Is there an 'underclass' on MN?

[wildswans]

I have name changed for this.

I have been on MN for about 6 months - off and on - and one of the most interesting aspects is the insight into people's lives and the contrasts and similarities. You can communicate with others you probably wouldn't meet in RL and in circumstances where they feel able to be completely open and frank about themselves, their families, their worries, their aspirations etc.

However, I can't help wondering if there is an 'underclass' who subscribe to MN. I have noticed, in particular, that any site which relates in any way to money or status - such as jobs and level of earnings and spending or whether a SAHM or WOHM - provokes very strong reactions. By this I don't just mean engaging in heated debate - which is part of the fun - but there is an undercurrent of envy and spite, which is very unattractive.

There are clearly a lot of high earning, highly successful women in MN and a number who have DHs who are well off. There are also lots who are earning less but do worthwhile and fulfilling jobs and others who are happy to care for their DC full time. Most MNs agree that it's all about choices and it doesn't really matter what you choose as long as it's right for you.

Yet the 'underclass' often seek to highjack interesting and constructive threads by pouring scorn on anyone who is a high earner, can afford tickets to the theatre (or even the zoo in one case!), or go on decent holidays. Presumably these are the ones who want the entrepreneurs to be taxed into exile and for a 'mansion tax' to be imposed. I can tell you that you don't get a 'mansion' for £2m in london or the South East, so what is that all about? In my view, it's nasty spiteful class envy and emanates from a small number of people on MNs who haven't achieved much in their lives so don't think anyone else should either.

Has anyone else reached this conclusion or AIBU?

Outraged, you say it's only the top 1% who can afford to avoid tax.

Ballpark figures: lesley33 said upthread: "Btw the Daily Mail says there are only 155,000 houses in England and Wales worth more than £1 million."

Dr Google tells me there are 20m households in England & Wales; so the top 0.8% of households are living in >£1m properties, let alone £2m. [Assuming the Mail is right. There's a first time for everything after all....]

Essentially, if you're living in a 2m property, you are uber-rich.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-561748/Ken-Livingstone-admits-bid-2012-Olympics-ensnare-taxpayer-billions-develop-East-End.html

Billions so that Livingstone could see the East End redeveloped. Who voted for that? What about the North of the country and the South West, because it is the 'squeezed middle' in all of those places who will pay for Livingstone's aim.

And the fat cats, not the 'squeezed middle', are getting many of the plum seats

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1394064/London-2012-Olympics-Corporate-fat-cats-half-Games-tickets.html

Looking forward to seeing you there claig.

Underclass is a horrid word OP.

If the mansion tax were brought in, only 45,000 households would be affected. I would imagine that the vast majority of these 45,000 households are part of the 275,000 people who contribute 27% of all income taxes collected by the Exchequer. The assumption seems to be that folks living in £2m houses aren't paying taxes at all or are paying minimal taxes. I genuinely think for someone who is UK born and resident that this is just not the case at all. So all this vitriol and energy is probably targeted towards a handful of foreigners.

One of the most bizarre things about the UK tax system is the fact that non-resident companies pay neither stamp taxes nor capital gains taxes on UK property. Non-UK domiciles don't have to work very hard to legally mitigate their UK tax liabilities.

As an aside I find it rather comical that living in a 6 bedroom house almost seems to be the crime of the century. Seriously?

45,000... so the top 0.2% then.

Yup
We are all just jealous

Love and kisses

The mumsnet underclass xxxx

( feel better now?)

But actually the council tax bands need to be revalued. Our house is valued as "G" - up to £320,000 in 1991. In 1991 the entire row of houses were blighted by potential redevelopment. Ours was decrepit. It was sold at auction in 1992 and the builders in 1994 went bankrupt. We bought it at the bottom of the last "bust cycle". We have since extended the ground floor, dug into the cellar and improved and extended the top "loft/attic" floor. It is still "band G" in spite of its value today.

However, having said that, this same house on the South Coast where my mother lives would be hard pushed to reach about £450,000 in the best parts of town, but houses like this are only found in the scrag end of town down there!

'We are all just jealous'

I don't live in a mansion like Blair or Miliband probably do. But I am not jealous of them.

I am not jealous of great successful writers like JK Rowling who through her talent and hard work has earned great wealth and is also taxed on her income. I don't see why she should have to pay 10% additional mansion tax if she chooses to buy a property for £2 million, and I don't see why ordinary 'squeezed middle' homeowners were being considered for higher socialist stealth taxes by Prescott just because they wanted to improve their homes

www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-1591134/New-tax-for-home-improvements.html

Income tax is fair, because it is on current income.

Why do so many rich people apparently only ever consider what they are paying in tax and not at what they have left over after tax?????

And why is a 50% tax rate always referred to as though such people have to pay 50% on their entire income, rather than on the tranche that is over and above the rates below that? Absolutely nobody in this country pays 50% income tax on their entire income.

