EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

Is there this delusion? I don't think there is. I think those people earning more than 80k on here are (mostly) aware how this is above the average.
What has happened though, is a concentration and amplification of their discourse about their purchases.

Perhaps a normalisation of the discussion of heir spending and their ability to spend as their spending ability has increased.

Has this made them forget or not think about the vast majority outside of London not being paid similarly eye watering sums? I dont know.

I earn over 80k, I am aware that puts me into the top 3% in the UK, and I’ll be voting Labour in the GE. Now, just off to play a round of golf wearing ermine underpants and 15 watches.

High earners are an easy and often deserved target, but imho the real problem is the huge skew in the income band in the UK. Many more people are below the median than above and a smaller group of high income payers (top 25% of income band, off the top of my head) carry most of the tax load.

No doubt Labour is going to try to address that too? I hope it is not just easy soundbites.

In NI wages are much lower, and rent etc. is reasonable so it is do-able. But no doubt there are areas in the UK with low wages (compared to median/average) and high living costs... and London has high wages but very high rents.

Ermine?
Vicuna wool or have your valet flogged.

In NI wages are much lower, and rent etc. is reasonable so it is do-able. But no doubt there are areas in the UK with low wages (compared to median/average) and high living costs... and London has high wages but very high rents.

It's not helped by the fact that quite a large proportion of people in high wage jobs are able to work remotely most of the time. When this happens you get London wages and cheap living costs. I've seen it in our offices where it's gone from most people being in the office 4 or 5 days a week and living within 20 miles of central London to people rarely being in the office and living up to 400 miles away (Cornwall, Coventry, Brussels, etc). Yet the salaries have not changed.

It's not necessarily a London/not-London thing in terms of wages once you start to get to jobs at the higher end of the salary scale.

He’s camped out in the Rolex boutique in T5 waiting for a GMT

It is a lot, but it's a measure of how f**ked the income / wealth spread is that being an 80k earner may well not be enough to buy a reasonable family home in London (e.g. mortgage of 4.5 X salary means you can only borrow 360k).

I wouldn't say that person feels stretched - but nor do they feel wealthy, because asset prices (particularly land) have become so inflated. Obviously this isn't great as it leads to a real feeling like working is for mugs, actual money is made through capital transactions - which puts yet more pressure on stuff like housing as people try to get rich from that, the cycle continues....

From a Twitter thread about the BBCQT chap:

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Yeah, but no one can buy a house anywhere, imagine what it's like for someone on minimum wage or thereabouts anywhere in the country, it's an important but separate issue that also needs addressing. They may not feel wealthy, but they are and they're certainly not struggling to eat or stay warm and can certainly afford to pay more tax on the money they earn over £80k and can happily pay the same as everyone else on what they earn under it.

This is what I was saying to seemingly the only Tory (there's plenty of ukip racists though) in Levenshulme on a local Facebook group the other day when he was all "why should I bother working for more than £80k when I'll just get taxed more?" firstly it's only on what you earn over that, so you still get more money, and secondly, any pay rises you get at that wage are unlikely to be 15p an hour like most people used to get when pay rises were a thing, and more like a few £k extra salary taking into account the fact you're on a higher tax band so will be worked around take home anyway.

The obvious answer is that if you earn more than 80k you take home more money. It’s not 100% taxation at £80,001 and above.

Is your interlocutor a mental?

Tory

I thought I'd made that clear.

This is the inverse of the "why should i work when it will lose me my benefits".

Here's some numbers about London poverty:
30 % of families are unable to meet an unexpected but necessary bill of £800
50% of families have zero savings
17% of london families with children live in material deprivation
28% of london's popn. live in poverty after housing costs
You need to work 17.4 / 32.5 hours (at London living wage) to pay for 25 / 50 hours nursery
20% of London's jobs pay below the LLW
45% of london's PT employees are paid below the LLW
12 % of London's FT employees are paid below the LLW
10% of London's workers are in insecure employment
2.6 % of london's workers are in zero hour contracts
GLA datastore

Income obviously has to be based against cost of living.
It’s ridiculous to say those earning the bottom 5% in the U.K. are wealthy because they are over the global average.

The DWP reckon there are about 14 million people living in relative poverty in the UK. Relative poverty being people earning close to the cost of living in their area.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/households-below-average-income-199495-to-201415

On a personal note, I've spent a fair amount of time in Wellingborough recently, helping with affairs after my mother in law died. One thing that struck me is how many local people I have met who struggle to feed and house themselves every month. Their MP, Peter Bone, often claims that there is little or no poverty in his area.

Depressing that’s about a 1/4 of the population

^^ it's not clear if that figure includes children. I think they only look at people old enough to earn.

I reckon some people genuinely think that moving over the threshold into a high tax bracket means you take home less money.

The SMC (Fullfact) break it down like this
8.3 million are working-age adults, 4.6 million are children, and 1.3 million are of pension age

The system is a little odd (effective rate of 60% at 100k to IIRC 125k, then it drops again for e.g.) but what people always (perhaps deliberately) misunderstand is that the bands come in at income above certain points- they don’t apply to income earned below said points.

Ah, thanks for filling in the gaps.

This is pretty bleak
https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN07096#fullreport

Here's an indicator of living in material deprivation

Child indicator:
Have friends round for tea or a snack once a fortnight - 5% cannot do this
Have a warm winter coat - 1% do not have this

Parent indicator:
Replace broken electrical goods - 20% cannot do this
Replace worn out furniture - 28% cannot do this

Pensioners
At least one filling meal a day - 1% cannot do this

firstly it's only on what you earn over that, so you still get more money

I have a suspicion that there's a huge number of people who believe that if you earn £80,001 then you suddenly get higher tax on all of it and somehow end up with less to take home than if you earned £79,999. It's not like the Tory party go out of their way to dispel this myth.

I don't blame them particularly - tax is byzantine, not very interesting and I don't think anyone trusts that it's collected fairly.

I'm sure it should be possible to have a fairly high impact visual to show what the changes would mean to the individual, alongside the number of how many of those people there are in the UK, especially at the high end to see exactly how few people this would affect - for example, "if you earn £10m per year, you'll pay £x more tax. There are 1,000 of these people in the whole country, they will be responsible for building and maintaining 5 hospitals this year".