labour shortage. Honestly, there aren't too many Englishers willing to go out at 6am to pick carrots or work in an abattoir.

On another note, did anyone catch Start the Week on Radio 4 this morning? David Willetts MP (Conservative!) talking about reciprocal altruism. Was really well thought out and measured. I was impressed anyway. If you want to catch it on listen again, he was on from around 25 minutes into the programme.

Swedes - I know that higher rate tax is 40% but NIC has been uncapped now so we effectively pay 41% on all our higher rate income

Love the way a thread about being socialist becomes about how much higher rate income tax is

If NIC is being included in the 41% higher rate, then the lower rate is 33% including NIC. Not that much of a difference between them put like that really.

lol Cam. And that 1% makes all the difference you know...

That's why I think we need one rate at all levels of say 20% (and hugely cut back public services too). Must simpler and you're keeping more of the pound in your wage packet so can buy moreor save more. Having separate NI and Tax is ridiculous given they dont' set aside the NI fund for you later when you retire and if they Government run out of money the NI pot won't be worth anything anyway.

Don't get me on the subject of NI, Xenia.

It's the most ridiculous swindle ever.

And as for the fact that Gordon Brown has increased spending on the NHS by 50% in real terms with NO discernible improvement in service ...

I don't mind paying the tax. I just want value for money.

Oh and I don't want dodgy MPs paying 80 their 80 year old mothers "allowances" out of my money either.

Should be prosecuted IMO

Tis true that there is not much incentive to aim for incomes above £40,000 unless they're markedly above that.