What do you think of the 5% tax hike for those earning more than £150k - good or bad?

[soapbox]

????

SOrry. Didn't mean to be rude. I'm just sick of being expected to spend my money on everyone else apart from...us.

Charity donations--every day, there are more of them.
School donations--teachers' presents. School trips.
More tax.

Just off to collect my boots from the cobblers. Third time. Can't afford new ones because of the above.

Public servants: Who earns most?
Looking at this link teachers, firefighters, police officers, nurses - all seem to be reasonably paid tbh compared with the UK average

but do we need to pay the heads of local councils over £100,000 a year

Socialism won't work any more than capitalism .... some pigs are more equal than others ...

Following on from Duchessse's excellent post - I wonder whether wealthy Americans feel more inclined to give to charity because there is a greater divide there between rich and poor? In the UK we have a wonderful history of charitable giving but it all seems to have gone to pot. I wonder if this is because the UK poor already have free education, free heatlthcare and a welfare state that provides? I personally have an ongoing argument inside my head about whether it's preferable to give to a UK charity or to a Charity that seeks to relieve suffering in Africa, for example.

Perkin - There was no mention of torture in my Econ class and neither did I see anything of the sort in further studies of the subject, so I don't know what you are talking about.

Certainly, I hope you are not about to start off about what a great system communism was

The Blonde that's far too simplistic, we need the best people for the job in terms of running council's, NHS etc etc and to attract those people they need to compete with the private sector.
Whether we have the best people is a whole different story.

more tax = carers being paid more than min wage by local authority.

Surely you aren't that naive NMC ?

Agree to some extent KatieDD but I'm sure you could get some one good enough to run most councils for approx £100,000 or less. I don't think it would be harder to run a council than a school and I don't think School Heads are payed more than £100,000.

Unfortunately councils do not seem to spend our money wisely or take any notice of public opinion.

Our local council runs the towns 5 yr old sports centre and you only have to look there to see how incompetent people can be. It has a lovely new pool and gym but the place is not cleaned properly, the cafe only sells junk food at exorbitant prices and they have facilities they shouln't have such as sunbeds..not exactly good for the communities health!

I think it is right that some jobs pay more than others but some salaries are ridiculously high such as those of TV personalities, footballers - I think the top salaries should be for people who are running large companies or institutions or have spent years training in professions such as doctors.

whoops should have written paid not payed!

But with the exception of the BBC - which i would ban/scrap tomorrow - what business is it of our what Manchester United or Liverpool want to pay their players ? The fans could vote with their feet and not go, but if they are happy to pay for season tickets then so what it doesn't affect me.

Cote D'Azur: since you asked...

Of course you didn't explore the philosophical underpinnings of the notion of utility in your economics class: because economists don't believe they have to understand anything beyond the black box of rational action.

The problem though - as Perkin points out - is that the utility function is anything but neutral economic action, as you will find from a little further reading of your preferred source: the philosophical basis of utilitarianism

Wilfsell - re "if no-one can judge need objectively, how best can we judge it and on what criteria?"

We can't. That is the point.

That is why nobody in their right mind (in politics, at least) tries to determine what everyone needs, because there is no such common denominator once we are out of the realm of food, shelter, clothing.

Books might be inessential to you. To me, they may the purpose of life. Bicycles might seem completely pointless to me, but riding a bike might your one true hobby, what gives you most joy. I think a good school is an absolute need, but there are some here who prefer to home school their children etc etc.

That is why money is a good medium - you work, receive money in return, and then go spend it according to what you feel you need.

The argument that bankers work harder or that carers work harder really annoys me. Why can't we value the work that different members of society do for what it is?

Contrary to popular opinion, bankers (and lawyers and accountants and other high paid people) are key to the functioning of our society - I'm sure you appreciate the ability to have a mortgage, or a legal system that offers you redress for things going wrong (in theory).

I also think bankers (and lawyers and accountants et al) appreciate a society in which there are professional carers, nurses, doctors etc.

I work for a bank. I think I work pretty hard. I don't think I work harder than a nurse. I work differently. And I am absolutely certain that if I decided to become a nurse right now, I would have to work a LOT harder than I do now because it's so foreign to me and not natural. And ditto to the nurse trying to do my job.

Wikipedia is far from my "preferred source" but it explains things in a layman's words - suitable for this thread.

