Yes, we should.
If they want to leave, I'm sure there are plenty of people still here who'd do their jobs better, for less, and pay taxes.

Brain/Money Drain = fiction

Nonsense tomfoolery. They will not split.

Bit of both.

Take a concrete example: a top financier working for a uk institution in London. If he or she was taxed at, say, 60% then is he or she likely to go to to Hong Kong instead? I'm happy to take the risk myself as I reckon we'd have people waiting in the ranks who'd be reasonable for a while but I think we need to know the likely consequences.

As for tax or cut, we'll have to do both to get through the next few years.

Call their bluff! Pay them less and tax them at 40%. The mega-salaries are obscene and it's not as if they've done a good job so far.

think its a case for both over the next few years, but I agree call their bluff, something needs to change, and as they have not done theirselves proud in their job description department so far I say do it.

quote:

Originally posted by Kaytee:
Call their bluff! Pay them less and tax them at 40%. The mega-salaries are obscene and it's not as if they've done a good job so far.

Not all the top earners are on a mega-salary. We've been taxed shitless at 40% for 20 years, to the point where we can't actually afford to live in England or even think about coming back. Hubby's job went abroad and we had to go with it, or go bankrupt.

I officially retire in a few years' time and my State Pension will be £24 a week, so I am informed. Hubby's will be the basic pension, because his personal pension is one of those which crashed. We would like to come back and spend our hard-earned cash in the UK and contribute to the economy, but we can't. So we are stuck here.

As ever, it will be the middle classes who will carry the burden. The rich will always find a way around taxation no matter what the rate.

Everybody would prefer not to pay any tax.
Those who can afford consultants to ensure they pay as little as possible will always be one step ahead of the amateurs who run the Government finances.
As usual the politicians are trying to deflect public scrutiny on to one particular sector of society when in fact it is they who spent and are spending money that we have not got.
The hard truth is, that even if every person in the country paid their full whack of Income tax we would still be in a huge mess.

quote:

Originally posted by profile:
Brain/Money Drain = fiction

Nonsense tomfoolery. They will not split.

It is not fiction. Every time Labour hikes up the tax burden to impossible amounts, a brain-drain occurs. Some of the best people leave the UK and go to places where most of their hard-earned cash don't disappear into the State Trough.

If Labour didn't do that, all that hard-earned cash would go into the State Trough anyway, in the form of indirect taxation through purchases and other non-income taxes.

The more of this wealth which is kept in the country, the more jobs are kept.

The poor just see greed. They don't see hard work or 7 years' university education without much income and a huge mountain of debt before work has even begun.

The poor think all high-earners are just those obscene bank-bonus suckers. It's not like that at all. Look outside the box.

quote:

Originally posted by Daniel J*:
Take a concrete example: a top financier working for a uk institution in London. If he or she was taxed at, say, 60% then is he or she likely to go to to Hong Kong instead? I'm happy to take the risk myself as I reckon we'd have people waiting in the ranks who'd be reasonable for a while but I think we need to know the likely consequences.

As for tax or cut, we'll have to do both to get through the next few years.

Every time there is a brain drain, the good managers disappear to other countries and the UK is left with the dregs. The UK has been managed by the dregs since the 70s, hence the unthinking mess we are in.

I thinkthe answer is to make London a Monaco-style principality and build a wall around the M25.

I agree that the government have used moeny they didn't have, but what was the alternative, anyone know?

quote:

Originally posted by Garage Joe:
I have been listening to a bunch of baffled peeps debating this on Radio 2.
Person after person suggested that the top earners, rather than being in dodgy schemes, should pay tax just like us. Apologisers for the top earners suggest that if they had to pay tax, they would leave the country.
Given that.....
a) A lot of 'em don't technically live here.
b) No -one knows where their money is.

Shouldn't we just call their bluff?

The kind of people you are talking about are a tiny percent of the working population. The scammongers.

