Billionaires -should wealth be capped

Shandypants

Shandypants

Well-known member
The Sunak family, Russian oligarchs etc. The wealth is utterly obscene, to put this into context if you spent £1 a second you would go through one million in 12 days and one billion in 32 years. Let that sink in, the difference is staggering. Those individuals are multi billionaires as well Abramovich has an estimated wealth of £12 billion. Its sick when huge swathes of the planet are living in abject poverty.
No man alive needs anywhere near a billion to live, in my opinion wealth should be capped, 100m is more than enough.
 
Yep same as all these ridiculous FFP rules, if you don’t want the high rollers then wave goodbye to the Prem being the best league in the world and the end of managers like Pep Klopp etc as you can be sure the Italian and Spanish leagues will welcome them with open arms. The Premier League generates massive money and tax revenue for this country but we must be seen as holier than thou.
 
Memphisboy said:
Yep same as all these ridiculous FFP rules, if you don’t want the high rollers then wave goodbye to the Prem being the best league in the world and the end of managers like Pep Klopp etc as you can be sure the Italian and Spanish leagues will welcome them with open arms. The Premier League generates massive money and tax revenue for this country but we must be seen as holier than thou.
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Who gives a shit about the Premier league? Are you really proud that corrupt regimes (Saudi, city owners and Abramovich) are pumping money in
 
Lost Seasider said:
Depends, if you want them all to leave the country, not pay a penny in tax, not spend a penny in the country, not invest in businesses, create jobs and wealth for others, then that's the way to go.
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Haha do you think they pay proper levels of tax? Dear me....you think Russians buying a mass of property in London has helped our economy in any way?
 
Memphisboy said:
All the financial transactions carry a tax and the City of London financial centre bankrolls vast swathes of the country but yes let Frankfurt take over. We’ll all be destitute but we’ll have clear consciences.
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What has your response got anything to do with my point? Anyway didn't you want to leave the EU? Spare me your concern for the city of London.
 
Shandypants said:
Haha do you think they pay proper levels of tax? Dear me....you think Russians buying a mass of property in London has helped our economy in any way?
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If you think the only people with that much money are Russian oligarchs, if you think the country would be better off with Mr Sunak an investment banker living in the US, James Dyson still in Singapore, all the other billionaires scattered around the world, that's your opinion, I'm not sure how many would agree with it.
 
Lost Seasider said:
If you think the only people with that much money are Russian oligarchs, if you think the country would be better off with Mr Sunak an investment banker living in the US, James Dyson still in Singapore, all the other billionaires scattered around the world, that's your opinion, I'm not sure how many would agree with it.
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Not many agree with your views. I'm glad to see the back of Dyson who makes shit stuff, took EU money when it suited and buggered off. Sunak go run off as well, he's a shyster. It cracks me up how the man on the street sides with Billionaires as though they add something to their life.
 
Lost Seasider said:
Depends, if you want them all to leave the country, not pay a penny in tax, not spend a penny in the country, not invest in businesses, create jobs and wealth for others, then that's the way to go.
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Hmm. Not sure it’s as zero sum as that.

When it comes to business investments, they will invest where they can get the workforce that will make sense for their business. That won’t change with a 100mill wealth cap. Many billionaires already base themselves in tax efficient territories (not paying UK tax) and invest in the UK. A wealth cap wouldn’t change that.

I know one example of a billionaire who wanted to run a hedge fund from the channel islands, where he was from. The infrastructure and workforce required basically made it impossible. He did however set one up, where he executed from Jersey, with a skeleton company of about 15 people. Meanwhile he created a sister company in London that basically does all the work, and now employs over 1000 people. Why? Because people want to live and work in London, and the UK produces the highly skilled workforce required to do the work.

You could argue that those 1,000 odd employees wouldn’t want to work in London with a 100m wealth cap but I’m not sure even the top people in the business would earn 100m. Such is the massive gap between the owner and those who work there, even though many of them will be multimillionaires.

I just don’t know how you would go about enforcing a wealth cap to be honest, even though I’m kind of for the idea in principle.
 