While Utilitarianism is a nice concept, it has a fundamental flaw - It does not work. Study after study has shown that people do not choose to do something according to "its contribution to overall utility: that is, its contribution to happiness or pleasure as summed among all persons". People act in the best interests of themselves and their loved ones. If they have resources to spare, they will act to benefit others, as long as that action does not conflict with the interests of themselves and their loved ones.

This is why MMR uptake is so low - Those who vaccinate don't believe in any risk to their DCs. For the rest, even a tiny risk to one's own baby trumps absolute benefit to the society as a whole.

I'm sorry to say this but your Utilitarianism is a fantasy. It doesn't explain the world we live in, nor the actions of our peers.

Game Theory is best for that, specifically because it assumes we all maximise our own utility, rather than "greatest utility for the greatest number".

Where was I? Earning money I suppose. It doesn't matter what we think and what posters think, we will not be moving to complete state provision of servicesand 100% state employment of people. Move to North Korea if you want that system. It's never worked anywhere.

Don't be jealous ofpeople like me who think it would be hard to live on as little as £150k a year. Go out and earn that money or go to church / mosque more and learn to accept your lot and not be materialistic. Jealousy /envy is a nasty sin and doesn't make people very happy.

We wer made very different by God inlooks, health, mental and physical, personality and brains so we will never iron out all differences. The rich and clever will lawfully avoid new taxes if there is enough incentive to do that as there often is so no need to feel too sorry for them. But if higher tax means less is recovered as has been the case in the past then that will mean those who are poor suffering so let's hope Brown knows hat he's doing.

long thread!
pmsl at idea of all super rich going to russia. that's really made me smile. they'd better be careful then and spend a bit more money on bodyguards.

I'm quite happy for there to be a higher rate for the top 1 percent of earners but it's not going to make much money as they all can afford top accountants. it's more of a statement that earning that much money means more of it should be redistributed.

I'd rather wages were more evenly spread out but until most people in the uk accept that we have a very unequal society with a wide disparity in wages (and see it as a bad thing - most developed countries don't have such a wide gap) then that's not going to happen really. shame

still laughing to think of all the british super elite off to moscow.
lolol

blinglovin that is an extremely spot on post.........we all work bloody hard and the the inequality stems from the free market ecoonomy we live in.

there are upsides to my job...........massive pay............but the downsides are insecurity , no pension etc.

Nurses and fireman etc all work bloody hard too and I know for one I couldnt do the job in a thousand years but whilst they dont have the pay we have they have a job for life on more than national average wages and as I said earlier the most fantatsic pensions. No public sector workers have had their retirement pots diminish by 30% this year. To many lower paid people in the private world that is a f**king nightmare.

And NMC if you think the tax rises will pay carers more than the minimum wage then you must be more deluded about how these things work than I thought. Its all about supply and demand.......It will simply go to some bloody red tape initiative that will be abandoned after 3 years and do nobody any good at all !

Nurses, florists, painters, etc make a conscious decision when they enter their chosen profession, knowing that they will most probably never be high earners.

Maybe that was their passion and they chose to do what they love over another profession that would bring them better financial security. Maybe they thought mathematics was too hard, or that law, management, finance etc was boring.

Each profession is important to society, but at any given time there is more demand for one and less for the other, and hence a nurse earns less than a banker.

All this is rather obvious, but perhaps needs to be repeated as there are some on this thread who feel nurse works as hard as banker and thus should earn the same. It just doesn't work that way, and both new this when choosing their professions.

Very few people can do what I do so I get paid more. Most of us can d cleaning, even my sister with her Oxbridge degree has done it, so it's lower paid. If you think money matters then you need to ensure your childrn know about the consequences of picking certain jobs. If money doesn't matter or you reject capitalism then let your advice to them may be different.

As for "LOL at rich going offshore"

What you people don't get is that they won't physically move. They will set up structures so that the bulk of their income is generated in a favourable jurisdiction overseas, away from the UK taxman.

Many already do this and more will do it as taxes rise. I don't know what is there to laugh at, except perhaps the ignorance behind that comment.

exactly Xenia...now I need to get on . I am walking away from this thread .......its addictive!

Most people on £150K plus are paye on jobs right here, not in Minsk. And there needs to be a crackdown on non-dom cheats.

But Cote, that doesn't meant that the discrepency between the wages of a nurse to a banker should be so great.

Especially the bankers that have caused so much of this global fuckup, and to whom we were all supposed to be genuflecting with gratitude until about five minutes ago.