On 4 Apr 2013 at 2:25pm Front Cover wrote:
You heard it hear first. The recession is not a recession, it is the way things will be from now on. We are in a new state where the majority will be kept in a state of survival whilst the top 1% get richer and more powerful. It is happening now. Don't be fooled into thinking it will get better than this, it wont and the government/banks etc don't want it to.
On 4 Apr 2013 at 3:46pm Ben wrote:
Yes FC, the rich will get richer but as they do they will pay more tax. We need to encourage the rich to stay in this country by not taxing them into buggering off. We should be reducing tax rates for the wealthiest, this would encourage more of them to reside here. This creates vast employment and revenue from the cars and toys they buy, to the staff they employ and the endless building work they have done, not to mention the VAT thereon.
Too many shortsighted people in this country are too quick to bite the hand that feeds them!
On 4 Apr 2013 at 4:05pm Tim Wilkins real name wrote:
Ben: That is the biggest load of cobblers, made up by and spouted by rich people. Don't be so naive...........please!!!
On 4 Apr 2013 at 4:23pm Front Cover wrote:
Spot in Tim. Check out the link below on a related issue.
View the picture »
On 4 Apr 2013 at 4:42pm drone wrote:
I love Ben`s logic that to get more crumbs from the masters`tables, we need to feed the rich bigger meals.
On 4 Apr 2013 at 6:32pm Ben wrote:
Why is it cobblers Tim?
For my first example: I know a village in the West Country where unlike most rural areas it is thriving and everybody is content and employed. The reason, two very large estates nearby owned by some seriously wealthy people where upwards of 100 staff are happily employed. Two pubs employing 7 staff thrive because people have money to spend there. A shop employing 43 staff thrives. Two local building firms employing 40 plus full time tradesmen and apprentices take most of their work from the estates.
Lets not even get onto the tourism income.
So Tim, its all very well saying lets just make the rich pay more and all our problems will be solved. The reality is they will LEAVE this country and places such as i have just described will collapse and you will have another 400 folks jobless.
Its not about the income tax they pay, its the employment for the service industries they create.
On 4 Apr 2013 at 6:51pm Tim Wilkins real name wrote:
Ben, I agree with you re your West Country example. However, the myth that the rich will leave this country is rubbish. They already pay less tax and get more perks than working class people who cannot keep their money off shore or pay an accountant to exploit every loophole the governments conveniently allow them to. The rich aren't stupid enough to give all that up.
On 4 Apr 2013 at 7:10pm Boris wrote:
Your absolutely right Ben, the problem you will have is convincing the ignorant Commies on here that a drip down economy works. As far as they are concerned rich people don't spend their money they just keep on putting it in their bank accounts, and that's where it stays.
On 4 Apr 2013 at 7:26pm Tim Wilkins real name wrote:
Boris you are a complete twat. I am not an "ignorant commie" just a realist. By the way Y.O.U.R means it is yours. Y.O.U.'R.E means you are. You're obviously one of Thatchers right wingers and should be ashamed of yourself.
On 4 Apr 2013 at 7:33pm Clifford wrote:
Tim Wilkins - one of the things you'll notice on here is that the more right wing the comment, the more illiterate the person making the comment (not in all cases, but in a high number). Why this should be we can easily guess.
On 4 Apr 2013 at 7:42pm Ben wrote:
So the rich are all tax dodgers eh? Of course the working class never dodge tax do they, all builders for example wouldnt dream of accepting cash in hand would they. All hairdressers, restaurants etc, all that cash goes through the books I'm sure......why would they need offshore accounts when it's all stuffed under the floorboards!
Fact is, nobody likes paying tax and but a lot of rich people do pay a lot of tax. 31000 individuals in this country pay more tax together than ALL the 14million people on 20k or less, with more than 2000 of them paying over 2million each. So just one of those are paying the wages of near 80 nurses.
We need to encourage more rich people to come and prosper in our country, we need to make it an attractive place for them to get richer, and that is not by taxing their backsides off.
On 4 Apr 2013 at 7:58pm Thatcher wrote:
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to £100...
If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this...
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay £1.
The sixth would pay £3.
The seventh would pay £7..
The eighth would pay £12.
The ninth would pay £18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay £59.
So, that's what they decided to do..
The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball.
"Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by £20". Drinks for the ten men would now cost just £80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.
So the first four men were unaffected.
They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men?
The paying customers?
How could they divide the £20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?
They realised that £20 divided by six is £3.33. But if they
subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.
So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay.
And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% saving).
The sixth now paid £2 instead of £3 (33% saving).
The seventh now paid £5 instead of £7 (28% saving).
