Axe personal allowance and pay everyone £48 a week, says thinktank

Caporegime
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People who earn over 37.5k shouldn't pay more tax. It's not a significant amount of pay, particularly unless you're living in cheap areas.

I don't see why they shouldn't in principle tbh... while I'm not in favour of the tax change in the OP the Lib Dem proposals like "1p on income tax for the NHS" applicable to all tax bands would be OK and would seem to be widely supported by voters.
 
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All the proposals for a flat tax I've seen involve a major overhaul of the system writ large to prevent the loopholes and schemes.

That's a very tall order. I doubt if it's possible, but at least it's recognised as an issue by people promoting flat tax.

With a flat rate it's also psychologically different as a high earner doesn't feel like they're being penalised unfairly.

I doubt that very much. All of the same excuses will still apply. I would be very surprised if a flat tax would make any difference at all in that respect.

They also mention overhauling things like VAT etc which is a regressive tax.

So it's a full-scale idea with some thought behind it. That's better. Maybe better or worse than what we have now, but with some substance.
 
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Same, i'm against anything that gives to people that don't work for no reason other than laziness.

I think we're going to have to do that. I think the current socio-economic system will not be sustainable for much longer and will be changed. Either in a managed way or a chaotic way, but definitely changed. I don't see mass employment being possible for much longer due to advances in technology. I think employment will become a minority thing and I think it will happen in decades rather than centuries. Hopefully it won't be too bad before I die because I don't see any sign of a plan to deal with it. I'll probably be dead in 20-30 years, so I think I might well be OK.
 
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I think we're going to have to do that. I think the current socio-economic system will not be sustainable for much longer and will be changed. Either in a managed way or a chaotic way, but definitely changed. I don't see mass employment being possible for much longer due to advances in technology. I think employment will become a minority thing and I think it will happen in decades rather than centuries. Hopefully it won't be too bad before I die because I don't see any sign of a plan to deal with it. I'll probably be dead in 20-30 years, so I think I might well be OK.

With the current trajectory it seems inevitable but if we actually start using these advances in technology to break into new fields such as actually exploiting our solar system and potentially colonising off the Earth loads of new employment would open up as even state of the art AI and robotics, etc. can only go so far.
 
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I think we're going to have to do that. I think the current socio-economic system will not be sustainable for much longer and will be changed. Either in a managed way or a chaotic way, but definitely changed. I don't see mass employment being possible for much longer due to advances in technology. I think employment will become a minority thing and I think it will happen in decades rather than centuries. Hopefully it won't be too bad before I die because I don't see any sign of a plan to deal with it. I'll probably be dead in 20-30 years, so I think I might well be OK.

People have been (incorrectly) predicting the end of employment and economic catastrophy since forever.
 
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It’s not luck, it’s hard work.
The "self-made man" who gets to the top "purely by his own hard work" is a myth.

Surely nobody is that ego-centric that they believe their own hard work is 100% of the reason for their success?

I'm not saying they don't work hard; just that there are always environmental factors at play also. Not the least of which is what parents you had.
 
Soldato
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People have been (incorrectly) predicting the end of employment and economic catastrophy since forever.
Indeed, but then we've never been faced with a technological revolution that has the potential to replace so many jobs, in such a wide range of industry sectors and so quickly, as with the rise of AI and automation.

It's quite possible that, as before in history, new technology breeds new jobs. What's less clear is whether the pace of new job creation will be able to keep up with the rate of job absorption by the machines. Not only do we need to invent new jobs, but we also need to invent new jobs that can't be automated by the ever-improving AI.
 
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I think we're going to have to do that. I think the current socio-economic system will not be sustainable for much longer and will be changed. Either in a managed way or a chaotic way, but definitely changed. I don't see mass employment being possible for much longer due to advances in technology. I think employment will become a minority thing and I think it will happen in decades rather than centuries. Hopefully it won't be too bad before I die because I don't see any sign of a plan to deal with it. I'll probably be dead in 20-30 years, so I think I might well be OK.
I don't think we could create a successful economic model where the majority did no work. It's certainly never been done before...

Now this is assuming that the means of production is automated; that energy production is automated. In that case then most of the >7 billion people on this planet have no worth. Worse than that, they're a liability.

But that is again assuming that the means of production is in private hands; that energy production is also in private hands.

Perhaps in such a future scenario where automation has rendered us almost all obsolete, the automated production itself would have to be owned by the people collectively (by the state/world government).

