Green Party leader defends wealth tax proposals
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly2nyz3ed2o
Posted by JayR_97
Green Party leader defends wealth tax proposals
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly2nyz3ed2o
Posted by JayR_97
6 Comments
> “This isn’t about creating public investment, we can do that anyway, we don’t need to tax the wealthy to do that. This is ultimately about tackling the deep inequality in our society.”
> However, he admitted the idea was not even “close to a panacea” and said capital gains tax – which is charged on profits made from the sale of an asset such as a second home or shares – also needed to brought in line with income tax.
“We need to tax unearned wealth as much as we tax earned income,” he added.
> Pressed over whether lower and middle-income earners would also have to contribute more for better public services, Polanski insisted the focus at the moment should be on the wealthiest.
But he added: “Once we start to move to a better footing as a society, where we have better public infrastructure and services, then I think it is legitimate to say paying tax is something that’s actually patriotic, we should be proud of contributing to this country, to making sure we have an NHS that works, that we have public transport that works. And, yes, everyone will have to pay for that”
Seems like an awfully long way of saying that the wealth tax won’t make enough of a difference, and low and middle earners, already at the highest tax burden since the war will end up with tax rises anyway
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad he’s being honest. And I’m not opposed to a wealth tax in principle, and I certain agree with Capital Gains increases, etc But there seems to be an awful lot of a pretending that a wealth tax is be all and end all solution to the problems
This guy is very poor quality. Anyone who votes for this lot is only guaranteeing a Reform win.
This is the left wing version of the Mitchell and Webb ‘have we tried kill the poor sketch’. Except it’s been tried in this case and we know it doesn’t work.
Established and Nobel prize winning economists like Piketty, Stiglitz, Saez, Zucman, hell even staunch capitalists like Buffet are calling for higher taxation of wealth (**The Buffett Rule** would establish a 30% minimum tax rate on individuals with annual incomes over $1 million).
The case for it is simple. Economic growth is like 3% a year including inflation. Private wealth grows at around 9% including inflation. Even with taxes, private wealth grows much faster than the economy as a whole and wealth inequality gets worse. Only way to deal with this is with wealth taxes like inheritance tax (though it’s infrequent enough).
The case against a straight up wealth tax is that it’s easy to plunder wealth and escape. But it’s not easy to steal assets. So any real taxation of wealth will probably require us to have rules preventing just about anyone from owning British assets without paying taxes.
Edit: p.s. I am happy to debate this or provide more evidence if anyone’s unconvinced.
**The Labour Government has until August 2029 to call an election.** There is plenty of time for both Reform and the Green Party to implode long before then.
The Green Party’s set of headline policies, such as this Wealth Tax, are all sparkly and initially very appealing. But they don’t survive the first serious scrutiny on their true costs, potential risks/downsides and how the policy would be delivered in practice.
Wooing then keeping both the so-called ‘Muslim block vote’ and those of Transgender Allies, whilst hoping their core environmentalists will remain happy and loyal is hard, and will only get tougher for the Greens.
Perhaps if we want to tax wealth, we should probably do something about the fact that 90% of the world’s global tax havens are British Territories, otherwise a wealth tax is just another meaningless gesture in which the bottom tier of the wealth ladder will pay whilst those at the top continue to avoid.
We shouldnt tax ambition, risk or personal gain. We should aim to tax greed and those flouting already existing laws.
The Green Party and their proposals offer no such vision on how theyre going to solve that very critical issue to what they supposedly want to achieve, and all due respect, im not a particularly smart man, so if ive thought of it, surely they have, which begs the question, why not tackle it when no one else is if this is your key pillar? Its the same sort of question i ask when Reform blabber on tackling immigration but when pressed to emphasise policy regarding that it comes down to just the ‘Small boats’ and ‘Illegals’ nothing of substance about the main, core issue.