But how do you build good parents?
How good a parent you are is related to how good a start in life you had, which corresponds in part to how well off you were. There are exceptions yes (and I've met some too), but that's what they are, exceptions.
British public wrongly believe rich pay most in tax
- Thread starter scorza
- Start date
But how do you build good parents?
How good a parent you are is related to how good a start in life you had, which corresponds in part to how well off you were. There are exceptions yes (and I've met some too), but that's what they are, exceptions.
I don't know if you are trolling or if you are just ignorant.
If you look at the stats on social mobility, then it is obvious that people do not all enjoy the same opportunities - where you start plays a huge part in where you end.
Last edited:
You obviously missed my point! I was posing that question to the other guy. Obviously I support (progressive) general taxation.
No, but I have never argued for that. I do think we should have a truly progressive tax system though (which is what the thread is about).
The whole point of a progressive taxation system is that those at the bottom don't have to pay, they don't 'opt out' they just pay less as a proportion.
Last edited:
Is everyone in the UK entitled to free education?
I would say your education is the biggest key to your earning potential.
What you earn is probably the biggest key to where you are placed in society.
Inheritted wealth obviously skews this, and whilst I understand fully what you are trying to say, I don't believe it play as bigger factor as you make out.
Oh far from ignorant dude. I know a fair few people that didn't have a bucket to **** in when they were young. Now are very successful people working in the City. They would strongly disagree with you on the 'where you are born is a strong indication of where you would end up'. There would even be an argument for quite the opposite. If you are born with nothing people often tend to develop a hunger for the better things in life. Something people born into wealth don't have. When you enter the world of work and it's dog eat dog nature, the people with this hunger tend to fair better.
Last edited:
I think the only way that these figures work out is if you consider people that earn say 5-8K doing odd jobs, part time manual labour etc, that pay say 1800 on council tax and buy many luxuries that have VAT. Then their average tax could be quite high - BUT only when ignoring tax credits, benefits, social housing etc, etc.
Someone who is barely employed and earn 1000 in a year because they worked part time at Tesco's for 2 months and the rest of the year on JSA will likely have a massive tax percentage that drives up the average. Conversely, someone earning 14K a year and has a frugal lifestyle (it is easy to avoid almost all items that require VAT, the few essentials that are left should be made exemptions) will have a relatively low tax take as a percentage.
Moreover, with both people if you include benefits and credits will have a strongly negative income tax.
This just highlights the flaws in that article. Percentages are meaningless because when totals are small the noise becomes extremely large and the data looses all numerical stability. Secondly, an arithmetic mean is probably a completely useless metric for something which almost certainly has a multimodal distribution, as well as severe skewness and kurtosis.
Statistics doesn't work well with non-homogeneous distributions and the general public would never understand more accurate non-parametric alternatives - and it certainly wouldn't make good newspaper headlines.
It'd have to be significantly more than that. The average salary is around £26k and that doesn't include people who don't work (kids/pensioners/stay at home parents).
Permabanned
- Joined
- 28 Dec 2009
- Posts
- 13,052
- Location
- london
Increasing tax will increase total revenue but the point was that there will be a sweet spot which results in the highest total revenues. At some point on the percentage scale the increases will result in less total revenue as a) tax payers leave the country b) The productive half of the economy is reduced substantially leading to overall decrease in tax revenue as a result. ie the high taxes is detrimental to a productive economy and the general economic decline will lead to less overall tax revenue.
There are tons of studies out there that link government spending other peoples money to social mobility, all of them are essentially biased and ultimately are only trying to increase the states revenues and the size of the government using inequality as a justification for pushing through higher taxes for everyone.
http://www.heritage.org/federalbudget/income-tax-receipts
The opposite is true also, reducing specific taxes can increase productivity in certain sectors and make businesses viable that were not viable before the tax reduction. This works to increase overall economic output and ultimately social mobility.
Denmark highest in social mobility? Denmark is not even a relatively poor country. The nordic countries have good education systems and i don't think this can be attributed specifically to high tax, its more just the quality of the education system itself.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikepatton/2012/10/15/do-tax-cuts-increase-government-revenue/
You also have to consider all the income tax, employer taxes, employer national insurance contributions etc. of all the people the business employed. even deeper you have to look at the expenditure on VAT taxable items the employees spend, and that if a business was to disappear then all those employee would be on benefits.
Which is why countries like Switzerland that have a low corporate tax rate attract many business and ultimately generate a lot of wealth for the region despite low or no corporate taxes.
That's what I was thinking.
Say the poorest earns 10k a year so no income tax.
Pays £245.28 NI a year.
Pays council tax band C (are there homes for less than £52,000 in UK?)£1,127
Pays in total £1,372.28 in tax and has £8,627.72 to spend. If they spent ALL of that on things with the 20% VAT that would mean another £1,725.54 spent on tax.
In total £3097.82
That's only 30% tax. But this means they have never bought food. So highly unlikely.
Even if you throw in a car, road tax, fuel duty, you will struggle to get it near the 40% mark.
Why? Do the wealthy use more public services than the non-wealthy by virtue of being wealthy? Are you making a case that the non-wealthy have a claim on the money of the wealthy purely by virtue of non-wealthy? If you can make that claim, how is it not indiscriminate wealth redistribution?
That's not what I'm asking... you stated that most wealthy people don't earn their own wealth because they were born to privilege. So what about the people who struggled and become wealthy? Given that they didn't have the privilege, are they still obliged to pay lots in taxes?
----------------------------
As a side note to all of this, the article and the various posts conflate income with wealth. It's never made particular sense to me that if the state was interested in the wealthy paying more, why the taxes fall on income rather than wealth.
The problem with this kind of reasoning is it is very hard to draw the line:
Women earn less than men on average through their lifetime but their is no proof of any significant difference in ability. Should there be a male tax that seeks to redistribute assets to females in order to address this balance? Women had no choice in being born female, so why should they be disadvantaged?
People who happen to be born in Orkney will on average earn much less than those born in London city - should there be a special London tax to redistribute the wealth?
People with the star sign Aquarius are more likely to earn $10K a year or less, while Virgo's are more likely to earn $150K or more, should we have a tax based on star signs in order to redistribute wealth more fairly?
http://www.marketplace.org/sites/default/iframes/income_upshot/data/income-upshot-astrology.html
There are a great many reasons why poor people are disadvantaged, and most of them the government and society can do little about unfortunately. The Parent's DNA and lifestyle are the 2 biggest factors contributing success and wealth. How do you want to absolve that? Ban people from procreating if their DNA suggests a stronger likely hood of a lower IQ child? Remove all children from households where the parents aren't as devoted and caring? Remove all children at birth and put them in one giant government run child rearing facility to ensure equality?
now, don't get me wrong. I think it is critical that we can improve social mobility and improve equality but it is foolish to think that robin hood taxes resolves the main issues.
That's where the argument falls flat for AGD. If you are wealthy you infact use these services less. You probably have private healthcare, send your kids private school. Hell, probably use the police and fire brigade less because you live in a nicer area.
So you are paying more, for actually less use.
Not that I disagree with this at all.
Have a butch at my post #169, what I was alluding to there.
Permabanned
- Joined
- 28 Dec 2009
- Posts
- 13,052
- Location
- london
This pursuit of equality is futile and in my opinion its the wrong way to look at not only social mobility but life in general.
some quotes:
Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.
Thomas Sowell
In liberal logic, if life is unfair then the answer is to turn more tax money over to politicians, to spend in ways that will increase their chances of getting reelected.
Thomas Sowell
"A society that puts equality - in the sense of equality of outcome - ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom." Milton Friedman
"Equality before the general rules of law is the only kind of equality conducive to liberty that can be secured without destroying liberty. It is an equality that neither requires nor assumes people are in fact equal. Our attempt to make people equal in fact by rigging law to produce equal results destroys civility and generalized respect for the law. Government cannot create an advantage for one person without simultaneously creating a disadvantage for another." Walter E. Williams
some quotes:
Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.
Thomas Sowell
In liberal logic, if life is unfair then the answer is to turn more tax money over to politicians, to spend in ways that will increase their chances of getting reelected.
Thomas Sowell
"A society that puts equality - in the sense of equality of outcome - ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom." Milton Friedman
"Equality before the general rules of law is the only kind of equality conducive to liberty that can be secured without destroying liberty. It is an equality that neither requires nor assumes people are in fact equal. Our attempt to make people equal in fact by rigging law to produce equal results destroys civility and generalized respect for the law. Government cannot create an advantage for one person without simultaneously creating a disadvantage for another." Walter E. Williams
My arguments are based on a sense of moral good and charity. Not on whether or not a wealthy person gets as much out in public services as they pay in. The whole point of progressive taxation is about redistribution. It is intended that the wealthy pay in more and get less out.
That was my point in post #169. Get rid of income tax and have purely consumer taxes. The wealthier you are, the more you buy, the more you pay in tax.
Higher income earners tend to save a greater proportion of their income whereas lower income earners spend more. Look up Marginal Propensity to Consume/Save on wikipedia. This is why consumption taxes like VAT are considered extremely regressive.
Also, VAT is not a tax on wealth it is a tax on consumption.
You love the words percentage and proportion. Yes you are right. But in absolute terms the richer people still spend more money than poorer people. Thus paying more tax when it comes to consumer taxes.
Yes because it's kinda important to take into account the ability to pay when looking at how money is raised through taxation. If the total amount of money is all that matters then you end up with a system that demands a flat fee of say £50k a year off everyone irrespective of income, wealth or consumption which I think everyone would agree was stupid to the extreme.
Denmark has a top tax rate of 55.56%, but have a VAT of 25% that applies to groceries and essentials (but not transportation).
Finland have a top tax rate of 53%, a VAT of 24% but 14% applied to groceries, 10% for medicine.
Sweden have a top tax rate of 56.6% and a VAT rate of 25%, but 12% for groceries and medicine.
The UK has a top tax rate of 45% + 10% NI = 55% (and in certain tax bands like 100-115K that jump to 60-Income tax + NI). UK VAT is only 20% and doesn't apply to groceries, medicine or necessities.
For all those detesting the regressive nature of VAT and proclaiming Scandinavia as an ideal role model, how do you reconcile these figures?
perhaps the UK VAT rate needs to increase to 25% and have less exclusions if we want the social mobility of Scandinavia?