Ask HN: What Is Happening in the UK?

The pound dropped in value a few days ago, but the price has recovered since then.

The media chooses to focus on the drop rather than the recovery, because the drop coincided with a government announcement of some pro-growth economic policies that mainstream pundits disagree with.

If you speak to people in the U.K. many would agree that paying less tax is a positive thing, especially during a global cost of living crisis. But some people on the Left are angry that the wealthiest are also getting tax cuts.

What a lot of those people don’t realise is that the wealthiest 1% are paying 28% of income tax receipts - and this percentage has increased over the last decade.

In my opinion, I’m glad to see government reduce the tax burden on productive workers, as this stifled well-paying jobs, growth and investment.

I speak from personal experience. Due to the insidious tax policy of withdrawing the personal allowance when income reaches £100K, there is a marginal tax rate of over 60% at that income level. For that reason I chose to quit my job as a software team manager in an investment bank and instead went to work as a developer in a startup.

I decided there’s no point in working long hours in a responsible job helping other people advance their careers if I keep less than 40p of every pound I earn at that point. I may as well do less responsible work that I enjoy instead.

It doesn't appear recovered to me.

> I decided there’s no point in working long hours in a responsible job helping other people advance their careers if I keep less than 40p of every pound I earn at that point. I may as well do less responsible work that I enjoy instead.

This is an extremely funny takeaway in that anyone who doesn't agree with your ideological position is likely to see this as the tax working as intended.

> "policies that mainstream pundits disagree with"

That the Bank of England have had to scramble to compensate for by bringing back QE in a limited form, that previous governers of the BoE have spoken out against, that the IMF has spoken out against, that previous heads of the US treasury have spoken against, that conservative peers and MPs have spoken against, that the markets responded to by having a fire sale?

Those are a few mainstream pundits? LOL.

> If you speak to people in the U.K. many would agree that paying less tax is a positive thing, especially during a global cost of living crisis

Very few of those people would be paying less tax under these plans, as the major reduction is for people earning over 150k per annum - and those are the people already best placed to weather the cost of living crisis.

It's not that the wealthiest are also getting tax cuts, it's that virtually nobody else is.

I'm a high earner and I like money, but this is some self-interested bull**** right here