From The Telegraph:
[The Lib Dems] suggest a one per cent tax on properties over the value of £2 million, which would be paid by the wealthiest 0.16 per cent of property owners.
However, the Chancellor has explicitly ruled out this possibility, saying many middle-class people could find themselves suddenly paying higher taxes.
Somehow I prefer the American meaning of "middle class" which is just about any family with at least one earner and probably most pensioners. I fail to see how you can equate "the wealthiest 0.16 per cent" with "many middle-class people" or vice versa.
Tuesday, 16 October 2012
The rapidly shrinking middle class
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7 comments:
"I fail to see how you can equate "the wealthiest 0.16 per cent" with "many middle-class people" or vice versa"
Easy. In Britain, class has nothing to do with money. You can be a billionaire, and if your father worked down a coal mine and your mother was a nurse, then you are still working class. Even your father was Lord Chief Justice and your mother earned millions as a high-flying lawyer, you are still middle class unless you have a title (with some notable exceptions, like the Howards of Castle Howard).
B, sure, but 0.16 per cent of the population is not "many" and only a minority of the top 0.16 per cent will be middle class, they'll all be investment bankers or oligarchs and so on. Or indeed landed gentry.
Don't get so bogged down in snobbery. He might as well say "A tax on the top 0.16% of homes will hit many parents" or "will hit many people who enjoy watching Great British Bake Off" or whatever.
No it won't, it will hit a very few of them.
The whole point of an LVT IMHO is that EVERYONE pays it. It's just that ALSO everyone in the population gets money towards paying it.
That it picks on a small minority of people is not a good argument for a tax.
Well no, most of the top 0.16% will be middle class. Bankers and oligarchs are almost certain to be middle class. It's not snobbery to state how the class system works in this country, it's only snobbery when you start applying value judgements. Anyway, it all depends what you mean by "many". 0.16% of 62 million is damn nearly 100,000 people. I'd say that counts as many.
B, is "100,000" really "many"? They don't seem to mind about 100,000 people losing their jobs, do they? And depending on how you define "middle class" it is surely only a tiny fraction of "middle class" and almost certainly a teeny tiny fraction of "comfortably off" people.
This is why politicians get clever people to write their speeches for them. 100,000 people is many - it's a big crowd by any standard - but , although "many middle class people" implies "a large proportion of the of what most people would think of as the middle class", it doesn't actually mean that, although that's what they want you to think. What it means is "a large number of very rich people who happen not to be aristocrats or landed gentry", but, of course, they don't put it like that. What Georgie boy means is "people like us" and he wants you to think "people like us", too, but, of course, his "people" are not your "people".
"They don't seem to mind about 100,000 people losing their jobs, do they? "
That reminds me of a story of my mother's, when she was on the county council. Some silly woman had pulled out in front of a train on an ungated level crossing. She hadn't bothered to look, but, amazingly, the train stopped in time and no-one was hurt. The County Surveyor, a Tory and roads man to the core, went on and on about the danger posed by this ungated level crossing and how the incident was all the fault of the railway. When my mother pointed out that no-one had even been hurt, his response was "but someone important could have been killed". That's the Tory attitude, then and always.
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