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

[soapbox]

????

American lenders did not care much about whether or not their clients would eventually pay back the loan, because in any case, they would bundle & package the loan portfolio and sell it to another institution. Who then bundled, repackaged, & sold the same loans to others. After a while, nobody really knew what the underlying assets were and pricing was quite arbitrary, if not downright irrational.

That is one systemic problem.

Another was the deregulation of the derivatives market by Clinton in late 1999, a law pushed through by a Republican Senator called Phil Gramm. Gramm was and still (I think) is a lobbyist on UBS payroll.

Banks had a ball with this deregulation, but now the lack of a central exchange and the extreme counterparty risk inherent in over the counter trading is biting them hard.

The thing is though hatwoman that we may all be in this shit together but some will be hit harder than others and some carry more of the responsibility for the shit we are in than others.

Those that carry most of the responsibility are not neccessrily the hardest hit and the hardest hit are most likely the least responsible.

But hey, who ever said life was fair?

I haven't read all of this but we will be hit by this and we don't care if it gets the economy moving again.

Honestly you can't really avoid taxes and it does pay for good things - so if we have to pay a little more now, so what? We have the benefits of having grown up with a national health service and welfare state which means we are strong and healthy enough to now make money. Seems fair to me

I agree that life isn't fair. I'm not entirely sure that redistributing money I have earned to the financially feckless, the prisons, the corrupt MPs, invading other countries etc etc is a particularly good way of evening out the balance.

It'd be fascinating if the tax system allowed a taxpayer to nominate where his/her taxes should be spent. Including third world development aid.

On another point, it is naive to blame bankers and bankers alone for this mess. Actually I think that the bankers are less culpable than most. What about the company directors stuffing their balance sheets full of unnecessary debt? What about the governments who were too lily-livered to regulate when it was obvious that regulation was needed? What about the man on the Clapham Omnibus who threw prudence to the winds and borrowed more than he could repay and spent the borrowings on rubbish? Everyone contributed.

And finally, the bankers got hit hardest first. They all lost their jobs. And who do you mean when you say banker? Do you mean the chairman and the board? Or do you mean the thousands of ordinary employees?

I know some are hit harder than others. I said so in my post. and I would agree with you that there is, to an extent, an inverse correlation between hitting and responsibility.

That phrase sounds clever but is entirely meaningless. You have all or mostly shouted that the bankers were culpable (they weren't solely responsible, but be that as it may) they got all the redundancies first.

I have the Oxford concise in front of me:
Jealous, like many words, has several meanings, one of which is: "Feeling resentment or envy (of person, his advantages etc) on account of known or suspected rivalry esp in sexual love.

And the Collins:
Jealous 2 envious

So it is true that jealous can we used, quite correctly, as a synonym for envious.

And I have the Chambers etymological in front of me:

Jealous, jel'us, adj. lit. zealous; suspicious of or incensed at rivalry; anxious to defend the honour of

Envy, en'vi, v.t., to look upon with a grudging eye; to hate on account of prosperity

Anyway we're having a comedy fight about it in pedant's corner if you want to join in.

That would be Pedants' Corner

Really Quattro, you really think it is meaningless?

Don't you see that the banker who has been paid a very high wage (and therefore had the opportunity to put something by for harder times) is less hard hit but more responsible than the bank clerk who is in the shit because the bosses have fucked up and they have lost their jobs. Jobs that carried little responsibility and little opportunity for squirreling money away as a cushion for when it all went tits up.

Surely nobody thinks that when we criticise 'bankers' we are refering to the poor bastards at the counter?

Look, I hate the use of jealous on this thread as it is inaccurate and insulting, but the word has been used with its correct meaning, including by Xenia.

Oh alright mabanana, I am clinging to the shreds of the past in my insistence on this meaning. But the fact remains that those who feel they should pay less tax on their comparatively large earnings are acting jealously (in a sense of the word which is also correct), whereas it is highly debatable whether the same might be said of those who believe they should pay more.

Are we all clear now?

And I thought it was funny (damn... knew it wouldn't play well over here)

QC - of course 'bankers' on this thread doesn't mean cashiers in the high street branch. Please.
To take Cote's last post...would you say, then, that responsibility for those decisions and actions lies with the lowly paid media studies graduates she describes in her earlier post as having taken the lazy and easy option - or with thoise with an HND in plumbing, or SAHMs, perhaps? If not - who? Top finance folk (aka on this thread 'bankers'.

The point is, we KNOW everyone has had a part to play. But this thread is about the tax hike imposed on the highest earners. And whilst many of the bankers were the first to lose their jobs those that remain are still the ones earning huge salaries, stil getting thier bonuses - alongside the others you hold partly culpable - the board room directors and CEOs. And funnily enough THEY TOO are the highest earners, previously, and now if still employed. Likewise all the corporate lawyers and accountants - made very very good money from servicing the finance industry and offshoots in the good years. Now it's gone can they not mop up a small proportion of the pain without- as some have done on this thead- shrieking at less wealthy people about how they are necessary and they will leave if they have to stump up and we should all be very grateful for them because they work harder than the rest of us.

