FT General Election Poll 2019

[Guest MattP]

6 minutes ago, Babylon said:

If you earn £80,000 and don't have loads left at the end of the month then you are financially incompetent at best. You'd be in the top 5%, so yeah compared to the average person you are rich. If you are even debating putting a kid in private school, then you are rich. It's not something most of this country could even comprehend being able to do. 

Jess Phillips earns that a year, pays her husband £160,000 a year to work for her, claims travel expenses and stands up in parliament implying she can't even afford a printer. Maybe some people are just absolutely shit with money full stop?

 

https://order-order.com/2019/09/04/jess-phillips-80000-year-implies-cant-afford-printer/

[Babylon]

Just now, MattP said:

Jess Phillips earns that a year, pays her husband £160,000 a year to work for her, claims travel expenses and stands up in parliament implying she can't even afford a printer. Maybe some people are just absolutely shit with money full stop?

 

https://order-order.com/2019/09/04/jess-phillips-80000-year-implies-cant-afford-printer/

They are... doesn't mean they weren't "rich" before they decided to spunk it all down the drain on things they don't need. 

[Tommo220]

10 minutes ago, Strokes said:

That is assuming you don’t have a company vehicle, you need to half that tax code.

i didnt put any of the figures in mate - it self populates most of that for you, but yeh a company car would fleece you even more.

[Nick]

Reading people’s definitions on here of ‘rich’ is akin to the which footballers can be described as ‘world class’ over in the football threads.

[Bryn]

1 hour ago, Babylon said:

If I earn't £4500 a month after tax, I'd have multiple homes and be well on my way to being a millionaire. You're doing something wrong if you aren't. 

You say that like 18 year olds spring into existence earning money like that. 

 

I am a doctor. My salary is a matter of public record, you are welcome to go look it up (I am a CT2). I am 29 years old. I did not start earning until I was 24 years old. My family and I did not qualify for financial support and I trained at university for 6 years. My father was the first on either side of the family to go to University and we do not have a wealthy background. I now have some modest savings but have spent the first 11 years of my adult life getting myself through training and paying off debt. My professional fees are in the four figures annually and every mandatory exam I sit to progress costs in excess of £450. I pay tax and repay my student loan at comparatively high levels. 

 

I may reach a consultant level in 5 or 6 years and will earn the national salary which I think is about 75k. I can assure you by that point I will not have multiple houses unless something very improbable like winning the lottery has happened and if I choose to have a family that becomes even less likely. Perhaps by the time I am 60.

 

I do not think I should be the target of intensive wealth taxes. I am happy with my salary and I am happy to make the contributions that I do. 

Edited 22 November 2019 by Bryn

[Strokes]

1 minute ago, Tommo220 said:

i didnt put any of the figures in mate - it self populates most of that for you, but yeh a company car would fleece you even more.

Yeah I just had a go at putting it in through the advanced settings and I couldn’t work it.

I’m not PAYE anymore, as it wasn’t worth me doing extra hours due to tax. I’d rather pay an accountant to help me avoid it now.

[Carl the Llama]

20 minutes ago, Jon the Hat said:

Not rich then are they?  If you have to carefully manage your money to have some left at the end of th month, if you are choosing between a new car and a holiday, or if putting the kids in Private school means no new cars or haoliday, then you are not Rich.  Comfortable probably, but definitely not rich.  

Are you arguing that you people shouldn't have to be responsible with their finances to be considered rich?  Are you Donald Trump in disguise?

 

The things you're struggling to choose between are private schools, new cars and going on holidays (presumably not ones to Bognor Regis).  Read that back to yourself. 

 

5 minutes ago, Bryn said:

You say that like 18 year olds spring into existence earning money like that. 

 

I am a doctor. My salary is a matter of public record, you are welcome to go look it up (I am a CT2). I am 29 years old. I did not start earning until I was 24 years old. My family and I did not qualify for financial support so I trained at university for 6 years. My father was the first on either side of the family to go to University and we do not have a wealthy background. I now have some modest savings but have spent the first 11 years of my adult life getting myself through training and paying off debt. My professional fees are in the four figures annually and every mandatory exam I sit to progress costs in excess of £450. I pay tax and repay my student loan at comparatively high levels. 