The eighth now paid £9 instead of £12 (25% saving).
The ninth now paid £14 instead of £18 (22% saving).
The tenth now paid £49 instead of £59 (16% saving).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings.
"I only got a pound out of the £20 saving," declared the sixth man.
He pointed to the tenth man,"but he got £10!"
"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a pound too. It's unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!"
"That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get £10 back, when I got only £2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"
"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison, "we didn't get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!"
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and government ministers, is how our tax system works.
The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction.
Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore.
In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics.
For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible
On 4 Apr 2013 at 7:59pm Thatcher wrote:
food for thought
On 4 Apr 2013 at 8:13pm the old mayor wrote:
Suddenly the natives have got it !!
On 4 Apr 2013 at 8:24pm Expat two wrote:
I didn't think anybody believed in trickle-down economics anymore. Itâ??s a measure of a lack of critical thinking in the UK that it was ever used as an excuse. Just stop & think about it for a couple of moments, the theory is, if you give rich people tax breaks, ie more spending power, theyâ??ll put that money back into the economy, where everybody else has to work hard to get a cut of it. The reality is, someone who has 10million in the bank more than he needs, doesnâ??t spend another 2 million the government have given him. He squirrels it away in an offshore account so he doesnâ??t have to pay tax on the interest he earns. What he does spend it on is luxury goods, not manufactured on UK, and overseas property. Why would/how could he only spend it in UK? Doesnâ??t make sense.
Now, the obverse is, if those tax cuts for the rich were given to the poorâ?¦.. that money would be directly thrown back into the economy, and probably end up in the hands of the rich, everybody gets a look at it. Instead of a trickling down it would flood upwards. I suppose we ought to be grateful that while Boris & co still believe it, theyâ??ve downgraded it from trickle-down to drip-down.
On 4 Apr 2013 at 8:36pm Expat two wrote:
Thatcher, lovely analogy though it is, it crucially misses that in UK economic policy the richest beer drinker doesnâ??t get assaulted and not turn up, he demands more and more discounts for himself only because he wants more than the others, the publican gives it to him, because their from the same background and they went to school together, between them they decide the others should pay more to make up the difference.
On 4 Apr 2013 at 8:44pm Ben wrote:
Expat, the rich don't have 10 mill just sat in the bank. A large amount will be invested in equities, thus supporting the share price of those companies........most of whose shares will be held by the pension funds of the average johnny.
As far as how you could you spend it in the UK......A new helipad, a new orangery, a new pool, a new Smallbone kitchen, a new football team....there are hundreds of niche market small companies taking orders from the rich for big orders of things we can only dream about. Employment is the result and the lifeblood this country needs.
On 4 Apr 2013 at 8:47pm Ben wrote:
by the way, I am bloke 6 in the pub and very happy that bloke 10 is kindly paying for my less fortunate mates. Good on him I say.
On 4 Apr 2013 at 9:04pm thatcher wrote:
Top 14 per cent of taxpayers pay 60 per cent of all tax. How could you possible argue they should be paying more? you seem to be the guy that always feels hard done by. We should be aspiring to become the 10th guy, failing that we should at least thank him.
What I disagree with is corporations like Starbuck or individuals like Philip Green who evade huge amounts of tax. This is however due to the complexities of our own taxation system and the government are fundamentally to blame for allowing this to happen. After all, if you could save £500m+ through a tax heaven you would! I know I would
Check it out here »
On 4 Apr 2013 at 9:12pm Sussex Jim wrote:
Both Robin Hood and Labour governments thought it would be simple to take from the rich and give to the poor. That is why we are now in recession.
On 4 Apr 2013 at 10:18pm Cliffe Hanger wrote:
I don't post on here very often now, though continue to read avidly, mainly because I don't want to get drawn into a discussion of party politics.
But as someone who cares about the economy - it is my profession - and knows a few *ankers, I cannot help myself when I read stuff like this from "Front Cover" :
"You heard it hear first. The recession is not a recession, it is the way things will be from now on. We are in a new state where the majority will be kept in a state of survival whilst the top 1% get richer and more powerful. It is happening now. Don't be fooled into thinking it will get better than this, it wont and the government/banks etc don't want it to."
and this:
"Spot in (sic) Tim. Check out the link below on a related issue.
View the picture »"
You do realise the money that the government has spent in this country bailing out the banks has been used to protect depositors, don't you? That means people like you and me. If that money wasn't spent, savers of all walks of life would have lost thousands. That is what was being threatened in Cyprus. If Northern Rock, if RBS, if HBOS had not been bailed out with public money, ordinary depositors would have lost substantial amounts of money, and we are talking billions here.