What a weird bunch of sycophants we have in this country. They believe billionaires create and add value to this country and are scared they will scarper elsewhere as soon as you tax them an extra 10p. Bollocks to them, they can all leave the UK tomorrow. They avoid tax, hoover up property so it's becomes unaffordable by the locals. It's hard to believe that people on modest incomes support people who are wealthy beyond reason, it's not like they have a spare few quid or can afford a ski and summer holiday. Wake up to their wealth, it's so vast it's disgusting.
 
So once an individual reaches the cap then we stop paying him/her to do their job? The only gripe I have about these people is they are always looking to avoid paying taxes no matter how much they have even though they will never spend it all; just sheer greed.
 
EagleDay said:
So once an individual reaches the cap then we stop paying him/her to do their job? The only gripe I have about these people is they are always looking to avoid paying taxes no matter how much they have even though they will never spend it all; just sheer greed.
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You think billionaires are paid to do a job 😂😂
 
Shandypants said:
What a weird bunch of sycophants we have in this country. They believe billionaires create and add value to this country and are scared they will scarper elsewhere as soon as you tax them an extra 10p. Bollocks to them, they can all leave the UK tomorrow. They avoid tax, hoover up property so it's becomes unaffordable by the locals. It's hard to believe that people on modest incomes support people who are wealthy beyond reason, it's not like they have a spare few quid or can afford a ski and summer holiday. Wake up to their wealth, it's so vast it's disgusting.
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Avoiding tax is not illegal. Most people do it in the forms of ISAs and pensions.

So your idea is we throw them all out for following the law, which in turn would reduce HMRCs tax take significantly....and while you are at it, you massively slow down / reduce investment and employment in the UK, while massively increasing the tax burden of the average person in the UK to cover for the money now not being paid.

Thank god you are not anywhere near power.
 
seasideone said:
Avoiding tax is not illegal. Most people do it in the forms of ISAs and pensions.
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So, is this statement aimed at those who have ISA‘s and Pensions, do you think 🤔

‘Tax avoidance involves bending the rules of the tax system to try to gain a tax advantage that Parliament never intended.

It often involves contrived, artificial transactions that serve little or no purpose other than to produce this advantage. It involves operating within the letter, but not the spirit, of the law.

Most tax avoidance schemes simply do not work, and those who use them may end up having to pay much more than the tax they tried to avoid, including penalties.’
 
Recidivist3 said:
So, is this statement aimed at those with ISA and Pension holders, do you think 🤔

‘Tax avoidance involves bending the rules of the tax system to try to gain a tax advantage that Parliament never intended.

It often involves contrived, artificial transactions that serve little or no purpose other than to produce this advantage. It involves operating within the letter, but not the spirit, of the law.

Most tax avoidance schemes simply do not work, and those who use them may end up having to pay much more than the tax they tried to avoid, including penalties.’
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Tax avoidance is simply using means within the law to not pay tax - such as an ISA or a pension - sorry if this does not fit in with most peoples opinions - but it is tax avoidance.

Any tax avoidance scheme that does not fit in with HMRC (or work in your terms) is not tax avoidance, it's tax evasion which is illegal and punished (not enough in my opinion).

All this 'within the spirit of the law' is frankly quite bollox - the law is the law.
 
It’s a real eye opener this thread.

I hadn’t realised how lucky we were to have so many benevolent billionaires living in the U.K. and playing the system to avoid paying tax. Our lives are so enriched every time a Russian Oligarch or member of a Middle Eastern Royal family buys a palatial property in London via an offshore company based in the BVI or Cayman Islands. Imagine how shit our lives would be if they all opted to live in Dubai or Singapore instead.

Actually I’m going to start a petition to have statues of each of them erected in every town in the North West so that we can give thanks on a daily basis. It’s just what the people in towns like Burnley, Blackburn and Blackpool need 👍
 
Seasideone said

‘Any tax avoidance scheme that does not fit in with HMRC (or work in your terms) is not tax avoidance, it's tax evasion which is illegal and punished (not enough in my opinion).’

🤔 You’d think that gov.U.K.would know the difference, wouldn’t you
 
Recidivist3 said:
Seasideone said

‘Any tax avoidance scheme that does not fit in with HMRC (or work in your terms) is not tax avoidance, it's tax evasion which is illegal and punished (not enough in my opinion).’

