This is a brilliant new video from Inequality Briefing
Sop much for social justice.
So much for fairness.
And the answer? Well, wealth taxation is very clearly one.
And land value taxation another.
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Bring back the mid 1960s top tax rate of 98 percent and make the rich really squeal! 🙂
Can you even imagine governments taxing the rich to that extent now?
No
And I would not advise it
I believe in broadly based progressive but not punitive taxes – including on wealth
Well, I said it mostly in humour, because there is more likelihood of me meeting Elvis on the moon than government’s putting up the top rate of tax to 98p in the pound.
Having said that though, I would certainly restore the 60% tax rate of the mid 1980s, in fact, in a lot of cases, I would stick it up to 70 or 80 percent. I have few qualms about taxing wealth, especially nowadays where much of this wealth is unearned.
There are certainly better methods of taxation, especially a land value tax, and taxes should maybe target assets rather than production, as income tax does now.
However, while we have the present system of income tax, I say the rich should pay their whack!
The 60 percent rate should be restored immediately!
I won’t hold my breath waiting though! 🙂
I only discovered the other day that Denis Healey had promised to ‘squeeze the PROPERTY SPECULATORS until the pips squeeked’ not the rich in general.
I think Richard’s right… tax isn’t part of our justice system, and simply being wealthy isn’t, in itself, a crime! A good start point would be simply insisting that the wealthiest individuals pay the taxes they owe at the current levels. A progressive Government could do quite a lot with that extra £100bn or so.
A 60 percent tax rate on the top earners is more than fair, in my opinion!
As well as LVT I would tax the bricks and mortar of residential property over a reasonable square footage. It would take a bit more evaluation but at least buildings, along with the site, cannot be hidden.
Agreed
That’s a truly dreadful video. For they’ve ignored, if they even knew about it, the lifecycle effect on wealth.
Roughly, the ONS figures are that there’s £10 trillion of wealth. £1 trillion each in personal wealth and financial wealth. All of the rest is private pensions savings and housing. So of course that £8 trillion will be concentrated. Among those old enough to have paid off their mortgages and to have saved into their pension plans.
You could have absolute equality of lifetime wealth (ie, everyone borrows when young, pays off that borrowing and then saves to the same amount) and you would still have gross inequality of wealth the way they’re measuring it. Just because wealth is age correlated.
Utter drivel Tim
Have you not noticed how desperately poor many old people are?
And how much the baby boom bubble has favoured a few ( yes, me included)
Does the real world ever influence your dogmatic statements? Or is all your writing both evidence and empathy free?
So nothing at all to do with the accumulation of increasingly unequal incomes and the rising share going to capital and land at the expense of labour?
Is this Tim Worstall man real, Richard, or have you invented him as a sort of imaginary devil’s advocate? – I cannot believe how a supposedly thinking person can inhabit Cloud Cuckoo L so exclusively!and
Now that’s an interesting idea…..
Sadly TW is a real a person, but he inhabits a world far removed from most in the UK. I think he appears on the Forbes’ “comedy circuit”.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/consumertips/tax/10366122/UK-top-rate-tax-cut-was-worlds-largest-in-2013.html
“In our view there is a point at which tax rates can squeeze taxpayers too hard and act as a disincentive to growth and investment. At 50pc, the UK was probably at that point and lowering the rate thus removes this barrier to an extent, although 45pc is not the lowest rate around by any means.”
Highly selective quoting from a report where the important conclusion was ‘it was too soon to tell’
But the fact is we do not have a 50p tax or even 45p for many and much much less for all business
If you do not understand that then you are not presenting objective evidnce
“But the fact is we do not have a 50p tax or even 45p for many”
It is you, isn’t it, who continually asserts that the incidence of employers’ NI is upon employees? You’re correct in this assertion of course but that does mean that you’re right we don’t have a 45 p tax rate, it’s rather higher, up at 54 or 55 p isn’t it?
But since people do not realise that is the case there is no behavioural consequence
And those with their own companies who do realise often avoid it
Again, please deal with reality Tim or don’t bother
“But since people do not realise that is the case there is no behavioural consequence ”
Really? So why does that Diamond and Saetz paper that you love to quote about the peak of the Laffer Curve therefore include all employer paid taxes on employment as part of its calculation of that top tax rate?
If it doesn’t matter because no one believes it then they would have left them out.
I do not have to agree with all of it
I have my own mind Tim
That’s an aspect of freedom you might need to explore
Whilst the non doms situation isn’t included in that report. However that is something that the previous government had a chance to sot out, and failed. The non doms joke affects equality in the UK, and causes much confusion with many people.
It is very simple thing to sort out, yet the Labour party failed.
I agree on that point
“Hijacked” globalization has a lot to answer for!
Going back to the issue you raised — “Inequality in Britain”. I wonder if the issue is peoples’ understanding of money – as if a millionaire’s wealth is NOT connected to one’s own [lack of it]. Huff post headline today “Russian Millionaires Spend £130,000 In ‘Monumental’ Three-Hour Drinking Session In London’s Mayfair”, probably not an every night affair.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/10/10/russian-millionaires-drinking_n_4078910.html?1381424366&utm_hp_ref=uk