Zack Polanski

The Green Party, at least officially the basis for this thread, actually does advocate taxing 5 and 6 income earners significantly more.

In any case, if the wealthiest leave the country or more effectively avoid tax than currently, where else do you expect the burden of taxation to fall? Has there ever been a left wing government that has accepted they spend and tax too much? Is that how we expect the advocates of higher taxation now to respond if their actions result in lower tax incomes and fewer wealthy people to try and take from?

 

When I was five my family were bankrupt, my parents divorced, and both my mum and I lived in the small box room of my grandparents' 3-bed Lupset council house.

I'm not from money, I've just valued education and made sensible choices.

 

Depending on the state for anything is leaving yourself exposed to being a victim

 

The world of the future doesn't look like the world of the past - AI is going to be a major disruptor - to jobs, to people's current ways of making money, to how services are delivered, and to how people need to prepare for and engage with the world. Building any new tax model based on the current economic understanding and looking to punish those who are successful under it is probably folly and will be subject to major change over the next decade by most predictions of those in the tech industry.

 

That's precisely what it is, the alright jacks bellyaching of tax they can easily afford.

There are plenty of people who are massively struggling at the lower end of the pay spectrum. Tax measures have been aimed at them who are the ones you need support. Not the ones looking for little tax dodges to generate even more clear water than they need.

 

Same here. And I pay my taxes.

 

Who doesn't?

 

You don't seem to want to.

 

So you're making that assumption about people living in poverty? That they can easily stand on their own two feet without help but they just won't? Bold.

 

Your argument is becoming more shrill.

I want to pay my taxes, I want them to help people, I want a more egalitarian society where everyone prospers.

My argument is that how taxes have been used over the last 15 years doesn't result in a better world for anyone. The answer that the government seems to have reached is to tax more. This is not the solution to our problems. It just places the burden on middle earners.

I've grown up in Ireland and seen how a country can be dragged out of poverty through education and bold policy. They pay a similar level of tax to here, they get far more for what they're paying in, from free third level education, to childcare, to public transport that works, to free school meals for all. They've done that from a base of zero industry and very little old money. It's eminently possible here.

 

Not shrill at all. Anything is possible, and I agree education is the way forward, for many reasons.

But you'll also know that things can't change over night and the economic inheritance was intentionally weak. The short term answer is not to tax more, but to collect the tax that is being evaded by the super rich. Not increase, just collect and close their loopholes. They've started to do that, it no coincidence that the right wing media have been increasingly, well... Shrill.

 

I would suggest access to single market combined with their tax have policy has allowed the Irish economy to thrive. The UK trying to do similar tax policies without that access to the single market has been disastrous for everyone except the super wealthy. In the end it has lead to more tax burden being forced down the wealth ladder. Ireland is one of the clearest examples you will find for the benefits of being an EU member state.

 

I don't want to pay higher taxes than the already high taxes I pay.

Who does?

 

I'm making the assertion that if people made more sensible choices then their circumstances would be better.

 

Ireland's key economic decision has been low corporate taxation.

Lower taxes attract more companies, more investment, higher productivity, higher earners, and higher earnings; this benefitting more widely through more jobs and tax revenues.

Essentially the opposite of what the UK's left argue for.

 

I'm happy to pay the level of taxes required to fulfil the services required. Not all people easily able to do so are as minded.

 

Our economy is 6 times the size of Ireland's. The comparison on that kind of policy doesn't scale up without massive issues they never faced from their starting point. If we dropped our corporation tax to 15% for multinationals and 12.5% to smaller corps then it would collapse our economy and cause widespread economic panic. (See Liz Truss trying to drop it to 19% overnight)

To achieve that tax model on our scale it would be a 30-50 year plan with a great deal of hardships, and likely privatisation of many areas of the public sector, alongside significant tax burdens on working and middle classes during the transitional phase just to keep us afloat. Assuming the global landscape doesn't shift to make that model no longer feasible in the meantime. An even more massive risk in the middle of Industry 4.0.

Even assuming it would work, without the access to the single market, Ireland would still provide a much more attractive option in the same geographic area the entire time we were trying to establish it.

 

Bold

 

What is the solution then RamTam. How do we get things working again and uplift the huge numbers out of poverty?

 

Affordable housing would be a good start. Actually building council houses and creating social housing would be a damned good start. We keep saying we need more houses in this country then we allow developers to build houses worth half a million quid or more to benefit the upper middle classes while doing nothing to help those at the bottom.

Reactivate support and 'leg up' programs that were all cut along with council house budgets in 2010 and never returned.

I do agree that education and training would help a lot though.