'Why do so many rich people apparently only ever consider what they are paying in tax and not at what they have left over after tax?????'

Because when you spend your earned money and are subsequently out of pocket, you think of the cost, not of how much you have got left. You ask the question, is it a fair cost and is it value for money?

True, Rabbitstew, you see people saying, "Well, I pay 50% tax on my earnings and blah blah blah".

When actually they mean, "I pay 50% tax on all my earnings over £150,000 ", which is a bit of a difference!

Rabbit stew, sorry, it's me that does that. I worded myself badly, I do know really that the 50% income tax only kicks in after a certain level

Boulevard, I don't do Maths, so I'll happily take your figures and believe them, but the fact that it's less than 1% proves my point even more. There are so few people that live in such expensive houses that it becomes pointless to administrate the mansion tax. Even more so when you think that not all of those people can have offshore banking.

It's being done to pacify people who basically don't like people having so more than they do.

And I refuse to believe that normal average income families like mine pay more in tax than people who are able to live in £2m worth of house. That just can't be possible, even with my crap Maths knowledge.

'And I refuse to believe that normal average income families like mine pay more in tax than people who are able to live in £2m worth of house.'

What about pensioners who live in mansions and no longer earn large incomes?

If they live in mansions in their old age they have probably paid tax throughout their working lives as well as paying into a private pension.

Wouldn't it just be better to stop people in that situation getting WFA instead of charging them just for being.

It looks like this wealth tax is a socialist thing. The New Statesman has a leader saying we should shift the tax burden from income to wealth.

www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2012/03/tax-rate-income-wealth

I got it wrong. I thought the mansion tax was 10%, but it is 1%. However, 1% of 2000000 is £20000 a year. I bet there are lots of people living in those houses who can't afford that.

This is from teh New Statesman leader

'The fourfold increase in property prices since the early 1990s has enriched homeowners at the expense of younger generations. For decades, however, politicians have refused to tax this unearned windfall. Remarkably, the council tax bands even now are based on property valuations made when the levy was announced by the Major government in 1991.'

The writer fails to understand why this asset bubble was encouraged. Precisely to be able to classify people as wealthy, when they were really only sitting on assets that have been inflated due to excess credit and a shortage of new housing and council housing. On the basis of this artificial inflation, they can now be milked by the socialists until the end of their days.

Their pensions will be reduced, their benefits cut and they will have to work to 67 for now, and even longer later, but the socialist s can class them as wealthy, and if they dare spend their already taxed money on home improvements, they can be milked even more. Heads the socialists win, tails you lose.

Oh and they have had 3 year wage freezes, their conditions are worsening and many are losing their jobs. But they are sitting in houses that have been artificially inflated, so even though their income has reduced or even though they are out of work, they will still have to pay the "wealth" taxes rather than teh fair "income" taxes. The socialists will tell them, pay up or sell up you wealthy fat cats, while they knight their mates for "services to banking".

claig, you make the mistake of thinking true socialism would encourage the price of homes to increase exponentially in the way it has. True socialism wouldn't allow you to make a profit on a home, because we all need somewhere to live. It is capitalism that requires the value of everything to increase forever, because it cannot work as a concept unless your economy keeps growing, and nobody much cares what it is that keeps it growing, so long as it keeps growing. That's why you get booms and busts, because occasionally we realise we can't go on being that stupid.

No, rabbitstew. It's a trick, a scam, just like the whole asset bubble was, and the stock market bubbles are. They are fuelled by bankers lending easy money and encouraging the 'squeezed middle' to over extend themselves, and then, hey presto, they pull the rug out from under them.

It's about keeping the ordinary people down, holding them back and squeezing them dry. The latest trick is to point at their inflated house prices and say, hey you're wealthy, pay up, shut up or sell up.

Look at who is backing this 'wealth tax' shift. Read teh New Statesman and you can see teh socialists rubbing their hands at this untapped source of wealth to be skimmed from teh hard working people. This is teh quote in the New Statesman

'politicians have refused to tax this unearned windfall'

They think it is a windfall to squeeze the 'squeezed middle' yet more. But they don't tax the billion dollar corporations or extract windfalls from their inflated assets.

Sorry, I still think you are using the wrong word when you term them "socialists."

Maybe "capitalist socialist" would be more appropriate, since that is what they are attempting to be (hence it not working....).

Ok, then progressives, as they now prefer to call themselves.
Teh New Statesman is progressive and staffed by progressives and they all love taxation and what they call progressive taxation.

'hence it not working'

It is working for them. It's about squeezing the 'squeezed middle', it's about austerity, about 'work till you drop' and get used to reduced living standards. That's how they keep the people down and how the progressives prevent the people's progress.

That's because they are too cowardly to look capitalism in the face and tell it what's wrong with it.