 

I may reach a consultant level in 5 or 6 years and will earn the national salary which I think is about 75k. I can assure you by that point I will not have multiple houses unless something very improbable like winning the lottery is happened and if I choose to have a family that becomes even less likely. Perhaps by the time I am 60.

 

I do not think I should be the target of intensive wealth taxes. I am happy with my salary and I am happy to make the contributions that I do. 

Based on what you've said about your income you won't be.  What's your argument against?

[Babylon]

10 minutes ago, Bryn said:

You say that like 18 year olds spring into existence earning money like that. 

 

I am a doctor. My salary is a matter of public record, you are welcome to go look it up (I am a CT2). I am 29 years old. I did not start earning until I was 24 years old. My family and I did not qualify for financial support so I trained at university for 6 years. My father was the first on either side of the family to go to University and we do not have a wealthy background. I now have some modest savings but have spent the first 11 years of my adult life getting myself through training and paying off debt. My professional fees are in the four figures annually and every mandatory exam I sit to progress costs in excess of £450. I pay tax and repay my student loan at comparatively high levels. 

 

I may reach a consultant level in 5 or 6 years and will earn the national salary which I think is about 75k. I can assure you by that point I will not have multiple houses unless something very improbable like winning the lottery is happened and if I choose to have a family that becomes even less likely. Perhaps by the time I am 60.

 

I do not think I should be the target of intensive wealth taxes. I am happy with my salary and I am happy to make the contributions that I do. 

Once you've earned £80,000 a year for a good few years. You are doing something wrong if you aren't able to afford a second home (location dependant). I've never earnt more than the national average wage, started out at 18 earning just £40 a week (minimum wage never existed). I'm now 40, paid off my mortgage, car paid for, money in the bank and very comfortable. I'm not a financial wizard, from day dot of earning money x% was for saving and x% was for spending. Once the spending money was gone, it was gone. 

 

I could buy another house now if I so wished to lump a bit more debt on myself. A high wage should afford you the ability to buy a home and rent it out. In 25 years the rent would have paid that mortgage off and you'd be left with a lovely little nest egg for retirement. They are dicking around with second home stuff all the time, so that might not always be true. But it's been more than possible. 

 

I'm aware life can throw a few curve balls, but if people want to save, they can save. 

 

 

Edited 22 November 2019 by Babylon

[Milo]

27 minutes ago, Bobby Hundreds said:

Are you saying they aren't paying tax?

I did add a bit on my post about that, but deleted it...

 

But, yeah, that is what I’m saying 

[Tommo220]

6 minutes ago, Strokes said:

Yeah I just had a go at putting it in through the advanced settings and I couldn’t work it.

I’m not PAYE anymore, as it wasn’t worth me doing extra hours due to tax. I’d rather pay an accountant to help me avoid it now.

its a public forum chap, i think you meant to say "i'd rather pay an accountant to make sure i pay the exact amount of tax that i am required to and not a penny more" 

Edited 22 November 2019 by Tommo220

[Guest MattP]

3 minutes ago, Carl the Llama said:

Based on what you've said about your income you won't be.  What's your argument against?

That depends on whether the taxing of the "super rich" is successful - an idea I'll remind you the IFS says is "not credible".

 

Even if it is by some miricle it's still impossible to not see some capital flight or bond yield growth through borrowing which will hit taxpayers below what he's targeting now.

 

It's going to weird in a decade if Labour win and many people finally realise they were bribed with their own money.

[Bryn]

6 minutes ago, Carl the Llama said:

Are you arguing that you people shouldn't have to be responsible with their finances to be considered rich?  Are you Donald Trump in disguise?

 

The things you're struggling to choose between are private schools, new cars and going on holidays (presumably not ones to Bognor Regis).  Read that back to yourself. 