I doubt there's one person on this thread who wouldn't stand alongside you in wanting better use of all our taxes by gvt..but as well as feckles bastards in prisons, a recent need fro higher taxes perhaps includes a huge bail out to.....banks...to the benefit of the people you list in your post!

And I realise that the gordon Brown underwriting of the banks was for the benefit of all of us, stability of country etc etc...but you can hardly say it didn't pesonally bebefit people who have stayed in very highly paid jobs and will still get thier bonuses this christmas. Apparantly.

Actually, if I was a city finance person who had lost my job in the last 3 months I would probably be madder at those remaining high earners than any person on this thread! And calling for a pound of flesh, never mind a few measly duckets!

It's by no means clear that bailing out the banks is wise but time will tell. We need bankers and lawyers at the moment very much indeed. Very few people have the skills to deal with the demise of Littlewoods and get the best deal there and the company is very lucky to have good accountants and lawyers working on that presumably round teh clock at the moment, very hard working and well paid people. Most of us don't have the competence or skills to do that so those people get paid accordingly, whereas most of us could man the till in Woolworths, hence the pay is lower as any old 16 year old can do it.

Don't mention Woolworths

Xenia says ?But on average people who work harder earn more. He probably works harder than the council office cleaners and secretaries.? Oh dear Xenia, you really haven?t a clue how these things work have you? Pay in the public sector has nothing to do with merit or how hard you work. It?s to do with the pay scale that someone has decided (on very dodgy criteria) to assign to your particular job, how many increments are on the scale and how long you have worked there. There is no facility for pay increases according to results, and overtime is unpaid. Good post Quattro btw - it illustrates the position perfectly.

And as for this ?As for paid holidays, what are those> If I don't work we starve. no sick pay, no holiday pay, no pension etc etc. Not everyone by any means has paid holiday leave.? Oh my heart bleeds for you. Every employee gets paid holiday leave by law, as you should know. If you choose to be self-employed that?s the pill you swallow. And we know that only too well ? DH has never had paid sick leave or holiday leave for as long as I?ve known him. He has clinical depression, and suffers from frequent migraines and high blood pressure, and he struggles to work every single scheduled day as we still have to pay the childcare whether he?s at work or not, and if he misses a day we can?t eat that week.

In any case, I?m sure somebody as clever and hard working as you can manage to apportion their substantial income to allow for time off.

Xenia have you ever worked in a care home? Or worked for eight hours a day for a few months as a cleaner? Or worked as a nurse?

I'm curious to know on what authority you claim that low-paid workers don't work as hard as high-paid ones.

The statistics on illness rates and life expectancy, don't bear out the notion that you have an easier life if you are lower paid.

So how much are we really talking about? How much will this increase in tax really raise and is this enough to make any difference to the shit that we are all in? What difference will someone like Xenia paying say an extra £5,000 grand a year make to someone like LittleBella or WillSelf? I don't think this is going to be a re distribution of wealth like it sounds on paper - a good proportion of what is raised will be engulfed by the administration costs to put the plan into action and I think most of it will go into funding more bureaucratic rubbish and perks for civil servants or bailing out more institutions rather then proper public services For what it's worth I agree with everything that Quattro says, I don't think this is the answer to the problems and the higher income people already pay the significant proportion of the revenues.

People here just seem to wallow in the thought of taxing supposedly super rich people on ideological grounds rather then identifying whether this extra money is actually going to serve any useful purpose.

Yes the "super rich" can probably live without an extra couple of thousand pounds a year but the actual benefit that those on lower incomes will receive will probably be so minor that that they can live without that too.

Actually I don't think too many people on here are getting hett up about whether we should or shouldn't tax the very well off more. Most of us are getting hett up about the implication, or blatant assertion, that the rest of us don't earn £150k because we don't work hard enough.

The difference that it will make to me, is that I will live in a fairer society.

If I don't get 2p a year extra in my pay packet, that's irrelevant.

Yes I am ideological - I believe in a progressive taxation system because I believe that to be fairer than a regressive one.

Just as I have this ideological belief that living in a democracy is probably overall better than living in a dictatorship. Even if they still had Mumsnet and Coronation Street in the dictatorship and it didn't make much difference to my life.

If I'm not supposed to bother about it because it won't affect my life, how come Xenia is supposed to be bothered about it when supposedly it won't affect her life that much either?

Oh yes and I am very sceptical that anyone in a high status high paid job works harder than a low paid nurse.

I would just like to see them swap jobs and see if that is the case.

Hang on, I do think that I work harder than a nurse. The statistics tell us that nurses work a 37.5 hour week. Their hours are capped at 48 hours a week by EU law. Mine are not, and I work many more hours than they do.

What I was saying is that more work does not unfortunately correlate with more pay.

Twinkle - I only managed to read the first 30 pages of posts so I have to apologise if the argument has moved on - anyone who thinks that only people who earn more then £150K works hard is a twat. In fact most people I know who earn over £150K worked far harder when they earned a lot less and once they reached a certain level they could take things easier, but that is besides the point, I don't earn anywhere near £150K, I earn a decent amount though but I don't work as hard as some people on here.