As to banks and the government wanting the economy to remain in recession, that is just nonsense, and merits no comment further than that.
Your cartoon, though perhaps mildly humorous, I suspect makes exactly the opposite social comment from what you had intended. The people that have been hit by the Cypriot bail-in are precisely the rich - those with deposits over â?¬100,000. Basically, people who had a lot of money to spare and were attracted by high deposit rates in Cyprus. Those rates were high for a reason. And they are precisely the people who deserved to lose out.
On 5 Apr 2013 at 12:46am Cliffe Hanger wrote:
I think Sussex Jim has a point. Sort of. The Labour government did believe it would be easy to take from the rich and give to the poor, and that is in large part why we now have a big structural deficit. I am not sure it explains the recession though.
Expat Two, what "reckless risks" do you think the "obscenely rewarded" bankers took that led us into recession?
On 5 Apr 2013 at 4:06am Expat Two wrote:
Essentially, it happened like this; American banks, Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae sold mortgages to high risk mortgagees â?? the unemployed, low waged, bad credit-rated etc. It was a risk, but fortunately they then sold most of those debts to other banks and hedge funds at a profit. Inevitably, those high risk mortgagees (â??Sub-Primeâ?? mortgages) defaulted and left the owners of the debts with massive, I mean billion dollar, losses. Which of course led to a cascade of failing banks and investment funds around the world. The UK Govt has earmarked more than 800 billion (thatâ??s not a typo) to underwrite the UK bank losses. None of those banksâ?? chairmen or top staff lost their multi-million pound bonuses for their catastrophic failures.
UK tax payers had to pay, for example, blockhead Freddy Goodwin a 5 million bonus as a reward for bringing Northern Rock to its knees and notching up a 2 billion loss for tax payers to cover. Most of the remaining top brass that lost their jobs when their banks went down waltzed into new jobs with the government, on comparable wages â??because we want the bestâ??, advising on fiscal policy. If youâ??re part of that elite, youâ??ll get paid an obscene amount regardless of how good you are at your job, and if you are bad, global-disasterously bad, youâ??ll still be looked after and get a lottery win sized salary every month. And of course, none of them pay income tax, or if they do itâ??s less than you, and begrudgingly.
Itâ??s the champagne socialism thing again - a bottomless tub of free hand-outs for the rich that do nothing to discourage poor performance or responsible professionalism. It was Thatcher, then Major followed by Blair & Brown all of who progressively de-regulated the banks and emasculated the FSA to allow more recklessness and less govt scrutiny. Pick your â??Robin Hoodâ?? out of that shady cast of characters and you might convince me why youâ??re not being duped by a Neo-Con fit-up. Iâ??m not surprised you guys are nâ??t told what really happened, there'd be a riot if everybody knew the the facts.
On 5 Apr 2013 at 8:28am Annette Curtin-Twitcher wrote:
And the government now proposes to risk taxpayers' money by giving it out to people who can't get mortgages because they are deemed high-risk by the banks, just so over-inflated property prices and low interest rates are supported.
I will never get why the rich need more money as an incentive to do stuff, but the poor have to be incentivised by getting less.
On 5 Apr 2013 at 10:06am jrsussex wrote:
I will never understand the relentless drive to force up the cost of property. Prior to practically every recession in my lifetime there has been a couple of years or so of dramatic increases in the costs of residential property. What leads to that is as Expat Two says, giving credit far too freely to those that cannot afford it if the slightest thing in their financial circumstances goes wrong.
Many of those that have struggled to obtain a mortgage will be aware of the practices adopting by the various lending sources, valuers, solicitors etc all of whom will pull any string in order to get the mortgage agreed, they then all get their share of the charges/commission pot, They care little that the mortgagor has a debt that they are stretched to meet even in the early days. I think no one should be able to obtain a mortgage on a residential property unless they have a minimum 20% deposit, hard I appreciate but better for all involved and certainly better for the financial state of the UK.
Unquestionably the major reason for the state of the world's finances is credit too easily obtain for several years.
On 5 Apr 2013 at 10:29am SC wrote:
@thatcher. Do your pub analogy in the 1960s compared to 2012 and explain to me the difference. Tax thresholds don't seem to have moved much and seem to be getting less progressive don't they?
I suppose it is easier to emigrate and to move your money around now-a-days, so perhaps the threat of people leaving would be greater in today's money.... but surely these 1%ers would miss plummy conversation and tweed wherever they fled to, no?