Then there is a batch of highly-paid individuals, who do pay their taxes. Tax these people, and they will wonder just how long they can go on shouldering the burden of bankrupt Britain. Increase their taxes, and they will have less money to spend on houses, furniture, going to the picture, private schools, easyJet flights and time-shares in Florida. Remove all that from them, and you begin to remove all the jobs which are dependent on the moneyed people for their survival.

quote:

The poor just see greed. They don't see hard work or 7 years' university education without much income and a huge mountain of debt before work has even begun.

The poor think all high-earners are just those obscene bank-bonus suckers. It's not like that at all. Look outside the box.

Well that's us told

quote:

Originally posted by love greek sunsets:
I agree that the government have used moeny they didn't have, but what was the alternative, anyone know?

When Tone and Gordon came to power, they inherited the healthiest economy for decades.

But they spent it.

Now, ask what they spent it on.

Gordon has ensured that literally half the country is dependent on The State for jobs and are thus dependent on NuLab to keep those jobs.

They have filled the NHS, the Police, teaching and the Social Services with useless managers who just manage other managers. Many of these are non-jobs. This fulfills another function in that it reduces the unemployment figures. But the State has to pay for these jobs and you have to pay for these jobs in your taxes. (Now, I'm not talking about the honourable copper, teacher or nurse, but those quango jobs which mean nothing and contribute nothing.)

The creation of all these non-jobs went under the guise of investing in the NHS, and Education, Education, Education and Tough on the Causes of Crime.

But it didn't work. There is more crime than ever. Kids are leaving school illiterate and the Police spend all their time filling out forms in triplicate so they don't have time to go on the streets and send all the drunks home.

Britain is out of control and all because NuLab span The People into believing they were acting in the Public Good.

quote:

Originally posted by jennywren:
The UK has been managed by the dregs since the 70s, hence the unthinking mess we are in.

In your previous post you blamed Labour, I'm just curious, which political party was in power between the mid 70's and the mid 90's and were thus responsible for 20 years of having the dregs in charge?

quote:

Originally posted by jennywren:

quote:

Originally posted by love greek sunsets:
I agree that the government have used moeny they didn't have, but what was the alternative, anyone know?

When Tone and Gordon came to power, they inherited the healthiest economy for decades.

But they spent it.

Now, ask what they spent it on.

Gordon has ensured that literally half the country is dependent on The State for jobs and are thus dependent on NuLab to keep those jobs.

They have filled the NHS, the Police, teaching and the Social Services with useless managers who just manage other managers. Many of these are non-jobs. This fulfills another function in that it reduces the unemployment figures. But the State has to pay for these jobs and you have to pay for these jobs in your taxes. (Now, I'm not talking about the honourable copper, teacher or nurse, but those quango jobs which mean nothing and contribute nothing.)

The creation of all these non-jobs went under the guise of investing in the NHS, and Education, Education, Education and Tough on the Causes of Crime.

But it didn't work. There is more crime than ever. Kids are leaving school illiterate and the Police spend all their time filling out forms in triplicate so they don't have time to go on the streets and send all the drunks home.

Britain is out of control and all because NuLab span The People into believing they were acting in the Public Good.

thankyou for your answer but I was on about the money they have put into the banks system since last year?

Rather then drag up the past or start approtioning blame, why don't we focus on possible solutions. Perhaps we should shift focus from direct tax to indirect.

quote:

Originally posted by jennywren:

Not all the top earners are on a mega-salary.

Oh yes they are!

quote:

Originally posted by disley21:

quote:

Originally posted by jennywren:
The UK has been managed by the dregs since the 70s, hence the unthinking mess we are in.

In your previous post you blamed Labour, I'm just curious, which political party was in power between the mid 70's and the mid 90's and were thus responsible for 20 years of having the dregs in charge?

The Labour Government, under Harold Wilson, imposed a 90% tax on the super-rich.

That government greed saw many of those people leave the country for tax-havens, where the tax-havens have benefited and the UK is all the poorer. So what was the point?

Others, lower down the social scale, but in the realms of 40% tax, have decided that it is cheaper to take their teaching, medical and science skills to countries which appreciate them and don't tax them so much. Their spending money has also gone to these countries and not to the UK.

