deleted-
Unless you have literally insane mortgage
Only came into a decent income in my 40s, only available mortgage once I'd saved a deposit was a 22yr one due to when I'd retire at and my lack of pension (no proof of income beyond 65 - too much time on the streets or then in dead end jobs grinding to get off the streets to have any pension beyond legal minimum in the last 4 years).
So yes, mortgage is ~50% of my insane salary.
The assumption that salary equates to rich also assumes normative middle class lives, or at least a consistency in income over a long period of time prior. If one takes a homeless person and gives them a top 1% salary they aren't suddenly rich, only when it's sustained over such a period of time that assets can be acquired does it really translate to wealth.
I'll end my life more comfortably than I began, but nothing else. I may have earned slightly more than most people in an average working life, but I am earning more of it at the end of my working life and far less in the first two decades of working (and this is not the tax efficient way to earn money!). I am unlikely to retire early, will probably need to retire late just to ensure I'm not totally broke after 80 (if I get that far).
You are reading a single comment by @deleted and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
Velocio
I'm rich in some ways, not in others.
I'll freely admit my salary makes me rich... in fact I filled in this https://ifs.org.uk/tools_and_resources/where_do_you_fit_in to try and determine what my top n% is, and it said: "you have a higher income than around 99% of the population" and "In conclusion, Your income is so high that you lie beyond the far right hand side of the chart" - this is based on me being a sole income household compared to it actually comparing to multi-income households. I earn a lot.
But... salary != wealth.
I come from no money, no inheritance, no family gifts, a much harder slog to earn every penny of a deposit for a mortgage, etc. I work with a colleague who is in his early 20s and has a higher disposable income than I do because his grandparents gifted him a house (one of their 2nd/3rd rentals) on his 21st birthday... an inheritance tax avoidance I guess... and so I in my late 40s have less disposable income than him in his early 20s.
I am definitely rich. But there is also a very large inter-generational middle-class that is far richer in other ways. My colleague wouldn't count himself as rich, he doesn't... but definitely he is, in fact almost everyone I know is rich as these are not the circles I move in I guess, this is what my peers earn, etc. I still remember shivering in an underpass sleeping rough, but it's irrelevant really... I've achieved social mobility as politicians call it, and moved from street to flat to home, from work to career. Judged solely on my last payslip I am off the scale, but it's a poor thing to judge anyone by... if I had a child I couldn't afford private education for them.
I'd love to see more people become rich in my lifetime... i.e. higher salaries for others, less tax on that salary.
So how to fund the country? I'd also love to see more of the asset value of wealth be redistributed... i.e. land tax that erodes large estates and holdings, increased capital gains tax on assets, etc.
Income is the one way to help change people's lives... tax everything else (inc private schools).