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

[soapbox]

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Twinkle - it's possible that banks have pushed loans in order to encourage people to get into debt so that they - the banks - reap the interest.

All of us have experience of loans being shoved under, even up, our noses - increased borrowing limits given without us requesting them etc - and some of us have even had credit cards withdrawn because we pay the owed amount every month and are therefore not worth the price of the plastic card to the bank. Even though the bank gets the commission fom the retailer the card was used with. Greedy?

British banks did NOT have to buy the bundles of debt - they presumably did it because they wnated to make the killing on the interest. They miscalculated, and now the taxpayer - including all those domestic staff luck enough to earn £10 per hour (ffs) - has had to bail out the banks.

On the extra tax over £150k - I don't know. But I wondered when I heard Boris on the news sayoing that all the high earners would leave the country, just where it is they will go? Many Western countries re locked into the same credit crunch and i am wondering wher your heroic banker DH will find a job. Banks aren't big hireers atm, are they??

Sweden, or Norway perhaps. Not, apparantly in deep shit because of the credit crunch - but - oho - lets have a look at how much tax they pay there.....a LOT more than we do here.

Enjoy Norway. It'll be great if you need a breast feeding counsellor at very short notice or a paid year off work after having a child. But it's all paid for by v high taxes...and the alcohol is extremely expensive - that tax q again. Send us a postcard.

And as far as I can see the single biggest factor in the house price bubble is again, banks desire for more interest.

When I bought my firts tiny flat, it was normal to pay 9 or 10% interest and you couldn't borrow more than 2x your salary, plus 1x the salary of another person if you were buying together. Then interest rates went down - which should, perhaps have meant that people could buy their houses more cheaply. But no - the banks decided to offere people far bigger multiples of their income - borrow MORE MORE MORE - so that they could continue to get the same cash value in interest. More money available led to higher prices, higher prices led to banks saying 'OK - now we'll let you borrow 4x your salary over..ooh, lets say 45 years - from 20 to returement. OK?'. And who thought they were laughing all the way to the bank? The bankers.

We have been led like dim sheep into debt (as a society) by banks lending money like dealers push drugs - because once in, we have to keep paying them.

But msbossy - if you and your husband are earning 90k combined, this doesn't affect you. And it wouldn't if it were just one of you earning that.

I'm a bit confused

ooo- I missed your deleted post, greedypoppins. What did it say?

Norway does sound like a very good fit for twinkle and her family, blu. Nice suggestion.

And as far as I can see the single biggest factor in the house price bubble is again, banks desire for more interest

Don't forget the stamp duty, that was the main reason for ramping the property market.

And as far as I can see the single biggest factor in the house price bubble is again, banks desire for more interest

Don't forget the stamp duty, that was the main reason for ramping the property market.

Twinkle has a point. The whole subprime thing did indeed originate out of pressure to extend credit to those in deprived areas in the US. Campaigners at the time accused banks of discriminating against the less well off by refusing to lend to them.

Yes credit has been too easily available but responsibility has to be shared with the person taking out the credit. Otherwise isn't it like blaming MacDonalds etc for the obestity crisis?

twinkle if you really have that amount of money surely losing a bit more won't be such a great loss?

So do you think it's responsible to lend to people when you know they don't have a hope in hell of paying it back chocolatedot? That's what regulation is supposed to be for.

The banks were constantly sending me information saying I could borrow probably more than my annual salary. Do you think that's responsible?

but spicemonster is it responsible to borrow when you don't have a hope in hell of paying it back?

Surely an individual understands their own finances better than anyone else?

Chocolate dot, could you point us in the direction of these campaigners who "accused banks of discriminating against the less well off by refusing to lend to them" and brought such pressure to bear? Did the same campaigners come up with all those whizzy ideas that allowed them to lend so recklessly like collateralized debt obligations?

It is an extremely interesting version of events - do show us the evidence.

twinkle. I think you misunderstand. It's not jealously. It's abject disgust at your disdain for everyone that doesn't have the capacity that earn what your husband does. What a nasty human being you are

noonki - not everyone has the mental capacity to make risk assessments. And not all financial advisers were honest about the risks.

