roubaixtuesday wrote:Psamathe wrote:As the 5th largest economy in the world and with politicians continually declaring how well we are doing I don't accept it has to be an either/or situation. We can afford to do pensions and provide a sensible safety net for those in need. Of course to do that some companies would need to start paying some tax, some of the mega wealthy wll have to start paying tax, etc.
Ian
Sure. But right now, young people are funding pensioners to have a retirement income at a level they have no hope of ever attaining. I think that's wrong.
So do I. But the answer isn't to stop funding the pensioner but to make people who can afford it do so. That is, the large greedy companies and the large greedy greedymen of every ilk & tittle, as mentioned by Psamathe
We all paid lots and lots of National Insurance and tax when we worked. The ladywife still does, often at 40%! I for one don't mind in the least, as I believe in government as a means (amongst other things) to arrange a civil society. This includes ensuring everyone in it can benefit from participating. Being a citizen.
At present, the young are being prevented from full participation - via many claims on their income, not just tax - in order to support not pensioners but greedymen: rentiers, banks, privatised infrastructure service company profiteers and shareholders..... They pay directly and also via a greater percentage of their income as tax than the percentage paid by many greedymen.
Anyroadup, I feel you are over-simplifying to imagine that the tax paid by young people is directly funding pensions. Tax is not water and it doesn't go into a pipe at one end then out at another. Tax is an exudation of wealth which is meant to operate as an emollient to maintain the health of society .... All of it. It needs to exude most from the densest wealth. After all, the wealthy benefit most from society, do they not? It's what enables them to become weallthy, amongst other things.
I never can grasp why anyone needs to be a billionaire, especially if it's all stashed in some offshore bank account. Some billionaires use their outrageous wealth to make more billions, by making and selling toxic dross, gambling in "the markets" or squeezing rents out of others. What's the point?
Cugel
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes