PS - If you've got a link so I can get 50K a year for delivering for Amazon (comfortably) can you post it please.
The Amazon website tells me that drivers earn between £13-£17 an hour, and have to cover their own expenses - as you're an independent contractor (although fuel is covered). An article from 2023 in the Guardian estimates than the average driver earns £26300 per year. So unless you're working an 80 hour week, you aren't earning 50k as a delivery driver.
I know that 100%. It's an absolutely ***** state of affairs. Just for the record, I can only afford a vaguely comfortable life in the UK thanks to doing a couple of hours a day of pretty well-paid freelance work on top of my regular job. I'm not complaining, because I know I'm in a much better situation than most. But in the 5th richest economy in the world, a 45 year old professional shouldn't have to be moonlighting in order to maintain a halfway decent standard of living for his family.
I don't get this mentality. Of course people can get a £50k wage if they are ambitious, smart and hardworking enough. In countries like the US and Germany people think nothing of moving for a job or to where their industry pays best. The issue in the UK is the lack of decentralisation. The prime jobs are in London and to a lesser extent Manchester. You want good money, you may need to sacrifice and move to or commute to one of these locations. That's not for everyone, but if you are in London 3-4 years and not earning £50k you're doing something badly wrong.
A wealth tax makes perfect sense. 1% for millionaires. 2% for billionaires. Increase capital gains tax. Taxing people more earning 50k. I don’t disagree but it isn’t where you’d start
I don't get people who don't understand simple mathematics. Only 15% of the people who earn a wage in this country earn 50K or more. Working and studying harder does not change that. There are only so many positions that pay that much money. And a large proportion of those that receive that get it because of who they know, not what they know or how well they perform. Working harder does not raise what employers will pay. I also don't understand why people who earn more think they're better than those who earn less. But this thread is full of them.
Most teachers won't ever make £50k in London even at the top of the pay scale unless they're in senior management. Ditto nurses and police officers.
And that's before we talk about the people who actually make the country run: the people who work in the child care facilities for the guy who has a bought a house that commands a mortgage repayment of over £1000 per month and then talks of starvation, the people in the care industry looking after our parents, the people who clean and take away the garbage, the people doing the admin work, the people taking the calls from clients and customers, the people living in houses of multiple occupancy and commuting 2 hours to their job. This forum has started to disgust me. I am utterly appalled.
A lot of the bad takes in this thread explaining how the tories have been allowed to destroy this country so absolutely. Some real ghouls.
You are totally out of order with your comment. I am fully aware of people working long hours, working incredibly hard and not earning a big wage and i never said otherwise.i have been one of them and I have the ultimate respect for everyone of those workers. Get off your high horse and your reply is a disgrace but not a surprise. This is a thread about taxing people who earn over £50k more, as people have explained if you are the single earner in a family, with a mortgage, bills, not entitled to child allowance, free prescription etc etc. I earn £56k a year, work stupid hours, under a shxt load of pressure don't smoke, don't go out drinking dont have a flash car and still have fxck all left at the end of the month. Who on earth do you think you are? You sanctimonious pillock.
And some people do all that and earn significantly less than £56k. Every pound you earn is worth less in real terms than the previous pound. I have no issue with tax going up as income goes up.
That's very scary. My mortgage payment on a 4 bed detached is around £450 I believe. I have since buying it 4 years ago set the the Ditect Debit at £600 to over pay. I was lucky that I tied in just before Liz Truss to a 5 year deal and have currently around 50% equity. Mortgage prices I hear about now are frightening.
People earn different amounts, that's obvious. But surely the OP is alluding to the idea of people on above average wages having to pay a little more each week to help society out? I think its perfectly ok to say to people in higher salary brackets 'give a bit more'. There are millions of people who can't feed themselves or their kids properly and cant get extra clothes because they don't get enough money coming in. It's not about cars, holidays eating in restaurants every week for these people, its about the very basics and there is now massive income and wealth inequality which is causing crippling problems for folk but which the major parties dont want to talk about. So Ill credit the Green Party for at least getting this topic into the open and for suggesting that benefits should also rise for people eligible to claim them (which will improve wages for some). The topic of increasing tax on income and wealth has been neglected for too long.
Got a point. If you tax the super rich too much you run the risk of them moving abroad to tax havens like many already do (Mick Jagger and Lewis Hamilton as two examples) and that leaves us even more skint.