I can't believe people are defending banks. FFS!

There are two questions here:

(1) Should a borrower borrow? My DH thinks that people need to be protected from their own stupidity. I tend to think that people should be able to make their own decisions, and that not very many people are actually that stupid over money.

(2) Should a lender lend? The trouble is with lenders is that they move in packs. If one lender lends, they all have to lend otherwise there is a chunk of market share they will lose.

blu is not remotely a jealous person, twinkle.

And I am not jealous of you either. Why would I be? You seem, like some others on this thread, to hold cold stringent views which are an utter anathema to me. You apparently agree with Margaret Thatcher that there is no such thing as society and have opted out of it as far as possible because you're alright jack with your saved up bonuses. You don't believe in paying your due and you don't care about people who have less than you. Horrible. Unkind. Selfish. Wrong.

Twinkle - nobody forced people to sign but they did show TV programme after TV programme blatently stating that house prices would continue to rise and if they didn't buy now they never ever would be able to, at the same time tenancy laws became more in the landlords favor so the conditions to push people into cheap credit were certainly created by the powers that be.
Generating massive income in stamp duty which most people just added to the mortgage.

jealous of you Twinkle? I think not. Who would want to live with a banker husband? Never home to see his kids, working every hour that godsends, more likely to have a heart attack and a coke addiction than the rest of the population.

Ohhhh jealous erm no.

Mortgage advisors lied, surveyors lied, estate agents lied - I have personal experience of all three offering us a 5 times DH's salary and using our old house as capital, we would have lost everything. The EA openly mocked us for missing an opportunity when I begged DH to think about it (and thank god he did, he was made redundant 4 months later).
People do need to be saved from themselves, estate agents should be regulated for a start.

When we went for our mortgage the bank was willing to lend us about double what we actually wanted.

We probably could have just about paid the higher mortgage that they offered us as long as nobody got sick, made redundant or we didn't have any children.

We turned the offer down and borrowed the amount we wanted, bought a house that needed work done and kept our options open.

I think that it was our responsibility to decide what we could afford to pay but the bank's professional and ethical role to not lend us an unrealistic sum.

I would no doubt be an absolutely crap banker and not worthy of a mega salary because I don't think it is right to put people in financial jeopardy whilst gambling on the risk that the aforementioned people have taken.

spice - I'm not really defending the banks, I think they are culpable for most of the problems we are in. But unfortunatley so is the greed of our consumer society.

Those that bought more property than the one they live in, those that bought houses larger than they need, made a mistake on a false assumption that prices will rise.

but the people that do really rile me are those that not only spent on houses but on things that really they didn't have the money to buy.

I can understand buying a house a little above budget given the promise of price rises, but what about buying a brand new sofa on credit, or carpets/tv/cars etc. What's wrong with saving up until you can afford these and make do with cheaper secondhand alternatives until you have?

Morgally there should be an upper cap - say once you've paid £50k tax a year you get an invitation to No. 10, personal thanks from Gordon Brown, hero of the people award bestowed unto you for your hard work and for the huge sum you've given back to the often idle poor as well as the deserving poor and the like and no obligation to pay any more than year. That would be fairer as long as there were a flat tax too and perhaps discounts on the tax if you don't use the NHS and use private schools too.

Anyway the poor will always be with us. We will all be born very different in terms of drive, looks, abilities etc and differences make the world fun. I am worth what I am paid because not many people can do it. Any fool can scrub a toilet hence I get paid more. It's pretty simple and to some extent all our teenagers have a choice whether they want to work in jobs that pay well or not. We make a choice and then we live with the consequences.

Higher tax payers will ensure they don't pay too much more tax and people saying people won't move abroad - some will. This week I have spoken to at least eight people who might for various reasons - one about to sell a business, another moving a business off shore for tax reasons, another now based in the Caribbean but at 46.5% (which I think will be upper rate NI and tax combined) plus loss of personal allowances that is about half your income so getting towards the difficult point of disincentive but not like those 1977 tax rates I posted above which presumably all the poor socialists on this thread would love when rates were up at 80% +_ levels for the higher paid.

oh Xenia, you made me say it:

Tax the fuckers till they all emigrate.