Let's support Ed Balls's 50p tax rate instead of George Osborne's shameful attack on the poor

Ed Balls has been the object of widespread attack and ridicule since his weekend move to raise the top rate of tax to 50p. However, I am certain that the shadow chancellor is right to make his 50p pledge, and furthermore there are solid Conservative reasons to justify his action

It is very important to remember that the Conservative Party is not an interest group which represents only the very rich. In fact it should not be a class-based party at all. The Conservative Party has always claimed to represent the nation as a whole.

As someone who voted Conservative at the last election, I therefore found it profoundly shaming and offensive when George Osborne lowered the top rate of tax from 50p to 45p two years ago.

The Coalition government has devoted a great deal of effort to lowering the living standards of the poor. I support this project because I believe that Gordon Brown’s welfare state forced some people into a life of dependency, thus taking away their human dignity.

There have been many people on welfare who need much more of an incentive to return to work. But to make the rich richer at the same time as making the poor poorer – what George Osborne has been doing – is simply squalid, immoral and disgusting. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is leading the fight inside the cabinet to strip a further £10 billion of welfare payments for the very poorest. Any decent human being must surely feel sick in the stomach that he is taking this action at the same time as cutting the amount of tax paid by people earning more than £150,000.

Conservative HQ claimed this morning that Mr Balls move "takes Labour back to the 1970s". This claim is pure bilge, and suggests that the Conservative Party has lost the plot. Back then the Labour chancellor imposed a tax rate of 83 per cent, which was clearly stupid, wrong, driven by socialist envy, and a disincentive to hard work. Raising taxes to 50p in the pound for the highest earners is a completely different matter.

Have a look at the lists of people complaining today – they are mainly the very rich. As we learnt during the Blair years, the very rich tend to support the government of the day. Some of them shamefully avoid paying tax.

A Conservative Party with decent values should not reward these people. It should support hard-working, honest people. If the Chancellor understood this point, he would have taken middle earners out of the top rate of tax, not given a bonus to people who are already affluent.

So well done Ed Balls, who has had a hard time lately. He has given ordinary, decent people a serious reason for voting Labour at the coming election.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100256699/lets-support-ed-ballss-50p-tax-rate-instead-of-george-osbornes-shameful-attack-on-the-poor/

    

Fortunately a significant portion of Labour supporters now understand higher tax rates means less tax revenue and are opposed to this.

Well, that's a decent man for you, whichever party he supports.

sphinx wrote:Fortunately a significant portion of Labour supporters now understand higher tax rates means less tax revenue and are opposed to this.

Shameful

I'd like to see the evidence for that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve

sphinx wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve

No, the evidence for your statement that Labour party supporters don't back it. After all, the Telegraph was talking about 69% of them supporting it, and it was just because of envy.

Sassy wrote:

sphinx wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve

No, the evidence for your statement that Labour party supporters don't back it.   After all, the Telegraph was talking about 69% of them supporting it, and it was just because of envy.

Ah my mistake - it was the case that the shadow cabinet were rather split over it - I was over crediting members with sense there.

sphinx wrote:

Sassy wrote:

No, the evidence for your statement that Labour party supporters don't back it.   After all, the Telegraph was talking about 69% of them supporting it, and it was just because of envy.

Ah my mistake - it was the case that the shadow cabinet were rather split over it - I was over crediting members with sense there.

They are? Evidence please, as you asked for in another thread.

http://news-post.co.uk/news/50p-tax-backlash-sees-shadow-cabinet-split-and-ed-balls-attacked-over-politics-daily-mail

Nope, that's just the DM saying something, it has no factual support.

You mean 63% tax rate plus employers NI of course.

A tax on jobs just the recipe fro disaster tried in France.

A lefties idea of equality is everyone being poor and by golly Milliband will achieve it.

Sassy wrote:Nope, that's just the DM saying something, it has no factual support.

In denial again. Then Blairites will be in full scale revolt you dense woman. Are you really so dense that you believe the shadow cabinet will be as one. Not everyone in the Labour party thinks spiteful thoughts like you.

The politics of envy.

Oh bless, did you have to come back because your wife chucked you out of bed?

You accept that the rich should be allowed to hold the country to ransom. Your moral chart has got a bit twisted, probably from licking all the boots of those with more than you, and grovelling to them.

Clarkson wrote:You mean 63% tax rate plus employers NI of course.

A tax on jobs just the recipe fro disaster tried in France.

A lefties idea of equality is everyone being poor and by golly Milliband will achieve it.

50% tax rate. Can pay won't pay.

Sums them up. Where will your wife go? Will she still want the protection of the state and the Navy if needed?

