Reply to: The rise of the overclass

[AtW]

Ultra rich City slickers against a wealth tax.

Why a wealth tax is a very bad idea | City A.M.

To be fair they are right - once something is owned there should be no tax on it unless it's related to services provided - road tax for car, council tax for fire crews etc, otherwise it's not ownership but a low level rent with a very high deposit paid upfront.

HTH

[DimPrawn]

Ultra rich City slickers against a wealth tax.

Why a wealth tax is a very bad idea | City A.M.

A wealth tax is the best way to destroy our most vital asset: Britain’s historic respect for property rights. It must be resisted.

[Spacecadet]

Yes - but it enables the to get a directorship of a bank when they leave....

stupid AND greedy then

[BrilloPad]

If the politicians were only doing what they were persuaded to by the banks then it's still the fault of the politicians for being so ******* stupid.

Yes - but it enables the to get a directorship of a bank when they leave....

[Spacecadet]

sasguru - it's fair comment to say that the bankers are not the only ones to blame. They were simply exploiting a situation that the politicians allowed to exist. But...

...who do you think it was whose influence discouraged the politicians from sorting things out properly, once it became obvious that the system was broken and that the rules needed changing?

If the politicians were only doing what they were persuaded to by the banks then it's still the fault of the politicians for being so ******* stupid.

[BlasterBates]

Yes easy to jump on the bandwagon of tax the very rich but when the new tax legislation comes along it will be on private pensions bigger than 30 grand a year, higher capital gains tax etc etc. The very rich don't care because they'll be in Quatar or Bahrain. That's because if you really want to raise taxes taxing the super rich who are tiny number of people actually won't make much difference. If you want to raise tax it's Joe "Slightly better off" who has to foot the bill

[Jeff Maginty]

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[sasguru]

Sounds like the "create an enemy of the state to distract the stupid" scheme has worked quite well on a few people around here.

Finally someone with a brain on CUK
The same cretins get who get distracted by the well funded and organised big oil lobby against global warming are equally stupid when politicians blame bankers to save their skins.

[DimPrawn]

I think the bigger issue is that Banking is heads they win, tails we lose. Banks need to be able small enough to be able to fail.

Yes, this is the important bit.

Banks need to be structured so that the casino investment banking is completely isolated from banks whose job it is to raise capital and lend money. In this way if a casino bank makes £1trn profits this year and pays every single banker a £1bn bonus we can all cheer at the delight and if the banks gets it wrong and it goes pop we can all laugh and all the bankers lose their money and their jobs.

Lending to people and businesses, pensions and savings must be completely isolated for that other tulip.

After Credit Crunch I the govt pretended it was going to action this, but too many wealthy people need the tax payer to subsidise the gambling, so nothing came of it.

[BrilloPad]

Banking suffers from a lack of competition which is why they are so overpaid.

I think the bigger issue is that Banking is heads they win, tails we lose. Banks need to be able small enough to be able to fail.

[DodgyAgent]

Why do you banker-appologists always brand anyone who questions the status-quo as "socialist". I believe in capitalism... you know, that thing were a bad business model fails and the people who ran that bad business model end up out on their arse. Not rewarded with £billions in bonus (pool) and allowed to carry on as before. I'd say people such as you who defend the current system are more 'socialist' than I am. And it's even worse because your form of socialism is only for the rich. I don't see anyone in any other profession being given a multi £billion bonus pool out of taxpayers' money.

I do not defend bankers at all. I think that they have behaved extraordinarily badly. If you read my threads I strongly believe that too few (people, government and corporations) hold far too much power. Banking suffers from a lack of competition which is why they are so overpaid. However I am not driven by the clear envy and insecurity that drives so much of the criticism. Bankers are being used as scapegoats by the socialists to obscure the root causes of the ills of society. By all means regulate their divisive activities, but most of all reduce their sizes and open up financial markets to new companies.
The only thing that stops every jumped up little socialist and member of the vast population of people with a sense of entitlement is the fact that all this happened under labours watch, and they didnt save for a rainy day. We have a duty to make government understand that every penny of taxpayers money should be spent wisely. What the banks have done is deprive governments of vast amounts of money that they can no longer spunk away - and we are the better for it.

[Jeff Maginty]

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[VectraMan]

Errrr... No! The article merely reflects what many people had already concluded for themselves.

Go on then, lets see you justify rewards-for-failure paid for by the taxpayer...

Well if we're going to talk about rewards-for-failure paid for by the taxpayer, we have to start off with the welfare state. Then of course there's the public sector; £100K p.a. pension for GPs, do they have to be exceptional GPs to qualify for that? Even if you're going to be completely cynical about blaming the banks for the credit crunch, it's not true that the tax payer "spent" money on the banks (there's an outside chance we may even make a profit selling it back). And if a banker makes a big fat profit for his bank in 2012, how is giving him a bonus reward for failure? And how is that paid for the taxpayer? The banks haven't received any tax payer money for 3 years, yet the railways receive £5.2bn of state subsidy every year whether the trains run on time or not.

[DodgyAgent]

Errrr... No! The article merely reflects what many people had already concluded for themselves.

Go on then, lets see you justify rewards-for-failure paid for by the taxpayer...


Go on...



I'm waiting...

Quite Vectra man, as I said in my previous point, where does one draw the line on who is part of the undeserving rich? It is not easy to be a socialist and a wealthy contractor at the same time because a lot of the petty envy that drives these people can be applied to themselves.

[DodgyAgent]

That is absolute bullocks. People are sick to death of tax payers' money subsidising institutions such as banks and the bonuses being paid by the tax payers. People are also sick of politicians making decisions that favour corporations that will make them directors once they have left parliament. Just look at Tony Blair.

It is not absolute bollocks at all. It is a very legitimate point. However there is a problem that the Telegraph article points to which is that too much power is in the hands of too few people. And yes that includes Politicians on the make such as Tony Blair.
Steve Jobs enjoyed huge power yet he could'nt even make sensible logical decisions about his own health. How can we entrust these people with such power?
We are in danger here of allowing envy to overrun logic and practicality here. Too many people including wealthy It contractors are not driven by any sense of practicality but by their own insecurities - after all many of the "sick to death" actually do not create any wealth whatsoever, and I repeat if we are going to join in a witch hunt against the rich just be careful that someone else does'nt include you lot in the list of "undeserving, tax avoiding rich"