Good points, @Fat Controller. Net zero is impossible to achieve whilst pretending to get there is highly lucrative for a few. If lifestyles are to be adjusted in a vain pursuit of its targets until sense reasserts itself somewhere down the line when every possible £ has been squeezed out of tax payers and ordinary folk, then those with the most profligate carbon footprints should be the first to experience restrictions, IMV.
Taxing savings will simply encourage more people to 'p*ss it up against the wall' i.e. not save anything but spend every pound they earn. Then, come retirement, they can't support themselves and the State has to provide everything for them.
My brother still lived in the family home when my mother died, and continued to live there. The house was valued at about £200k. That would have left him with a tax bill of £25k and absolutely no way to pay it without the house being sold. I agree that we need a simpler tax system, and one which can't be manipulated. The suggestions made simply make it clearer just how difficult that is to create.
Would this be a £100 million in cash or the sum of my assets including cash. A Euromillions lottery jackpot can be over £100 million. Let's say due to careful investment I have a few £100 million, without implementing a "Big Brother" type state how do you propose to restrict my spending? I just move abroad then what do you do, or I use assets as security for a loan and a third party company owned by an anonymous trust spends that and allows me to use that purchase.
I'm afraid I don't consider £100 million as "reasonable wealth" . Mega rich would be a better description. The average person surely does not need that sort of money to live on ( not doubt invested to gain more ) even if they lived to be a hundred. That is just one of the reasons I cannot understand Lotteries and such like - forget the Million pound prizes and instead use that to offer more chances of someone being able to win £10 ,£25 or even £50 k. That would help far more people overall and would curb the desire for private Jets, Yachts and the rest of it. Everyone wants more - human nature but we all seem bewitched by the word "Millions". Just a thought .......... if you suddenly found yourself with £1 million what would you spend it on ( apart from your Council Tax of course ) ?
Not asking you because that would be very rude @pete, but there are two ways of interpreting living off savings. Either you are spending the capital and any income, and will end up broke, or you are living solely off the income, which would imply that you have a reasonable amount of capital, and could therefore be described as rich.
Somehow people seem to think that invested money is just making more money for those that invest it. I think you need to look at things like government borrowing and companies running services. If nobody invested the country would soon grind to a halt, there needs to be a fair income from investment and a fair dividend for those investing. The problem I see was the years of zero interest rates, when it wasn't worth investing in your building society etc. as your money just slowly became worthless. Thats not the super rich I know but the bloke in the street mostly. If I had a 100 million I'd be out of here tomorrow.
Again, I see false information you have here. and again, not addressing it, since you seem to love to listen to false media. Take care.
Well I have a state pension and a tiny private pension, if I said 90 grand after paying into that for 40 yrs you can probably guess the tiny amout I get from that each month, and it will never rise. So about 13ish grand a year, but I'm rich because I bothered to save, why did I save? Because I thought it would give me a better retirement, it has but I have to dig into the savings for things like car repairs, household replacements and keep some back for the day they force a heat pump on to me. or and electric car. Not had a holiday since 2018 and that was 5 days in the IOW. The state pension just about covers day to day things but its getting less and less when you factor in insurances and council tax. Sometimes I think they wont be happy until we are back to living in caves. I'm certainly not living off the interest on my savings, like my Father did in the 1980s
@NigelJ, private jets could be restricted pretty easily. You wouldn't need to remove the wealth, just stop it being useful in supplying endless luxury that damages the planet and takes the basics from others. Anonymous trusts and all the other ways of concealing money need sorting out too. Simplicity. Transparency. Fairness. That is all I am proposing. @Philippa, I consider £100 million excessive wealth. @KT53, the reason for taxing money made by savings is this. If money making money is easier to accumulate than working to make money, those who start with money rapidly accumulate more and those who rely on work are not able to. The more you start with, the greater the effect, and that is how you end up with a huge wealth gap and resources (housing, etc) pooled in the hands of the few.
The population of France i 66.35 million. The population of USA is 347.28 million. The management style for France is certainly different than the management style for American. What works politically managing little France, size of Texas, will not work politically managing, the size of America and its grand diversity. Across America, there are specific cultural areas, there are East Coast thought process, West Coast thought process, Mid West, Southern and Northern, all of the areas think different, expect different. This is why the electoral vote is very important to America. Our founding fathers saw the difference. I just hope, for all of you, that each one of your countries, run so perfect that your happy as a pig in mud and would not change anything.
