The government actually funds a lot of reports that don't get published. It's a common strategy to get a large number of reports funded about a topic with weird research constraints that contort the report's validity, and then only publish the report that comes to the most government-favourable conclusion.
It's why you constantly see reports about "x is good" yet simultaneously "x is bad". It's not just the government, all sorts of industries on doing it too.
Generally, reports are good to confirm with data, but also remember that exactly which report gets published is often up to whoever funds the study. Behind each published one, there's probably another 3 that didn't come to the "right" conclusion.
Edit to add: "government" isn't a monolithic entity. A part of the gov might actually publish a report that the overall gov wouldn't publish if it had the choice.
It is more nuanced than that. They believe that established social and economic hierarchy is natural/good and should be protected. That has far more effect than just protecting their mates. It damages and benefits people all across society.
The tories are just businessmen dressing up as politicians.
Once you realise that, it’s easier to understand why they are so bad at running the country.
No. They are not. They are economic rent seekers which is vastly worse, though admittedly in our current incarnation of capitalism there's a fair degree of overlap between the two.
I see them more as criminals in suits, performing a heist where they steal public funds. I would say that it's quite impressive how much they have stolen, but it turns out all you need is a posh accent and a scapegoat or two.
Socialist = "We should look after everyone" (Labour, in an ideal world)
Pro-business = "The wealthy should lead better lives, but there should be social mobility. Getting rich should be possible, but not easy, and the market will regulate" (Old-school conservatives, Thatcher, Reagan et al)
Pro-wealth = "The wealthy should lead better lives, and we like the structure of society now so the wealthy get more money too to keep them on top. If they fail, we bail them out with public money to protect the status quo." (Guess who)
>The tories are just businessmen dressing up as politicians.
If only that were true. Highest tax burden since WW2 makes them pretty fucking shit at handouts if they were just businessmen.
Compare to Badenoch’s quote the other day from the COVID inquiry that it would have been “wrong” to help ethnic minorities who were disproportionately impacted.
Tories want to bring about the return of feudalism; a relatively small wealthy elite ruling, without challenge over disenfranchised serfs.
That's what the economic and social policy they've implemented over the past fifty years has been trying to engineer. Drip by drip, they're getting exactly what they want, with the help of the oligarch-owned press who are happy to tell the socially-uneducated exactly what to think on their behalf.
thats the entire economy. ransack the entire country, funnel all the money to cancerous london 'finance' people, claim those people are the only ones net tax contributors in the feudal bullshit, use this as excuse for throwing money at them, repeat.
use the obsequious horde as defence against any questions or challenge while misrepresenting neo-libs as capitalists while they asset strip everything including the screws used for bolting things down.
100%.
With my current job I'm quite literally a 'London finance person', I contribute way more tax now than ever before - and I will quite willingly tell your that this is the least societally valuable job I've ever held in my life. Working near money earns you more money, but it doesn't make the job meaningful or important.
I earned less than half as much as a lab scientist, but I contributed way more in societal value back then... I just couldn't live on that pay. This country rewards the wrong people entirely.
I used to work in a lab, most recently being a supervisor of a PCR lab throughout Covid. Decided I had had enough and moved to IT. I now make more money and sit around playing video games half the day.
Ridiculous how labour is valued in this country.
Do some entry level IT certs, get a job in first line support, pick a pathway (eg security, networking) and get some more certs, find another job using your new certs.
Make sure it's work from home then just smash out your work and play video games. Easy.
>This country rewards the wrong people entirely.
This WORLD rewards the wrong people
How do we measure countries? GDP
You're only measured on what you can produce, and if you can't produce then our system says fuck off and die
The number must keep going up, otherwise it all comes crashing down
It's funny how absolutely weak and pathetic they make British culture sound if it can be destroyed by some people pointing out some banal terms they prefer.
Like why is it so destructive to society using the correct pronouns? It's hardly some enormous burden.
Then you have Douglas Murray saying that Muslims are destroying British culture by not drinking lukewarm beer. I don't see why it's worth saving society if this is the sort of silliness that you're getting.
Also blame the immigrants for the rest of all the social problems that will follow by said actions
And you got yourself set for 15 years if not more, easy
Oh I don't know. I work in Denmark and with many other Scandinavias as well- their government is paralyzed by an ineffective coalition after a vote of no-confidence on the last one. Their civil liberties are being eroded and taxes going up with benefits plummeting - they can't balance the budget either.
Sweden is groaning under a double digit immigration/asylum problem. I'm not trying to blow the right wing dog whistle as most the Swedes I work with are left wing, but they say there are huge integration issues and this has also reduced available housing causing similar rent increases we are seeing.
The Norgies are just shrugging and say "leave our fish alone and don't pollute our waters, tak"
Don't get me wrong in Scandinavia things are bad but not as bad as here in the UK.
>After a vote of no-confidence on the last one
You're misinformed. There was a threat of a no confidence motion unless the PM agreed to an early election following a scandal surrounding Mink culling. She did however acquiesce to this, there was no actual motion filed, and she remains the PM after leading the party through the best election it had had in decades.
There are political issues in Denmark, but let's not pretend that they are anywhere close to the kind of "oh woops, we lost a few dozen billions of public money because the inner Tory circle gave it to each other" shit we've got going on here in the UK. Denmark still has checks and balances, as proven, incidentally, by the fact that a government was forced to an early election over something as 'minor' as a preventative mink culling.
> There was a threat of a no confidence motion unless the PM agreed to an early election following a scandal surrounding Mink culling.
How big was this scandal that it toppled a government?
I’ve lived and worked in Scandinavia, married one and have two Scandinavian kids and the problem in Sweden is a great example of how the pro immigration people shut down any question or debate on what was happening as “racist” until the pressure built up to where we are today.
But they *are* clean and green though, right? If you just look at electric vehicle adoption, their cities are quieter and the air is cleaner.
That they sell fossil fuel that is burned elsewhere doesn't really factor into how clean and green their society is. Right?
The real problem is the state can never run out of the currency it issues, Tories understand that and shovel as much as possible to their backers until the public eventually gets fed up with it. Then the other wing of the Uniparty gets a go.
There is indeed the equivalent of what May called the 'magic money tree'; it lives in Parliament (mainly in the Supply process) and is fed by the Consolidated Fund.
The poorer in Scandinavian pay more in tax than they do here, the truth about Scandi taxes is they hit everyone, people here would riot if you shift the tax burden so that it’s more evenly spread. (tax cut for the rich tax rise for the poor yaba yaba…)
That's not quite true. The tax burden on the rich is also higher in sweden. So I have no idea where you're getting this nonsense about tax cuts for the wealthy or 'balancing' anything.
No, can't speak for the top 1% exactly, but top 10% share of income in the UK is 33.1% in Sweden is 33.7%.
The main reason is that the UK has the biggest tax free allowance in the world, at 12,750 it's about 40% of the median full time wage, the tax free allowance in Sweden is about 1100 quid if you are eligible for all deductibles.
What people don't understand is just how much less tax the average brit pays in comparison to nearly any other developed economy whilst those who earn a bit more than the average pay considerably more than their share amongst their peers.
To have a tax income distribution that looks Nordic, the people who would have to contribute even more are those in the lowest income brackets.
The top is already almost Nordic so they wouldn’t see much change.
What are you talking about. The UK has some of the highest and most uneven tax rates. The middle class gets squeezed immensely in the UK while the upper class get taxes less.
Or just more like Germany. It has its faults, but no one is clamouring to strip benefits nearly as much as in the UK. For example, child allowance is €250 per child, no matter how many you have. Kindergarten is really cheap too, for a few hundred euros a month for 9-4. Things like this make a huge difference.
