The politics of envy – politicalbetting.com
The politics of envy – politicalbetting.com
Are you having a Laffer curve? Most Britons think you would raise more money by increasing taxes on the super-rich (55%) than by cutting them (17%)Even if raising taxes on the super-rich LOST revenue, by 44% to 34% Britons would still support doing ityougov.co.uk/politics/art…
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All dressed up but with nothing to say.
Greetings from Dubai, where 2026 is looking like a fantastic year for business out here in the sandpit.
Same as those who welcome millionaires and billionaires leaving our shores taking their taxes with them
Labour will tax anything and everything
Am I autistic?
The model - a Pigou tax on sweet fizzy drinks - has resulted in a major reduction in sugar therein of nearly half.
90% of the market now has sugar content below the threshold level.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1w9jg89glro
The fact that inequality gets passed down the generations via inherited wealth, inequality of opportunity, etc. - meaning that we seldom put the best people in the top jobs - adds salt to the wounds that damage our country.
One suspects that the Lords will tear apart any attempt by the Commons to do so.
#logicalparadox
The bottom ten percent or so were hit horribly by spending cuts, the top ten percent were hit by tax increases (all those silly kinks, cliff-edges and withdrawls), but the upper-middles did quite nicely, actually. Taxation of income is actually pretty progressive, unlike taxation of wealth.
Though maybe we shouldn't be surprised, if we think of it as the governing party superserving its core vote.
Justice Secretary David Lammy is proposing to massively restrict the ancient right to a jury trial by only guaranteeing it for defendants facing rape, murder, manslaughter or other cases passing a public interest test."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy7vdvrnnvzo
This illustrates the issue:
Business: 68% of FTSE 100 chairs and 37% of FTSE 100 chief executives were privately educated.
Law: 62% of senior judges were privately educated.
Politics: 52% of the House of Lords are privately educated, and 47% of the shadow cabinet are too.
Media: One-third of regular newspaper columnists attended private schools, and one-third of high-profile actors are privately educated, per this report from The Stage.
Civil Service: 47% of permanent secretaries in the civil service were privately educated.
https://www.suttontrust.com/our-research/elitist-britain-2019/
https://elitistbritain.suttontrust.com
It's a pretty effective deterrent: even for those who are not guilty.
Polanski's exhortations to tax billionaires' income and wealth more is, I suspect, a major reason for the rise of the Greens in the polls. It resonates with a lot of people, particularly the young.
The richest 1% own about 10% of net wealth. In the USA, that proportion is 31% (where the UK was 100 years ago). The global average, per country, is 43%.
The UK is only unequal compared to Scandinavia and the Netherlands.
But in any case, when you are less well-off if finances get tight whether because of increased costs or reduced income the first inclination is to see if you have get some extra hours, work longer, earn a bit more. I can remember this only too well from my younger day - a lot of Laffer followers seem to have completely forgotten (if they ever knew) what it is like to be really tight for money.
@Cyclefree gets to decide on whether they are guilt or not.
The possible verdict are
1) Death
2) Death
Do you have any evidence that the ones who are do perform better?
Equally obviously , that's not the same thing as actually putting up with it and hanging around to pay more tax.
As for the finding about taxing them more even if it were to reduce the tax take, I think that's been a regular polling result for a number of years now ?
More interesting would be to see how much that number has shifted over time.
There is also the slightly less obvious point that modern multi-billionaires are accruing far more power than in the past, as mega-corporations have similar heft to some medium sized countries, and huge influence via their media/social media platforms.
The wish to tax them more is perhaps just a marker of wanting to push back on that power ?
Laffer Curve in action.
Why work a bunch of hours to end up with not enough money to cover travel costs for the day? Let alone buy a sandwich for lunch.
Otherwise, they'd be beyond judgment.
...Fear no more the frown o’ the great;
Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The scepter, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust...
Not hold down senior NHS consultants wages. Oh dear me, no.
It's not a universal rule.
The 'bottom' 50% own a mere 9% of net wealth (some sources have this lower).
I don't think your claim that "The UK is not a particularly unequal society" is supported by the evidence. You're right, of course, that most other countries are even more unequal.
Which is ironic because the people most likely to be impacted are a different set of reform tending (non/rarely) voters.
Also, focusing on the government revenue side of things misses a more important point. The real damage high marginal tax rates do is not to government revenues - the effects there are ambiguous. It's to the wealth-creating private sector and the economy as a whole. And there, studies are as conclusive as these things ever are in social science - increasing the tax burden does not simply redistribute wealth, it significantly and chronically reduces the size of the economy overall.
I doubt the polling would be the same if that crucial point were highlighted.