But I still think a mostly automated society is sci-fi and not at all realistic for centuries. At some point someone might have to worry about it tho :p
 
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Indeed, but then we've never been faced with a technological revolution that has the potential to replace so many jobs, in such a wide range of industry sectors and so quickly, as with the rise of AI and automation.

It's quite possible that, as before in history, new technology breeds new jobs. What's less clear is whether the pace of new job creation will be able to keep up with the rate of job absorption by the machines. Not only do we need to invent new jobs, but we also need to invent new jobs that can't be automated by the ever-improving AI.
Can we even have ever-improving AI?

It's a fairly young field at the moment so advances are being made rapidly. Or perhaps not young per-se but relatively recently seen a large amount of effort directed towards it.

But perhaps it can't be "ever improving" to the same degree as today. Materials have finite performance capabilities, governed by the laws of physics. We're also constrained by the amount of energy we can harness at any given time (and the associated costs).
 
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The "self-made man" who gets to the top "purely by his own hard work" is a myth.

Surely nobody is that ego-centric that they believe their own hard work is 100% of the reason for their success?

I'm not saying they don't work hard; just that there are always environmental factors at play also. Not the least of which is what parents you had.

It depends what you mean by the top. My cousin is the owner of a construction company with a multi million turnover after starting life as a plasterer. He wasn't gifted any advantage other than having parents who weren't drug addicts or abusive.

I also know several people from my background who now run very successful and lucrative companies who started with nothing and weren't gifted a large amount of capital. It depends how far down the deprivation ladder you go if you want to claim their success is in some part based on environmental factors.

If you are talking CEO of multinationals, then you may have a point as wealthy parents can pay for education and networking to allow their children to have a head start. However people generally don't stay head of companies without some skill and expertise and there are plenty of very wealthy parents with complete screw up children.
 
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People have been (incorrectly) predicting the end of employment and economic catastrophy since forever.

Indeed... though the same arguments will keep on getting presented that this time it is different because [reasons]. In this case super duper magical AI.
 
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It depends what you mean by the top. My cousin is the owner of a construction company with a multi million turnover after starting life as a plasterer. He wasn't gifted any advantage other than having parents who weren't drug addicts or abusive.

I also know several people from my background who now run very successful and lucrative companies who started with nothing and weren't gifted a large amount of capital. It depends how far down the deprivation ladder you go if you want to claim their success is in some part based on environmental factors.

If you are talking CEO of multinationals, then you may have a point as wealthy parents can pay for education and networking to allow their children to have a head start. However people generally don't stay head of companies without some skill and expertise and there are plenty of very wealthy parents with complete screw up children.
Well the flip-side is the statement that "No, not everyone can get to the top by hard work alone."

Because nobody believes this is true.

Therefore there must be more to it than hard work.

I would suggest support networks play a large role, as do genetics, parenting, etc.
 
Soldato
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Can we even have ever-improving AI?

It's a fairly young field at the moment so advances are being made rapidly. Or perhaps not young per-se but relatively recently seen a large amount of effort directed towards it.

But perhaps it can't be "ever improving" to the same degree as today. Materials have finite performance capabilities, governed by the laws of physics. We're also constrained by the amount of energy we can harness at any given time (and the associated costs).
Well if you want to be pedantic, I’m sure it’s not infinitely exponential, but that misses the point of my post.
 
Soldato
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But they'd lose the tax free portion of their income which is equivalent to the £48 per week (more or less). So they wouldn't be better off. The only people better off are those who do not work, no?

Well you dont pay 100% tax above the tax free threshold, they would lose 20% of the £48. So it would be about £36 not £48.
 
Caporegime
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Indeed... though the same arguments will keep on getting presented that this time it is different because [reasons]. In this case super duper magical AI.

AI isn’t even the issue, it’s whether or not we can actually create jobs that aren’t awful for people to do, because they certainly don’t seem to be making people feel great as it is, sedentary, wasting away on some derivative excel program that a programmer could easily replace the work for.

Ultimately it’s down to lethargic companies not evolving for whatever reason that is keeping a good chunk of the workforce employed, I can’t remember where it was said... but around a third of the service sector is deadweight.
 
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Well if you want to be pedantic, I’m sure it’s not infinitely exponential, but that misses the point of my post.
I wasn't being even slightly pedantic.

Today it takes a crap-ton of power to make fairly basic AI that can just about (maybe) drive a car safely for a while until it flips out and kills someone.

We know that right now we are hitting the limits of silicon.

It doesn't have to be exponential growth (I didn't mention exponential at all!); faster hardware is not a given any more.
 