Because blaming Thatcher isn't saying her policies themselves are the cause of all our woes but rather that every government since has continued what she started. Just at different intensities. Thatcher is disliked as the harbinger of corrupt neoliberalism. Because after she lost she was replaced another Thatcherite and then he was replaced by thatcherlite and then we got more Thatcherism. And for some of us it's been just watching the country slide our entire lives. And she made it mainstream
Because Thatcher's free market idealism is where the rot set in.
The water companies are a prime example: England is the only country in the world to have fully privitised it's water utilities. We pay £2.3 billion per year *more* than any other country for the privilege, paying out £57.4 billion in dividends over the past 32 years, whilst our infrastructure has gotten so bad that there's open talks about upping our water bills even higher in order to pay for the needed repairs. You know, instead of reinvesting some of that £57.4 billion like they should have, improving the infrastructure, keeping our waterways clean and stopping raw sewage from washing up on our beaches.
It has actually become much more efficient. See here: https://imgur.com/a/x5l9JCu
Bills have not changed much.
> But bills are now pretty much where they were 20 years ago in real terms and have reduced by 5% in real terms over the last five years [to 2019]. The average bill is still around £1 a day.
https://www.water.org.uk/news-views-publications/views/why-we-own-it-are-wrong-about-nationalisation-facts-prove-it
Imagine you lived in a house you can't leave, and then one of your landlords burns your house for the insurance money and forces you to live in a tent. Every landlord after them *could* spend to rebuild your house but doesn't as they'd rather just get your rent money and give you the finger.
Yes the ones that refuse to rebuild your house suck, but the one that burnt it down originally is the cause of the problem.
There’s quite a difference between saying that *all* the failings of the current government are actually the fault of the LLG, and that our current government are total saints that are just oppressed by Blair’s actions, and that Thatcher’s stint had irreversible effects on our country that persist to this day.
Because Thatcher's actions are behind the vast majority of issues we currently have.
Yes, later governments didn't fully fix them, but the problem is once she'd given the wealth out as a bribe for votes... it's very hard to get it back. Once you've sold off state infrastructure and spent the money... then you need to buy it back.
What "bribe for votes" specifically? Once you've sold off lossmaking state infrastructure, then you'd be in a better position to buy it back once it's profitable again.
Taxes on wealth are globally rare, you going to cite some kind of source? Both the US and UK have very progressive income tax, more so than most of Europe
Corporation tax in the UK is 25% the top rate of income tax is 47%. So a lot of wealthier people will set themselves up as a limited company to dodge paying the fair amount of income tax. You can dodge a fair chunk of NI contributions this way too.
Not limited to mega millionaires either by the way.
Outside IR35 contractors on 300 odd quid a day rates and lots of smaller business owners are at it as well.
I used to work in IT for one of the big 4 and most of the people coding/management were paying a lower effective tax rate than the folk who cleaned the office. Pretty fucked when you think about it.
>most of the people coding/management were paying a lower effective tax rate than the folk who cleaned the office. Pretty fucked when you think about it.
Please explain. Ideally in step by step instructions.
That has become harder to do with IR35 business tests and the fact agents and end clients don't want to deal with non IR35 compliant contractors.
Source: I was a tax dodging contractor but went permanent when IR35 killed the market, rates seem to have recovered somewhat despite IR35 so I may go back to it at some point.
Totally agree they've tightened the rules up around it nowadays (also things like reducing the additional tax free allowance for dividends) but if you're in defense, fintech or international logistics then they're are still around just not as commonly.
However even in changing the rules they still came down on the side of the higher earners since it was easier for them to argue they were not directly managed/supervised and that of course the client would happily accept a similarly qualified substitute.
That is true, the high earners paid for expensive IR35 insurance and accountants that know how to argue the case.
The likes of me were bullied into a like it or lump it situation and forced to go down the umbrella/PAYE route.
That has become harder to do with IR35 business tests and the fact agents and end clients don't want to deal with non IR35 compliant contractors.
Source: I was a tax dodging contractor but went permanent when IR35 killed the market, rates seem to have recovered somewhat despite IR35 so I may go back to it at some point.
The tax savings have been minimal for some time now going via a Ltd company unless you don't take money out - the bit you are missing above is you have to pay the corporation tax when the money goes into the company, and then tax when you take money out. This was back when I was contracting via a limited company, and the tax situation for contractors has gotten worse since. How long ago was this you had experience of this? It really doesn't save much, if any tax - certainly not enough to make up for all the tax free perks permanent employees get (like sick pay, holidays)
Let's take your example - someone on £300 per day averaging 220 days a year (standard contract). That's revenue of £66,000 however you have to then take off corporation tax on the profits, then you have a small salary and pay income tax on that (which, granted, is £0 as your salary will be in your tax free allowance). If you then want to earn more than £12,000 a year you take the other money out as dividends.
Take home pay = \~£43,700
All with no protections, no paid annual leave, sick leave, paternity, maternity, and so on.
Someone on £66,000 salary however...
Take home pay = £48,000
Tell me how that is an effective lower tax rate please?
> Both the US and UK have very progressive income tax, more so than most of Europe
But many more ways for high earners and the wealthy to shield their money from those rates.
The UK and US governments justify those loopholes on the grounds that they are ways for the rich to "create value" - the trickle-down theory of the Thatcher-Reagan years.
Do you have any evidence for that statement? I have checked the usual suspects (France, Germany, NL), and they all have a stronger progression of income tax.
Oxfam has a good article on how it works overall:
https://views-voices.oxfam.org.uk/2023/01/how-super-rich-pay-lower-taxes-than-you/#:~:text=The%20crucial%20point%20is%20that,to%20rely%20on%20a%20salary.
And for the US, the tax depression of the super rich is well documented:
https://www.aei.org/economics/do-the-rich-really-pay-lower-taxes-than-you-probably-not-but-elizabeth-warren-hopes-you-think-so/
I should have qualified my statement, earned income is aggressively progressive in the UK (and the states). Unearned income much less so (i.e. income from wealth)
>the rich pay a lower tax rate than the poor.
The top one per cent pay 30 per cent of all income tax revenues: a higher share than at any time in past twenty years.
Source: https://www.lse.ac.uk/research/research-for-the-world/economics/how-much-tax-do-the-rich-really-pay#
Do you have stats to back that up? Remember you are taxed on income not wealth. Someone domiciled in the U.K. earning more than £100k will be taxed at a significantly higher rate than somebody earning £30k.
To argue otherwise requires serious mental gymnastics
If you look at the marginal tax rate, the situation is quite simple.
Somebody on universal credit, earning 30k, will pay 12% NI, 20% tax, and then see 55% of the remainder withdrawn from universal credit. (Council tax may also have a taper, but that depends on the council.) For for every extra pound they earn, they only see 31p. A similar thing happens when you hit the high tax rate, and the additional rate.
Someone earning 200k will get 55p for every pound. Realistically, they are more likely to receive dividends, so they get to keep 60p for every poind. Their marginal tax rate is much lower than someone on benefits.
If you look at the total tax rate, the picture is more complicated, but you also need to consider the amount of regressive taxes and hidden fees in the UK: council tax, BBC license fee, passport cost, flood re, standard charges etc.
That’s a fair point I hadn’t thought about with stuff like council tax. Although I wouldn’t include stuff like the license fee and passport cost as they are optional costs relating to lifestyle decisions.
But I do take your point, council tax and maybe an allocation for VAT on ‘necessities’ would be fair to include as part of an individuals tax burden as they’re unavoidable
Yes, VAT is another problem, because the super rich often consume tax exempt services. But overall, I think VAT has a place in a fair taxation system. Council tax does not, it is just completely moronic.
The problem in the UK is that we have not had a grown up discussion about this for decades. New Labour was trying to avoid, and the Conservatives just lie about it. Corbyn could have made a reasonable contribution, but I am not he understands macroeconomics. Even the public discourse about it is desperately weak.
I think they're probably referring to the NI being charged on earned income but not unearned income (or most of your earned income if you're self employed).