The more GB taxes its high earners, the more they take their money abroad with them and the poorer GB becomes and then the cycle starts again.

About 3.5 million highly-educated people born in Britain now live abroad and have taken those skills with them, skills which are not being passed down to those on the way up the ladder. There is a gap in experience which is not being filled and business has been suffering because of it.

Conversely, their places have been taken by unskilled immigrants who earn low wages and pay low taxes.

Mrs Thatcher did not help, in the meantime, by destroying the nation's manufacturing industry which left us almost wholly in the hands of a financial service economy. This left us particularly vulnerable to the banking disasters which have overtaken us, undertaken by people who learnt Banking by Rote in College, but did not pick up the skills taken by those who went abroad.

Manufacturing had become expensive, too expensive for the country to be able to afford, but it would have been better for the State to intervene and save some of it than to leave the UK without the means of earning its own income other than relying on world finance.

No matter what the cause we are still spending more than we earn.
Taxing the higher earners another 10, 20 or 30% will not come close to fixing the problem.
The public sector is by far the biggest drain on the economy and it there that eventually the biggest savings will have to come.
There will be plenty of huffing and puffing from the unions who will not want to see their membership drop. But as with the late 70s they will be out of touch with public opinion.
It was the unions that spawned the Thatcher years and were the catalyst for the shrinking of our manufacturing base. They may well end up doing the same for the public sector unless they quickly get a serious dose of reality.

Did you know Norris Mcworter (yes, he of Record Breakers fame) and his brother were two of the main architects of Thaterist monetary policy.

Teddy top totally true factoid of the day.

No, no applause please, I'm here all week, try the fish.

Just googled old Norris fella, what a rancid set of friends he had, still I'm sure he was a nice chap

quote:

Originally posted by electric6:

quote:

The poor just see greed. They don't see hard work or 7 years' university education without much income and a huge mountain of debt before work has even begun.

The poor think all high-earners are just those obscene bank-bonus suckers. It's not like that at all. Look outside the box.

Well that's us told

I have been looking outside the box for the last couple of hours I and have discovered that tax avoidance is a multi billion pound industry. If they are spending that amount of money on avoiding tax then the amount of protected money must be more than we can imagine, and like Han Solo we can imagine quite a lot.
All I ask is that people should pay their tax, or give the rest of us the information so that we may lawfully avoid tax also.

quote:

Originally posted by Teddy Bleads:
Did you know Norris Mcworter (yes, he of Record Breakers fame) and his brother were two of the main architects of Thaterist monetary policy.

Teddy top totally true factoid of the day.

No, no applause please, I'm here all week, try the fish.

No, they weren't. You're possibly confusing them with the Saatchi brothers.

The McWhirters were interested in Thatcher's Northern Ireland policies and Ross McWhirter eventually was shot dead because of it.

The Saatchis (the current Mrs Saatchi is the wholesome Nigella Lawson) were responsible for the Conservative's successful 1979 election campaign.

The chief proponent of Mrs Thatcher's monetarist policies was Alan Walters.

quote:

Originally posted by Garage Joe:

quote:

Originally posted by electric6:

quote:

The poor just see greed. They don't see hard work or 7 years' university education without much income and a huge mountain of debt before work has even begun.

The poor think all high-earners are just those obscene bank-bonus suckers. It's not like that at all. Look outside the box.

Well that's us told

I have been looking outside the box for the last couple of hours I and have discovered that tax avoidance is a multi billion pound industry. If they are spending that amount of money on avoiding tax then the amount of protected money must be more than we can imagine, and like Han Solo we can imagine quite a lot.
All I ask is that people should pay their tax, or give the rest of us the information so that we may lawfully avoid tax also.

It is not only the super-rich who avoid tax. The poor do it, too. They fiddle their accounts, take cash-in-hand, live on the dole while having a job on the side, claim for stuff they shouldn't. In fact, there is a whole industry devoted to avoiding work altogether and thus to avoid paying tax altogether, while the rest of the Great British Nation supports its members.

