Budget day

rick_chasey

Yet research by the Financial Times has demonstrated that the living standards of those in their 60s are now rising faster than those in their 20s.
Viewed through that prism, the chancellor’s decision to make pensioners the target of his biggest Budget tax rise was a rare exercise in intergenerational redistribution.

finchy

Bozman wrote:

I don't get the 50%/45% tax thing, everybody should pay the same percentage whether you earn ten thousand or ten million, why should you be penalised for doing well in life. Labour just push it to get the "why should they have all the money" vote.

1. Because expenditure is a higher % of earnings for lower earnings, a flat tax would effectively mean that the poor pay higher rates of tax than the wealthy.

2. It's all based on ability to pay, it's nothing to do with justice.

3. Wealth is created as a society. At the moment I'm not a high earner, but I fully intend to get a decent wage later in life. When I do, I hope that I will remember all the ways in which society helped me get to that point - education, health, etc and realise that I should contribute more to the system which will have helped me to earn a high salary. In all honesty I come from a working class background on both my Mum's side and my Dad's. It is only thanks to the state (and general taxation) that I have any opportunities at all.

OffTheBackAdam

An EU angle to the application of full rate VAT to sausage rolls?
http://eureferendum.blogspot.co.uk/2012 ... fishy.html