🤔 You’d think that gov.U.K.would know the difference, wouldn’t you
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You have lost me with that one?
 
seasideone said:
Avoiding tax is not illegal. Most people do it in the forms of ISAs and pensions.

So your idea is we throw them all out for following the law, which in turn would reduce HMRCs tax take significantly....and while you are at it, you massively slow down / reduce investment and employment in the UK, while massively increasing the tax burden of the average person in the UK to cover for the money now not being paid.

Thank god you are not anywhere near power.
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The obvious and much used ploy when coming up against a set of principles you don't agree with is to post an interpretation of what you want the other person to have said by making out it is indeed, what they have said: "So you would have..." "So your idea is..."
 
1966_and_all_that said:
The obvious and much used ploy when coming up against a set of principles you don't agree with is to post an interpretation of what you want the other person to have said by making out it is indeed, what they have said: "So you would have..." "So your idea is..."
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He was pretty clear 'Bollocks to them, they can all leave the UK tomorrow.'

I interpret that to him wanting them to leave if they do not do what he wants.

You can interpret any way you want - it's a free (supposedly) country.
 
First things first - wealth should not be capped and im not even sure how it could be capped, even the soviet communist system had a wealthy elite and inhereted benefits for descendents in a system that should have not permitted that.

Secondly, is libertarian free market capitalism a functional system for societal growth, economically or otherwise - based on the evidence: no. There is too much wealth in too small a set of the population and that set is accumulating more and more of the available wealth (libertarians are wrong when they claim wealth is an unlimited resource). Free Market Capitalism in order to function requires firstly competition to regulate the market and participation of the population to ensure continuity. The current libertarian mindset is giving rise to monopolies, virtual monopolies, or monoplolistic co-operation, in a majority of markets - which undermines or in some cases removes competition and stops new companies entering the market. The current libertarian mindset (with 40 to 50 years of maturity) which prioritises capital over labour reduces participation in the economy beyond basic needs for an increasingly large proportion of the population. The prevailing idea of economists that stable economies require inflation below 2%, is based on the idea that at least 4 to 6% of the workingage population have to be unemployed in order to maintain low wages. The knock on effect is that at least 20 to 30% of the working population has to be in insecure low paid work to ensure that low wages prevail.

The issue is that low wages reduces participation, which in turn reduces the ability of companies to sell products. What we have seen in the global economy of the last twenty odd years is a downward spiral of prices in order to find customers, at a price they can afford. This has been largely sated by very cheap but very high risk credit, the risks having been recalculated to appear low risk, which in itself is a huge capitalistic problem.

Additionally the prioritisation of capital over labour means that credit and finance in general is not as readily available for productive purposes. It is fundamentally much easier to finance assets, or percieved assets, and use various means of increasing the percieved value of those assets, to extract what is at best virtual wealth. That wealth is now becoming inacessible to all but the top few percent of the economic distribution.

Capitalism in its current form is eating itself, through reducing the number of customers it can sell produced goods to and limiting access to real (and virtual) asset wealth. The only way Capitalism succeeds in this light is market control.

Does high tax work - not in the current climate - tax avoidance is too attractive. Lowering tax rates in a global economy ensures that large corporation move to sunnier and more liberal climes. Amazon recieves millions in tax breaks and gets numerous incentives to locate in a region on the basis that it will bring in thousands of new jobs. Most of those jobs (based on UK data) will be minimum wage, many will be low hour contracts with limited rights and benefits, and a large proportion of those workers will require state assistance to meet basic needs of food clothing and shelter. Also for every amazon job created in the uk there is at least an equivalent loss in the wider retail sector. amazon is permitted to under report its earnings by a two thirds and send almost all profit to a third country. Also the only way an investor in Amazon can earn from the company is to ensure that the stock price goes up, they do not pay dividends, therefore it requires short term investing by mass investors which additionally puts risk into the financial system.

Capitalism is broken, Socialism DOES NOT WORK (or at least traditional conservative clause four Socialism), so wealth will continue to move increasingly quickly to a smaller number of individuals or corporations and power will be held by those with wealth. The rest of us no matter how wealthy we might think we are, are simply a resource for those hyper wealthy individuals. The current gap has to be closed, but in many respects the wealth at the very top of the tree is underwritten by the population through government, and wealth and earnings at the bottom of the economic scale are left to market circumstances. If that changed the wealth gap could be decreased.
 
