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And we're almost at communism.
How did you get to communism with that?
It's just how do you define 'hard'?
Exactly.
IME the hardest jobs I have ever done paid the least
Really? Most low paid jobs I've done were a doddle. Take basic shop work in Tesco's or where ever, not hard.
When you look at pay, market conditions and responsibility have a big factor.
Really? Most low paid jobs I've done were a doddle.
Hardest job I've ever had was either working in McDonalds as a teenager or working in a CD packing warehouse.
Take basic shop work in Tesco's or where ever, not hard.
I worked at a supermarket when I was younger. It was incredibly hard. Not physically, but mentally. I suppose we're all different.
.
Really? Most low paid jobs I've done were a doddle. Take basic shop work in Tesco's or where ever, not hard.
Really? My experience is the exact opposite.
depends on what defines 'hard' - during my time at Uni, I worked in a sheet metal factory, I couldn't lift the sheets or get my arms around them but the pay was great and I stuck at it. That was physically hard.
Today, my job is mentally challenging, at the start the challenge was big but over the years, development and learning together with a great employer has meant my job, whilst challenging is also very satisfying.
Today, my job is mentally challenging, at the start the challenge was big but over the years, development and learning together with a great employer has meant my job, whilst challenging is also very satisfying.
I found the mind-numbing tedium of low-paid work to be mentally-challenging. What I do now is mentally-stimulating.
So the idealistic view is that we tell people how much they can earn and make an assessment of their level of happieness and then restrict them from doing anything which doesn't fall in line with this idealistic view point
Yup. We actually live in a society where we rely on each other...we don't live in a truly free market society, if we did people like me would be able to kill the rich in their sleep and seize their wealth.
We live in a society with lots and lots of restrictions placed upon we do or what we can own, I don't see why there has to be an arbitary line over wealth either.
At the end of the day economic policy should come down to identifying evidence based policy that best serves the economic interests of the majority of the country, eg growth and job creation. If that means redistributing wealth through higher taxes then so be it. This isn't communism, it's cold hard utilitarianism.
I don't pay any of my money in tax. The bit deducted from my nominal salary isn't mine to begin with.
They're also healthy, prosperous and well-educated. It'll never catch on..
I don't know we are led by a centre right coalition just like Norway, Finland and Sweden.
Their centre is further to the left than ours.
Really, you should look up the Swedish Finance Minister
Borg has been recognised as the mastermind behind the new Swedish government's economic doctrine, focusing on proactive measures against unemployment. An incremental dismantling of the social democratic welfare state, with larger self-financing of welfare systems, lower taxes and fewer benefits are seen as the way to create new motivation to work and more business opportunities and creation of jobs. He developed these new policies in his role as chief economist in the Moderate Party.
focusing on proactive measures against unemployment.
You should read the whole article. According to the same source as you mefty : [i]"who has served as Minister for Finance in the Swedish Government since 2006."[/i]
So look at what's been happening to unemployment in Sweden since 2006 :
[img] 
[/img]
BTW, guess what year the "Moderate" Party came to power ? Yep, you've got it.......1991
Thatcher and the Tories made a great song and dance about the 1.5 million unemployed in 1979 with the most famous general election slogan in British politics : "Labour isn't working". So tackling unemployment could rightly be seen as their priority. Within 2 or 3 years they had more than doubled unemployment.
Really, you should look up the Swedish Finance Minister
Yes really. Any cursory examination of their welfare and employment law would tell you that.
EL - I was just using it to illustrate that Scandinavia has moved on from the Social Democratic dominated politics of the past - I think a debate over the relative merits of the economic policies in Sweden would lead to so much wiki trawling that it might break the internet and is, as a result, not a tangent to be pursued.
Brilliant, wikiflounce.
I admire the lack of gross excess in salaries in Norway eg:
In a nondescript building down a side street in Oslo, Yngve Slyngstad is in charge of the world's biggest investment fund, Norway's £500bn government pension fund. His salary? After the fund's second best year ever for returns, he picked up £595,000 – and no bonus. Over in the City of London, in a rather grander marble and glass building, sits a fund manager unmasked yesterday as Prudential's highest-paid employee: Richard Woolnough, manager of the bond funds run by the Pru's subsidiary, M&G. He presides over funds worth around £30bn, or around one-17th of Slyngstad's pot, but earned 30 times more – an extraordinary £17.4m.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/apr/03/fund-managers-limit-excessess-pay-bonuses
Yngve Slyngstad is in charge of the world's biggest investment fund, Norway's £500bn government pension fund
He's a civil servant though no? So hardly a fair comparison.
He's a civil servant though no? So hardly a fair comparison.
Why not? It shows that you can manage a huge fund successfully paying a modest salary. The City will tell you that that is impossible and you have to pay an obscene amount otherwise the fund will collapse or go into a 'death spiral' etc etc.
When you are independent you have to raise the fund, as a civil servant you don't, star managers attract funds therefore get paid more, like footballers who bring in more success. As with footballers, not all succeed.
