Hi Edith,

Agree entirely with point 1.  On point 2, I just don’t see any pensioners who are struggling financially.  Plenty of younger people are really scraping by, and have young dependants.  Of course, some pensioners are struggling, but that’s not a good enough reason to give all pensioners a tax break.

On point 3 and 4, I am under the impression that high earners are often pretty mobile.  Obviously I have no evidence on this, I’m only thinking that no government would do anything to reduce the amount of tax they are collecting.  I’m probably completely wrong, perhaps on all the points I made.

My gut instinct would be to tax the high earners….but then I started thinking - how is that actually fair? If I normally earn £100 a day and pay 10% tax I get £90. if I work harder or study for longer (doctor, lawyer etc) and earn £200 a day and get charged 50% tax I make £100 per day. Not much incentive to work for those top jobs there….

Maybe a fairer way would be to have a minimum living standard, below which you pay no tax, and then a flat rate of tax. The high earners would still pay more in actual cash than the low earners, but we wouldn’t be taking away HALF their earnings…..

Of course, that’s only fair if you pay jobs according to their real value, or the length of time required to study for them, rather than paying CEOs millions and nurses £20k.

Angie

I just don’t think that there is a clear relationship between working hard and earning more. If there were, some of the people who are currently the lowest paid in the country would be millionaires, not to mention most parents.

I really, really, do not think that doctors, or lawyers, or bankers, work harder, in any sense of the word, than midwives or nurses or teachers. They have generally had to do more exams and more training BUT this is generally in-work, so they’ve been earning while doing it. I have studied law and I have friends who have studied midwifery or nursing and I really don’t think law was significantly harder, it was certainly less arduous and they go out of their way to make sure that its not emotionally demanding for anyone (hmmm).

More fundamentally I don’t think that anyone actually needs income at £150k, and I think that everyone has a duty to society to make sure that everyone is looked after.

What I think the real difference is between doctors/lawyers and midwives/teachers is that a. doctors and lawyers tend to come from wealthy backgrounds (iirc the overwhelming majority are privately educated) and b. those who get right to the top (which is where you’d be earning to £150k) are overwhelmingly male. I’d love to see figures on how many state school educated women were paying the 50p tax rate.

I don’t think the determining factor for whether your kids grow up ludicrously wealthy or with holes in their shoes should be whether they have clever, well connected parents and grandparents.

I don’t agree with the 50p tax rate being lowered.  I was listening the radio though and a lady called in and said she’s better off now because she was paying the 50p rate and she actually feels guilty that she’s better off now and so many others are worse off.  I had an idea that maybe a Robin Hood type charity could come out of this where all the top earners give what they saved from their tax cuts and it goes to people more needy.

I’m actually not bothered with this so-called ‘Granny Tax’.  It doesn’t affect the poorest pensioners so I don’t need to worry about old people starving.  But maybe that’s because I have been financially independant since mid 2007 (dropped out of uni aged 21) so as a country we’ve been financially struggling for most of that and I’ve been a struggler even though I hardly contributed to the debt.  I’ve been working, earning not much more than minimum wage (and being under 25 and childless until last year not entitled to tax credits), yet having to spend £10 a day on travel to work and couldn’t afford much fuel when I lived on the boat so went without electricity, running water and heating most of the time, yet I see my grandparents and their friends banking their winter fuel allowance, going out and about on public transport to all these places that offer pensioners discounts, going on holiday at least once a year and having a beer or two.

The child benefit thing just seems silly though.  They say it would be too much admin to work it out on the family income? *confused*  I don’t think a family on £60k need it at all, but definitely a family on £120k shouldn’t be getting it!!  Stay at home parent’s should definitely be rewarded instead of penalised as I believe it’s best for the child’s development.

I wonder if we were not such an individualistic society if we would in fact be happier?
I’m sure all forms of society have negatives; just seems to me that the individualism, that has been more and more encouraged, has led to the break down of community and essentially the increase in selfishness and a “that group of people get xyz and that’s not fair…” mentality.

I too am also very cross that those who contribute to society through employment are valued more so over families who choose to have a parent home with the children, when both groups contribute to society.  Particularly, when there is a mountain of evidence to prove that being home with a parent is crucial for early years development, and it’s blatant to anyone with half a brain that trying to force education down younger and younger children’s necks is just NOT working!  It exasperates me the constant media brain fogging about single parents, young people; this apparent malady we have of benefit frauds sucking the country dry,  call me cynical, if society is to0 busy pointing fingers at the various elements and blaming them for the various crisis… then society is too busy to give the govt a damn good b*tch slapping!

I had to laugh when scanning the gaurdian’s ‘how does it affect you’ section ... we earn so little between us that we didn’t even fall into any of their examples, yet we get nothing in the way of tax credits - they cut them complelty last year, still can’t work out why, but it meant I had to start working nights opposite my boyfriend’s days so that I didn’t have to foot unmanagable childcare bills.  Thank god I did start working nights otherwise life would be unbelievably difficult financially now.

RachelN .... government isn’t comited to ending poverty on it’s own shore let alone anywhere else!

Much love x

we bring in 20000 a year and are gonna love 177 a month that is a lot to loose.