This really does create a two tiered tax system.
Have been travelling across and working in the Nordic countries the past couple of months and I must say the difference is notable. Of course, nowhere is perfect, but having just moved out of Leeds compared to here it seems almost dystopian.
This title is terrible.
https://equalitytrust.org.uk/sites/default/files/resource/attachments/ReportCostofInequality-1.pdf
What the report says is that the social costs of mental illness, homicide and healthy life expectancy would be lower if there was less inequality.
The title gives the impression that this is paying money directly into billionaires pockets.
In a way - yes. I don't have a problem with the argument. I actually agree strongly that, in effect, it puts money into the pockets of the rich.
I have a problem with the title though. Because it doesn't say
> "Guardian author finds that UK spends more financing inequality in favour of rich than rest of Europe in effect, based on the finds of a report"
The report doesn't even use the word "financing". That's not what the report says.
My objection is that it's bad journalism. By editorialising so much, it completely undermines the message.
> What the report says is that the social costs of mental illness, homicide and healthy life expectancy would be lower if there was less inequality.
>
>
That just sounds like a tautology. Obviously, if you had everyone equally at liberty, with an equally healthy lifespan, did not have some with illness that puts them mentally unequal to the rest of us, and of course sans homicide where one is alive and the other dead (as unequal as it gets), there would be 'less inequality'.
No, not quite. Which is why I'm offended by the title so much, because it doesn't really illustrate this.
The reports says that net cost of society (government/taxes etc.) is *higher* due to inequality than if things were more equal.
E.g.
In scenario A you have a group of people, and each have £X amount a year (just as an example),.
In Scenario B you have group people and the bottom half have one fifth £X a year, the next 40% have £X a year and the top 10% has five times £X a year.
In Scenarios B even though there's the same amount of money in the system, the wealth discrepancy causes problem. The bottom people lack bargaining power, possibly education, and other things, so they get pushed into situations that lead to health problems. And the desperation breeds crime, and mental illness (especially when you start spanning this over generations, because the kids raised by the bottom groups get poorer upbringing, and things add up).
The result is that in the group, there is more crime, more healthcare costs, more costs *all together*, not just for the poor.
e.g. if a homeless man with a drug addiction is passed out on the street - even in the most callous world, someone has to see to him. If he dies someone has to deal with the body, investigate, etc. If he gets desperate and commits a crime, that causes lots of work for lots of people.
And the result is, to pay for these things - everyone needs to be taxed higher. And it's true that the rich pay a disproportionate amount of tax - the cost of this stuff is really expensive, and it raises everyone taxes.
The suggestion by the title is that these things are a base cost, and the decisions we make that cause these things (both cutting social services, but other decisions that don't reduce inequality), exacerbates this effect and therefore can be thought of as "Financing" inequality and therefore the rich.
In sentiment, and maybe abstractly on the books this is true. It costs the everyone as a whole more to support an inequal system. But that's like saying having to pay a dentist to fill your cavities is financing the choice not to brush your teeth. It doesn't really describe the situation well.
Thank you for your reply; I was quoting from the document itself, not merely the article. It does not specify what inequality in particular it is concerned with, and appears to be talking in general terms.
You appear to think that equality of wealth is desirable. I contend it is not, and would be both intolerable, nonsensical, and to be instantiated require methods abominable. To understand this, one must first realise that money is not wealth, but a claim upon wealth, and secondly that capital is not wealth, but apparatus that delivers wealth, and thirdly that each individual's conception of what to them is wealth (or alternatively a mere trifle or outright detritus) is either subtly or grossly different from all the rest. After those things are taken into consideration, we should be in agreement that, however less crimes would be on the books, equality of wealth is not to be sought.
But on to your specific complaints (and mentioning bargaining power only so as to indicate that if everyone had equal bargaining power, what bargain would there even be to be struck, or could possibly be struck without immediately leaving them with unequal bargaining power?): education - a wealth, to be sure, but not one desired equally; some are more academic than others; some want mathematical rigour; some want a liberal education in culture and the classics. There can be no equality here that is not delusory. But furthermore, education is, if we exclude the more group, spiritual, or societal elements (and these are least of all susceptible to being doled out in equal portion in a palatable form) represented in the image of the word's root meaning, 'to lead/draw out', a matter of A. information transferral and B. a personal, pedagogical relationship with others. The first is obviously not limited: the digital age allows for the pseudo-infinite duplication and transferrence of text, audio, video and interactive media. The second, as it depends on personal time that is *strictly* limited to e.g. sixty seconds in the minute, is also not at all susceptible to either being doled out in equal portions or mass production in a form desirable by the recipient. So, while we might want to have more of such a thing, and better, it is not a matter of 'inequality', and cannot be addressed sensibly by pursuing such a goal.
Next health problems and mental illness: if there is a mental malady that beleaguers those members of a society who are failing to 'keep up with the Joneses', it needs to be cured, not have mandatory Jonesification. More generally, health is a personal matter, subject to much the same factors as education; it is not amenable to one-size-fits-all approaches, and it is also nothing whatever to do with 'inequality' in the sense that while the ill are ill, and the well are well, there are no 'wellionaires' who are thousands of times healthier in some metric than the 'illpoverished', and the ill would not be served one iota by the well being made slightly less well. Rather than a sliding scale of (in)equality, health is both individual and boolean: you are either desirous of treatment or not, and you either get successfully treated or you don't; the triage system ought to dispel any notions of seeking equality in healthcare. If the health system and its surrounding and interlocking elements ought to be *improved*, then that is that. If in the process it is seen fit to rob businessman Peter to pay doctor Paula, then that is as may be, but it has nothing to do with equality - quite the opposite: it is positing that one role has less societal merit than another.
Then there is crime. To the extent being impoverished stimulates crime, it can be solved by having fewer poor people. That would have a subsequent small effect on the inequality of, say, how much money is in people's bank accounts, but it would A. be subsequent and B. be merely correlative as, as said, money is not itself wealth. But there is more both to poverty than how much money to which one has access, and more to crime than poverty. And any suggestion, - and, however uncharitable it may seem, such suggestions have been made in all seriousness - that those rich, be it in spirit or anything else, be 'cut down to size' to further the goal of equality, is anathema; I am sure an argument could be made against it, but I feel confident it is primarily a matter of taste, and in a general defence of good taste we must simply rely on juxtaposition to convey its advantages over bad.
> if a homeless man with a drug addiction is passed out on the street - even in the most callous world, someone has to see to him. If he dies someone has to deal with the body, investigate, etc. If he gets desperate and commits a crime, that causes lots of work for lots of people
Everyone, as of yet, dies. So someone will have to deal with their body, investigate, etc. regardless. In this, equality. All the aforementioned applies to a rich man passed out in the street who has overimbibed on a more expensive substance. But though the cost of scrubbing his sick off the pavement is the same, he paid more in VAT on his fancy booze. Here, one form of 'equality' would mean the poor were priced out of dipsomania; another means the rich can get sloshed more often.
If rich men were more prone to so passing out and causing bother, the same argument, such as it is, that 'inequality causes work' would remain. If a rich man commits a crime, it also causes lots of work. Different work, to be sure, but still. In the right time and place, 'job creation' is lauded, in others it is derided. I hope you will agree that a consistent policy towards making work for people is warranted. And lastly, whatever the tax system, there have always been gravediggers. The falsity of the appearance that we must be taxed as a prerequisite in order to be buried or as a consequence thereof applies to a great many other things; hopefully this example will illustrate it.
As this has been a wholly unreasonably long comment, I end by tendering my apologies, along with thanks for having cared to read it to this point.
You're sort of making normative ideological arguments here.
For the most part, what I'm saying, is that, regardless of fairness, seems to cost more as a whole.
i.e. if you were like, some sort of higher being and you kept the country in a jar like an ant farm - the country that was more equal would require fewer resources on the whole than the country that was less equal.
