The Tory attack on family 'v' The State of the Economy. I don't want to like the Tories, I Would Rather Eat my Own Arse. So help Me Understand

[Tortington]

abolition of Child Trust Funds;

money in bank for being born was always a shit idea. lets give kids £100 for existing.

the economy down the shitter - i think its proper that we pull this.

the Health in Pregnancy Grant;

not essential is it. does one reaaaaaaaally need a grant to be healthy in pregnancy?

jesus again i have to say - as a benefit to be pulled, its hardly essential considering that cut back have to be made

Surestart Maternity Grant for second child;

i dont know what this is- more money for having children?

the three-year freeze on child benefits whats the problem
and the introduction of housing benefit caps.
great

then theres the biggee - CB.

WTF am i not seeing that everyone seems to be going apoplectic about?

is there general agreement that a cb cut should be on household income? is it that its unfair in this way?

if that is the case - i see the point.

if its just bitching becuase people who earn over 45k aren't getting cb, then im finding it hard to agree.

and the argument that its a failsafe paid to women that help them get out of abused situations etc - you can't just pay women benefits on the offchance that one dayt hey will be abused.

am i missing a mahoosive point?

tell me the tories are targeting poor people like this but are not targeting rich people.

tell me that yes yes!! yes yes yes!!! you would agree with benefits like this being withdrawn, IF he also targetted rich people by some tax or other

tell me the equality?

they seem like non essential benefits to me - that have to be reined in cos we're financially up the shitter? or are we - maybe we aren't financially up the shitter and its a huge lie and the tories are just lying and whipping poor people? tell me?

That's a claim, huddspur, not proof. Show me your evidence. Show me one Western developed nation that has suffered any ill effect from taxing the rich.

Lots of people will say they're going to leave.........chances are very few actually will - and if they do leave someone currently down the pay/job scale from them either from this country or abroad I'm sure will be more than happy to step up and take over.

Hang on hang on hang on. The wealthiest were hit hardest and hit first. The top rate of tax is 50% and they abolished personal allowances.

So I do think that it's fair for non-essential benefits to be cut

Edam

Try UK in 1970s

In 1974 the top-rate of income tax increased to 83% (incomes over £20,000), and combined with a 15% surcharge on investments and dividend could add to a 98% marginal rate of personal income tax.

People left in droves ... it was pointless trying to be entrepreneurial.

Not everybody believes in the concep of a Laffer curve but one major study of the US between 1959 and 1991 placed the revenue-maximizing tax rate (the point at which another marginal tax rate increase would decrease tax revenue) between 33% and 35%

And that highest rate of tax of 50% is one of the highest rates of tax in the western developed world.

Take an entrepreneur. Would you chose to flog yourself to death to lose half your earnings in the UK, or head off to Switzerland where the top rate of tax is 20%? You get to a point where you think, well, this is ridiculous and up sticks

And the UK would lose. Lose out on the top players who've generated the wealth.

Thing is what people define as non-essential is intimitely linked to what their values and beliefs are.

Many people around the world wouldn't say that free universal healthcare was an essential benefit for eg.

I think that the cap on benefits is callous. An article on teh BBc says it is the first time in teh UK that a benefit of that type has been unlinked from need.

So it's no longer about meeting people's basic needs. That disconnect has been accomplished. It's about whether the govt deem the recipient worthy of assistance or not, with all the value judgements and prejudices inherent in that.

I find that scary.

I'm a 40% tax payer and my DH is a 50% tax-payer (52% with NI).

Previously, DH has never been a large scale user of tax avoidance products. He was okay with paying his tax.

The move to 50% income tax, loss of personal allowance and cuts to pension tax relief have changed his mind. He'll ask to company to reduce his salary for next year and put stock, bonuses etc into an EBT. That's the Laffer curve in action.

Personally, I'd prefer to move to one of the cantons outside Zurich. His company has bought a new office there and some of his colleagues have already transferred.

Have only read about a third of the thread so apologies if someone has already raised this point.
How big was the deficit (aka National Debt) after WW2? How wrecked was the country physically, city centres bombed to hell, all non-war industry in disarray, thousands of injured and traumatised soldiers coming home.
Yet we managed to introduce the NHS and expand the Welfare State. We had a massive program of council house building, and increase in free Further education. OK it cost a lot of money, the Debt was paid off only recently. But in the meantime, I didn't notice the end of life as we know it. Somehow the country stayed on its feet.

I don't agree with the thinking that the money must be there because well it simply must be there. Sloppy thinking. Look what happened to Greece

The money to meet the basic needs of the children in this country must be there, yes. We are hardly a poor country.

Arguing that it is logical and sensible to refuse assistance for children due to the government disapproving of their parents circumstances is... well whatever it is, it's a lot worse than sloppy.

Oh, and Siasi, is that really the best you can do? Kind of proves my point. There is no actual proof that even if some of the super-rich did fuck off that it would do any harm to us as a nation. In fact it might make us a bit happier. The more unequal the society, the more prone it is to social conflict, high crime rates, physical and mental ill health. Worth finding out if it works the other way round.

While I'm at it, let's nail another lie. The 50% tax band is not a flat rate. No-one pays 50% tax on their entire earnings. It only cuts in once you have already made £150k. Which puts those people in the very top ONE per cent of earners, last time I checked. (Oh, and you only lose the personal allowance if you earn over £100k. Not exactly struggling to get by).

If the rich don't want to take their share of the pain, fine, they are free to leave. Wish they'd hurry up and do it instead of endlessly bellyaching about it. We don't need parasites.

Edam, there is a need for our economy to be competitive with other western developed economies.