I think we all understand the reasons they give to "justofy" the salaries what we are saying is it is BS
Do you think they wouldn't lose him if they paid him less? Or if they did it wouldn't matter as someone could do as well for a lot less?
Getting back to the schools thing, I've been having a separate argument with someone on facebook about home education. It seems there's a growing body (although thankfully still small) of people out there who think school of any type is evil and that kids shouldn't be taught anything at all 😕
[url= http://sandradodd.com/unschooling ]http://sandradodd.com/unschooling[/url]
[url= http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200909/why-don-t-students-school-well-duhhhh ]http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200909/why-don-t-students-school-well-duhhhh[/url]
Or if they did it wouldn't matter as someone could do as well for a lot less?
Of course. Salary has very little to do with motivation or ability...
Lesser of two evils. A nation full of jobs and investment but no corporation tax, or a nation without both.La la land. There was talk of this in the USA during the bush administration, didn't get anywhere, and as stated elsewhere on this thread, the bastion of capitalism's corp tax rate 35%.
As for investment, how the hell do you think stuff like infrastructure, vital for commerce, gets built and maintained? Largely through taxation. If there was no corp tax, the burden would shift elswhere, resulting in higher personal taxation or stuff like infrastructure(I include the NHS and Education as infrastructure) gets cut.
Of course some stuff gets built through private investment. Like nuclear power stations. Via French state owned company money. And Chinese government money. And the end user getting stiffed through high prices when it comes online at some point in the future. Like I said, some stuff gets built.
Our corporation tax is getting obscenely low.
I think we all understand the reasons they give to "justofy" the salaries what we are saying is it is BS
They don't need to justify it. They make money, they can do what they want with it. The fact is that there is competition for jobs, same as there is for footballers. So to make people want to work for you you have to offer big salaries or other perks. I bet that civil service guy has other perks which mean more to him than millions in bonuses.
So the only way around this is to impose either a salary cap or tax most of it away above a certain threshold. Which is where we were a page or two back.
Fundamentally, it's about ideology. If enough people think '£xxxx is enough, I don't need any more' then society changes. But that's a pretty big ask of most people. It's a shame, but human nature is hard to change.
Who would live in all the big houses if your salary cap came into force?
Would we all have to drive Toyota Piouses too?
imagine?? 😯
molgrips - Member
It's pure luck that I was born with an aptitude that pays well.
So that puts a hole in the idea that meritocracy is some kind of panacea. Since skills or otherwise are distributed randomly at birth. Well put mol.
The most striking thing in the Swedish graph is surely the impact of the banking crisis?
Who would live in all the big houses if your salary cap came into force?
Just to make it clear - I am not advocating a salary cap.
[i]I don't pay any of my money in tax. The bit deducted from my nominal salary isn't mine to begin with.[/i]
Bit of an odd statement....if you didn't go to work, you wouldn't get a salary. just because its taken at source, doesn't mean you haven't earned it.
just because its taken at source, doesn't mean you haven't earned it.
It's just a number on a piece of paper. I never see it, so why even look. If someone offers me a job earning £50kpa, I don't start budgeting to spend £4166/mo and then get all surprised when some money's missing.
So I haven't earned it, no. I've earned my takehome, that's all that matters.
Perhaps you should. It's important what happens to the money your EARN. Think of it another way, what date in the year do you effectively start working for yourself rather than indirectly for the state?
Why?
What difference does it make?
And the word 'earn' is a bit vague, isn't it?
If you need to ask mol, perhaps you can also send me part of your pay. I promise to spend it wisely.
Are you saying I'm not paying attention to the political process?
teamhurtmore - Member
Perhaps you should. It's important what happens to the money your EARN.
And more to the point, how its calculated - there are loads and loads of ways of not paying tax depending on your circumstances that IR won't automatically inform you about, so you could be throwing good money away.
To give you an example, I found out just last wee that I don't have to be paying tax on yet another £4k of what I earn, which basically has given me a few 10's of pounds extra each month. Why would you forgo the opportunity 'cuase you can't be arsed to take not of the tax you are currently paying?
This really gets my goat - he's a compliance officer at a bank and his finances are stuffed! He talks about "disposable income" but doesn't take into account the massive debt he needs to pay off at some point, so his true disposable income was a lot less and the reality is he can't afford that house, mortgage and school fees, let a lone the bloody city breaks....
To give you an example, I found out just last wee that I don't have to be paying tax on yet another £4k of what I earn, which basically has given me a few 10's of pounds extra each month. Why would you forgo the opportunity 'cuase you can't be arsed to take not of the tax you are currently paying?
I honestly don't care that much about money to be bothered. I spend less than I earn so I'm quite content. Not checked my tax code / tax for years...
Nothing personal footflaps but I find that attitude a bit trite. Maybe with two young kids my life has changed over the last few years from a disposable income perspective, or that I attribute the gain to more things I can do for them, but it means enough to me to have made a 20 minute phone call to sort it out.
