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

[soapbox]

????

Oh Spokette, don't you know the entire global financial mess was caused by the wicked and feckless poor buying too many fags and cans of coke?

Again, it is not a punitive tax. It is proportional or progressive taxation, quite an established economic concept...

"buying too many fags and cans of coke" on tick! The rascals.

I don't suppose any of us are naive idealists - as I said below, I am well aware that finance led the wealth of the last few years - and a large proportion of the population benefitted. My only problem now is with people who are indignant and outraged that they might suffer a tax hike on earnings over £150k, over and above other sections of our community who are losing their jobs in the retail sector, going bankrupt in the small trader / blue collar self-employed sector or losing their home.

I do feel very sorry about the poor sods who work for buttons in Woolworths and MFI. Doubt they have any assets to 'liquify' and are facing a miserable and frightening Christmas. Even if it was entirely their fault, what with all the fags and all.

I'm shocked about Woolies.

Xenia, I think your point about the gulf between perspective and reality is spot on, and that's why debates such as these will never come to a neat consensus. Those who earn less than 150k, while not envious (and I'm off to pedants' corner soon to bang on about envy/jealousy) look at those who do, and say, "well, it is a lot; you do have more luxuries, etc, and so can afford more tax".

Our joint household income, with me working 50%, is about 58k, which is enough for us, (after 8 years each as students, it still feels positively luxurious!) and DH is just about into the higher tax threshold. people on much lower incomes than us will also say that the higher tax threshold is justified for us. FWIW, I agree, I thinik it is, and I hope, like Quattro, that if HE suddenly became very well paid, that I'd still happily take the tax hike at 150k.

Even people who live within their means tend to expand their consumption with increased income, and blur the line between necessities and desires - think this was what Cote and Will were debating earlier. But I do think that people can and should step away from always just considering their own personal circumstances to try to examine the wider picture, and think about what kind of society we live in.

That's why, as Xenia says, debates on here are really interesting, as in RL you tend not to get quite the same cross-section of people as you do on here. I honestly don't think I know anyone in RL who earns over 150K!

Xenia "money grubbing people most people are who earn less han their husbands as they chose good providers"

This is how Xenia regards those of us who are married to people who happen to have good jobs!! We are obviously the lowest of the low!

Have got about 3/4 of the way through this thread but, really need to get back to work now so apologise if this has already been mentioned:
Yes people on lower incomes pay less tax but, they pay significantly higher proportions of their incomes on basics such as fuel, food, clothing, rent and water. They also have limited access to cheap finance and many who pay for gas and electicity through prepayment meters actually pay a higher tariff than those of us who can pay by direct debit. Credit is also much more difficult to come by and many of these people resort to loan sharks and doorstep credit just to make ends meet.
In my experience there are very few people who are on benefits through choice (despite what the headlines say) and if they were shouldn't we be more concerned about the aspirations and life choices that got them there. I could go on and on and on but realise that I am going off the point here somewhat.

Yes I think that the tax rise was a good think but, no I don't think it goes far enough.

I don't earn anywhere near £150K nor do I think I need to (have no idea what I would spend it on) but I do work hard as does Dh.

I know people who earn over £150k and the operative word here is earned. There are lots of people including many bankers who get paid lots of money that they have not earned.

Those who feel bankers are getting an unfair hearing need to remember that when you are the one possessed with the power, facts and influence to do something and you do so irresponsibly, the greater blame lies with you.

Of course there are feckless people out there (rich and poor) who have taken on more debt than they could afford. They should not have taken out those mortgages, debts etc that they could not repay. However, the greater blame lies with those institutions who chase after these people and knowing full well that they would struggle to repay the loans, still lent to them. Why? Amoral bankers and their ilk are driven by their avarice and gluttony.

The credit crunch arose because these feckless bankers deliberately used their wonderful products such as CDOs to obfuscate the risk associated with the scale of debt that they were peddling as financial products. Nobody knows the true extent of these toxic debts because nobody knows exactly what is out there. The bankers and other financial maggots don't care though because they have been paid their obscene bonuses and will not bear the brunt of the financial tsunami that is engulfing the world.

Life isn't fair, though. So it's pointless saying X earned the money so that's fine but Y inherited it or married a rich man or slept her way to wealth or whatever. There will always be those inequities and it makes no one feel good to feel jealous about them. I should have done what my husband did - marry someone better off and take about £1m on the divorce - easiest money there is in a sense (unless tolerating me in a marriage was so awful that that was a small reward in comparison...)

So just because one job is better paid than another doesn't mean it's wrong one person earns more. It's just how it is or market forces or luck that hte good fairy gave you very good looks at your christening and you became a super model or married a rich man.