Actually this is one thing on which drinky and me found some accord,
No-one likes to feel they are having their toger ripped off, and it is a sad fact that them wot 'ave are a singularly tight fisted bunch, having got rich on the back of what today amounts to near slave labour, having got rich by having their businesses SUSIDISED by the state (in the form of tax credits so they can pay wretched low wages) they wont pay up, they will, traitors that they are, flee. SO, answers

dont tax the individual so high...it makes them feel all sad and treacherous, insted we need to tackle the institutions that make them rich

so abandon employers NI
and institute instead, a "social responsibility tax"
this can be staged according to payroll size, profit and more importantly the difference..INCLUDING BONUSES, between the top paid management and the lowest paid bog cleaner. this element would be graded very steeply so where large differences occured large taxation would be the result...It would be somewhat off set by having a large payrol meaning you paid a bit less.

Also...the rule should be implemented that corporation tax, which I believe is the equivalent of income tax for a company, should be paid on every penny earned here....you make it here, you pay it here...No hiding it off shore, fiddling the tax with spurious internal loans from subsiduaries abroad.

and Yes drinky dear i do know the difference between turnover and profit....I would have em pay on every penny made ....then let em claim back their costs, seperately....where they can be properly scrutinised for "evasive techniques"

sphinx wrote:Fortunately a significant portion of Labour supporters now understand higher tax rates means less tax revenue and are opposed to this.

Do you honestly believe that all your snivelling, grovelling and begging to your so called betters off will actually pay off, do you think they'll look down on you with pity and reward you for your servitude?

scrat wrote:

sphinx wrote:Fortunately a significant portion of Labour supporters now understand higher tax rates means less tax revenue and are opposed to this.

Do you honestly believe that all your snivelling, grovelling and begging to your so called betters off will actually pay off, do you think they'll look down on you with pity and reward you for your servitude?

You could go fox hunting with Sphinx! lol

Catman wrote:

scrat wrote:
Do you honestly believe that all your snivelling, grovelling and begging to your so called betters off will actually pay off, do you think they'll look down on you with pity and reward you for your servitude?

You could go fox hunting with Sphinx! lol

Hunting is in my blood Phil, I enjoy hunting and always will, when you feel the mane stiffen, the ears prick up and the nostrils flare, you'll understand that feeling, that hunting is natural and vital, and that we're animals that eat meat!

may as well tax the British rich to oblivion they are wasting it anyway, start a fund for young entrepreneurs and get your country moving             
 You've stalled too many old coggers withholding the funds to make it go.

scrat wrote:

Catman wrote:

scrat wrote:
Do you honestly believe that all your snivelling, grovelling and begging to your so called betters off will actually pay off, do you think they'll look down on you with pity and reward you for your servitude?

You could go fox hunting with Sphinx! lol

Hunting is in my blood Phil, I enjoy hunting and always will, when you feel the mane stiffen, the ears prick up and the nostrils flare, you'll understand that feeling, that hunting is natural and vital, and that we're animals that eat meat!

Kill it with your bare hands, then I'll be impressed

veya_victaous wrote:may as well tax the British rich to oblivion they are wasting it anyway, start a fund for young entrepreneurs and get your country moving             
 You've stalled too many old coggers withholding the funds to make it go.

Perhaps if young entrepreneurs did not face the prospect of receiving such swingeing tax bills as a reward for their hard work, initiative and sacrifice of personal and family life they might be even more motivated to "get the country moving."

Fred Moletrousers wrote:

veya_victaous wrote:may as well tax the British rich to oblivion they are wasting it anyway, start a fund for young entrepreneurs and get your country moving             
 You've stalled too many old coggers withholding the funds to make it go.

Perhaps if young entrepreneurs did not face the prospect of receiving such swingeing tax bills as a reward for their hard work, initiative and sacrifice of personal and family life they might be even more motivated to "get the country moving."

Perhaps you should address your own shortcomings M'lud, greed begets greed and you worship this, you have defended troughing at every opportunity and you enjoy watching the poor suffer as austerity measures and lowering standards of living take hold, you have only ever displayed a sneering treachery towards the British worker.

Would you like some fish with your chips?

scrat wrote:

Fred Moletrousers wrote:

Perhaps if young entrepreneurs did not face the prospect of receiving such swingeing tax bills as a reward for their hard work, initiative and sacrifice of personal and family life they might be even more motivated to "get the country moving."

Perhaps you should address your own shortcomings M'lud, greed begets greed and you worship this, you have defended troughing at every opportunity and you enjoy watching the poor suffer as austerity measures and lowering standards of living take hold, you have only ever displayed a sneering treachery towards the British worker.

Would you like some fish with your chips?

What I would like is for you occasionally to respond intelligently to a discussion instead of posting your usual histrionic, mendacious and abuse-laden garbage.

scrat wrote:

Catman wrote:

You could go fox hunting with Sphinx! lol

Hunting is in my blood Phil, I enjoy hunting and always will, when you feel the mane stiffen, the ears prick up and the nostrils flare, you'll understand that feeling, that hunting is natural and vital, and that we're animals that eat meat!

Are you serious?

Dont get me wrong I know exactly what you are talking about I am just not used to those with left political leanings admitting they know it.