Many UK companies have relocated to Switzerland because of the taxation system. That's billions of pounds lost to the UK exchequer, literally billions. Wolseley was the latest to do so, and they left a couple of weeks ago.

If you want to see the country stagnate and degenerate into a third world economy, taxing the rich until the pips squeak is the way to go about it. Like it or not, they have the money and they are mobile.

What will be left, when you have had your way? Who will fund universal healthcare? Who will fund benefits?

I don't object to paying a 50% tax rate - one of the highest tax rates in the western developed world. I do object to being cursed for it though.

Interesting thread. I tend to agree with the OP. Although there does seem to be an unfair weighting towards family-type allowances. Having said that, when I was childless and TTC it seemed to me that "hard working families" were endlessly getting new handouts at my expense. Perhaps the balance is just being redressed a bit?

A third world economy? Like Denmark and Sweden you mean?

If level of taxation is the basis for judging a successful economy then it looks like Latvia and Slovakia are the places to be.

Great news for top rate tax payers here, I think Easy Jet might do cheap flights...

Edam,

The top 1% of earners pay 22% of the tax in the UK. The top 10% pay 53%. These are hardly "parasites" as you put them. They are paying for half of the NHS, education, pensions, defense etc etc

You may want those higher earners to leave but if the top 1% left then you'd lose about £100bn in revenues. That's the NHS budget gone ...

I didn't say the 50% was a flat rate. The point is that at a certain point the marginal tax rate becomes so punitive that a) entrepreneurial activity ceases b) tax aviodance is used c) you leave the country.

My DH and I are happy to pay tax up to a point but in return we want to understand that the tax is going to the right people/causes, not being squandered on inefficient public services, final salary pensions etc etc. As one of the top 1%, we are pulling 22x our weight ... how much more do you want!

Denmark and Sweden have tax rates of approximately 58% as the basic rate for everyone. As a result the vast majority of families have both parents working and usually both full time as only way to make ends meet. Childcare costs about 20% of the cost here in UK, great quality 'free' education and healthcare but you all end up paying one way or another.....this is a problem ALL western world economies now have as we have ageing populations, high expectations of state care but now limited growth or expansion to pay the increasing bills. Another 18months with no change in policy and this country would have been up the financial shitter. As it stands life will be even more grim for many here but there is a great chance that we will avoid the economic disaster that is likely to hit the majority of people in Greece, parts of Spain and Ireland in the next 12 mths. Even with huge public sector job cuts and benefit cuts at least the Government will pay the remaining wages and benefits as promised. Other countries are not paying workers anything at all at the moment. Greece is only surviving by receiving loaned money from the rest of the EU (mainly Germany).

edam the 1970s was a decade of terrible economic performance in this country. The policy to tax the rich until the pips squeeked was a large contributing factor along with trade union militancy.
The richest people that you degrade are the main wealth creators in this country and the loss of entrepreneurial talent would be devastating for the country and the economy and would worsen our situation further.

ditz... you are mad. Or so terribly misinformed that you sound mad.
Kerrrristtt...

Would the "loss of entrepreneurial talent" really be devastating for the country? As edam says, crime rates and depression increase the more unequal the society is, regardless of how wealthy that society is.
Which means poverty is relative. You can live in a rainforest tribe and not feel poor, or you can live in one of the richest countries in the world and feel extremely marginalized and poor.
So the amount of wealth a country has is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is how evenly it's distributed.

The loss of talent would greatly hinder economic performance as we are a knowledge economy and the loss of this talent would greatly reduce the skills and knowledge base that we have as a country. As an economy we would lose competitiveness because of this and that would cause economic performance and standards of living to fall.

This argument about people leaving is flawed. Tory people assume everyone will leave as they assume that everyone thinks the same as they do ie will always act purely in their own self interest.

This misses many points:

• People do not always act purely in their own self-interest, even rich people. Many wealthy people are responsible, altruistic individuals who are happy to pay taxes to assist those who are less fortunate
• The country where you live is for many people more than just the place where a house sits. Many people are emotionally attached to their country of residence
• People have family here, children in schools. They enjoy the culture and way of life
• etc etc

This is the mistake that selfish people often make, assuming that everyone else thinks the same as them. A total failure of imagination and empathy. Of course all the rich people won't just leave if they tax them a bit higher. It's cobblers, an empty threat. And as others say, would we miss them anyway? People would step up to fill the gaps.

I note that my post about the government punishing children because it disapproves of the actions of their parents remains unanswered.

I therefore assume that this ideological stance is fully supported by the Conservatives on this thread.

I agree with the idea that inequality is what makes society dysfunctional. However we do not have a Scandanavian model of society here. I would happily vote for any political party who proposed one.

We have a society in which swathes of the population are economically inactive. Given that, we are in a position where the economically inactive are financially supported by the proportionately fewer economically active. It is competitively impossible for the UK to tax the economically active any more, which is why we end up in this sort of muddle of inequality and resentments.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8052059/Benefits-culture-Six-children-and-675-a-week....html

Tory paper unsure on demonising children - read that ISNT.

I am a Tory and would happily have dh pay more in tax; for most HRTs on PAYE, paying an income tax increase is unavoidable, so saying that we would manage to avoid it is disingenuous.

'Of course all the rich people won't just leave if they tax them a bit higher. It's cobblers, an empty threat. And as others say, would we miss them anyway? People would step up to fill the gaps.'

Many will however, and how precisely is someone going to step up to fill the gaps if they haven't the qualifications or the experience to do so. I can't see an unemployed 25 year old stepping up to do my dh's job - they have neither the experience, training, or the other factors needed to do it. They would not be offered the post either.

As someone else pointed out companies are beginning to leave - therefore there won't be the gaps to be filled in any case; the jobs and those who do them will have gone abroad.