It is the super-rich who provide the jobs your dole-scroungers try so hard to avoid.

I am absolutely pissed off with the Saintly Poor. Not the honest ones who did their best under their own particular circumstances, but those who avoid work altogether, or those who wouldn't get off their backsides at school and get a decent education because they felt the whole effing world owed them a living.

quote:

Originally posted by jennywren:

quote:

Originally posted by Teddy Bleads:
Did you know Norris Mcworter (yes, he of Record Breakers fame) and his brother were two of the main architects of Thaterist monetary policy.

Teddy top totally true factoid of the day.

No, no applause please, I'm here all week, try the fish.

No, they weren't. You're possibly confusing them with the Saatchi brothers.

The McWhirters were interested in Thatcher's Northern Ireland policies and Ross McWhirter eventually was shot dead because of it.

The Saatchis (the current Mrs Saatchi is the wholesome Nigella Lawson) were responsible for the Conservative's successful 1979 election campaign.

The chief proponent of Mrs Thatcher's monetarist policies was Alan Walters.

As I recall they were also anti trade union and anti Europe. They came up with the crackpot Freedom association.

As for the abstract concept of monetarism, wherby money and the market are deemed more important than our flesh and blood... I think I know this one. One always remembers the irony of Milton Keynes.
Didn't Milton Friedman come up with the idea after reading Keynes, or vice versa?

Jesus

quote:

Originally posted by jennywren:

quote:

Originally posted by Teddy Bleads:
Did you know Norris Mcworter (yes, he of Record Breakers fame) and his brother were two of the main architects of Thaterist monetary policy.

Teddy top totally true factoid of the day.

No, no applause please, I'm here all week, try the fish.

No, they weren't. You're possibly confusing them with the Saatchi brothers.

The McWhirters were interested in Thatcher's Northern Ireland policies and Ross McWhirter eventually was shot dead because of it.

The Saatchis (the current Mrs Saatchi is the wholesome Nigella Lawson) were responsible for the Conservative's successful 1979 election campaign.

The chief proponent of Mrs Thatcher's monetarist policies was Alan Walters.

The Saatchi's only did the ads. The Mcwhirters were very for privatisation, monetary policy, etc as outlined in their National Association for Freedom founded on 1975.

They were very anti-IRA as well and his brother was shot by them but they were also involved in lots of areas of policy that were later adopted by Thatcherism.... including the economy.

quote:

Originally posted by electric6:
Jesus

Never mind him Leccy, we must away as fast as our little legs can carry us. We must away to north west Durham where at this moment thousands of poor people are committing fraud and deception on a huge scale.

quote:

Originally posted by Garage Joe:
Never mind him Leccy, we must away as fast as our little legs can carry us. We must away to north west Durham where at this moment thousands of poor people are committing fraud and deception on a huge scale.

I shall direct Interpol to Wolsingham forthwith!

quote:

Originally posted by Garage Joe:

quote:

Originally posted by jennywren:

quote:

Originally posted by Teddy Bleads:
Did you know Norris Mcworter (yes, he of Record Breakers fame) and his brother were two of the main architects of Thaterist monetary policy.

Teddy top totally true factoid of the day.

No, no applause please, I'm here all week, try the fish.

No, they weren't. You're possibly confusing them with the Saatchi brothers.

The McWhirters were interested in Thatcher's Northern Ireland policies and Ross McWhirter eventually was shot dead because of it.

The Saatchis (the current Mrs Saatchi is the wholesome Nigella Lawson) were responsible for the Conservative's successful 1979 election campaign.

The chief proponent of Mrs Thatcher's monetarist policies was Alan Walters.

As I recall they were also anti trade union and anti Europe. They came up with the crackpot Freedom association.

As for the abstract concept of monetarism, wherby money and the market are deemed more important than our flesh and blood... I think I know this one. One always remembers the irony of Milton Keynes.
Didn't Milton Friedman come up with the idea after reading Keynes, or vice versa?

