Cost of living crisis

[Hummer_I_mean_Hammer]

I’ve confidence that the British people would have found a way to sell & distribute books & CD’s online if Bezos had never existed.

What, even bog roll?

[RichieRiv]

Richie - forgive my ignorance but how does what you have said in your first paragraph work? The changing tax code part and what are the benefits?

I know my honourable friend has explained, but to add....

For every £2 over a 100k you earn you lose £1 of your personal allowance. E.g you earn 95k pa but get a 10k bonus putting you on a total of 105k. You therefore owe the tax man 2.5k. This is why you trigger a tax return once you breach 100k if you are on a 125L tax code.

If you owe the taxman less than 5k then typically you can offset it against next years allowance as long as you do your return by September. If you are forget and aee no good at saving you can be put on a M1U1 (i think) which means you forgo a perseonsl allowance. You will still complete a tax return but along as you havent earned over 125k you will get a rebate. I have know people get so in trouble with this, HMRC actually wanted them in tax credit for the next tax year.

That's why when companies operate a workplace pension you are offered salary sacrifice where you effectively take a pay cut, but that money is paid into your pension. Although pension contributions are tax free, you provider only claims the 20% piece. Not the 40% which is your responsibility - you can only claim for 2 years backdated I think.

The best part is you obviously pay less NI. So if you are a 40% tax payer its work investigating

[Danny's Dyer Acting]

How would the Amazon workers be impacted if bezos had died before he started the company?

He wasn't a billionaire then.

[Samba]

Then why didn't they/dont they?

Where are all the innovative, workforce lead start ups?

They can't compete with Amazon?

[Tenbury]

Where are all the innovative, workforce lead start ups?

Drowning in the drudgery of day by day, week by week, struggling to make ends meet.

[DaveWHU1964]

How would the Amazon workers be impacted if bezos had died before he started the company?

Maybe they’d have had better pay and working conditions from the company that would have inevitably, albeit belatedly, filled the void had Bezos never been born …

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... -at-amazon

As an aside Amazon pay less corporation tax than I do. I must be doing better than I thought …

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... -tax-break

Not sure on your point on startups Sam - the last figures I saw were that there were something like 600,000 a year or one a minute.

[SammyLeeWasOffside]

Drowning in the drudgery of day by day, week by week, struggling to make ends meet.

Same as lots of the billionaires before they become billionaires.

[SammyLeeWasOffside]

Maybe they’d have had better pay and working conditions from the company that would have inevitably, albeit belatedly, filled the void had Bezos never been born …

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... -at-amazon

As an aside Amazon pay less corporation tax than I do. I must be doing better than I thought …

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... -tax-break

Not sure on your point on startups Sam - the last figures I saw were that there were something like 600,000 a year or one a minute.

A different company owned by a different billionaire who presumably this guy would again want rid off.

My point is where would all the more important workers earn their money without the nobody would notice if they weren't there billionaires taking the risk of starting the company.

[Danny's Dyer Acting]

A different company owned by a different billionaire who presumably this guy would again want rid off.

My point is where would all the more important workers earn their money without the nobody would notice if they weren't there billionaires taking the risk of starting the company.

The point isn't that entrepreneurship is bad. The point is that we bow down to these people who have been allowed to get to where they are by exploiting others and forget how powerful workers can be if they stick together.

As a society we need to tip that balance back towards the people that make the money, not the people that hoard it.

[DaveWHU1964]

Exactly that DDA.

Anyway, someone has a plan to help, other than to call the £400 we're all due to get, ****ing hand-outs ...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ndfall-tax

[SammyLeeWasOffside]

The point isn't that entrepreneurship is bad. The point is that we bow down to these people who have been allowed to get to where they are by exploiting others and forget how powerful workers can be if they stick together.

As a society we need to tip that balance back towards the people that make the money, not the people that hoard it.

The argument was no one would notice if the billionaires vanished. It's a stupid argument. The whole you need us more than we need you logic is massively flawed imo, it's a logic that didn't work in the general strike or for scargill. If Amazon goes bust 1 billionaire and thousands of not billionaires lose their income, so who needs it to exist the most?

If people don't want bezos to have their money don't buy so much crap.

Rebalancing sounds great what's the plan for that?

[Danny's Dyer Acting]

The argument was no one would notice if the billionaires vanished. It's a stupid argument. The whole you need us more than we need you logic is massively flawed imo, it's a logic that didn't work in the general strike or for scargill. If Amazon goes bust 1 billionaire and thousands of not billionaires lose their income, so who needs it to exist the most?

If people don't want bezos to have their money don't buy so much crap.

Rebalancing sounds great what's the plan for that?

Jesus christ, not every comment has to be taken completely literally.

No idea on your last point. But let's start with some really punitive wealth taxes on anything over 8 figures and fine companies for every full time worker that needs benefits to top up their wages to ensure they are able to survive.

[SammyLeeWasOffside]

Jesus christ, not every comment has to be taken completely literally.

No idea on your last point. But let's start with some really punitive wealth taxes on anything over 8 figures and fine companies for every full time worker that needs benefits to top up their wages to ensure they are able to survive.

I shouldn't take the quote we are discussing literally?

Won't they just put everyone on 0 hours contracts? Every business? Why not just put up minimum wage to the point it's more than the benefit limit? That would be simpler than monitoring and fines surely.

Isn't the argument that the wealthy can afford to avoid tax, is another tax really going to solve that? It would cost a fair bit to assess everyone's wealth every year I would imagine. You could just up the poll tax. Is 9m not hoarding wealth?

