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Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

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Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#21

Post by tesseract »

gaius wrote: post #18
moultano wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

250k of household income puts you at the 98.3 percentile, so any two married valley engineers probably qualify, and they probably can't afford a house. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...

Same situation here in the UK - you become one of the hated "rich" at about GBP 37k where income tax goes up to 40%. Nowhere in the Home Counties is that enough to get a mortgage even on a 1-bedroom flat, let alone a house. A super-tax of 50% kicks in at GBP 150k - but an ordinary family home costs around GBP 500k. As normal in politics, the middle classes are being raped for the benefit of those at the top and at th…

> GBP 37k

What is that percentile wise?

As an American, I am perpetually shocked at how low UK salaries sound when I hear them, especially given that I know consumer goods are more expensive on your side of the pond. Is it made up for by comparatively lower cost of housing or other essential items or what? Or is there a huge transatlantic income gap that I never really hear about (mostly it's cost of living differences that seem to draw attention)?

Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#22

Post by tesseract »

alnayyir wrote: post #17
moultano wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

250k of household income puts you at the 98.3 percentile, so any two married valley engineers probably qualify, and they probably can't afford a house. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...

>, and they probably can't afford a house. I moved to the bay area recently, and I'm an engineer. I was kind of wondering how people actually live out here. I came here from New York, so I get how people can rent for their whole lives, but I had thought that there'd be more reasonable home ownership in the bay area. Not so. :\

I'm a recent (last few months) migrant to the bay area. I have to say, for a city that hates capitalists, San Francisco sure is expensive.

(hmm, maybe there's some causation there?)

Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#23

Post by hnhg »

tesseract wrote: post #21
gaius wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same situation here in the UK - you become one of the hated "rich" at about GBP 37k where income tax goes up to 40%. Nowhere in the Home Counties is that enough to get a mortgage even on a 1-bedroom flat, let alone a house. A super-tax of 50% kicks in at GBP 150k - but an ordinary family home costs around GBP 500k. As normal in politics, the middle classes are being raped for the benefit of those at the top and at th…

> GBP 37k What is that percentile wise? As an American, I am perpetually shocked at how low UK salaries sound when I hear them, especially given that I know consumer goods are more expensive on your side of the pond. Is it made up for by comparatively lower cost of housing or other essential items or what? Or is there a huge transatlantic income gap that I never really hear about (mostly it's cost of living differenc…

I don't know for sure but I suspect that people in the UK paid more attention to total personal wealth including property asset values, which were rising at a pretty ridiculous rate.

To put this into perspective with an anecdote, I know a family who bought a house about 10 years ago to rent out in an up and coming area for £60k. Two years later they bought the house next door for 220k. Now each house is worth around £400-500k. This isn't even in London/the South where the rises were even greater.

So property assets perhaps made up for relatively low income, and I feel that the government at the time played up to this. I also know a lot of people who took debts against their homes to increase their cash flow and buy cars, kitchens, etc with it.

EDIT: Of course, now the situation is different, with the property market being flat. Who knows what will happen from now on, but our new government has made noises about making sure the property market less important to the economy.

Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#24

Post by ladon86 »

tesseract wrote: post #21
gaius wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same situation here in the UK - you become one of the hated "rich" at about GBP 37k where income tax goes up to 40%. Nowhere in the Home Counties is that enough to get a mortgage even on a 1-bedroom flat, let alone a house. A super-tax of 50% kicks in at GBP 150k - but an ordinary family home costs around GBP 500k. As normal in politics, the middle classes are being raped for the benefit of those at the top and at th…

> GBP 37k What is that percentile wise? As an American, I am perpetually shocked at how low UK salaries sound when I hear them, especially given that I know consumer goods are more expensive on your side of the pond. Is it made up for by comparatively lower cost of housing or other essential items or what? Or is there a huge transatlantic income gap that I never really hear about (mostly it's cost of living differenc…

Well it's definitely not cost of housing, which is very expensive here. For the most part you can expect to pay a lot more for a much smaller house in the UK compared to the US.

I'm not sure where it is that we make up the difference in costs, or if indeed we do.

Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#25

Post by qq66 »

pg wrote: post #3

This is written more like a speech by a politician than as an attempt at analysis. The type of economic inequality that successful startups yield, and which accounts for a lot of the entries in the Forbes 400, is described merely as a theory cherished by the rich, and dismissed with evidence it would be a compliment to call anecdotal. And while there's a lot of talk about how the rich own the government, he doesn't e…

The Forbes 400 is mostly entrepreneurs but the "Forbes 40,000" is mostly financiers, only a small fraction of whom create net positive value.

Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#26

Post by hootmon »

Just consider this. Most tax money goes toward providing defense, Which is just a nice word for protecting the property of the wealthy. The more property you have, then the more value you receive, thus the more, not less, you should pay. Its called welfare for the rich. Our taxes go towards securing their position and goods. Say hello to that boot rushing down on you.

Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#27

Post by wlievens »

gaius wrote: post #18
moultano wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

250k of household income puts you at the 98.3 percentile, so any two married valley engineers probably qualify, and they probably can't afford a house. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...

Same situation here in the UK - you become one of the hated "rich" at about GBP 37k where income tax goes up to 40%. Nowhere in the Home Counties is that enough to get a mortgage even on a 1-bedroom flat, let alone a house. A super-tax of 50% kicks in at GBP 150k - but an ordinary family home costs around GBP 500k. As normal in politics, the middle classes are being raped for the benefit of those at the top and at th…

In Belgium it's 50% starting at about €32k. Add social security tax and municipal tax to that and effective marginal tax rate becomes over 60%.

Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#28

Post by rudiger »

The top 1 percent of American income-earners account for ~25% of the nation’s total income every year. The top 1 percent of American wealth-holders account for ~40% of the total wealth. I hear statistics like this all the time but I never understand... What is the "correct" amount? The top 1 percent of anything by definition are going to hold some larger share. There are compelling theoretical reasons for wealth and income distribution to follow a power law (ie. Pareto distribution). Why should these numbers be as they were 25 years ago, or as they are in other countries now?

Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#29

Post by dot »

rudiger wrote: post #28

The top 1 percent of American income-earners account for ~25% of the nation’s total income every year. The top 1 percent of American wealth-holders account for ~40% of the total wealth. I hear statistics like this all the time but I never understand... What is the "correct" amount? The top 1 percent of anything by definition are going to hold some larger share. There are compelling theoretical reasons for wealth and…

Because the bottom X% are starving.

Re: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

#30

Post by varjag »

hootmon wrote: post #26

Just consider this. Most tax money goes toward providing defense, Which is just a nice word for protecting the property of the wealthy. The more property you have, then the more value you receive, thus the more, not less, you should pay. Its called welfare for the rich. Our taxes go towards securing their position and goods. Say hello to that boot rushing down on you.

Perhaps that is taking defense too literally. In this day of age, there is very little threat to people's property from Mexico or Canada.
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