I am very bored by the claim that higher tax rates (45% at present, 50% proposed) impact the middle classes. The personal income statistics published last week make clear how untrue this is. This is one way of looking at that:
The 5oth percentile is middle UK - it is median income. In 2011-12 a peson on this income was earning just over £20,000 before tax.
A person on the 99% percentile was enjoying income of around £150,000 - just enough to pay the higher rates of tax.
They are not in the middle.
And just in case there are those who think these are after tax figures this is the data for the 50th percentile in before and after tax terms:
That £20,000 is pre-tax income. That's partly because male and female earnings are so starkly different right across all age ranges:
This is a profoundly unequal society.
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Just for your information, maybe you have missed it .
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2547970/BBC-hands-new-presenter-Laura-Kuenssberg-200-000-year-deal-600-000-viewers-thats-33p-each.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490
£200,000 is middle class. If that’s the salary newsreaders are now expected to earn.
Hardly. Though if it is typical it goes some way to explaining the utter nonsense talked about incomes and benefits in the mainstream media. Most of us think that the majority are in similar circumstances as we are ourselves: we look at those a little better off and a little worse off, and consider we have a reasonable grasp of what is happening for the majority. That is in a different compartment of our minds from factual knowledge about benefit rates and bankers bonuses, and it is in part the way we are wired and in part a consequence of the class structure: we just don’t drink in the same pubs as people who are much better or much worse off, so they don’t impinge on us in any real way.
Although that is pretty typical it does not serve as any justification or excuse for the rubbish normally promulgated. Politicians (who set tax and benefit rates) and media people (who report them) have both the information and the responsibility to be honest.
Even when they are corrupted, by accident or by design, that does not excuse the rest of us for swallowing their nonsense wholesale. The information is available. The failure of imagination is inexcusable when we all know that there are foodbanks in this country. That is a black burning shame for any wealthy country, and that we are prepared to accept it is a terrible condemnation of our intelligence and of our morals. It really does not matter what stories are told: whatever they are they are plain wrong when they lead to this outcome.
You’ve simplistically labelled mieddle class as median income, when clearly they are not the one and the same.
This calculation also totally ingores the benefits system. If you are going to talk about inequality, you have to measure it *after* tax is taken off and benefots recieved are added on, so you can see how much a person’s total take home relative pay is.
Thank heaven for the benefits system
And now wonder we need it so badly when most are on such low pay
What do you think “middle” means? How do you propose to measure it, if you do not accept a median as a reasonable approach? Please explain what you prefer and then spell out how it changes the conclusions in the OP?
Surely class is about more than income? Groups like train or Tube drivers, or the Met Police all earn above £22,000. I imagine trades in London also earn above that – at the hourly rates I get charged!
Class may be about more than income if we are talking about precise definitions. We are a long way from that, however. As we have increasingly adopted american mores the traditional idea of class has been debased in the “national conversation”. Anyone who now wants to abolish the bedroom tax or make the minimum wage keep pace with inflation is now apt to be labelled “socialist”, which is almost funny. But the use of socialist as a boo word does nothing to help us analyse what is actually happening. Some would argue that we need to change the words since they have been so corrupted, though I am not a fan of that approach myself
I am interested in what your preferred definition is, however. And I am interested in how it relates to the OP and what implications it has for how we should be discussing this
Is it not the conservative party who wants to increase the minimum wage.
They say they have given no guidance
Would not argue your monetary statistics. But no decent economy does, or has ever
existed without a vibrant middle class. I accept not all want to, or could emigrate, but history is full of emigrant people of talent/skill who have left behind sinking economies and arrive in growing ones. Like it or not talent,skill,leadership etc has to be rewarded, I don’t know where the level of taxation has to be pitched but as you know I have argued that existing rates may be fine, just not enforced properly.
Yes we have to look after those people earning less, but I am cynical (apart from the righteous) of people who ask people other than themselves to pick up the bill.
I agree re a middle class
But it is not the tax system preventing that
It is wage oppression
Have you seen that Japan is trying to encourage wage inflation to kick start consumption and economic growth? Might be a better argument to use than tax the Middle Class more!
I approve of real wage inflation – especially against asset prices