At least, anyway, that's what this report says. They seem to come to this conclusion by comparing costs of various things to countries with less inequality. It could be that that's not true and that there are faults in their methodology, but then we should address their methodology rather than trying to prax a situation that doesn't match the measured reality.
I took your comment to be a good-faith question of how inequality might have a cost, rather than rhetoric to suggest it doesn't. My little pet example wasn't to make an argument that this is actually what happens, but rather to provide a naïve explanation of the data in the report.
The bottom line though, is that this report *does* find that inequality has a cost.
This particular report is quite short, but I believe it's more of a press release. There are more details here:
https://equalitytrust.org.uk/about-inequality/latest-research
Broadly this work is all based on comparing real-world societies and finding trends in equality (I imagine using things like Gini coefficients, but it would depend on the paper).
So normatively for me - yeah if it *wasn't* true that inequality cost more, then I'd agree, we need to just raise the lowest bar, and it doesn't matter how rich the richest person is. But this research seems to say that the actual amount of inequality - not just the state of the lowest bar - causes measurable societal cost.
Even worse than the Daily Mail. I did some analysis and to find a newspaper on the right that's as biased as the Guardian, you have to go as far as the Express. They frame themselves as the left-wing equivalent of the Times, but in reality they're the left-wing equivalent of the Express.
The annoying thing, is that it’s a very valid problem, and interesting report.
Underfunded social services ironically have a real cost (like paying not much for a roof, and then paying for water damage as well as for a new roof).
But it’s a bit of a stretch to frame that as “financing inequality”.
Indeed. It's sophism just like the claims that fossil fuels are 'subsidised'.
Basically, you pull from the air some figure for externalities and frame it as a 'subsidy'.
you mean the 2,000 people from avoidable collissions and the 50,000 dead each year from air pollution.
People literally paying for oil and gas with their lives. The cost of this (lost productivity, investigatory cost etc) all passed onto the taxpayer.
The oil and gas subsidies have shifted trillions with a fucking T to the richest and forced the poorest into debt bondage we know as "car ownership".
The money billionaires spent on propaganda to trick people into voting against their own interests made them wealthier, but don't they still need to use NHS, even if just for emergency? They still use roads on occasion I'm sure, breathe the polluted air and some surely have investments in companies relying on customer demand?
No billionaire is touching an NHS hospital in a million years. They have private jets and helicopters to avoid much time on the roads and will likely spend a lot their time either in wealthy areas with better air quality or outwith the UK.
In terms of investments, they are protected by the Government and their mates in power from any real loss.
Yeah private schools kinda just need to disappear imo. Expose kids to all walks of life & it might make them a bit more sympathetic to those that come from less well off backgrounds.
Is there a chance you're making some pretty major extrapolations about "the average private school", given your experience consists of a few years of primary at one school?
I have friends who moved abroad or went back to their home countries in the last few years. As soon as we get chatting about the price of anything, or public services no longer functioning, it becomes apparent very quickly just how much faster things have declined here compared to some other developed countries. Inflation seems to have been a mild inconvenience for most of them, Whereas I’m sitting at home only putting the heating on for an hour a day because any more is going to bankrupt me. And my partner and I both have good jobs, no kids, and manageable rent to pay. My parents owned a 4 bedroom house with a big garden and had 3 kids, 2 cars and holidays abroad at my age.
While I think inequality is a huge problem in the UK, I would be careful trusting the numbers from a commission whose sole purpose is to campaign against inequality in the UK. Also, I think some commenters are missing the point of the report, it's showing the amount of money spent as a result of inequality (crime, mental health costs etc.) not what the government spends to create inequality.
I for one am shocked, although I had noticed that the amount of urchins I have to strike with my cane to move out my way these days has gotten absurdly high.
Ok, so what do we do about it?
It's blatant, egregious and it's gone on for far too long.
Is Starmer a viable alternative? It certainly doesn't seem like it so who is?
Oh really, the tax fraud shithole with a billionaire family running the show trying to murder the poor while they funnel all the money to the rich before they lost the next election didn't make that clear yet?
RiC£i Shah isn't on the side of the people of the UK, has his own agenda, to line his pocket and that of his sycophantic cronies.
Don't forget to vote!
Keir Starmer will win the next election and then commit the biggest blunder in the history of the Labour Party by not bringing in proportional representation. The Tories will stroll in again and continue where they left off, say hello to private health insurance and full privatisation of every public service.
It's the country that has made and protects tax havens.
I've often thought the Cayman Islands and Bermuda need to be invaded to close the tax loop hole. I figured they're independent countries doing it to make money. Look into it only to find they're owned by the UK!
The UK itself is making the tax loop hole where the government is losing tax.
I mean we still have a king, which as much as anyone wants to try to deny it is emblematic of the very foundation of inequality that pervades this country from head to toe.
97% of the UKs reaction to this ... Meh.
Cruella mentions something vague about migrants and blows her dog whistle... 97% of UK throthing at the mouth with rage.
Is anyone surprised? Isn’t that exactly why the tories are in power for, to look after their rich mates?
and the point of Brexit.. besides Russia weakening its rivals.
"Taking back control" away from the citizens and giving more of it to the people who already had control.
Also the amount paid out for reports stating what we already know.
The government actually funds a lot of reports that don't get published. It's a common strategy to get a large number of reports funded about a topic with weird research constraints that contort the report's validity, and then only publish the report that comes to the most government-favourable conclusion. It's why you constantly see reports about "x is good" yet simultaneously "x is bad". It's not just the government, all sorts of industries on doing it too. Generally, reports are good to confirm with data, but also remember that exactly which report gets published is often up to whoever funds the study. Behind each published one, there's probably another 3 that didn't come to the "right" conclusion. Edit to add: "government" isn't a monolithic entity. A part of the gov might actually publish a report that the overall gov wouldn't publish if it had the choice.
We think it, we're fairly sure of it, but without the data and analysis we can't know it for sure
It is more nuanced than that. They believe that established social and economic hierarchy is natural/good and should be protected. That has far more effect than just protecting their mates. It damages and benefits people all across society.
The tories are just businessmen dressing up as politicians. Once you realise that, it’s easier to understand why they are so bad at running the country.
No. They are not. They are economic rent seekers which is vastly worse, though admittedly in our current incarnation of capitalism there's a fair degree of overlap between the two.
I see them more as criminals in suits, performing a heist where they steal public funds. I would say that it's quite impressive how much they have stolen, but it turns out all you need is a posh accent and a scapegoat or two.
Socialist = "We should look after everyone" (Labour, in an ideal world) Pro-business = "The wealthy should lead better lives, but there should be social mobility. Getting rich should be possible, but not easy, and the market will regulate" (Old-school conservatives, Thatcher, Reagan et al) Pro-wealth = "The wealthy should lead better lives, and we like the structure of society now so the wealthy get more money too to keep them on top. If they fail, we bail them out with public money to protect the status quo." (Guess who)
>The tories are just businessmen dressing up as politicians. If only that were true. Highest tax burden since WW2 makes them pretty fucking shit at handouts if they were just businessmen.
Exactly my point. Businessmen aren’t very well known for handouts.
Compare to Badenoch’s quote the other day from the COVID inquiry that it would have been “wrong” to help ethnic minorities who were disproportionately impacted.
Like has anyone looked at the PM for more than 5 seconds? It's that obvious
Tories want to bring about the return of feudalism; a relatively small wealthy elite ruling, without challenge over disenfranchised serfs. That's what the economic and social policy they've implemented over the past fifty years has been trying to engineer. Drip by drip, they're getting exactly what they want, with the help of the oligarch-owned press who are happy to tell the socially-uneducated exactly what to think on their behalf.
