Ask HN: What Is Happening in the UK?

Post by agent008t » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 12:14 PM UTC

donpott wrote: post #220

agent008t wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, high income does not mean 'rich'. 45% tax bracket started at £150'000 income - that is not 'rich' in London. Secondly, all else being equal, lower taxes certainly would attract talent and business to the UK and overall make people better off. As a simple example, let us consider an extreme case where the UK has a 20% flat tax while maintaining macro/political stability, and that rate is expected to pers…

Making GBP 150,000 before tax in the year 2019-2020 would put a person in the 98th percentile of salaries in the UK. If that's not rich, I don't know what is, in London or anywhere. Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-f...

Post by jedrek » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 2:16 PM UTC

jakub_g wrote: post #19

cbeach wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes, you're not wrong. Many people on the left see tax as an appropriate punishment for wealth. In their worldview, wealthy people are demonised and dehumanised. The left are convinced that wealthy people are parasitic on society. This leftwing ideology seems peculiar to me, having seen the data on who's funding public services, and who's benefiting from public services.

The real issue, everywhere, is that the ordinary people are made believe those earning 100k are ultra rich, and should be taxed to death, and not those earning 10M+, or having inherited millions.

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 4:23 PM UTC

gadders wrote: post #191

hunglee2 wrote: post #24

In simple terms, the Bank of England and UK Gov are pursuing conflicting economic policies, BoE trying to take money out of circulation through hiking up interest rates, whilst UK Gov is putting money into circulation by proposing massive debt funded tax cuts. The obvious incoherency of this then led to the markets losing confidence in the UK economy, crashing the value of the pound, which in turn makes the planned U…

Tax cuts aren't debt funded. Tax cuts are free. The (arguably excessive) government spending is what is debt funded.

Post by MattPalmer1086 » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 7:53 PM UTC

dan-robertson wrote: post #186

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's correct. Most people in the UK have no idea that there is an effective 60% tax rate either. It's not an official tax band. But it's the kind of tax raising governments love doing, by stealth. Don't put up the tax band thresholds causing more people to fall into the higher bands over time. They also remove child tax credit as you earn more. And remove your personal tax allowance gradually over 100k.

> And remove your personal tax allowance gradually over 100k. Well the that’s the thing this thread is all about so that isn’t an additional thing.

Post by logicalmonster » Sat, Oct 01, 2022, 2:27 PM UTC

kypro wrote: post #129

kypro wrote: post #120

If a government runs a fiscal deficit then to balance their books they need to borrow additional funds from the market. If your fiscal plan doesn't make sense market lenders may not be willing to lend to you or will at least expect a higher interest rate to compensate for their risks. The Conservative party in the UK has just elected a new PM who has announced a fiscal plan which doesn't add up - tax cuts financed wi…

Also I suppose to add a little more depth to this explanation a lot of this is related to actions coming from the US central bank. As the Fed raises rates in the US it makes the dollar a more attractive place to put money. This devalues other currencies against the dollar. Because the dollar is the reserve currency a lot of stuff countries like the UK imports is denominated in dollars (oil, food, etc). This means the…