It's an interesting thought experiment. Do we actually *need* the kind of giant companies that do everything and dominate markets? Do they 'create' wealth or do they choke opportunity for others?

I dunno. I have my doubts. It seems to me that once people reach the kind of earning power that makes them unimaginably rich, it often also comes with a power within markets that mean they can crush competition and thus innovation with ease. They become like some kind of slime, absorbing everything.

It's a slightly different argument to personal wealth, but it's linked. There's a kind of psycopathy to the way certain huge companies work that I don't understand that must be linked to individual desire - Amazon is a crude example, but where as I would like to say, write a book, or run a cafe or something and have no desire to write all the books and run all the cafes and then also branch out into other areas, companies like Amazon seem to want a total hold over as many things as they can. For the sake of it. I don't really understand it. I couldn't be arsed.

There's other examples. Those weird groups with names like 'capita' (I'm not sure if Capita actually is one, but you know the type - they run school dinner services, prisons, road fixing contracts and all sorts of mad contrasting shit) that bid for stuff. They're not even companies in a traditional sense - they just get contracts and then hire people to do things, often badly. It's like they only exist to expand - there's no sense of real identity to them.

That kind of giant company stymies opportunity for other people to be 'capitalistic' - they become essentially the marketplace as opposed to a player in the market because everyone has to yield to them and work beneath or around them.

I'm not sure I've put this very well, but it's something I think is a problem.
 
What I don't understand or can get my head around are who are and owns the banks that lend money to countries???
Who regulates them and why when countries have banks of their own that can print money and give it away however they feel but call it quantitive easing have to borrow?. The mind boggles at the fact that someone or institution lends money to countries therefore in reality calling the tunes and making the rules.
 
I've found since these big chains started in the sixties, that's as far as my memory allows, the choice of goods seems to have diminished somewhat. All the smaller shops have gone in most towns where you could find almost anything to be replaced by big stores who only stock what they want you to buy because they order in bulk and distribute to the rest of the chain. I imagine fewer companies in the industrial sector has the same effect.
 
td53 said:
It's an interesting thought experiment. Do we actually *need* the kind of giant companies that do everything and dominate markets? Do they 'create' wealth or do they choke opportunity for others?
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Do you have a car? How much do you think the manufacturer spent developing that model? How much do you think they spent building the factory that made the car?

How much do you think it costs to develop a new pharmaceutical? Or a new piece of computer equipment, or in fact almost anything modern?
 
td53 said:
It's an interesting thought experiment. Do we actually *need* the kind of giant companies that do everything and dominate markets? Do they 'create' wealth or do they choke opportunity for others?

I dunno. I have my doubts. It seems to me that once people reach the kind of earning power that makes them unimaginably rich, it often also comes with a power within markets that mean they can crush competition and thus innovation with ease. They become like some kind of slime, absorbing everything.

It's a slightly different argument to personal wealth, but it's linked. There's a kind of psycopathy to the way certain huge companies work that I don't understand that must be linked to individual desire - Amazon is a crude example, but where as I would like to say, write a book, or run a cafe or something and have no desire to write all the books and run all the cafes and then also branch out into other areas, companies like Amazon seem to want a total hold over as many things as they can. For the sake of it. I don't really understand it. I couldn't be arsed.

There's other examples. Those weird groups with names like 'capita' (I'm not sure if Capita actually is one, but you know the type - they run school dinner services, prisons, road fixing contracts and all sorts of mad contrasting shit) that bid for stuff. They're not even companies in a traditional sense - they just get contracts and then hire people to do things, often badly. It's like they only exist to expand - there's no sense of real identity to them.

That kind of giant company stymies opportunity for other people to be 'capitalistic' - they become essentially the marketplace as opposed to a player in the market because everyone has to yield to them and work beneath or around them.

I'm not sure I've put this very well, but it's something I think is a problem.
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its more than an interesting thought experiment, the idea behind giant companies is fundamental to the functioning of capitalism: market dominance and monopolisation (in its various forms) literally removes the core idea of capitalism. No company wants competition its anathema to company survival.

