How do city lawyers and accountants in partnerships get away with paying no NI as “self-employed”? And so on.
The self-employed do pay NI…..
Some opposition is mindless: protests from retailers that the rise in minimum wage rise and employers’ national insurance will cause job losses would carry more weight if they offered an alternative tax rise to pay for the NHS and everything else.
The effects of a specific tax rise have nothing to do with what the money then gets spent upon. Nor even the desirability of that spending. The effects of a specific tax rise are, simply, the effects of that specific tax rise. Deal with it.
Of course, the real problem here is that Polly wants a large government high tax country. Brits are a little less sure about this – especially when they’re asked to pay those high taxes.
Of course, the real problem here is that Polly want’s a large government high tax country.
In that case she should be very happy because that’s what we had under the Tories and we have a lot more of it now.
Nothing lasts forever. Even the longest, most glittering reign must come to an end someday
Since the Graun’s profits-such as they are- are made from begging and tax avoidance I wonder if Lady Pol actually pays tax? It would be most unsocialist if she did. TTK and Ange seem to have managed it, Ange by being allegedly a crook and TTK, in typical lawyer’s fashion being a legal non crook…
It seems as if the word has gone out to those who seek to defend Labour’s disastrous budget to bounce the question back to the complainer ‘Well, if the farmers (or whatever victim) should not suffer the tax, what will you do to replace that money for our sainted NHS?’. It is not a logical argument, as Tim points out. But I’ve heard it so many times recently that it must be in the briefing script for Labour spokesfolks and the miserable creatures who come on to make excuses for the inexcusable.
‘Well, if the farmers (or whatever victim) should not suffer the tax, what will you do to replace that money for our sainted NHS?’.
Sell it. And the schools.
what will you do to replace that money?
I wouldn’t. Spend less. Stop throwing money onto a bonfire.
“what will you do to replace that money?”
Sell licences to drill and frack. Legalise khat so we get the revenues from that which we once had. And on all the drugs banned since. Bring back the personal allowance above 100k to increase the tax take.
And have a property value tax (this isn’t optimal) which would double the charge on what Polly lives in just ‘cos.
She should fuck off back to Umbria.
Self-employed people (under state pension age) DO pay NI but at a lower rate *because* they don’t get the “Insurance” part of NI in the form of unemployment benefit when unemployed (unless they belong to Equity).
To complain that an increase in employers’ NI will increase unemployment is NOT mindless – it involves someone thinking about the consequences of increasing an impost that has nil relation with ability to pay – that thought *requires* a mind
I’ve been self-employed all my life and yet still get a full state pension. How did that happen? No doubt Polly is too rich to know. How is it possible to be a socialist multi-millionaire?
And the state should be aiming to need less NHS, not more, by people being healthier. Or smerkin’ tabs and dying younger at less cost to the State having paid more tax.
Look at any photo from the ’40s to the ’70s. Everyone a normal size and shape. Land whales conspicuous by their rarity. Even in America, which never had rationing. The majority smoked, which takes care of that mouthy thing and what-to-do-with-my hands that so many peole have.
I’ve been self-employed all my life and yet still get a full state pension. How did that happen? No doubt Polly is too rich to know. How is it possible to be a socialist multi-millionaire?
And the state should be aiming to need less NHS, not more, by people being healthier. Or smerkin’ tabs and dying younger at less cost to the State having paid more tax.
Look at any photo from the ’40s to the ’70s. Everyone a normal size and shape. Land whales conspicuous by their rarity. Even in America, which never had rationing. The majority smoked, which takes care of that mouthy thing and what-to-do-with-my hands that so many people have.
‘Well, if the farmers (or whatever victim) should not suffer the tax, what will you do to replace that money for our sainted NHS?’.
I read that we send more money to farmers abroad (as part of ‘foreign aid’ schemes) than would be raised by IHT on our own farmers. There may be a solution here, somewhere.
@ Norman
It is a lot easier to be a Socialist if one is a multi-millionaire than if one has to work for a living in the private sector.
Look at any photo from the ’40s to the ’70s. Everyone a normal size and shape.
Except if you actually look at photos “from the ’40s to the ’70s” – Butlins are a pretty good source – you’ll see people are far more solid than many are these days. The line-up for the beauty contest will depict a crew of chunky girls. Not the slender one’s you’d see now. My grandmother’s generation were almost universally hefty women.
That & obesity figures are vastly distorted by immigrants. Who culturally prize the fatter frame. I can remember living in proximity to a London school. The afro girls passing by were about twice the size of the white ones.
There are more land whales now? I don’t think so. We’re just told they are by people who lie for a living.
“There are more land whales now?”
I’d say so. I remember none from my childhood.
People still walked or cycled to work and smoked like chimneys. As Tim likes to say, they had no central heating. Perhaps rationing had led to familiarity with a meagre diet though I can’t say I remember that – butter on everything seemed to be the rule.
“Polly wants a large government high tax country. Brits are a little less sure about this – especially when they’re asked to pay those high taxes.”
And especially when the large government is so shit.
@ dearieme
“butter on everything” – not in my middle-class childhood; butter was still rationed for eight years after ww23 and even after the Conservatives finally abolished rationing butter was still viewed as slightly luxurious: we got butter on our bread but still used morwe margarine than butter.
You must be younger than I.
@bis
I don’t do anything for a living and I remain convinced that there are far more land whales than there were in my childhood.
The Butlins’ beauty contest girls weren’t chunky. Look at newsreels. They just weren’t anorexic. They only had one chin and one pair of tits, not a second pair round the back. They could walk rather than waddle.
Yes, there were Ena Sharples fat grandmas and elderly aunts knocking about but very few fatties until late middle-age, and few of them blokes. Nowadays I’m regularly forced to walk into the road to bypass a waddling, tattooed or tented hulk of lard a yard wide.
My question is this. Given that the post-war Yanks weren’t fat, were not subject to rationing, and had the first large scale access to ultra-processed fast food, does the Big Bloat pre-date or post-date the decline in smoking? Or do the Bloat, fast-food consumption and smoking decline all correlate contemporaneously?
As I contonually claim, there’s a very strong correlation with the roll out of central heating and A/C.