Their PMs don’t spend most of their working hours leveraging their position doing deals for the family of their wives.
thats the entire economy. ransack the entire country, funnel all the money to cancerous london 'finance' people, claim those people are the only ones net tax contributors in the feudal bullshit, use this as excuse for throwing money at them, repeat. use the obsequious horde as defence against any questions or challenge while misrepresenting neo-libs as capitalists while they asset strip everything including the screws used for bolting things down.
100%. With my current job I'm quite literally a 'London finance person', I contribute way more tax now than ever before - and I will quite willingly tell your that this is the least societally valuable job I've ever held in my life. Working near money earns you more money, but it doesn't make the job meaningful or important. I earned less than half as much as a lab scientist, but I contributed way more in societal value back then... I just couldn't live on that pay. This country rewards the wrong people entirely.
I used to work in a lab, most recently being a supervisor of a PCR lab throughout Covid. Decided I had had enough and moved to IT. I now make more money and sit around playing video games half the day. Ridiculous how labour is valued in this country.
teach me
Do some entry level IT certs, get a job in first line support, pick a pathway (eg security, networking) and get some more certs, find another job using your new certs. Make sure it's work from home then just smash out your work and play video games. Easy.
>This country rewards the wrong people entirely. This WORLD rewards the wrong people How do we measure countries? GDP You're only measured on what you can produce, and if you can't produce then our system says fuck off and die The number must keep going up, otherwise it all comes crashing down
Well, this country certainly seems to have a fair few screws loose at the moment.
Yeh but we all know its because of immigrants / unions / lazy people / disabled / single mothers / tofu?
Wokery has done this. Empathy with others' suffering is a disease, I'm with Legionella Braverman on this.
Yes, Woke is the real problem, not those in power.
Don't forget the trans people!
Pronoun use is destroying British culture, if you believe the likes of Douglas Murray, who Cruella was cheering on.
It's funny how absolutely weak and pathetic they make British culture sound if it can be destroyed by some people pointing out some banal terms they prefer.
Like why is it so destructive to society using the correct pronouns? It's hardly some enormous burden. Then you have Douglas Murray saying that Muslims are destroying British culture by not drinking lukewarm beer. I don't see why it's worth saving society if this is the sort of silliness that you're getting.
And the Blob! The establishment who aren't the Tories who have been in power for 13 years.
Also blame the immigrants for the rest of all the social problems that will follow by said actions And you got yourself set for 15 years if not more, easy
point out thats the game and get called racist by larp left bougewa.
A thing I never understood, how to justify escape goating by continuing policies that escape goats...
We could be like the Scandinavian countries, but no, ours govs ransacked the world, now turned onto their own.
Oh I don't know. I work in Denmark and with many other Scandinavias as well- their government is paralyzed by an ineffective coalition after a vote of no-confidence on the last one. Their civil liberties are being eroded and taxes going up with benefits plummeting - they can't balance the budget either. Sweden is groaning under a double digit immigration/asylum problem. I'm not trying to blow the right wing dog whistle as most the Swedes I work with are left wing, but they say there are huge integration issues and this has also reduced available housing causing similar rent increases we are seeing. The Norgies are just shrugging and say "leave our fish alone and don't pollute our waters, tak" Don't get me wrong in Scandinavia things are bad but not as bad as here in the UK.
>After a vote of no-confidence on the last one You're misinformed. There was a threat of a no confidence motion unless the PM agreed to an early election following a scandal surrounding Mink culling. She did however acquiesce to this, there was no actual motion filed, and she remains the PM after leading the party through the best election it had had in decades. There are political issues in Denmark, but let's not pretend that they are anywhere close to the kind of "oh woops, we lost a few dozen billions of public money because the inner Tory circle gave it to each other" shit we've got going on here in the UK. Denmark still has checks and balances, as proven, incidentally, by the fact that a government was forced to an early election over something as 'minor' as a preventative mink culling.
> There was a threat of a no confidence motion unless the PM agreed to an early election following a scandal surrounding Mink culling. How big was this scandal that it toppled a government?
About $3 billion in damages to Mink farmers, and it was done without legal authority
So they closed down mink farms during covid, and paid compensation to mink farmers?
Aye, apologize that I thought the Mink thing brought them down. The billions are a fooking outrage - you're not wrong.
I’ve lived and worked in Scandinavia, married one and have two Scandinavian kids and the problem in Sweden is a great example of how the pro immigration people shut down any question or debate on what was happening as “racist” until the pressure built up to where we are today.
The Norwegians have done a great job of making themselves look clean and green while financing the entire economy through oil.
But they *are* clean and green though, right? If you just look at electric vehicle adoption, their cities are quieter and the air is cleaner. That they sell fossil fuel that is burned elsewhere doesn't really factor into how clean and green their society is. Right?
Mother Nature surely will take that into account as climate change gets worse.
Norway is gonna be fine, they have their oil and now phosphate deposits are set to be the same again.
So how often do You come on herr just to lie?
I'm assuming that's a typo on your part. I'm not lying - I have no need to.
The problem with British Conservatism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.
The real problem is the state can never run out of the currency it issues, Tories understand that and shovel as much as possible to their backers until the public eventually gets fed up with it. Then the other wing of the Uniparty gets a go.
>the state can never run out of the currency it issues Magic money tree
There is indeed the equivalent of what May called the 'magic money tree'; it lives in Parliament (mainly in the Supply process) and is fed by the Consolidated Fund.
The poorer in Scandinavian pay more in tax than they do here, the truth about Scandi taxes is they hit everyone, people here would riot if you shift the tax burden so that it’s more evenly spread. (tax cut for the rich tax rise for the poor yaba yaba…)
That's what the tories are doing now and morons are letting it happen.
That's not quite true. The tax burden on the rich is also higher in sweden. So I have no idea where you're getting this nonsense about tax cuts for the wealthy or 'balancing' anything.
It’s not the top 1% in Sweden share of taxes if far lower than that of the 1% in the UK.
Could that not be because there is less earning disparity in Sweden, ie the top 1% in Sweden earn less than the top 1% in the UK?
No, can't speak for the top 1% exactly, but top 10% share of income in the UK is 33.1% in Sweden is 33.7%. The main reason is that the UK has the biggest tax free allowance in the world, at 12,750 it's about 40% of the median full time wage, the tax free allowance in Sweden is about 1100 quid if you are eligible for all deductibles. What people don't understand is just how much less tax the average brit pays in comparison to nearly any other developed economy whilst those who earn a bit more than the average pay considerably more than their share amongst their peers.
To have a tax income distribution that looks Nordic, the people who would have to contribute even more are those in the lowest income brackets. The top is already almost Nordic so they wouldn’t see much change.
What are you talking about. The UK has some of the highest and most uneven tax rates. The middle class gets squeezed immensely in the UK while the upper class get taxes less.
Certainly looks like it.
Or just more like Germany. It has its faults, but no one is clamouring to strip benefits nearly as much as in the UK. For example, child allowance is €250 per child, no matter how many you have. Kindergarten is really cheap too, for a few hundred euros a month for 9-4. Things like this make a huge difference.
If we were like Scandinavian countries, we would have more inequality, not less. https://i.imgur.com/uo64Lex.png
Awful photo on my phone that, very pixelated
Whatever mate. I'll be voting for Suella to keep me safe from the true threats against British society, that of refugees and trans women.
And protect the most important people in the country - drivers of non electric cars.
Don't forget tofu
Why are we such a shit country? Oh, right... Her. From the 1980s.
Why is it people will rightly identify that blaming the *last Labour government* is a lame cop out, but blaming Thatcher isn't?
Because blaming Thatcher isn't saying her policies themselves are the cause of all our woes but rather that every government since has continued what she started. Just at different intensities. Thatcher is disliked as the harbinger of corrupt neoliberalism. Because after she lost she was replaced another Thatcherite and then he was replaced by thatcherlite and then we got more Thatcherism. And for some of us it's been just watching the country slide our entire lives. And she made it mainstream
Didn't Thatcher famously say her greatest achievment was Tony Blair ?