Caporegime
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AI isn’t even the issue, it’s whether or not we can actually create jobs that aren’t awful for people to do, because they certainly don’t seem to be making people feel great as it is, sedentary, wasting away on some derivative excel program that a programmer could easily replace the work for.

Ultimately it’s down to lethargic companies not evolving for whatever reason that is keeping a good chunk of the workforce employed, I can’t remember where it was said... but around a third of the service sector is deadweight.

Not particularly, I mean making the workplace a nice place and/or work interesting etc.. is a good thing but that is rather another tangental topic.

The topic of mass employment or indeed mass unemployment isn't really contingent on workplaces being at top 100 employers standard etc..

As for automating things that are otherwise done via spreadsheet - some aspects of my previous work was involved in doing that, I guess my time in the software industry did contribute towards reducing the need for staff in some areas, I don't see that as a bad thing, that is progress IMO. We should be automating the mundane... if anything freeing people from the more mundane tasks is perhaps helpful in some ways if you want to improve people's experiences at work.
 
Soldato
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Kind of what it seems like to me. Anyone over £37.5k loses, People earning under that stay the same and people who don’t work gain £200 a month extra. Sounds like typical Labour.

It does sound like it would help to lift some people out of poverty though.

I suppose if you look at it from losers and winners point of view (what thatcher encouraged in people) then yeah you could see it that way.

Its a bit like the budget calculator the bbc publish every year so people can see if they better of after budget, horrible way of thinking.

Are people really looking at it in a way that if it means you personally worse off or someone else gains more than you then its a bad thing? Its a very backward way of thinking and to be frank selfish way of thinking.

I look at it this way.

1 - the benefit to the economy.
2 - how it circulates money to the poor (something that doesnt do this believe it or not is typically a bad thing).
3 - The complexity of it. A flat civilian income is as about as simple as it gets.

Instead we have people getting their calculators out, decided maybe they above the 37k bracket so this idea must suck, or maybe they just hate anyone unemployed getting money so its a bad idea etc.

They forget that one day they may have to take a low paid job themselves or be unemployed themselves, they may fall ill and be reliant on incapacity benefits and so forth. They forget the world is more than just themselves and the overall benefit to the economy has importance.

If you think i am wrong then why we getting comments like "oh its just the unemployed", "typical labour".

People really need to get over their selfishness and "jealousy" of others so the county can progress, because until we do we will stagnate.

If someone is earning 40k vs someone having a 10k income its entirely reasonable they pay more tax, simply because you have a better ability to pay. But even someone earning 40k a week benefits from the civilian income, as I said before you dont pay 100% tax rate above the threshold, so you still getting a boost to your weekly income, its just a smaller boost, but thats absolutely fine as you have a higher income in the first place.

It feels like people would be fine with strangling GDP, having recessions and so forth as long as it ensured those below them are miserable and they were individually financially better off, its a sorry state of affairs.

Even the tories are not this bad, UC actually increases income significantly for a lot of the unemployed they simply havent advertised this to the public due to the stigma attached to it, but UC brings with it the biggest % of income increase for the unemployed in over 4 decades, and thats a 100% tory policy. Also due to the taper off policy it significantly helps the lower paid as well. Kind off ironic that people may have voted them in with the belief it ensures the unemployed get no more money when they have enacted the opposite.

Something like this with selfish people wouldnt surprise me.

Party A promises more money for those not working funded by workers, all of those not working vote for party A
Party B promises more for those earning below 37k funded by the unemployed and those earning above 37k, everyone earning below 37k votes for party B
Party C promises to abolish all tax for those earning above 37k funded by those who get less than 37k and the unemployed are left to rot, everyone earning above 37k votes for party C.

People voting for themselves. Al 3 of the above policies are bad of course but examples of how selfish people can be.
 
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Well the flip-side is the statement that "No, not everyone can get to the top by hard work alone."

Because nobody believes this is true.

Therefore there must be more to it than hard work.

I would suggest support networks play a large role, as do genetics, parenting, etc.

If you are talking at the genetic IQ level then yes, not everyone can be a neurosurgeon or barrister. You also need a certain personality or talent if you want to pursue entertainment or the arts.

However I wouldn't call this an environmental factor. A support network, ready access to cash and good parenting can help, but generally speaking without the prerequisite intelligence, natural skill and ambition it's impossible for anyone to become top of their game.

What I think is more applicable is that there are barriers which can prevent success, bad parenting, restricted access to education, negative personality traits etc.

It depends how you decide when somebody can be viewed to be self made, i.e overcome significant barriers, had no barriers but no assistance either, received signifigant support and Investment.
 
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