"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me."

volver

GSM I think we all know now that you paid a lot of tax. So did I. A lot. In fact, you could probably say I worked my a**e off.

So I might ask, Is that what I worked for? Other people’s kids who can use or waste my earnings as they choose?

Yes. Yes it is. If I'm dead and don't need it, they can have it.

But you don’t have kids volver. Therein lies a very big difference. If I had no kids everything would go to chosen charities. That would mean zero IHT.

We don't have a lot of Tory voters in my neck of the woods, but the ones I do know certainly think we all need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and not spend other people's money. Or that you can't rely on the government to keep you, and if you do get benefits you're a layabout. Probably having babies to claim the Child Support.

One thing I’ve learnt is that sadly most people just aren’t interested in politics volver. They are taken in so easily by the facade some politicians put up, but if you asked them what the policies, or even the broad underlying principles of a party were, they wouldn’t have a clue. I don’t like the condemnation of a sizeable chunk of the population because they vote in a particular way, because for most people I don’t think that defines their whole being.

Sorry to say that I think I agree with DaisyAnne. ?

If they aren't thinking about what it stands for when they vote, then that's even worse. Do they not care?

Germanshepherdsmum

So what do you propose dickens?

... something along the lines of the Scandinavian model?

There is sometimes confusion about these countries - people think they are socialist economies - and that's simply not true.

Norway, in particular, has a very healthy Capitalist economy. It also has a fairly well run social and health care system within it - which is probably why some think it's a 'socialist' state.

... and before you point it out - yes, you do pay more tax on your earnings... but those earnings are far in excess of those in the UK. So it's swings and roundabouts.

The housing market is regulated and stable, and there is a high rate of home ownership (and high quality standards).

It's a small country, but its economic model is one based on a desire for a more equitable society, a principle that can be copied, regardless.

As for taxation... there is almost total transparency that keeps companies accountable - and forces them to offer fair salaries.

... that kind of thing is what I propose GSM. All doable, with tweaks here and there to account for the difference in population size, etc. If the will is there.

I know some think that if you are critical of Capitalism - you're by definition a paid-up member of the 'Oh-Jeremy-Corbyn' club, but it's simply not true. I wouldn't mind him as a neighbour, but never as our PM. I am at heart a supporter of Capitalism - but not this (in my view, extreme) right-wing, market-driven, small-state (very small), libertarian ideology, being implemented by self-serving individuals - some of whom are not, really, very bright or well-informed. Our Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, didn't even understand that Channel 4 was publicly-owned, but that it makes its money from its commercial operations, as a recent example. I won't list all the other gaffes by various individuals. But they really are not a very inspiring bunch.

‘The Tories are selfish, entitled people who are happy to have more at the expense of those who have less. They justify this with their "I have worked hard" claims, ignoring the facts; others will have worked harder and in worse circumstances without being so well rewarded. It is no argument. They are not happy with simply having more than others; they want to increase that by continuing to take more off the poorest. I cannot see any sense of morality in this.’

Your final paragraph went too far for me, and I’m a Labour voter DaisyAnne. If you had qualified it by saying ‘the present Tory Government’ rather than ‘Tory Voters’ I would have agreed, but condemning everybody who votes Tory, most of whom aren’t thinking deeply about what it stands for is OTT.

GSM I think we all know now that you paid a lot of tax. So did I. A lot. In fact, you could probably say I worked my a**e off.

So I might ask, Is that what I worked for? Other people’s kids who can use or waste my earnings as they choose?

Yes. Yes it is. If I'm dead and don't need it, they can have it.

No problem volver I was just a tad confusing

To take everything a person owns when they die, money and property, is theft, pure and simple. That’s why it doesn’t happen.

GrannyGravy13

volver ?

Oops, very sorry. My post at 19:05 was for GSM, not GG13.

Apologies.

growstuff, I’m talking about what happens to my assets when I die. Why on earth should everything I have worked for be redistributed when I die so that every baby can have an equal (financial) start? Is that what I worked for? Other people’s kids who can use or waste my earnings as they choose? No, I worked for myself and my child and paid a lot of tax along the way which I imagine has gone a fair way to help a lot of people. And they will have another nice chunk when I die but nowhere near the 100% you would like - otherwise why would I have bothered? Could have done a low paid job or even stayed at home, claimed benefits and made no financial contribution to society couldn’t I? Where’s the incentive to work your arse off?

Isn't it interesting that this started as a thread about how the rich are treated differently by this government and has now reached a point where a couple of people sound extremely suspicious and afraid of what others will do to their legacy?

Is there anyone on this forum who is rich? Some shout so loudly for them. The top 1% have an annual income of £688,228. The Sunaks are, I believe, in the top 0.001%.