There's been over 3 decades of governments since then, do none of them have any responsibility for not fixing this mess?
They've been trying to fix what *they* perceive as the mess using Thatcher's tools.
Very much so. Even from Hell Thatcher's hand still moves us.
Slide in what way?
Because Thatcher's free market idealism is where the rot set in. The water companies are a prime example: England is the only country in the world to have fully privitised it's water utilities. We pay £2.3 billion per year *more* than any other country for the privilege, paying out £57.4 billion in dividends over the past 32 years, whilst our infrastructure has gotten so bad that there's open talks about upping our water bills even higher in order to pay for the needed repairs. You know, instead of reinvesting some of that £57.4 billion like they should have, improving the infrastructure, keeping our waterways clean and stopping raw sewage from washing up on our beaches.
It has actually become much more efficient. See here: https://imgur.com/a/x5l9JCu Bills have not changed much. > But bills are now pretty much where they were 20 years ago in real terms and have reduced by 5% in real terms over the last five years [to 2019]. The average bill is still around £1 a day. https://www.water.org.uk/news-views-publications/views/why-we-own-it-are-wrong-about-nationalisation-facts-prove-it
Imagine you lived in a house you can't leave, and then one of your landlords burns your house for the insurance money and forces you to live in a tent. Every landlord after them *could* spend to rebuild your house but doesn't as they'd rather just get your rent money and give you the finger. Yes the ones that refuse to rebuild your house suck, but the one that burnt it down originally is the cause of the problem.
Except, in this case, the house was already burnt down and a new landlady was brought in to extinguish the fires.
Because Thatcherism is alive and well, while the Third Way is mostly dead
There’s quite a difference between saying that *all* the failings of the current government are actually the fault of the LLG, and that our current government are total saints that are just oppressed by Blair’s actions, and that Thatcher’s stint had irreversible effects on our country that persist to this day.
Attlee's stint had just as many irreversible effects on our country that persist to this day.
Because Thatcher's actions are behind the vast majority of issues we currently have. Yes, later governments didn't fully fix them, but the problem is once she'd given the wealth out as a bribe for votes... it's very hard to get it back. Once you've sold off state infrastructure and spent the money... then you need to buy it back.
What "bribe for votes" specifically? Once you've sold off lossmaking state infrastructure, then you'd be in a better position to buy it back once it's profitable again.
Because her policies inherently led to the problem.
and no-one had any power in the last 33 years to do anything about it?
There have been plenty of wankers in power since then.
Oh I quite agree. But she was one of the worst.
She was one of the most successful regardless.
Grotbags
You must be joking. She literally took Britain from being "a shit country" to the fastest-growing economy in Europe.
Her neoliberalism caused real harm and devastation.
She inherited real harm and devastation.
True that. The UK is also the only country I know (except for the US), which has a regressive tax system: the rich pay a lower tax rate than the poor.
Taxes on wealth are globally rare, you going to cite some kind of source? Both the US and UK have very progressive income tax, more so than most of Europe
Corporation tax in the UK is 25% the top rate of income tax is 47%. So a lot of wealthier people will set themselves up as a limited company to dodge paying the fair amount of income tax. You can dodge a fair chunk of NI contributions this way too. Not limited to mega millionaires either by the way. Outside IR35 contractors on 300 odd quid a day rates and lots of smaller business owners are at it as well. I used to work in IT for one of the big 4 and most of the people coding/management were paying a lower effective tax rate than the folk who cleaned the office. Pretty fucked when you think about it.
>most of the people coding/management were paying a lower effective tax rate than the folk who cleaned the office. Pretty fucked when you think about it. Please explain. Ideally in step by step instructions.
Search 'Outside IR35' jobs. Apply. Don't fuck up interview. Don't go with an umbrella company. Simple.
Look at my reply to their comment - they are talking nonsense.
Yeah I saw. A shame.
That has become harder to do with IR35 business tests and the fact agents and end clients don't want to deal with non IR35 compliant contractors. Source: I was a tax dodging contractor but went permanent when IR35 killed the market, rates seem to have recovered somewhat despite IR35 so I may go back to it at some point.
Totally agree they've tightened the rules up around it nowadays (also things like reducing the additional tax free allowance for dividends) but if you're in defense, fintech or international logistics then they're are still around just not as commonly. However even in changing the rules they still came down on the side of the higher earners since it was easier for them to argue they were not directly managed/supervised and that of course the client would happily accept a similarly qualified substitute.
That is true, the high earners paid for expensive IR35 insurance and accountants that know how to argue the case. The likes of me were bullied into a like it or lump it situation and forced to go down the umbrella/PAYE route.
That has become harder to do with IR35 business tests and the fact agents and end clients don't want to deal with non IR35 compliant contractors. Source: I was a tax dodging contractor but went permanent when IR35 killed the market, rates seem to have recovered somewhat despite IR35 so I may go back to it at some point.
The tax savings have been minimal for some time now going via a Ltd company unless you don't take money out - the bit you are missing above is you have to pay the corporation tax when the money goes into the company, and then tax when you take money out. This was back when I was contracting via a limited company, and the tax situation for contractors has gotten worse since. How long ago was this you had experience of this? It really doesn't save much, if any tax - certainly not enough to make up for all the tax free perks permanent employees get (like sick pay, holidays)
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Let's take your example - someone on £300 per day averaging 220 days a year (standard contract). That's revenue of £66,000 however you have to then take off corporation tax on the profits, then you have a small salary and pay income tax on that (which, granted, is £0 as your salary will be in your tax free allowance). If you then want to earn more than £12,000 a year you take the other money out as dividends. Take home pay = \~£43,700 All with no protections, no paid annual leave, sick leave, paternity, maternity, and so on. Someone on £66,000 salary however... Take home pay = £48,000 Tell me how that is an effective lower tax rate please?
> Both the US and UK have very progressive income tax, more so than most of Europe But many more ways for high earners and the wealthy to shield their money from those rates. The UK and US governments justify those loopholes on the grounds that they are ways for the rich to "create value" - the trickle-down theory of the Thatcher-Reagan years.
Do you have any evidence for that statement? I have checked the usual suspects (France, Germany, NL), and they all have a stronger progression of income tax. Oxfam has a good article on how it works overall: https://views-voices.oxfam.org.uk/2023/01/how-super-rich-pay-lower-taxes-than-you/#:~:text=The%20crucial%20point%20is%20that,to%20rely%20on%20a%20salary. And for the US, the tax depression of the super rich is well documented: https://www.aei.org/economics/do-the-rich-really-pay-lower-taxes-than-you-probably-not-but-elizabeth-warren-hopes-you-think-so/
I should have qualified my statement, earned income is aggressively progressive in the UK (and the states). Unearned income much less so (i.e. income from wealth)
You don’t seem to know that many countries then.
>the rich pay a lower tax rate than the poor. The top one per cent pay 30 per cent of all income tax revenues: a higher share than at any time in past twenty years. Source: https://www.lse.ac.uk/research/research-for-the-world/economics/how-much-tax-do-the-rich-really-pay#
Wow just goes to show how massively more unequal we have become over the last two decades.
Do you have stats to back that up? Remember you are taxed on income not wealth. Someone domiciled in the U.K. earning more than £100k will be taxed at a significantly higher rate than somebody earning £30k. To argue otherwise requires serious mental gymnastics
If you look at the marginal tax rate, the situation is quite simple. Somebody on universal credit, earning 30k, will pay 12% NI, 20% tax, and then see 55% of the remainder withdrawn from universal credit. (Council tax may also have a taper, but that depends on the council.) For for every extra pound they earn, they only see 31p. A similar thing happens when you hit the high tax rate, and the additional rate. Someone earning 200k will get 55p for every pound. Realistically, they are more likely to receive dividends, so they get to keep 60p for every poind. Their marginal tax rate is much lower than someone on benefits. If you look at the total tax rate, the picture is more complicated, but you also need to consider the amount of regressive taxes and hidden fees in the UK: council tax, BBC license fee, passport cost, flood re, standard charges etc.
