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

[soapbox]

????

Cote, you are unbelievably patronising. I hope you never need the services of a nurse.

It is not perfectly legal to have non-UK companies that make money in a tax haven. There will be no "crackdown" on these people, who are the majority.

It is illegal to claim you live in a tax haven when you live in London. I assume those are the few you call "non-dom cheats".

thumbwitch - You must have misunderstood. Nurses do a necessary and perfectly fine profession.

However, it is a profession which not in high demand, is (comparatively) easy to train for, and as a result a nurse does not earn as much as a banker, a specialist doctor, etc.

This is the simple reality, and it is not patronising at all to point it out. And I certainly hope this is not the first time you have heard that some professions earn less than others.

Nurses, teachers, etc perform essential services. But their jobs do have some great benefits not available to many higher earners.

Apparently nursing staff take the greatest number of sick days per year of any job. And try sacking a teacher. In the paper today was one teacher who spent 4 hours a day on the internet - in the classroom! She is currently undergoing a 'disciplinary hearing'. The headmistress of the ds's school was telling me she dreads hiring staff who turn out to be incompetent, as it is near-on impossible to get rid of them.

Now, contrast that with many in the private sector who are constantly nervous of getting axed, and the culture of 'presenteeism' where you are afraid to take a holiday in case some eager beaver is sitting in your seat when you return.

I think security is worth a great deal of money. Apparently applications for public sector positions are up by 22%.

"that doesn't meant that the discrepency between the wages of a nurse to a banker should be so great"

Says who?

Wages of nurses, bankers, architects etc are determined by the market - i.e. the free will of all buyers and sellers of a service. Buyer wants to pay less, seller wants to get more. The equilibrium is the determined wage.

If tomorrow there were less nurses, their wages would be significantly more. If there were much more bankers than jobs, their wages would decrease (which we are now beginning to see, given the huge numbers of bankers out of a job and bringing down their salary expectations).

ok Im back. Precisely fircone.

a bit late but Cote - you will find justifications for torture in the original Mill and Bentham texts. no, it's not on Wiki, but that doesn't mean it's not there! I'm sorry your Econ. class skipped this bit, but my PPE degree didn't.

I'm confused Cote . I thought we had a huge shortage of nurses. That's why we're bringing in lots of nurses from overeas. No one wants to train to be a nurse here because it's such hard work and it's so poorly paid.

I don't think it is "comparatively easy to train for". I've got friends who are nurses who are graduates and who have done 2 years of nurses training on top of their degrees. They're still paid pittance and they work really hard. How's that easy compared to lots of high earners in the City who fell into banking pretty much as school leavers?

I'm confused too Cote... I wasn't (and would never) advocate utilitarianism of any shade. I think decision making is much more complex.

I was just responding to your exhortation that people should go learn about the utility function by pointing out that you should go learn why Perkin points out the link between utility and torture...

Not many high earners in the city go straight form school. Most have degrees........and earn a pittance whilst they learn the trade.

Mill & Bentham texts talk about Utilitarianism, which would indeed justify torture of one person for "the greatest utility for the greatest number of people". However, that is what Wilfsell has been advocating (see her posts below), and not me.

I have been talking about the Utility Function in economy, which involves the pleasure/pain each individual gets from each product/service personally. In simple terms, my utility function might be:

5food + 6books + 1holidays + 2nice clothes...

Someone else's might be:
3food + 1books + 7holidays + 5nice clothes...

So the whereas I will spend lots of money on food and books (to maximise my own utility function), this other person would fly away on a holiday at every chance.

My point was that we all have different Utility Functions and hence it is not possible to determine common needs for everyone and discard the rest as inessentials.

True, Rosa. Adult and mental health nursing courses are often undersubscribed.

The problem as i see it with a very strict adherence to the idea taht "the market creates equilibrium" is that it (a) assumes that the market functions perfectly, and (b) that the needs perceived by the market perfectly match the needs of society in general (which is really an outcome of (a), I suppose. I did, ages ago, read really interesting stuff by Joseph Stiglitz on this issue - his argument was that perfect markets need perfect information if they are to function, and that perfect information can't ever truly exist, so markets are flawed. Huge disclaimer, though - am at work and so don't have the book to hand. Will try to clarify/amend this later.

high earners in the city don't fall into banking as school leavers. shedloads of them have phds for starters. and loads have mbas. no harder than training to be/being a nurse but definitely not easier

Wouldn't you firstly make a distinction between necessities and needs, Cote? - the holidays and nice clothes are surely the latter, rather than the former?

OK. Not saying that everyone in the City fell into it as a school leaver but I know people in the City who did and who earn a lot more than my friends who are nurses (and spent significantly more time in higher education)...in fact, they earn more than anyone else I know and I'm not sure the person I'm thinking of has got A-levels.

Anyway, aren't we straying from the point of the OP. The answer as far as I'm concerned is yes, the rich should be taxed more. Lots more .

If there was such a shortage of nurses, they would be much better paid. Sorry, but that is the simple truth.

Training to be a nurse is much easier than training to be a cardiologist, which is one reason why there aren't as many cardiologists as nurses and they are paid much better.

Surely, this is not news to anyone.

If you think finance is so easy that there is not much education involved in being a banker, I can only assume that you don't know much about what it entails nor the degrees necessary to get a job. Obviously we are not talking about the clerks working the cashier but high earners in corporate finance, investment banking.

'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 (sic) this when choosing their professions.'
interesting, cote.
so nurses are not highly paid because they don't work hard?
gosh i hope you never get ill and have to be looked after by one of those lazy slackers...

Habbibu - The point is that you can't make that distinction for others, for what is important for each person can be very different (aside from food, shelter, basic clothing which are the bare necessities we all share).

You're not understanding my points at all Cote D'Azur...

You cannot have a model of the utility function without an assumption about the acting individual and therefore social behaviour. Utilitarian thinking and philosophy is what grounds the conception of the economic agent, whether economists like to acknowledge that or not.

This is why Oxford offers a degree in PPE because they recognise that it is important to understand the links between economics in practice and the political and philosophical models that underpin economic action (amongst other reasons).

So your defence of the utility function is just not there and I'm putting to you the need to defend it on both analytical and moral grounds. Where is the evidence that people behave in a game theoretical way? It might be nice and neat in economic theory but I've yet to see convincing empirical evidence that people do behave in such a way, other than economists telling us that they do. And since they don't actually (typically) recognise other factors in human behaviour (such as habit, ideology, altruism, religious belief, delusion etc) I've yet to be convinced that neo-classical economists really understand human behaviour at all...

apparently there is a shortage of nurses and surplus of consultants

so by cote's logic nurses' wages should have shot up? and did they?
thought not...

CatIsSleepy - That is not what I said at all. I wish you would read the thread before making inflammatory comments.

Nurses may work as hard as doctors, but they will not have the same wages, because wages are not determined according to who works hardest. They are determined according to value added, and which is more in demand and has less supply.

This is the tenth time I am saying the same thing. It is tough trying to reason with emotion

and RR yes you're right-lots more indeed

People on high incomes employ a lot of people.Some of my customers probably earn around that amount {they are medical consultants},and if they have less money coming in,people like me,their cleaners,ironing ladies,ect,lose their jobs.

The government's plans make me very uneasy personally.Too much easy credit got us into this mess,so the government wants more of the same to buy us out.We will all pay heavily for this in the long term.

but you seemed to be implying that because they (apparently) don't work as hard as bankers they should not be paid as well as bankers....that is the gist of your comment '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 (sic) this when choosing their professions.'

apologies if that's not what you meant