[SammyLeeWasOffside]

Exactly that DDA.

Anyway, someone has a plan to help, other than to call the £400 we're all due to get, ****ing hand-outs ...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ndfall-tax

I can see the backdating thing. If you are going to windfall tax at least make it from the point the windfall started.

When they say people won't pay a penny more is that backdated or from now? I thought the point was people are struggling now (govt sitting about while people struggle etc) so how does leaving bills where they are help that?

More generally because I don't know lol will capping home energy bills cut inflation? Surely if business costs are rising then that will impact everything. Household bills only impact what of these high prices things you can buy. Maybe it's about wage inflation, you have a bit more in your pocket you don't need better pay? God knows on economics it just feels a bit counter intuitive to my brain lol

[chelmsfordhammer91]

IMO it's a ying and yang situation.

The business owner takes on the risk (I believe around half of businesses go bust within the first five years?), so when a business is successful deserves a greater share of the pie than someone who hasn't taken on that risk or had less input in the innovation/progressive side of things (again, purely my opinion).

The issue really isn't the wealth these people jave, it's the working conditions and reward packages involved.

Raising minimum wages in theory would increase the costs to the business thereby increasing what they need to charge for their product or service. However, all workers deserve to have a relatively decent working environment and a fair market level of compensation.

I've heard many stories of poor working conditions, extreme micro-management and in some instances breaches of employment law by Amazon (US side) in particular. However, their monopoly isn't really the retail side, if you look at their cloud and web services they have around two thirds higher market share than their nearest competitor.

I'm all for having higher tax rates beyond a certain point but it should be applied to all businesses. Amazon, Google, Facebook (Meta?) and the oil companies get the media attention, but if we were to windfall tax these firms then it should apply across the board.

What's the legislation here? Anything above a certain amount is subject to higgher tax? In that case then these firms will just create more subsidiaries to spread the income to avoid the higher bands.

Or tax beyond a certain level of profit v investment? Which would potentially stifle innovation and risk.

The truth is, you couldn't operate without the workers snd you wouldn't have the workers without the business owner.

[DaveWHU1964]

God knows on economics it just feels a bit counter intuitive to my brain lol

Don't ask me mate - I've never pretended to be an expert on economics. What is abundantly clear is that doing nothing or little isn't an option.

Now the Tories have their own idea - giving us all £400. If they think they can get away with covering just 20% of the cost of the average likely rise, then that's their call - we'll see how people, including millions of their own voters react to that, especially when the new leader refers to it as a 'hand-out' which millions of us have never asked for in our lives, you included I suspect, if I know you well enough from these pages.

[SammyLeeWasOffside]

Don't ask me mate - I've never pretended to be an expert on economics. What is abundantly clear is that doing nothing or little isn't an option.

Increasingly government seems to be about surviving problems and lumping to the next crisis. Tbh while I get the need to help some people I would rather these state interventions created something if possible.

What happens if prices don't ever come down. Are we all going to get help in perpetuity? Use some of the money to build the things we need to solve the problems we will have 10 years from now. New power sources, storage etc.

On the plans labours is 8bn more (possibly another 7 if it brings inflation down - which is why I was wondering about that). Is freezing the cap a bigger benefit to the wealthy in big houses and less money for the vulnerable that were in line for £1600?
Is also say if freezing the cap will save £1000 on average then the Tories £400 must be more than 20% surely

[EvilC]

On the plans labours is 8bn more (possibly another 7 if it brings inflation down - which is why I was wondering about that). Is freezing the cap a bigger benefit to the wealthy in big houses and less money for the vulnerable that were in line for £1600?
Is also say if freezing the cap will save £1000 on average then the Tories £400 must be more than 20% surely

Those at the bottom take most of the pain as energy prices rise - it is them that have the lowest disposable income which gets eaten into when your energy bill doubles. Similarly, they benefit most if the price cap falls, or does not rise.

However if you look at it in absolute terms, Tim and Pippa's six bedroom place in Guildford with a pool now costs £12k a year to run instead of £6k,they would (in absolute terms) be the biggest beneficiaries, but whilst it might sting a bit, they can probably afford it, although the new Range Rover (to replace the already quite new Range Rover) may have to wait a year and they may be restricted to five horses instead of seven.

[EvilC]

This is a better summary than my shitty words (source: Grauniad).

Poorest UK households to experience 18% inflation - IFS
There is another interesting finding in the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) data this morning: the poorest British households could face inflation rates as high as 18% by October because they are more exposed to rising energy costs.

Richer households tend to use more fuel and energy – mainly because they are more likely to have bigger homes and cars – but for poorer households energy bills take up a bigger proportion of their incomes.

With the UK’s energy price cap expeted to more than double by the winter it will almost certainly be a big driver of inflationary pressure. The 13% consumer price index inflation expected by the Bank of England is an average, so there will be variations depending on different spending patterns.

The richest 20% of households will experience inflation seven percentage points lower than the richest, the IFS said.

The IFS said:

The fact that poorer households devote more of their spending to energy, means that the inflation rate the poorest quintile will experience is expected to rise to an eye-watering 18% in October, compared to 11% for the richest quintile.

[SammyLeeWasOffside]

That's kind of what I was getting at. The damage has already been done to poorer families (albeit even greater damage was to come). The prices aren't coming down under this plan they just aren't going up any further.
This leaves the more exposed poorer households exposed to the £2k cap