What most people object to is wealth inequality rather than the existence of wealth. The increase in the inequality levels has been brought about by this government's different treatment of the poor and the rich. Why should the top 10% hold 43% of all the household wealth while 50% hold only 9%?

Those sounding slightly paranoid about what might happen to their money would feel safer, I believe, if we were a society of equals. No one expects total equality. However, I do not believe that one person's life is worth so much more than another's.

The Tories are selfish, entitled people who are happy to have more at the expense of those who have less. They justify this with their "I have worked hard" claims, ignoring the facts; others will have worked harder and in worse circumstances without being so well rewarded. It is no argument. They are not happy with simply having more than others; they want to increase that by continuing to take more off the poorest. I cannot see any sense of morality in this.

growstuff

Doodledog

It's absolutely not a choice between taking people's money and providing equality of opportunity. If we had a fairer system of progressive taxation we could have a system which ensured that every child had a good start, regardless of their financial expectations.

As I said upthread, by the time most people who are going to inherit do so, the opportunities from their parents are well on the way to their own children. A good education, a network of contacts, a culture of deferred gratification and many other factors that five people a 'good start in life' are all bestowed long before (in most cases) parents die and leave their offspring an inheritance.

Would those who want to remove inheritance take those things from those who have them, so they don't start life with an advantage over those who don't? If not, why push to take away inheritance. It's not a race to the bottom, and fairness can be achieved by giving rather than taking away.

Yes.

Yes to what?

volver ?

Please don't talk about the Chancellor as if you know him; he isn't 'Richie', his name is Rishi Sunak. Only one person has suggested 100% IHT so let's not allow it to divert the true problem here; too many people are not paying their fair share of tax, a share which would go towards levelling things up. Or are you all happy with some of our members on here potentially freezing to death next winter? Or not being able to eat properly, let alone have the odd little treat like a haircut or a coffee out?

Germanshepherdsmum

Yes volver, I’m entitled to hang on to my very nice house and my very nice car, all of which I and my husband have worked bloody hard for, and to pass my assets after IHT to whomsoever I wish. I have also paid a great deal of tax during my working life and still do. What the government of the day chooses to do with that nice chunk of revenue is up to them. As you well know I also support a number of charities of my own choice. Is it any wonder that anyone who has anything to leave votes for a party which allows them that final freedom of choice and doesn’t seek to redistribute everything they have?

Sorry to sound blunt GG13, but give your chosen beneficiaries the things they need now. You really can't do anything with it after you're gone. And if they can afford to wait until you pop your clogs, they don't really need it.

All those people who go to food banks probably do need it.

growstuff

Germanshepherdsmum

If you have earned your wealth in a perfectly legal way and paid your taxes, why should other people ‘get their hands on it’ growstuff? How is that remotely fair?

I'm not talking about taking any of it away when people are alive. I'm talking about stopping babies being born unequal.

Actually you are advocating for robbery by the state.

Sounding like a case of I haven’t so neither should anyone else.

Yes volver, I’m entitled to hang on to my very nice house and my very nice car, all of which I and my husband have worked bloody hard for, and to pass my assets after IHT to whomsoever I wish. I have also paid a great deal of tax during my working life and still do. What the government of the day chooses to do with that nice chunk of revenue is up to them. As you well know I also support a number of charities of my own choice. Is it any wonder that anyone who has anything to leave votes for a party which allows them that final freedom of choice and doesn’t seek to redistribute everything they have?

Germanshepherdsmum

If you have earned your wealth in a perfectly legal way and paid your taxes, why should other people ‘get their hands on it’ growstuff? How is that remotely fair?

I'm not talking about taking any of it away when people are alive. I'm talking about stopping babies being born unequal.

Doodledog

It's absolutely not a choice between taking people's money and providing equality of opportunity. If we had a fairer system of progressive taxation we could have a system which ensured that every child had a good start, regardless of their financial expectations.

As I said upthread, by the time most people who are going to inherit do so, the opportunities from their parents are well on the way to their own children. A good education, a network of contacts, a culture of deferred gratification and many other factors that five people a 'good start in life' are all bestowed long before (in most cases) parents die and leave their offspring an inheritance.

Would those who want to remove inheritance take those things from those who have them, so they don't start life with an advantage over those who don't? If not, why push to take away inheritance. It's not a race to the bottom, and fairness can be achieved by giving rather than taking away.

Yes.

Germanshepherdsmum

It isn’t a loophole if an Indian citizen pays tax in India on their
earnings in India and pays tax in the UK on their earnings in the UK. But I’m sure everyone’s delighted that Mrs Sunak has said she will also pay tax in the UK on her Indian earnings.
Btw UC is paid for by everyone’s taxes.