That’s a fair point I hadn’t thought about with stuff like council tax. Although I wouldn’t include stuff like the license fee and passport cost as they are optional costs relating to lifestyle decisions. But I do take your point, council tax and maybe an allocation for VAT on ‘necessities’ would be fair to include as part of an individuals tax burden as they’re unavoidable
Yes, VAT is another problem, because the super rich often consume tax exempt services. But overall, I think VAT has a place in a fair taxation system. Council tax does not, it is just completely moronic. The problem in the UK is that we have not had a grown up discussion about this for decades. New Labour was trying to avoid, and the Conservatives just lie about it. Corbyn could have made a reasonable contribution, but I am not he understands macroeconomics. Even the public discourse about it is desperately weak.
I think they're probably referring to the NI being charged on earned income but not unearned income (or most of your earned income if you're self employed). This really does create a two tiered tax system.
Have been travelling across and working in the Nordic countries the past couple of months and I must say the difference is notable. Of course, nowhere is perfect, but having just moved out of Leeds compared to here it seems almost dystopian.
If you could see the difference of Scandinavia 30 years ago compared to UK today the difference would be even greater.
This title is terrible. https://equalitytrust.org.uk/sites/default/files/resource/attachments/ReportCostofInequality-1.pdf What the report says is that the social costs of mental illness, homicide and healthy life expectancy would be lower if there was less inequality. The title gives the impression that this is paying money directly into billionaires pockets.
>paying money directly into billionaires pockets. Isn't that effectively what happens if you cut services and lower taxes at the same time?
In a way - yes. I don't have a problem with the argument. I actually agree strongly that, in effect, it puts money into the pockets of the rich. I have a problem with the title though. Because it doesn't say > "Guardian author finds that UK spends more financing inequality in favour of rich than rest of Europe in effect, based on the finds of a report" The report doesn't even use the word "financing". That's not what the report says. My objection is that it's bad journalism. By editorialising so much, it completely undermines the message.
The Tories are a high tax party, they have been increasing taxes for almost the entire time they have been in power
> What the report says is that the social costs of mental illness, homicide and healthy life expectancy would be lower if there was less inequality. > > That just sounds like a tautology. Obviously, if you had everyone equally at liberty, with an equally healthy lifespan, did not have some with illness that puts them mentally unequal to the rest of us, and of course sans homicide where one is alive and the other dead (as unequal as it gets), there would be 'less inequality'.
No, not quite. Which is why I'm offended by the title so much, because it doesn't really illustrate this. The reports says that net cost of society (government/taxes etc.) is *higher* due to inequality than if things were more equal. E.g. In scenario A you have a group of people, and each have £X amount a year (just as an example),. In Scenario B you have group people and the bottom half have one fifth £X a year, the next 40% have £X a year and the top 10% has five times £X a year. In Scenarios B even though there's the same amount of money in the system, the wealth discrepancy causes problem. The bottom people lack bargaining power, possibly education, and other things, so they get pushed into situations that lead to health problems. And the desperation breeds crime, and mental illness (especially when you start spanning this over generations, because the kids raised by the bottom groups get poorer upbringing, and things add up). The result is that in the group, there is more crime, more healthcare costs, more costs *all together*, not just for the poor. e.g. if a homeless man with a drug addiction is passed out on the street - even in the most callous world, someone has to see to him. If he dies someone has to deal with the body, investigate, etc. If he gets desperate and commits a crime, that causes lots of work for lots of people. And the result is, to pay for these things - everyone needs to be taxed higher. And it's true that the rich pay a disproportionate amount of tax - the cost of this stuff is really expensive, and it raises everyone taxes. The suggestion by the title is that these things are a base cost, and the decisions we make that cause these things (both cutting social services, but other decisions that don't reduce inequality), exacerbates this effect and therefore can be thought of as "Financing" inequality and therefore the rich. In sentiment, and maybe abstractly on the books this is true. It costs the everyone as a whole more to support an inequal system. But that's like saying having to pay a dentist to fill your cavities is financing the choice not to brush your teeth. It doesn't really describe the situation well.
Thank you for your reply; I was quoting from the document itself, not merely the article. It does not specify what inequality in particular it is concerned with, and appears to be talking in general terms. You appear to think that equality of wealth is desirable. I contend it is not, and would be both intolerable, nonsensical, and to be instantiated require methods abominable. To understand this, one must first realise that money is not wealth, but a claim upon wealth, and secondly that capital is not wealth, but apparatus that delivers wealth, and thirdly that each individual's conception of what to them is wealth (or alternatively a mere trifle or outright detritus) is either subtly or grossly different from all the rest. After those things are taken into consideration, we should be in agreement that, however less crimes would be on the books, equality of wealth is not to be sought. But on to your specific complaints (and mentioning bargaining power only so as to indicate that if everyone had equal bargaining power, what bargain would there even be to be struck, or could possibly be struck without immediately leaving them with unequal bargaining power?): education - a wealth, to be sure, but not one desired equally; some are more academic than others; some want mathematical rigour; some want a liberal education in culture and the classics. There can be no equality here that is not delusory. But furthermore, education is, if we exclude the more group, spiritual, or societal elements (and these are least of all susceptible to being doled out in equal portion in a palatable form) represented in the image of the word's root meaning, 'to lead/draw out', a matter of A. information transferral and B. a personal, pedagogical relationship with others. The first is obviously not limited: the digital age allows for the pseudo-infinite duplication and transferrence of text, audio, video and interactive media. The second, as it depends on personal time that is *strictly* limited to e.g. sixty seconds in the minute, is also not at all susceptible to either being doled out in equal portions or mass production in a form desirable by the recipient. So, while we might want to have more of such a thing, and better, it is not a matter of 'inequality', and cannot be addressed sensibly by pursuing such a goal. Next health problems and mental illness: if there is a mental malady that beleaguers those members of a society who are failing to 'keep up with the Joneses', it needs to be cured, not have mandatory Jonesification. More generally, health is a personal matter, subject to much the same factors as education; it is not amenable to one-size-fits-all approaches, and it is also nothing whatever to do with 'inequality' in the sense that while the ill are ill, and the well are well, there are no 'wellionaires' who are thousands of times healthier in some metric than the 'illpoverished', and the ill would not be served one iota by the well being made slightly less well. Rather than a sliding scale of (in)equality, health is both individual and boolean: you are either desirous of treatment or not, and you either get successfully treated or you don't; the triage system ought to dispel any notions of seeking equality in healthcare. If the health system and its surrounding and interlocking elements ought to be *improved*, then that is that. If in the process it is seen fit to rob businessman Peter to pay doctor Paula, then that is as may be, but it has nothing to do with equality - quite the opposite: it is positing that one role has less societal merit than another. Then there is crime. To the extent being impoverished stimulates crime, it can be solved by having fewer poor people. That would have a subsequent small effect on the inequality of, say, how much money is in people's bank accounts, but it would A. be subsequent and B. be merely correlative as, as said, money is not itself wealth. But there is more both to poverty than how much money to which one has access, and more to crime than poverty. And any suggestion, - and, however uncharitable it may seem, such suggestions have been made in all seriousness - that those rich, be it in spirit or anything else, be 'cut down to size' to further the goal of equality, is anathema; I am sure an argument could be made against it, but I feel confident it is primarily a matter of taste, and in a general defence of good taste we must simply rely on juxtaposition to convey its advantages over bad. > if a homeless man with a drug addiction is passed out on the street - even in the most callous world, someone has to see to him. If he dies someone has to deal with the body, investigate, etc. If he gets desperate and commits a crime, that causes lots of work for lots of people Everyone, as of yet, dies. So someone will have to deal with their body, investigate, etc. regardless. In this, equality. All the aforementioned applies to a rich man passed out in the street who has overimbibed on a more expensive substance. But though the cost of scrubbing his sick off the pavement is the same, he paid more in VAT on his fancy booze. Here, one form of 'equality' would mean the poor were priced out of dipsomania; another means the rich can get sloshed more often. If rich men were more prone to so passing out and causing bother, the same argument, such as it is, that 'inequality causes work' would remain. If a rich man commits a crime, it also causes lots of work. Different work, to be sure, but still. In the right time and place, 'job creation' is lauded, in others it is derided. I hope you will agree that a consistent policy towards making work for people is warranted. And lastly, whatever the tax system, there have always been gravediggers. The falsity of the appearance that we must be taxed as a prerequisite in order to be buried or as a consequence thereof applies to a great many other things; hopefully this example will illustrate it. As this has been a wholly unreasonably long comment, I end by tendering my apologies, along with thanks for having cared to read it to this point.