Most Labour and Green and LD voters polled also want to increase tax and public spending. Most Conservative voters want to keep tax and spending as now. Most Reform voters want to cut tax and cut spending
But your example is says a lot about you tbh. If you are faced with a hike in your rent which means you can't cover it, most people will work whatever hours they can get, even at 45p in the £, to try to bridge that gap.
You clearly have either never been in that position or forgotten what it is like.
(*It's not just the quality of the education though, it's the biases of the recruiters. Plenty of very mediocre but well educated people end up in jobs they are unable to perform at all well.)
It will cost Chris £15,000 to replace two rotting windows.
The windows themselves only cost £5,000. So, why so expensive?
Answer: Chris needs to get approval from Westminster Council and the Building Safety Regulator.
https://x.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1993236534926229951
You do realise that HB only pays a set amount regardless of the actual rent. Rent goes up - HB stays the same.
https://thetimes.com/article/b2433e5a-92ff-462e-9fd1-5073ac875fc1?shareToken=68cab80614e1522e445ff740f763e57f
It's only a week or so back that potential leadership "dark horse" John Healey was describing these as "world beating".
That’s true, looking from a military history viewpoint. Societies with lots of landholding peasants were more militarily robust than those where the population was divided between a tiny elite and a vast head count. The Gracchi brothers understood this, more than two thousand years ago. People fight harder for their own land.
But, the effect of the Industrial Revolution has been not to make the rich poorer (they got richer), but vastly to enrich the elite-adjacent, and middling population. Most rich world democracies would be close to Karl Marx’s ideal.
And that usually lags well behind current market rents especially private sector rents.
I suspect that those who are privately educated are more likely to come from relatively well off backgrounds, and are therefore better able to weather the income drop. While those who are state educated are more likely to still be paying off the mortgage.
I do think Israel should be held to the same standards as we are actually. I do not think they should be held to different standards.
So as we (and America and France and other democracies) are willing and able to bomb terrorists, I think Israel has that right too. That was my point three.
As for your false comparison between Ukraine/Russia and Israel/Syria, I chose the 1991 borders for a reason. 1991 borders are internationally agreed and respected borders they both agreed would be there borders, with a peace agreement, prior to any conflict. I did not choose ceasefire borders.
Why 2024 for you? Was there an agreed and mutually respected peace agreement in 2024? No.
When was the last mutually agreed and respected peace agreement between Israel and Syria? Oh, there never has been one. Never.
We could solve the problem of higher taxation "forcing people to go abroad to avoid tax", i.e. non-doms, by adopting what I believe is the USA approach and say that if you want a UK Passport, then you pay UK Income Tax and NI contributions.
Concerning the so-called Mansion Tax, tinkering at the top fringe is futile. What is needed is a proper valuation done properly, not by a "Wind-screen" survey. I would suggest valuations based recent local purchase costs assisted by reference to actual Planning Consents.
Finally, there clearly works that local Councils do not have the funds to carry out. I would suggest offering unemployed people extra money to do some of them.
Until one day I got hit by the 40% bug, and it was immediately “I’m not working Sundays for £7 an hour, or being on call when visiting my parents for lunch”, and after that hours were adjusted carefully to stay under the limit.
Apply the same to those comfortably off on £100k in their fifties, and it’s not surprising that many of them decide to take Fridays off unpaid.
The question is really, "Very rich people get commentators to write articles saying that there'll be less tax revenue if they have to pay higher tax rates. Do you believe them?" 44% have answered "No"/"Let's prove the hypothesis" in the interest of advancing human understanding I think that is laudable.
https://youtu.be/TpU0-dJ0HP4?si=KVVfQWnZTIebtqtx
If I was rich in the US, I'd be looking at ways to reform to reduce inequality and increases tax on wealth. Before someone gets elected who does it in a more confiscatory way.
People will take a pay rise and happily (within reason) pay extra tax that is due at their rate of tax they are on.
Where people change behaviour is the cliff edges.
Especially those stupidly designed cliff edges that leave people worse off for getting more.
I'm just back from Thailand and want to thank him for the excellent travel advice he gave me, which was very valuable.
Can I PM him even though he is banned??
The other corners include:
Amount of pay
Amount of income needed to have enough plus a bit
Agreeableness of the work
Going from paying a mortgage to not shifts one of them massively, which affects the importance of the others massively.
Even without the tax distortions, it's reasonably normal to take increased personal productivity as more time off, rather than less money. That's fine and normal- though I'm not sure so many of us should find it as easy as we do.
That may have changed, but that used to be the case.
But we are not unequal by top/bottom percentages.
We are unequal by age.
Actual Westminster Council costs look to be less than £1k.
I like my job, but if I had the means not to do it I can think of a hundred things I would rather be doing with my time.
If you say so