Including the taxes the recipient has paid him/herself.

Pammie1

growstuff

OK! So people won't accept the idea of ensuring that all babies do at least have an equal opportunity the moment they are born, which doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

How about ensuring that every child has the best possible start in life by providing them with a genuinely world class education and funding state schools at the same level as the average for all private schools?

How about making sure that everybody receives genuinely free healthcare with no queue jumping, without money being siphoned off to private providers?

How about making sure that everybody can afford basic nutritional food and has adequately heated homes?

How about accepting that there's a very poor correlation between "working hard" and acquiring wealth? And accepting that some people don't deserve their wealth on their own merits - or their poverty?

I wouldn’t disagree with any of this and I haven’t seen a single post that disagrees with equal opportunity. But you propose to fund it by a 100% IHT on the property people leave behind when they die. Property that they’ve worked for all their lives and which are already subject to what amounts to confiscation by the state should they need care services in later life. Add the fact that they’ve already paid tax in various ways on that property throughout their lives, I think it’s a bit rich to ask people to stomach the tax man coming along and taking the lot, the moment they pop their clogs.

Frankly, the tax man can take every penny I have after I've popped my clogs. I'll be dead and won't be spending it.

Do you think this is the issue? People want to hold on to their wealth so that they can pass it on to their children, and they think those nasty commies want to deprive them of it. Then there are people who are just holding it together and can’t understand why those people with houses and cars think its OK to expect to live in comparative luxury, and hold on to money even after they’re dead.

And never the twain shall meet...

So what do you propose dickens?

Pammie1

growstuff

OK! So people won't accept the idea of ensuring that all babies do at least have an equal opportunity the moment they are born, which doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

How about ensuring that every child has the best possible start in life by providing them with a genuinely world class education and funding state schools at the same level as the average for all private schools?

How about making sure that everybody receives genuinely free healthcare with no queue jumping, without money being siphoned off to private providers?

How about making sure that everybody can afford basic nutritional food and has adequately heated homes?

How about accepting that there's a very poor correlation between "working hard" and acquiring wealth? And accepting that some people don't deserve their wealth on their own merits - or their poverty?

I wouldn’t disagree with any of this and I haven’t seen a single post that disagrees with equal opportunity. But you propose to fund it by a 100% IHT on the property people leave behind when they die. Property that they’ve worked for all their lives and which are already subject to what amounts to confiscation by the state should they need care services in later life. Add the fact that they’ve already paid tax in various ways on that property throughout their lives, I think it’s a bit rich to ask people to stomach the tax man coming along and taking the lot, the moment they pop their clogs.

There are many different ways to fund all this, other than a 100% IHT on your home.

We should look at the models that other countries use. We don't have to copy them exactly, but it does give ideas.

However, the first requirement is a government - and frankly I don't care which one it is - that is committed to these principles. And the one we've got, isn't. And isn't ever likely to be.

No-one should be penalised for having worked hard to own their home. Equally, the poor should not be punished because they might not have had the same opportunities.

And no-one should have to rely on the state to top up their wages because they are too low to cover the basics. Wages in the UK - certainly in England - have stagnated over the last 30 years, or more. Should we really expect someone working full-time to take on another job, just to make ends meet? Forget owning their own home... some will never earn enough to make that possible, and will feed the property market with its extortionate rents.

Do you remember when technology was in its infancy and we were told that in the future we'd all be working 4 day weeks with more leisure time? How naïve to think that this emerging technology would be used by large corporations, big business and the ultra wealthy to benefit the general working population. They have simply exploited it to cut down on human resources - and because of fierce competition have loaded those human resources with more work than they ever had before! When you make a 'phone call and are "held in a queue and will be answered as soon as an operator is available" - that's the exploitation in full force... because they will not employ more 'operators' to answer your call. You can wait - sometimes at your expense - while the harassed worker tries to deal with one vexed caller after another.

The old model of Capitalism is broken and worn out - it needs replacing with a new Capitalist economy. Some countries are managing it, haphazardly, but there is a recognition that you cannot continue to impose financial burdens on working people to the point where they are continually running faster just to stay in the same place. But we have 'fixes' to plug the gaps of a failing model, and that's what we do... wait for a disastrous event to further impoverish people, and then reactively fix it - by giving people a £200 'loan' to mitigate a 54% energy hike - putting them further in debt.

How long do you keep patching up an old pair of trousers that are so worn they fall apart as soon as they are repaired - how long until you realise you actually have to buy a new pair because they are just disintegrating day by day? The status quo cannot be maintained like this, but that is what this government is trying to do - as the interface between the wealthy elite and the public, to protect them and itself. Not us.