Russell Brand

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Whichever way you look at it the person who started the business did so alone,

Says who? Almost all of the household name major business leaders had help/input etc from others at (or very near) the start, unless you're talking about one-person contracting outfits or window cleaners, a single dude starting and running everything is pretty rare.

took the risks alone

Unlikely

and made the decisions alone

Again, unlikely

- as the business grows his choice of staff will certainly aid the success of that business but, if he is a good businessman those key staff will be well rewarded. There are various ways in business of measuring added value and I am sure that none of them is entirely accurate but they have to be used and, although it may sound callous, the person who sweeps the office can far more easily be replaced than the FD

Don't get me started - as parasites go, FDs are about on a par with IT contractors and Agents - anyone with a high boredom threshold, a modicum of ability to retain pointless data and a few contacts can be a highly paid FD, although you are factually correct, chances are the average floor sweeper wouldn't be a significantly worse FD

[darmstadt]

First of all I do not agree with your premise that everyone should be equal and nor do I believe in your neat little principle that everyone should have the same "equal opportunities" . These are left wing Utopian cliches that have no use in devising a workable solution to the problems faced by societies today.

Damn, better tell old Thomas Jefferson that he's a rabid leftie:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Even though the term originally applied only to white male landowners...Or possibly all those religious types:

For God "hath made of one blood all nations of men" (Acts 17:26).

[doodab]

Whichever way you look at it the person who started the business did so alone, took the risks alone and made the decisions alone - as the business grows his choice of staff will certainly aid the success of that business but, if he is a good businessman those key staff will be well rewarded. There are various ways in business of measuring added value and I am sure that none of them is entirely accurate but they have to be used and, although it may sound callous, the person who sweeps the office can far more easily be replaced than the FD

This may all be true, but why should that mean that the person who sweeps the office isn't worth a living wage? Why tax people and give the office sweeper housing benefit rather than pay them properly in the first place? The reality of that transaction is that society is collectively inflating the rewards that the people who started or invested in the business receive by socialising their wage bill.

So, if I understand you correctly, and I realise that I may not have done - are you saying that Government should, in some way, have the power to redistribute wealth?

I think you need to distinguish between wealth and income, and also to distinguish between redistributing wealth (or income) after the fact and influencing how income is distributed and wealth accumulated in the first place. So I think government needs to look at influencing ways in which the rewards for effort are initially distributed, and they need to give people without wealth more opportunity to accumulate it. I think a lot of that could be done by allowing people to keep more of their pay packet to begin with, so personally I'm in favour of raising the tax threshold much further, and "personalising" the tax threshold depending on whether people have kids or support their partner or other dependants (elderly parents say), so that no one is taxed until they are earning a living wage (which obviously depends on circumstance), and then having a flat rate income tax. This would likely be quite high, around 45% or more, although ultimately that depends on government spending. I'd also tax capital gains at the same rate as income, because it shouldn't matter whether you're using capital or labour to produce value and it certainly shouldn't favour capital if the intention is to "reward hard work".

I'd also get rid of the capital gains tax free allowance. At the moment that basically means that those with capital to invest get twice the tax free allowance of those who don't.

[doodab]

How? Can you give me an example

Man buys £4 million house. Man sells £4 million house 2 years later for £6 million. That option isn't available to people who don't have the capital and/or income required to buy £4 million houses.

[LisaContractorUmbrella]

Says who? Almost all of the household name major business leaders had help/input etc from others at (or very near) the start, unless you're talking about one-person contracting outfits or window cleaners, a single dude starting and running everything is pretty rare.

Unlikely

Again, unlikely

Don't get me started - as parasites go, FDs are about on a par with IT contractors and Agents - anyone with a high boredom threshold, a modicum of ability to retain pointless data and a few contacts can be a highly paid FD, although you are factually correct, chances are the average floor sweeper wouldn't be a significantly worse FD

"When Sugar was young, his family lived in a council flat. Because of his profuse, curly hair, he was nicknamed "Mopsy". He attended Northwold Primary School and then Brooke House Secondary School in Upper Clapton, Hackney, and made extra money by working at a greengrocers. In The Apprentice (2009), Sugar revealed "I was in the Jewish Lads Brigade, Stamford Hill Division, Trainee Bugler, but it didn't make me sell computers!" After leaving school at 16, he worked briefly for the civil service as a statistician at the Ministry of Education. He started selling car aerials and electrical goods out of a van he had bought with his savings of £50."

"Richard Branson started his record business from the crypt of a church where he ran The Student magazine. Branson advertised popular records in The Student and it was an overnight success. Trading under the name "Virgin", he sold records for considerably less than the "High Street" outlets, especially the chain W. H. Smith. Branson once said, "There is no point in starting your own business unless you do it out of a sense of frustration"

"More than 40 years after arriving in New York from Mexico uneducated and broke, Felix Sanchez de la Vega Guzman still can barely speak English. Ask him a question, and he will respond with a few halting phrases and an apologetic smile before shifting back to the comfort of Spanish. Yet Mr. Sanchez has lived the great American success story. He turned a business selling tortillas on the street into a $19 million food manufacturing empire that threaded together the Mexican diaspora from coast to coast and reached back into Mexico itself."

9 American Entrepreneurs Who Went from Dirt Poor to Stinking Rich | FastUpFront Small Business Blog

All these people had the ideas, took the risks and found the money to follow their ambitions and I am sure they would all say that they had help along the way and maybe wouldn't have had such great success without good people behind them but the businesses wouldn't exist without them

[LisaContractorUmbrella]

Man buys £4 million house. Man sells £4 million house 2 years later for £6 million. That option isn't available to people who don't have the capital and/or income required to buy £4 million houses.

Man works 18 hours a day to be able to fund himself through training which resulted in a qualification. Man used last £20 to put ad in the local paper offering skills that he had learned. Man makes good decisions and takes risks. Man is now very wealthy - that option is open to people who have very little money.

To use your analogy - man buys house for £50k - he works hard to add value to that house and sells it for £25k profit - he invests that money in another slightly bigger and better house - he lives in rotten conditions, works during the day and works on the house at night. He sells that house for £75k profit and invests that in another profit. Within a number of years he buys a house for £4 million and sells it for £6 million applying exactly the same principals that encouraged him to buy and work on that first house.

Your argument seems to revolve around inherited wealth - would you redistribute that through the taxation system so that we are in a position to start with a 'level playing field'?

[LisaContractorUmbrella]

This may all be true, but why should that mean that the person who sweeps the office isn't worth a living wage? Why tax people and give the office sweeper housing benefit rather than pay them properly in the first place? The reality of that transaction is that society is collectively inflating the rewards that the people who started or invested in the business receive by socialising their wage bill.



I think you need to distinguish between wealth and income, and also to distinguish between redistributing wealth (or income) after the fact and influencing how income is distributed and wealth accumulated in the first place. So I think government needs to look at influencing ways in which the rewards for effort are initially distributed, and they need to give people without wealth more opportunity to accumulate it. I think a lot of that could be done by allowing people to keep more of their pay packet to begin with, so personally I'm in favour of raising the tax threshold much further, and "personalising" the tax threshold depending on whether people have kids or support their partner or other dependants (elderly parents say), so that no one is taxed until they are earning a living wage (which obviously depends on circumstance), and then having a flat rate income tax. This would likely be quite high, around 45% or more, although ultimately that depends on government spending. I'd also tax capital gains at the same rate as income, because it shouldn't matter whether you're using capital or labour to produce value and it certainly shouldn't favour capital if the intention is to "reward hard work".

I'd also get rid of the capital gains tax free allowance. At the moment that basically means that those with capital to invest get twice the tax free allowance of those who don't.

What would you consider to be a living wage? That means many different things to different people.

[DodgyAgent]

Man buys £4 million house. Man sells £4 million house 2 years later for £6 million. That option isn't available to people who don't have the capital and/or income required to buy £4 million houses.

so what?

[DodgyAgent]

I do not have the intellectual capacity or confidence to look beyond my own bigoted views to argue a worthwhile logical case to counter what you say.

FTFY

[doodab]

Man works 18 hours a day to be able to fund himself through training which resulted in a qualification. Man used last £20 to put ad in the local paper offering skills that he had learned. Man makes good decisions and takes risks. Man is now very wealthy - that option is open to people who have very little money.

Yes, and he worked ******* hard, and he needed a whole lot of luck, because the number of people who became wealthy this way is tiny. The wealthy person in my example needed neither of those, simply because he was wealthy.

To use your analogy - man buys house for £50k - he works hard to add value to that house and sells it for £25k profit - he invests that money in another slightly bigger and better house - he lives in rotten conditions, works during the day and works on the house at night. He sells that house for £75k profit and invests that in another profit. Within a number of years he buys a house for £4 million and sells it for £6 million applying exactly the same principals that encouraged him to buy and work on that first house.

Yes, and he worked ******* hard, and he needed a whole lot of luck. You can also see how the "positive feedback" effect I'm talking about works, so that by the end of his journey, because he's wealthy, he can make 80 times the profit with the same amount of effort.

Your argument seems to revolve around inherited wealth

Not at all. The argument revolves around the fact that being wealthy gives one access to much better opportunities.