 

Based on what you've said about your income you won't be.  What's your argument against?

 

I think I'm just trying to put a narrative to the kind of person who earns in the high 5 figures. I think we do need a serious change in society aiming at bringing down grotesque levels of wealth whilst people live in poverty but I think people need to be mindful of the level at which wealth becomes grotesque. 

[WigstonWanderer]

2 minutes ago, Tommo220 said:

its a public forum chap, i think you meant to say "i'd rather pay an accountant to make sure i pay the exact amount of tax that i am required to and not a penny more" 

They always used to say that tax avoidance was legal, but tax evasion illegal. 

[Tommo220]

Just now, WigstonWanderer said:

They always used to say that tax avoidance was legal, but tax evasion illegal. 

Ah, you may be right, i may have got it the wrong way around!!

 

[Guest MattP]

They'll lose a couple of seats no doubt, but the Tories might actually do far better than expected in Scotland. Could still hold 8-9.

 

Labour are probably going to be wiped out apart from Edinburgh South. 

 

 

[Strokes]

20 minutes ago, Tommo220 said:

its a public forum chap, i think you meant to say "i'd rather pay an accountant to make sure i pay the exact amount of tax that i am required to and not a penny more" 

I did mean avoiding tax through legal means 

[FerrisBueller]

I've noticed the IFS are credible again now they're telling us how shite the Labour Manifesto is and not how shite Brexit will be.

[Alf Bentley]

37 minutes ago, MattP said:

On top of that let's actually start getting healthy as a nation so we spend less on public services - 200 odd billion a year should be more than enough to fund the healthcare of 60 million people - it isn't because instead of being a nation of fitness freaks we are a nation or obese alcoholics (myself included).

 

Having not met Matt for several years, Alf suddenly had a new mental image of him..... 

 

 

Quote

I know you don't believe it, but I do want to see inequality tackled - but I'm not prepared to make everybody poorer just to reduce levels of inequality, I just don't hate the rich that much.

 

I didn't make any assumptions about your attitude to inequality. I was just raising an issue and asking a question. An important issue affecting the whole of the West, to varying degrees - the structural growth in inequality, leaving millions of people in rich countries struggling to survive (including many in work) while others accrue fantastic wealth - feeding into all sorts of tensions. In particular, the graph shows how working people are now getting a much smaller share of growth, and global capital a higher share. Helpful though it might be, I'm not sure that simply raising the minimum wage and cutting income tax will solve that. Though govt policy in different countries can be more or less helpful, the structural issues are bigger & will get more difficult without action - globalisation, mobility of capital in the high-tech age, tax avoidance/evasion, tax havens, automation of unskilled work, fragmented workforce with weak unions, greater pension/health/care burden etc.

 

Your other arguments there seem irrelevant. You could certainly make a case for Labour's plans lacking financial credibility, but they're not intending to make everybody poorer - indeed any lack of credibility comes from the narrow targeting of their tax increases on corporations and those earning £80k+. You can speculate that they'll ruin the economy - but such speculation about the Tories doing so, particularly under Hard Brexit, is just as credible. The "hating the rich" argument has as much credibility as if I were to accuse Tory voters of "hating the poor". Sure, you'd get a few idiots on both sides for whom that would be true, but not anyone with a degree of maturity. I don't even envy the rich, never mind hate them, because I'm not materialistic in nature. Happiness, good family/friends and an interesting life is much more important - so long as the material essentials are covered.

 

Various surveys have shown that inequality really affects most people's happiness, though. Happiness indexes are higher in countries where people don't have a wide span of unequal incomes.

 

Some day, inequality might matter more to you if fate means that you end up on the wrong end of it through no fault of your own. Blokes I worked with in the civil service 30 years ago ended up earning twice as much as me, have much bigger homes and much bigger pensions. That doesn't bother me, but I'm a bit of an oddball - and have had good luck in other ways, ending up co-owning a home with my ex & inheriting a bit of cash when my parents died. Then there's bad luck - I ended up getting divorced so no longer co-own a home. Despite being well-educated and hard-working, I'd be massively in the financial shit without the cash that I inherited......inequality can end up affecting anyone by chance, not just fault/merit.