If your happy to give some excess away I'm happy to email you my kids junior savings account details, it'll mean more to them in several years and I'm sure they send Uncle Footflaps a thank you card sometime. Failing that I'm riding for charity soon, care to donate?
Well my largest monthly DD is charitable donations so I'm quite happy to give my money to worthy causes 😉
But then I've chosen a lifestyle where I live well within my means, no kids, no massive house, no massive car etc. Personally it works for me as I don't have to worry about money, or in fact many things...
You and Teasel should have a get together. Do you like Tiramisu?
It's all well and good old Footaps coming on here lecturing us all about how to live our lives, but if we all took his route the world we live in would only last another 50 yrs tops!
I'd like to see your google evidence to back that up....
Sorry Pal, it's Friday night and the red wine is going down nicely. No time for mr Google.
@footflaps - as I and others have said it is not clear that any extra tax taken will result in a fairer society, ie one where the less well off have more relative to the rich. If you give more money to the government the first thing you'll have is more civil servants earning more money. Also @footflaps you say you don't care about money so I suppose we should be surprised that you want to take it away from others who you assume don't want or need it because you as a person with no kids etc doesn't want or need it.
The discussion re the civil servant "managing" the government pension pot what I think you'll find is that the moe y is actually mananged by professional money mangers being paid a fee and earning more than the civil servant.
@molgrios if we had a 75% tax rate we'd have very few jobs paying £1m gross, the reason is that the businesses would rather hire someone for £600k who lived in a 40% tax jurisdiction than a someone living in the UK, in fact what you'd find is the person in the £1m job begging to be transferred to another country.
The tax burden in the UK is already very high for every £1 a high earner makes you have 45p tax 16p NI (2p employee, 14p employer) then if you spend the 39p you have left on a VATable item that's another 14p - so total tax take from £1 earnt is 75p or 75%
Wealth inequality is very heavily skewed by the very top (if you like the Abramovich's or Zuckerbergs) as I posted elsewhere someone on £200k is in the top 1% along with the billionaires and when people speak of the 1% they think only of the B's. I believe the focus on inequality is a red herring. The focus should be on the wealth and lifestyle of the population overall, in various quartiles if you like. What will be seen is that everyone including the working class are much much better off.
Still only a couple of weeks now until tax freedom day in the UK.....
Tax freedom day seems late this year.....are the Tories back in government ?
The party doesnt matter Ernie - we know that. Overall tax take (in aggregate) is remarkably stable over time and different governments (I wont mention time periods though!!). Its the make-up that changes.
Tories tax too much too.
molgrios if we had a 75% tax rate we'd have very few jobs paying £1m gross
Yes I know, I'm not advocating a 75% tax band. I imagine very few people are on £1m PAYE now tbh. It'll be bonuses.
PS your sums are wrong.
What will be seen is that everyone including the working class are much much better off.
This seems to be completely the opposite of what's observed isn't it? There is more to economics than simple economics, I suspect. Ask yourself WHY some countries have higher tax and higher public spending.....
@molgrips bonuses are subject to PAYE too. I'll check my maths 😳 (yes VAT calc wrong only 8p so total tax take is 68p for every £1 earnt)
Not sure why you disagree that the working class aren't enormously better off than they where 10, 25, 50 years ago ? Seems pretty evident to me. I think over shorter term like 10 it's harder to call for all income bands
Tax burden is going to get greater as the population ages and fattens...
@molgrips some countries have higher tax and spending because that's what their governments have put in place, that's why. What is note in that in two I am familiar with, France and Germany, tax rates inc social security taxes are greater accross the whole spectrum especially the middle classes.
some countries have higher tax and spending because that's what their governments have put in place
Yeah but why? Because the electorate voted for social governments. So the question is, why do some countries vote left and some right?
Not sure why you disagree that the working class aren't enormously better off than they where 10, 25, 50 years ago ?
I don't!
PS your sums are still wrong. You took employer's NI out of the £1 earned by the employee, but it doesn't come out of that. Plus your sums only apply to those £s over the 40% threshold. No-one pays that on ALL their salary.
@molgrips I was trying to demonstrate total tax burden, employer and employee and yes of course it's only on the amount over the 45% threshold which is £150k but as we where discussing top rates of tax I was focused on the marginal rate tax burden.
As to why some countries vote left or right I couldn't tell you. Why do we in the UK alternate between periods of left and right ? One side screws up so loses power. I think in the UK in my memory power has been lost not won.
Why do we in the UK alternate between periods of left and right ?
That's one of the most bizarre comments on this thread. When was the last time that the Left were in government in the UK ?
And unless one political party is permanently in government, without ever relinquishing power, then by definition it means that those in government must constantly alternate.
Why does it constantly alternate ? Well primarily because the electorate are never satisfied with whoever is in government. It's no great mystery imo.