Are wealthy people wealth creators?
Ethel_Fred
Posts: 34,127 Forum Member
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"I am clear that the wealthy should pay more which is why in the recent budget I increased the tax on very expensive property transactions. But we also have to be careful as a country we don't drive away the wealth creators and the businesses that are going to lead our economic recovery."
So are the wealthy the same people as wealth creators?
So are the wealthy the same people as wealth creators?
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Profit accrued by eg. selling a 'product' at one price to one person and at another price to someone else does not create wealth it merely shifts wealth away from people who end up with the bad deal - usually the suckers who aren't wise to the game, sometimes also known as honest people but more often labelled as gullible = caveat emptor.
The only thing that creates wealth is labour. Even a good idea or innovation is useless without someone to action it.
Wealth creators get rich , they employ others , simples.
But the vast majority of "the wealthy" are taking advantage of work that others have done. They are creating nothing, they are exploiting. Often only possible because of tax-payer funded infra-structure and the various laws that allow this.
While it would be nice to reward the one-in-a-million, it shouldn't be done in such a way that also benefits the run-of-the-mill.
The honours system seems the best mechanism for this rather than across-the-board tax cuts for everyone who just happen to be rich.
Let's see this get specific. We can then assess the concept more clearly.
I'll go first... Richard Branson
They tend to be rich people who will hang onto their wealth come what may, where is the evidence they invest it so much that they create jobs?
George W Bush lowered taxes for the richest americans the most when he got elected and took office in 2001 and those tax cuts have reamined to this day. Did they stop America going into the dot com recession of the early noughties? Did they stop America going into the current recession(s)? How many jobs did they create once those taxes where lowered?
Same thing here. Osborne keeps on cutting corporation taxes and didn't increase Employers NI, did they create more jobs off those tax cuts?
Osborne last week blamed a lack of corporation tax revenue coming in for his latest extra borrowing too! :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
We along with most of the western world are now a nation of consumers, therefore we don't create wealth. There is only debt.
Labeling wealthy people "wealth creators" is just a clever way of buttering them up before extracting more tax from their wallets.
Personally I find it deployable that people would want to steal their wealth through taxing them. Perhaps we should lower taxes, thus freeing people up to spend their wealth easier without the government getting their dirty mitts on it.
Amen to that.
One week the wealth creators go abroad, along with their companies - noone is in a job, less tax collected, less consumer spending, economy stagnates, people live on less. No substitute available.
The next week, the workers go on strike, or go on holiday abroad - they all get fired and replaced.
But the outcome is that both are important, it's just that there's no substitute for one, but there is for the other.
It is those employees who are the wealth creators - investors in a company need do absolutely nothing.
Their capital invested is increased by the labour of the workers of the company in question - thus to speak of an investor "creating wealth" is spurious.
What if 80% of the workforce were replaced by robots? Who 'creates' wealth then?
Well unless you exterminate that 80% the 'wealth creators' better have some guardbots for protection.
There is as much difference between a pauper and a millionaire as there is a self-made millionaire who employs thousands of people and a millionaire through inheritance with everything hidden in off-shore accounts.
To lump them all together is a fallacy.
I'd love to hear your ideas about how we pay for the health service, police, roads etc without taxes.:D
Some wealthy people create more wealth, others don't. Ian Callum will be a wealthy man, and he certainly creates. He designs JLR cars the world wants to buy. 80% are exported, and thousands of well paid workers are employed to build them. The exchequer does very well out of it, even though it is foreign owned.
The inherited wealth and old money crowd create very little.
Hollande is about to do the same in France, so we will see what effect it has.
Yes and someone who opens a factory and employs thousands of people is very different to someone who gambles on shares or exchange rates - the latter is just a parasite.
So the workers create his wealth for him.
Agreed?
The average business owner in this country employs around 10 people (88% of UK companies employ 10 or less, 98% employ 50 or less) , and has as much need to go to work every day to pay the mortgage, car loan and all the rest as the people they employ.