 

Quote

 

A socialist government in name only, though doing very well to pass itself off as one whilst implementing more tax breaks and deregulation than your Singapore-on sea Tories would offer.

 

https://www.thenation.com/article/portugal-economy-public-investment/

 

In all honesty, I was only vaguely aware of the background to Portugal's recent economic success, so thanks for that link. I was just responding to Jon's suggestion that Portugal was a basket case or however he phrased it.

Here's another link: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-portugal-economy-analysis/portugals-economy-an-express-train-at-risk-of-derailing-idUSKCN1Q41RR

 

Certainly seems to be a mixed picture & not "socialism red in tooth and claw", as you imply. Still mighty impressive, though, to move from EU/Troika bail-outs to healthy growth, total elimination of deficit, higher incomes, unemployment more than halved etc. Part of the complaint seems to be about the lack of public investment, but my link states that they've launched several major public investment projects in 2019....and the reasons for the lack of public investment are clear, given the bailout terms & continuing high levels of public debt. Still plenty could go wrong with high debt, years of under-investment & part-dependence on Chinese investment, apparently, but an impressive record. The trajectory reminds me a bit of the early years of Blair. Will be interesting to follow.

[Innovindil]

14 minutes ago, FerrisBueller said:

I've noticed the IFS are credible again now they're telling us how shite the Labour Manifesto is and not how shite Brexit will be.

Broken clock is right twice a day. 

[FerrisBueller]

10 minutes ago, Innovindil said:

Broken clock is right twice a day. 

Unless it's digital 

[Guest MattP]

How can an MP not even know their main party policy three weeks before an election? I really don't get this at all.

 

 

Edited 22 November 2019 by MattP

[Alf Bentley]

59 minutes ago, MattP said:

 

It's going to weird in a decade if Labour win and many people finally realise they were bribed with their own money.

 

It's going to be weird sooner than that if the Tories win on a promise to "get Brexit done"......and over the next 5 years it becomes apparent either that it hasn't been "done" (interminable negotiations) or that what has been "done" has caused massive damage to people's lives, when all most wanted was for the issue to disappear.

 

"Wait for the sunlit uplands of Brexit, national control, brilliant new global trade deals, low immigration, happy Brits with fat wage packets & great public services", I'm sure someone will tell me....

[Guest MattP]

5 minutes ago, Alf Bentley said:

It's going to be weird sooner than that if the Tories win on a promise to "get Brexit done"......and over the next 5 years it becomes apparent either that it hasn't been "done" (interminable negotiations) or that what has been "done" has caused massive damage to people's lives, when all most wanted was for the issue to disappear.

 

"Wait for the sunlit uplands of Brexit, national control, brilliant new global trade deals, low immigration, happy Brits with fat wage packets & great public services", I'm sure someone will tell me....

As I've said before - if we don't make a success of Brexit we'll deserve what we get and that will probably be us rejoining on even worse terms, one of the main reasons I saw a no deal Brexit as too high a risk to take.

 

Fortunately we've had some help from the "people's vote" types on this who have predicted it to be armageddon, but there should still be no room for complacency at all.

[Izzy]

All this talk of what =‘rich’ is bollux anyway

 

Lots of rich people who are stressed, unhappy and just buy expensive shit to try and feel better about themselves 

 

What you wanna be is ‘time rich’ instead - it’s Fvckin great 

 

Edited 22 November 2019 by Izzy

[FoxesDeb]

2 minutes ago, Izzy said:

All this talk of what =‘rich’ is bollux anyway

 

Lots of rich people who are stressed, unhappy and just buy experience shit to try and feel better about themselves 

 

What you wanna be is ‘time rich’ instead - it’s Fvckin great 

I'd like to be money rich first, which would then enable me to be time rich