Earning power cannot make you unimaginarilly rich (although you can get filthy rich), what makes a billionaire is ownership and control of assets, markets and resources including people.

Its interesting you mention psychopathy. I do a lot of work on corporate structure, and one of my research interests is the effects of said condition plus sociopathy and narcissism on corporations, particularly as there is according to some studies 30 to 40 times the incidences of empathy deficiency (5 to 6 times the incidences of psychopathy) amongst leading business executives as well as high level government people. The vast majority of large corporations exhibit traits of said personality disorders within their core operations and in the way their employees behave, which has a detrimental effect on business practice in general and i think the societal impact is possibly worse.

The weird groups like Capita are literally a means of transferring wealth, priveledge and power in a nepotistic manner in my opinion. They serve no useful function in delivering better service or cheaper service. It seems to be: here is 10, 50 or 200 million pounds worth of assets, work or resources that we have to get off of public books in order to enrich members of an ingroup. At which point the public purse is stiffed to the tune of 20, 100 or 200 million pounds. A times article that was reporting on the carillion collapse in which a senior member of the audit office claimed that pretty much all of the major outsource companies had insolent business models and would not qualify for government contracts under nay reading of the regulations.

you are absolutley spot on about large companies becoming the market, and it is much more pronounced today than it was twenty years ago.
 
Lost Seasider said:
Do you have a car? How much do you think the manufacturer spent developing that model? How much do you think they spent building the factory that made the car?

How much do you think it costs to develop a new pharmaceutical? Or a new piece of computer equipment, or in fact almost anything modern?
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and the point is?

With established car companies the development costs are shared amongst many manufacturers. They also share factories, and look to move production to low wage economies and actively shut out innovation that is contrary to their operating models.

Newer car companies use investor money to firstly develop and prototype the car and then market it to the public, pre orders finance firstly the typical testing and proving process and with enough pre-orders a public listing, the initial public listing gets the factory constructed. Whether they ever deliver a single car is moot.

Modern pharmacuetical development is much the same.

The risk in this model, lies with the mass investors who buy into the public listing, the customers who pre-purchase and the employees who generally join up and work at relatively low wages in exchange for stock options which they will never be able to exercise due to firstly restrictive covenants on their small number of shares, the downgrading of those shares as more investment comes in, and of course the eventual collapse of the company. The founders and the angel investors will of course have cashed in a large proportion of their stock, and will do this several times with different start ups risk and almost always consequence free.
 
Shandypants said:
Not many agree with your views. I'm glad to see the back of Dyson who makes shit stuff, took EU money when it suited and buggered off. Sunak go run off as well, he's a shyster. It cracks me up how the man on the street sides with Billionaires as though they add something to their life.
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The trickle down effect that the Tories preach is basically them pissing on the public from a great height. Trickling down their trouser leg.
 
Nobody has answered my question.

How do you put a ceiling on someone's wealth.

Are you proposing a 100% marginal tax rate at a specific amount?

Does it include assets or is it just cash? Assets go up and down in value.

Does it apply to companies or just individuals?

Is it only a UK only thing?

There's more questions than these; but it's a basic starting point.
 
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TSSeasider said:
Nobody has answered my question.

How do you put a ceiling on someone's wealth.

Are you proposing a 100% marginal tax rate at a specific amount?

Does it include assets or is it just cash? Assets go up and down in value.

Does it apply to companies or just individuals?

Is it only a UK only thing?

There's more questions than these; but it's a basic starting point.
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I'm assuming your question was the how?
In practical terms it is impossible to cap or put a ceiling on wealth, other than the point that available wealth at any one time is a finite resource, although many will disagree with that,

if you want to get into the tax argument there is already low hanging fruit. By making companies declare what they actually earn would be a start, tax earnings at point of earnings is another. You have to bear in mind as well that when the US economy was at its strongest it had a marginal tax rate of 92%. The latest agreements at the G20 where all companies should pay at least 15% is literally allowing big global companies a free hit against smaller companies, who will be paying 25, 30 or 40%. Historically I've been in favour of a flat tax rate across the board but ive changed my mind on that recently due to the reasons below.