Keynes died in 1946, when Milton Friedman was a 34-year-old supporter of Keynes. In the 1950s, Friedman challenged Keynsian theory and out of this, developed monetarism.

quote:

Originally posted by Teddy Bleads:

quote:

Originally posted by jennywren:

quote:

Originally posted by Teddy Bleads:
Did you know Norris Mcworter (yes, he of Record Breakers fame) and his brother were two of the main architects of Thaterist monetary policy.

Teddy top totally true factoid of the day.

No, no applause please, I'm here all week, try the fish.

No, they weren't. You're possibly confusing them with the Saatchi brothers.

The McWhirters were interested in Thatcher's Northern Ireland policies and Ross McWhirter eventually was shot dead because of it.

The Saatchis (the current Mrs Saatchi is the wholesome Nigella Lawson) were responsible for the Conservative's successful 1979 election campaign.

The chief proponent of Mrs Thatcher's monetarist policies was Alan Walters.

The Saatchi's only did the ads. The Mcwhirters were very for privatisation, monetary policy, etc as outlined in their National Association for Freedom founded on 1975.

They were very anti-IRA as well and his brother was shot by them but they were also involved in lots of areas of policy that were later adopted by Thatcherism.... including the economy.

The McWhirters were supporters of a Free Market Economy, which is an economy which runs without government intervention. This is rather different to a monetarist policy, whereby the Government controls the money supply.

quote:

Originally posted by love greek sunsets:

quote:

Originally posted by jennywren:

quote:

Originally posted by love greek sunsets:
I agree that the government have used moeny they didn't have, but what was the alternative, anyone know?

When Tone and Gordon came to power, they inherited the healthiest economy for decades.

But they spent it.

Now, ask what they spent it on.

Gordon has ensured that literally half the country is dependent on The State for jobs and are thus dependent on NuLab to keep those jobs.

They have filled the NHS, the Police, teaching and the Social Services with useless managers who just manage other managers. Many of these are non-jobs. This fulfills another function in that it reduces the unemployment figures. But the State has to pay for these jobs and you have to pay for these jobs in your taxes. (Now, I'm not talking about the honourable copper, teacher or nurse, but those quango jobs which mean nothing and contribute nothing.)

The creation of all these non-jobs went under the guise of investing in the NHS, and Education, Education, Education and Tough on the Causes of Crime.

But it didn't work. There is more crime than ever. Kids are leaving school illiterate and the Police spend all their time filling out forms in triplicate so they don't have time to go on the streets and send all the drunks home.

Britain is out of control and all because NuLab span The People into believing they were acting in the Public Good.

thankyou for your answer but I was on about the money they have put into the banks system since last year?

All they have done is delay the inevitable deeper recession which will follow. The only alternative was to raise taxes and reduce public spending. As it is, there are a pile of hefty loans to pay off, which will result in those taxes being even higher and the public spending even lower.

In other words those of us who actually pay taxes are subsidising the defects of capitalism.
Those who caused the crisis have awarded themselves pay hikes.

quote:

Originally posted by Garage Joe:
In other words those of us who actually pay taxes are subsidising the defects of capitalism.
Those who caused the crisis have awarded themselves pay hikes.

That does not follow from anything that has been said.

You are behind the times. Marxist theory has been discredited. Even Russia and China have dumped it.

The problem with Marx was, he was a social analyst. He said there would be revolution when the proletariat would rise up, but he did not say what would happen afterwards.

But there has been such a revolution within the last couple of decades. The proletariat have risen up and are running the country and big business.

They are not doing a very good job of it.

quote:

The proletariat have risen up and are running the country and big business.

Huh?

I admit I'm not very well read in this area...I know little to nowt about this side of politics/the economy but I'm baffled by that

quote:

Originally posted by Garage Joe:
In other words those of us who actually pay taxes are subsidising the defects of capitalism.
Those who caused the crisis have awarded themselves pay hikes.

Capitalism to you seems to mean unfettered capitalism and no possibility of anything else. Can you envisage a system where people sell their labour for wages which isn't like that?