On 5 Apr 2013 at 11:06am Southover Queen wrote:
The undersupply of dwellings in the UK, particularly in the south east, is at the root of quite a lot of our problems I think, at least domestically. It's meant that housing costs per capita are very expensive compared to the rest of Europe. It also means that many people have all their savings tied up in their homes rather than invested in businesses in the community, and that means that house prices become pivotal issues for the older members of society who are probably relying on the capital tied up in them to see them through old age.
With reference to the trickle down argument, yes I remember that argument under Thatcher. Is that why the gap between rich and poor continues to widen? The extremely rich don't spend most of their money; they buy property and stick it in the bank.
Just up the road is a huge great house. It sold six months ago for about £1m more than anyone thought it was worth. It's been unoccupied ever since because, rumour has it, it was bought on a whim. Leaving all the economic arguments to one side, doesn't anyone feel that there's something just morally wrong about that? It's certainly not doing anything at all for the local economy, sitting there empty.
On 5 Apr 2013 at 11:43am Local wrote:
It was Adam Applegarth at the helm of Northern Rock; Free Goodwin was the captain of RBS.
All over the UK there are council-owned houses that are inhabitable; is that more morally wrong than a privately-owned house that's empty or big places with just one person living in them? Just a question.
By the way, of course the gap between rich and poor is going to increase over time! If you have £1000 in the bank, it'll increase by 2% even with current interest rates. if you have £0, the maths is simple. A far more relevant statistic to use would be the % of the population falling into the rich and poor categories.
On 5 Apr 2013 at 11:52am Southover Queen wrote:
Really, where are all these unoccupied council houses? Not round here they're not.
Go on then: what is the percentage of the population currently living at or below the breadline? Compared to the super rich?
On 5 Apr 2013 at 11:56am Southover Queen wrote:
Apologies for the double post, but here's the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on just how unequal our society is becoming. Some interesting if glum reading there.
Check it out here »
On 5 Apr 2013 at 12:55pm Front Cover wrote:
Cliffe Hanger - When they come after your bank deposits in few years time, you may wish you had looked a little deeper into my posts rather than take them at the superficial level. The gap is going to get wider and the poor are going to become the majority. There will be no cash anymore, it will all be "credits" in your bank account and one day, the hole in the wall won't work anymore. It is going to happen unless we stop them. They want us to stay in our rooms, being scared to go outside, watching crap TV and being watched by CCTV to "protect" us from the "threat of terrorism". To say that rich people in Cyprus deserved to lose their money is frankly sick.
On 5 Apr 2013 at 1:05pm Front Cover wrote:
Does it affect you directly yet? No? History gives us plenty of warnings. Here is one quote attributed to a Dutchman who survived the Dachau concentration camp.
Check it out here »
On 5 Apr 2013 at 1:15pm Nixon Scraypes wrote:
Labour get in after the Tories years of misrule,build up the NHS etc,run up a huge debt.Tories get in after years of Labour fiscal mismanagement, privatize NHS etc,everybody gets fed up votes in Labour who fund up the NHS etc etc. Who gains?How long does it take to realize this is just a scam.They're all in it together.The cartoon wasn't quite right,its called a BAIL IN now.Remember bail now means steal.A bail out is when they steal tax payers money,a bail in is when they steal depositers money.A note to the disadvantaged-all the really big depositors in Cyprus got their money out before the planned crisis you can see the list of them on line if you want.The only thing that trickles down ends up on your socks.
On 5 Apr 2013 at 2:17pm Local wrote:
I didn't say I had the poor vs rich %s, but I would imagine that there are more people in both categories compared to thirty years ago. Surely someone can drag up the figures from somewhere...
I'm sure I'll be jumped on as being selfish etc, but I can never understand the amount of carping on about people living around the bread-line, the damned rich, etc. There has always been, and will always be, inequality in every aspect of life. I wish deeply that I could live in the house of my dreams, with no mortgage, with a guaranteed income for life, etc etc. I don't, but I don't believe that it's unfair that some are in that fortunate position. Similarly, I don't lose sleep over the fact that not everyone is in my "average" position and are misfortunate enough to find life a struggle.
But I just think UK PLC directs enough of the country's income / borrowings to help them. If individuals feel strongly about the poor, they are perfectly welcome to volunteer their time and cash to help further - as I know some people do. But I would suggest it's not many people that do, compared to the amount of noise that others make on the issue.
The JRF is just one of a number of well-meaning organisations around the country who have grand ideals, and hopefully aren't one that ends up paying quite a lot of people quite a lot of money to make others feel guilty about their lifestyles.
By the way, does anyone know how the definition of poverty has changed over time? I can't believe the same metrics are used nowadays compared to pre-war, for instance...