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I didn't really mean could be worse. Id be delighted if the 0.1% had to pay eye watering amounts of tax again.

I don't see why a >50% tax on earnings is in any way controversial, the only point of debate should be when it kicks in.

Typical sausage munchers talking Britain down.

Could be worse. The highest rate was between 90% and 99.2% in the 40s, 50s and 60s.

Rookie numbers. Sweden had a top rate of 102% in the 70s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomperipossa_in_Monismania

Are the people who benefit from this going to vote Tory though, which is the goal?

I guess it's been focus grouped or whatever, but I'd like to imagine that if I earned 250K a year (lol) , that I would cost more than 5K in tax savings to be bought like that. It's not enough (is it?) to make a behaviour change compared to the risk posed by poor police / ambulance / services

Assuming 220 8 hour working days per year, its about a weeks earnings.

Yeah, the amount that individual benefits by would be eaten in a second by a serious medical situation (in terms of a one off problem) but also in general terms the plummeting UK pound is costing far more than the benefit of the tax cut.

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Disaster capitalist donors and they are just there to provide good value for them?

The mistake may be thinking they actually care about governing all of the UK...

Disaster capitalist donors

No way that those guys have any onshore UK PAYE income that would make them worry about the 45p rate. Although Ashcroft did celebrate the policy on Twitter...

https://twitter.com/LordAshcroft/status/1573247615629758464

More chaos under Ed Miliband. Oh wait.

I love it how people that never had to work in such conditions preach to others that this is exactly the solution.

Also lol how are you going to enforce that in the "high skilled" jobs the Cons let immigrants in to do... write 200 lines of code an hour? Oh but the code is bad... em, no wait... ok 200 lines and all automation must pass! Wait, now the integrations fails so somebody else... eh.

Or in his line of work, banking, how do you even monitor productivity?

The pessimist in me thinks that Labour may win the next election but then have to deal with the longer-term fall out of stuff like today's mini-budget, and then get blamed for it all leading to another long stint of tory-rule.

Disaster capitalist donors and they are just there to provide good value for them?

The mistake may be thinking they actually care about governing all of the UK...

It's a nonsense, but if you wanted to temporarily convince most key voter blocs that it was more or less business as usual for a year or two, then this (plus the energy cap) would be one way you might try, if you didn't care about long term consequences. I think thats the key bit...keep the donors happy, mug off the plebs and hand over a burning bag of dog shit to Labour at the next GE.

Labour still get the blame for the global financial crisis...

There are folks on Twitter surmising that this is the actual Tory strategy ... tank the economy and then let Labour in, knowing they can't fix anything in one election cycle.

The only wrinkle in that plan (apart from the fact that this is too smart a move for those in power) is that the Labour Party are likely to vote positively on adopting a more representational electoral system at their conference. If they do so, and they get in and actually enact that, the Torys will find it incredibly difficult to get back in.

No they won't have, but to me this is a pattern of extreme neoliberalism, which is what the ERG and other have promoted in the Tory party. It really is no longer a small state free market not overly progressive but sorta sensible right of center party.

Tanking the pound, more business going bust so you can buy up the property...ways to make £ out of this. If you have money sitting, crises can be very good. Even during Covid the rich got richer.

Buying out the fossil fuel companies via letting us sponsor the fuel bills, instead of windfall tax them hard and only giving extra ££ to lower income bands. Now we have this leading to even more state debt (or higher taxes which they said they didn't want to go for), markets are panicking...nuts.

I guess it means Labour will get in to clean up the mess...again.

When the Germans fled Paris in August '44 they nicked anything they could lay their hands on. They were cramming sheep into cars. That's what this country's like now.

extreme neoliberalism

I think that's taking it a bit far. "Extreme neoliberalism" would be something like the 10% flat tax on personal income that they have in Bulgaria - as I posted upthread this change taxes income taxes back to where they were during the Blair years, albeit with lower real-terms thresholds.

Similarly, if you look at tax and spend as a % of GDP (excluding the energy bailout) it will not be out of line from what was normal in the early 00's.

To the point about the rich getting richer during COVID, that was an inevitable consequence of monetary expansion and low rates - with rates rising world wide, I think you could say that "this time it's different"...

with rates rising world wide, I think you could say that "this time it's different"...

We're about to find out which economies have spent the last decade preparing for this sort of global crisis and which ones haves been lining their own pockets.

In what sense?

Inequality is rising, people are struggling it doesn't feel to me this is the right thing to do. The economy has not been well even before Covid. Even the markets are reacting badly to it.

The Covid issue was indeed part monetary policy but in the USA those median income and over were OK and got richer (not just the super rich, which fared EVEN better) and those below, well, things got even worse.

Perhaps it's not "extreme" neoliberalism but it is, to me, a continuing trend of screwing things up for far too many people. And in mainland Europe this is leading to openly* racist/xenophobic/fascist parties getting votes.

Perhaps in the early 00's all this was fine, but now we are facing a period of long recession (not just in the UK) with interest rates that have nothing to do with too much spending power for most people/too much business expansion and investment. So to me it is utter nuts to do this thinking "it will work out this time". These rising interest rates combined with inflation on food and heating are just going to hit people, and you cannot exactly stop eating or eating.

Unless they really WANT to make a mess. But perhaps they are just not really thinking about it and wanting to keep their donors happy.

*(the Tories, cha, looking at the Home Office, policing bill, panicking about a few thousand refugees (mostly) arriving on boats, nearly reverting some human rights laws, Brexit and all that they have some work to do)

In what sense?

Compared to much of Europe, the UK poor have been getting poorer and have less money to spend. Not just in last 12 years.

Conventional economics indicates that disposable income for your lowest earning cohorts is the factor most likely to drive growth.

Logically, the countries that have seen their lowest earning cohorts increase prosperity (and by keeping tabs on their property markets) will be better insulated against this sort of economic crisis. Imho.

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Andrew Marr talking sense

One sage has observed that the UK isn’t an emerging market, it’s a submerging market and another that we will be soon levelled up with the dollar.

A necessary convergence criteria for our application to join the US of A as the 51st state.