If you try to look at it from the point of view of fairness or who was wrong or who caused it I don't think it gets you very far. If American lenders acted within the law in offering loans to people who will never repay them that's probably the fault of the regulators and legislators or it's just how free markets work and then you have rises and falls and crashes etc and it's just part of natural financial cycles.

As for Woolworths clearly those at the bottom who lose jobs are in much worse positions than those who are at the top and lose their jobs. No one would dispute that. I was just talking to someone who stands to lose £1m to one of the companies going out of business at present. That wil lnot be as big a hit as if the average woolworths worker on £16k a year moves on to state benefits.

twinkle - I do not think all bankers are evil, by any stetch of the imagination. But I think we're all in a mess and differnt people will end up paying in different ways. Some by losing their jobs and / or homes, those who remain in v highly paid jobs by paying a bit more tax, those in the middle paying more of an even tighter budget for bills and the inevitable long-term effet on public services.

I am sure it IS a bit of a jolt to lose a small proportion of income - I am even sympathetic, in a poportionate sort of way - but NOT when it comes with an attitude that displays an unwillingness on behalf of those who have benefitted hugely from the boom to bear a little of the brunt of the collapse - along with everyone else - with anything other than good grace.

I think its too simplistic to blame the banks. Obviously some of the laons on offer and then sold on were a ludicrous risk but anyone with a pension was perfectly happy for the banks' share prices to soar and anyone with a business, from multi nationals to the corner shop were happy for the frenzied spending to continue.
Aren't we all guilty for this mess really?

Life isn't fair, but if you care about money and security, you can and should stack the odds in your favor by choosing a well-paid profession, albeit difficult to qualify for & excel at.

Many school friends chose the path of least resistance and avoid "difficult" subjects, thereby closing off certain career paths.

If you avoid science, you can't study medicine. If you don't study math, you can't go into finance or computer programming.

I agree, life isn't fair. That is exactly why we have governments and laws and even mad ideas like progressive taxation, to mitigate against the inherent unfairness of the natural world in order to make it less brutal/unstable/morally repugnant. It's pretty obvious really.

Xenia - you might want to have a look at Habbibu's envy/jealousy thread in Pedant's Corner. You keep saying that everyone is jealous of your wealth when strictly speaking you are the one that is jealous of it. It is becoming slightly embarrassing.

Orek, I really think you might want to check this in a dictionary...

I see Iorek has already made the point that it is because life isn't fair that we need old fashioned concepts like laws and taxes.

We all know fine well that whilst some people do make it from rags to riches, the fact of the matter is, that the circumstances you are born into play a major role in the opportunities that you are offered and how you will use them.

Saying 'life isn't fair' as though it is some sort of justification for the current gap between the rich, the comfortable and the downright poor is lazy convenience thinking.

In global terms I am luxuriously well off but I can't imagine saying 'life isn't fair' to someone whose children are going hungry due to poverty as some sort of justification or logic for either their situation or mine.

If you really think that life isn't fair and you are fortunate enough to be one of those for whom this unfairness is an advantage then how can you possibly grudge helping others?

By admitting that life isn't fair you are admitting that there is a sizeable portion of lucky circumstance that has contributed to you being in the jammy position you find yourselves in.

There but for the grace of God and all.

I don't have any "wealth" and I was saying people on the thread seemed to be resentful of others who earn more and the solution is to remove the jealousy rather than tax the rich to ensure fairness but in the process recover less tax which is pointless.

blu that's a very good post (16:47). after a couple of days of following this thread with a deeply heavy heart i feel someone has finally got to the heart of it. there's been so much vitriol in so many directions on this thread that it's honestly nearly made me weep. so many generalisations about rich people, about poor people, about hard workers, about slackers, about (in particular) bankers. so many stereotypes that I've found the vast majority of it really unpleasant reading. A few months ago I read a perhaps slightly naive but essentially hopeful article about us all being in this together and maybe, just maybe, some positives would come out of that. and reading this thread I have been feeling that the article was utterly wrong and crap and come the crunch we all just turn around and shout at each other. But then blu comes along and sums up so quickly how it is affecting us all (even if only to tiny degrees for some) and sums up a reasonable, sensible, eloquent position on the OP's question, without all the negative stuff on many other bits of this thread.

Doesn't jealous mean that you don't want others to have what you have got whilst envy is wanting what others have?

In which case mabanana is not only correct but making a pretty good point.

Sorry mean Iorek is correct.

Yes, beachcomber! (This is what habb's thread was about.)

(I swore I wouldn't mention it on this thread but at the umpteenth use of the word jealous to mean envious I cracked)