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An investigation into how the British tax system prejudices those who live outside the South East.
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The life expectancy gap between rich and poor people in England is widening, despite years of government and NHS action, a hard-hitting National Audit Office report reveals today.
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The life expectancy gap between rich and poor people in England is widening, despite years of government and NHS action, a hard-hitting National Audit Office report reveals today.
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An interview on Newsnight with Jeremy Paxman, Gillian Tette, Hugh Hendry and the economist Jeffrey Sachs.
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The Renegade Economist team presents an opportunity to learn what’s about to happen in the domestic and global economy, and …
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Our income based tax system goes beyond rewarding land owners and speculators, it actually taxes people on low incomes at higher rates than the ones on high incomes, see example below of employer who decides to spend an extra £100 on wage increase for a employee on £15K and one on £150K. The £150K employee pays 10% into Pension to get tax relief while the £15K employee cannot afford a pension at all.
Gross Salary £15,000 £150,000
Gross increase in employees salary
after pension reduction £100.00 £90
Cost to employer of £100 increase £112.80 £100
Employers NI £12.80 0
Employees NI £11.00 £0.9
Basic rate Income tax 20% £20.00 £36.0
Total deductions of earnings taxes £43.80 £36.90
% Total of earnings taxes paid 38.8% 36.9%
If you remove pension then its 38.8% and 41% so even in the unlikely event that the £150K employee does not use his pension tax relief at all, our complex tax system is almost a flat rate one. As the £15K employees life expectancy is shorter and he cannot afford to retire early then its probably not a good investment anyway. I came across this when I increased an employees wage by a £100 a month.
Your analysis that wealth equals longevity is simply an illogical inference made from highly selective facts. People in Tower Hamlets and the East End of London are some of the poorest and most unhealthy yet they are closer than anyone to the City of London mega wealth. The swan and the elephant live longer than most in the animal kingdom because of their slow heart beat, their serenity and quality of being rather than the richness of their environment. Violent animals tend to live shorter lives. Genteel people usually live more serene existences than slum dwellers. The more you eat in excess the shorter will be your life. The more you smoke and drink and abuse your fragile body the faster will be its destruction. The more chemical ridden junk food you consume the more you interfere with the normal functioning of that delicate organic chemistry set, your physical body. All this is essentially due to your attitude towards yourself rather than your geographical location. Finland is more northerly and distant from the centre of world production than Calcutta and Bengal yet it is infinitely more prosperous. You can only change your attitude not your circumstances.
Stress in employment and life style in London or New York kills people earlier than in the relaxed Seychelles. Scotland and Glasgow via the Barnet Formula receives a higher subsidized redistribution of wealth, diverted into public services, than people living in Surrey and Kensington, yet they are unhealthier. The cause you appear to be ignoring are some fundamental differences in intelligence and quality of being between people. Riff-raff always lead more degenerate and unfulfilled and even tragic lives. People of quality and greater potential tend to emigrate from locations of poverty and deprivation such as Glasgow, Newcastle, Sunderland, Middlesborough, Barnsley, and similar urban nightmares, towards centres of higher culture and prosperity. Years of brain drain have left our Northern cities denuded of quality people. That is partly why they are less prosperous.
The quality of human beings is generally lower in Glasgow than in Chelsea and if you were to overnight exchange the populations of both places, and put Glaswegans in Eaton Square and Sloane Rangers in Sauchiehall Street, then within a decade Belgravia would be a slum and the Gorbals a centre of high culture and prosperity. It is the quality of people, their inherent intelligence, their natural gravitation towards higher forms of culture and civilization, their ability to discover, create and invent, their ability to productively co-operate and exchange with each other that creates wealth, not any redistributed coins jingling in their pocket.
However, the thesis that the ownership of land, and its corollary the control of the means of production distribution and exchange by a few, giving them the ability to charge economic rent to the maximum bearable, is the chief injustice in contemporary societies is quite accepted. Please do not extrapolate from it longevity.