Assets could be taxed, every company declaring a value of lets say a quarter of a billion would get a wealth tax of lets say 0.5% of that wealth, 1 biliion its 1%, 2 billion 2% or something similar. This isn't just to raise tax revenue, I think it would be useful in reigning in ridiculous asset values in general. Also one idea I have is that productive and non productive earnings are taxed at different rates with non productive earnings taxed on a sliding scale upwards to something fairly high 60-70% maybe, whilst productive earnings are taxed at a standard rate across the board. The other part of this is how finance and banks are taxed - lending for non productive purposes ie the aquisition of assets should be taxed at a fairly high rate, as well as being subject to capital gains. This firstly raises tax revenue and should push economies back towards productive means rather than being geared for rentier models.

There would have to be rules built in for innovators, and rules for those people who build productive companies, that employ people and actually create wealth.

Individuals in my opinion should have a flat tax rate across the board with much stronger limits on avoidance.

An individual country would need to do it because global systems are fundamentally tied into a libertarian, privatisation heavy, supply side economic model. If an individual country was to do that and lets say big global firms pulled out, that economy still has economic needs - the country would be forced to look inwards for its productive capacity. It's pie in the sky of course because there isn't a single western indutrialised nation that has a government that a) has the inclination to change the systems and b) the basic competence (in most cases).
 
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Costero Poderoso said:
I'm assuming your question was the how?
In practical terms it is impossible to cap or put a ceiling on wealth, other than the point that available wealth at any one time is a finite resource, although many will disagree with that,

if you want to get into the tax argument there is already low hanging fruit. By making companies declare what they actually earn would be a start, tax earnings at point of earnings is another. You have to bear in mind as well that when the US economy was at its strongest it had a marginal tax rate of 92%. The latest agreements at the G20 where all companies should pay at least 15% is literally allowing big global companies a free hit against smaller companies, who will be paying 25, 30 or 40%. Historically I've been in favour of a flat tax rate across the board but ive changed my mind on that recently due to the reasons below.

Assets could be taxed, every company declaring a value of lets say a quarter of a billion would get a wealth tax of lets say 0.5% of that wealth, 1 biliion its 1%, 2 billion 2% or something similar. This isn't just to raise tax revenue, I think it would be useful in reigning in ridiculous asset values in general. Also one idea I have is that productive and non productive earnings are taxed at different rates with non productive earnings taxed on a sliding scale upwards to something fairly high 60-70% maybe, whilst productive earnings are taxed at a standard rate across the board. The other part of this is how finance and banks are taxed - lending for non productive purposes ie the aquisition of assets should be taxed at a fairly high rate, as well as being subject to capital gains. This firstly raises tax revenue and should push economies back towards productive means rather than being geared for rentier models.

There would have to be rules built in for innovators, and rules for those people who build productive companies, that employ people and actually create wealth.

Individuals in my opinion should have a flat tax rate across the board with much stronger limits on avoidance.

An individual country would need to do it because global systems are fundamentally tied into a libertarian, privatisation heavy, supply side economic model. If an individual country was to do that and lets say big global firms pulled out, that economy still has economic needs - the country would be forced to look inwards for its productive capacity. It's pie in the sky of course because there isn't a single western indutrialised nation that has a government that a) has the inclination to change the systems and b) the basic competence (in most cases).
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Let's tax everything out of existence, reduce investment and therefore growth and employment - and tax none liquid assets.

That last bit alone scares me more than Jeremy Corbyn!

WOW - thank god you are nowhere near power 👍
 
seasideone said:
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Let's tax everything out of existence, reduce investment and therefore growth and employment - and tax none liquid assets.

That last bit alone scares me more than Jeremy Corbyn!

WOW - thank god you are nowhere near power 👍
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With all due respect i dont think you have understood it. The idea is to tax non productive earnings which are not measured in economic growth and generally dont create jobs, they just increase asset values. By reducing tax for productive endeavour you create a production and job and create real economic growth, and then ease the financial system away from asets to productivity.

It should scare you more than Corbyns simplistic marxist inspired nationalising socialism, because it fundamentally changes the way society works. Capitalism is broken, and tinkering at the edges of the system is no longer enough.

And where i am occasionally positioned would really scare you then
 
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