General Discussion for politics in the UK.
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For anyone not wanting to read into the Reddit thread and is also from the US, it seems the "normal" tax rate is ~40% for people in the UK. So, 23% is a fairly large tax break.
I dunno how accurate that is, but if it's wrong, Cunningham's Law absolutely applies.
It’s not - he paid capital gains tax on a capital gain.
And it's still correct that it's a massive tax break.
The fact we have a massive tax break on capital gains compared to workers incomes is a shame on society in general and is basically the root of increasing inequality.
And it won't be fixed by people who benefit from it
Americans? Do they visit this place? Why would they?
Cause it's important to, at least, vaguely stay up to date o the news happening in countries that have a big presence on the world stage
have a big presence on the world stage
Aaah I see you're a smoker of the devils lettuce. ;)
I was there a few times. The beer was good and the pub atmosphere was kinda cool. Some random girl took me around the underground/after hours club scene in London once, so that was unique.
It was a good number of years ago though and lots of booze was involved, so I think I had some wicked-cool adventures?
Bad! Wrong!
The UK is a shitole beyond compare and I will have nothing good said about our shitole!
Well, y'all did give us the imperial system of measure, so I am really bitter about that. That is absolutely unforgivable, actually.
Because browsing new of all is the only way to use lemmy
Jesus. That's like winning the lottery every damn year. Why should a politician make that much? Let him go into corporate private business if he wants to make more. I guarantee you there will be someone who cares more about your country who is perfectly fine with making 200k-300k per year.
Did you read the article at all? His salary as PM was like 10% of his income. The rest was from investments he made FROM his time in banking.
Why is your FROM capitalized? To you type a lot of SQL on your phone and it got auto-capitalized or what?
Normalize SQL formatting IN normal text conversations
To underscore the point that he already worked in banking. The op said "if someone wants to make that much they should work in the private sector"...Rishi Sunak very much did work in the private sector.
SQL on phone sounds like a nightmare
His PM salary is only about 7% of that total.
His job is to represent the people of his electoral riding and manage the day to day work of the PM's office. That he's making £2M on the side is grounds for an immediate recall if you ask me.
I don't think he's making active investment decisions. In fact I'm almost certain it will be some sort of blind trust which is the usual mechanism ministers use for their investments when they go into office.
I know that's common practice and sometimes even the law, but it doesn't matter if it's a blind trust. The decisions made by the person getting the money are more influenced by how much they stand to gain or lose, and less by what the people want and need.
The point is that the people cannot possibly trust a representative who has higher priorities than serving the people.
Why should a politician make that much?
The idea is that it's one of, if not the most important job in the country and you want to be able to attract the best candidates.
If you were an extremely talented person and I offered you an MP role for £100K where you're under constant public scrutiny or a job on the board of a company for £1M which is arguably much easier than being an MP, which would you choose?
Inb4 "MP/PM roles are extremely prestigious so you should be happy to get paid so much less". You can't pay a mortgage with prestige.
I would actually go as far to say MPs should be paid more, but that they shouldn't be able to claim expenses or have second jobs etc etc
Unless the pm is a kleptomaniac. Hello from Malaysia - we give reduced jail terms and discounts on fines of more than 200million, if you embezzle over a billion dollars while in public office.
If you're an extremely talented person I would offer you the opportunity to bid on a contract to do a specific job.
If you cared about the country and had a vision you would apply to do it no matter the wage.
You don't want a politician to be the most talented person. You want a politician to be the person who has the ideas and hires the right people to get the job done.
The difference between ideals and reality.
The reality is that there is a class of people that can afford to be MPs, they're not doing it for the salary or their electorate, there doing it to bend the rules for themselves and their rich mates.
How many people do you know that do a job for the honour of it? Every now and again you might here a sportsman or someone like that say "I love my job so much I'd do it for free!", they still all take the money though.
Your last paragraph is somewhat of a paradox.
Can we not link to Reddit please?
Oh yeah!! 😂 I meant to copy the source article. Only just noticed the bloody thing goes to reddit!
Edit: Fixed. 👍
Wait. You can edit links after posting? This is awesome.
Thanks!
We need to fix this to make sure that income from wealth is taxed at the same rate as income from work.
No, it should be the other way around. Someone who does nothing but sit on his arse and put money forward should be taxed more than the people who give up their time - the most valuable of all commodities - to help the former group earn money doing nothing.
That's weird, his salary as PM is just £160,000. Has he been bunking off work early to go to some side job? Most employers have strict rules about employees working elsewhere at the same time, as it negatively impacts employee performance.
He owns shares. He makes money in his sleep. :(
Workers make money, he just gets some for no reason.
Misleading headline, bad Guardian. He paid income tax on income, and capital gains tax on a capital gains. Capital Gains tax is a flat rate (20%) the same as the basic rate of income tax. And you put your money in the US economy. Because it’s doing better than the UK one. No thanks to either government!
It's still "income" in the sense that it's money comeing in to his account. Only difference is that he didn't even need to do anything to earn it.
We used to tax capital gains at the same rate as income until it was slashed in 2008.
You’re right about the slash by Brown in 2008 - it was 40% under Lawson (Conservative) - that should be revisited
From a tax perspective it’s not the same - not least because it’s hard to pin down when the money was earned- if you bought shares 10 years ago, and their value increased 8 years ago and then you held them for 8 years before selling this year when do you say the gain was? If you paying a low rate of income tax 8 years ago should you pay that on the gain? You can say 20% is too low, but you can’t treat it like earned income.
Likewise you do earn it in a sense (if everything is working right) - you give up the ability to access that cash and accept you might make a loss
If you’re just objecting to the idea you can use money to make money - Ok, but that seems to be an intrinsic property of money and there’s not much to be done about it.
Most of the people on Lemmy hate capitalism, so they very much object to the concept of using money to make money. They want to burn the entire system down. You won’t find much insightful discussion about economics here unfortunately. It’s mostly stuff they read in Das Kapital in their first year of college.
So that's why I often get the distinct sensation of Freshman dormitory around here!
I am absolutely shocked the guardian would spin it like this. Oh wait, no I'm not. 😆
It's not even much of a spin, I reckon more people understand "income" to mean the money you have coming in than specifically non-capital-gains income. It's also then clarified in the very first line of the article.