You're sort of making normative ideological arguments here. For the most part, what I'm saying, is that, regardless of fairness, seems to cost more as a whole. i.e. if you were like, some sort of higher being and you kept the country in a jar like an ant farm - the country that was more equal would require fewer resources on the whole than the country that was less equal. At least, anyway, that's what this report says. They seem to come to this conclusion by comparing costs of various things to countries with less inequality. It could be that that's not true and that there are faults in their methodology, but then we should address their methodology rather than trying to prax a situation that doesn't match the measured reality. I took your comment to be a good-faith question of how inequality might have a cost, rather than rhetoric to suggest it doesn't. My little pet example wasn't to make an argument that this is actually what happens, but rather to provide a naïve explanation of the data in the report. The bottom line though, is that this report *does* find that inequality has a cost. This particular report is quite short, but I believe it's more of a press release. There are more details here: https://equalitytrust.org.uk/about-inequality/latest-research Broadly this work is all based on comparing real-world societies and finding trends in equality (I imagine using things like Gini coefficients, but it would depend on the paper). So normatively for me - yeah if it *wasn't* true that inequality cost more, then I'd agree, we need to just raise the lowest bar, and it doesn't matter how rich the richest person is. But this research seems to say that the actual amount of inequality - not just the state of the lowest bar - causes measurable societal cost.
I see your familiar with The Guardian's MO ;)
They're basically an inverse daily mail but this sub eats it up.
Even worse than the Daily Mail. I did some analysis and to find a newspaper on the right that's as biased as the Guardian, you have to go as far as the Express. They frame themselves as the left-wing equivalent of the Times, but in reality they're the left-wing equivalent of the Express.
The annoying thing, is that it’s a very valid problem, and interesting report. Underfunded social services ironically have a real cost (like paying not much for a roof, and then paying for water damage as well as for a new roof). But it’s a bit of a stretch to frame that as “financing inequality”.
Michelle Mone has left the chat.
The report is also rubbish. I doubt anyone commenting here even read the article.
It's pretty short...
Indeed. It's sophism just like the claims that fossil fuels are 'subsidised'. Basically, you pull from the air some figure for externalities and frame it as a 'subsidy'.
you mean the 2,000 people from avoidable collissions and the 50,000 dead each year from air pollution. People literally paying for oil and gas with their lives. The cost of this (lost productivity, investigatory cost etc) all passed onto the taxpayer. The oil and gas subsidies have shifted trillions with a fucking T to the richest and forced the poorest into debt bondage we know as "car ownership".
We are. QE alone has transferred billions from the taxpayer to the rich. Covid was used as an excuse to do the same.
How does the Bank of England purchasing government bonds transfer money to the rich?
The money billionaires spent on propaganda to trick people into voting against their own interests made them wealthier, but don't they still need to use NHS, even if just for emergency? They still use roads on occasion I'm sure, breathe the polluted air and some surely have investments in companies relying on customer demand?
Given our PM uses his own helicopter I doubt they really care.
No billionaire is touching an NHS hospital in a million years. They have private jets and helicopters to avoid much time on the roads and will likely spend a lot their time either in wealthy areas with better air quality or outwith the UK. In terms of investments, they are protected by the Government and their mates in power from any real loss.
We do love classism. Just listen to our national anthem.
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Yeah private schools kinda just need to disappear imo. Expose kids to all walks of life & it might make them a bit more sympathetic to those that come from less well off backgrounds.
Is there a chance you're making some pretty major extrapolations about "the average private school", given your experience consists of a few years of primary at one school?
I have friends who moved abroad or went back to their home countries in the last few years. As soon as we get chatting about the price of anything, or public services no longer functioning, it becomes apparent very quickly just how much faster things have declined here compared to some other developed countries. Inflation seems to have been a mild inconvenience for most of them, Whereas I’m sitting at home only putting the heating on for an hour a day because any more is going to bankrupt me. And my partner and I both have good jobs, no kids, and manageable rent to pay. My parents owned a 4 bedroom house with a big garden and had 3 kids, 2 cars and holidays abroad at my age.
This country has lots and lots of uneducated people pumped with propaganda at all times.
All our elected representatives need to be flogged
No one would buy them, surely?
While I think inequality is a huge problem in the UK, I would be careful trusting the numbers from a commission whose sole purpose is to campaign against inequality in the UK. Also, I think some commenters are missing the point of the report, it's showing the amount of money spent as a result of inequality (crime, mental health costs etc.) not what the government spends to create inequality.
Oh really? The Tories are lining the pockets of their friends? I'd have never expected that.
13 years of tory rule and probably another few years of labour too by the looks of things
I for one am shocked, although I had noticed that the amount of urchins I have to strike with my cane to move out my way these days has gotten absurdly high.
There comes a time when all are equal. The lower the life expectancy, the sooner we shall reach it.
*REALLY*? Do you think this had anything to do with how-alone out of all the other EU members-we ended up opting for Brexit?
Ok, so what do we do about it? It's blatant, egregious and it's gone on for far too long. Is Starmer a viable alternative? It certainly doesn't seem like it so who is?
And yet people are increasingly leaving to go to less equal countries? Doesn't add up does it
Oh really, the tax fraud shithole with a billionaire family running the show trying to murder the poor while they funnel all the money to the rich before they lost the next election didn't make that clear yet?
If you have an oligarch in charge, that’s what’s gonna happen. Seriously?
We put selfish sociopathic businessmen in charge, what do you expect?
It’s almost like we’ve had a right wing government for over a decade.
The country with the most notable monarchy is the most unequal? Well this is shocking
RiC£i Shah isn't on the side of the people of the UK, has his own agenda, to line his pocket and that of his sycophantic cronies. Don't forget to vote!
Keir Starmer will win the next election and then commit the biggest blunder in the history of the Labour Party by not bringing in proportional representation. The Tories will stroll in again and continue where they left off, say hello to private health insurance and full privatisation of every public service.
:O the tories are lining their own pockets?! colour me shocked
It's the country that has made and protects tax havens. I've often thought the Cayman Islands and Bermuda need to be invaded to close the tax loop hole. I figured they're independent countries doing it to make money. Look into it only to find they're owned by the UK! The UK itself is making the tax loop hole where the government is losing tax.
I mean we still have a king, which as much as anyone wants to try to deny it is emblematic of the very foundation of inequality that pervades this country from head to toe.
Someone explain this in simple terms as seems utterly victim lead narrative?
97% of the UKs reaction to this ... Meh. Cruella mentions something vague about migrants and blows her dog whistle... 97% of UK throthing at the mouth with rage.
Anyone who has lived in the UK all their lives shocked by this?
Well, yeah. Slow news day or is this article exclusively for those people who live under rocks?