We need to understand in this country that those on £70k a year, despite being in the top 10% and being a higher rate tax payer, have far more in common with someone on £27k a year than someone on £700k a year. People on good money in honest jobs don’t deserve to be tarnished with the same brush as the ultra rich.
I think we need to realise there is a huge difference between those who derived their income through earnings and generally pay tax progressively and those who take an income from familial wealth.
Yeah £70k would only be able to afford you, assuming 4x salary mortgage and a 10% deposit, a property valued at £320-330k or so which isn’t much above the national average. Also, those on £70k are more likely to live in more expensive areas, so they could realistically only afford an average house. Yes this is not dual income but it’s still crazy that you’d need a top 10% salary for an average property.
@@ellisbriggsbikes Income from familial wealth = RENT However, most of the income received by financial institutions, energy companies and monopoly utilities is also RENT.
I think the whole notion of the top 1% emerged out of the idea that these people don't have all of their income declared - so the ones we can figure out as being the top 1% are supposedly not the real top 1%.
This reminds me of a moment in the 2019 UK election campaign, when someone earning £80,000 heckled Labours plans to tax the top 5%. He declared on TV (BBC Question Time) that he didn't think he was in the top 50% let alone the top 5%...
We need to tax the wealthy, but not people trying to become wealthy. I think these taxes like capital gains should only really kick in above atleast £1million. Helps incentivise investing and generating wealth for the general public.
We need an interest rate that balances the demand for borrowing with the supply of savings. It's the free credit that redustributed most wealth to the richest during the last couple of decades of catastrophically devastating mismanagement by all the VOTERS in Europe.
We’re mainly an urban society. This means that the value of land varies massively by location. In parts of Kensington and Mayfair the land value exceeds £1 billion per square mile. Inaccessible rural land can be worth as little as £5,000 per acre. You can’t deduce someone’s wealth purely from the area of land they own. It depends where that land is.
1 square mile is 640 acres. That puts the cheap farmland at 3.2 million for the same amount of land area. Lots of land (especially productive land) is more expensive than this at 10-15k per acre. So the square mile people would think of as farmland is probably 6-9 mil per square mile. I feel like this much land in central London would be far more than £1b. Maybe not though. Does 100x decent farmland feel right?
@@andrewmerrin You may be right. I asked chatGPT to estimate the highest and lowest valued land in the UK, and those are the figures it gave me. Obviously valuations are subjective, and can change, sometimes quite rapidly. During the peak of the Japanese economic bubble in 1989, one study claimed that the land in central Tokyo between Ginza and the Imperial Palace was worth more than all the land in California. I suspect that wasn’t even true then, but within a year the bubble burst and Japan had its “Lost Decade”.
The problem with using stats like “top x% of earners” is that it is not telling the whole story. For a start, high earners have other sources of income which they have flexibility in declaring which means their true income is much higher. And importantly, benefits distort incomes at the lower level. Benefits top up wages so the median net income is actually higher. Someone on !60k isn’t actually 5x better off than someone on £12k. They can actually have pretty similar net incomes due to the effect of tax and benefits.
Have you tried to live on £12,000 pa? You can't. So your example is not so useful. Rather look at two single people, with no children, both working 40 hrs a week. One is on the minimum wage - that's £11.44 an hour; the other is earning £57.20 an hour - 5 times the person on minimum wage in 2024. After tax, NI, pension deductions, and a student loan repayment, Person 1 will take home just over £18,748 per year or £360.55 a week. Person 2 will will take home under the same deductions as person 1 £57791.46 or £1111. 37 per week. Person 2 still takes home just over 3× the amount that person 1 does. And as far as benefits are concerned, even with benefits, which are of course tapered downwards if you do get it. If person 1 was supporting even 1 child on that money, he'd still be broke, as childcare is incredibly expensive, and benefits are limited as well. There's a lot of working full time families having to use food and getting universal credit and housing benefit. And they're the lucky ones. And the low pay problem is much more widespread than anyone imagines. All most people want is what the previous generation had. 1 job that could keep them and a family with a roof over their head, and that's becoming nigh impossible due to real wages having fallen so far behind inflation since 2008.
@@CuriousCrow-mp4cx Benefits would top up the income of someone on £12k to have a similar net income to someone on £60k, especially if there's children involved.
@@kenville1429would be interested to see a breakdown of the numbers behind that claim. Assuming it's accuracy it shows what a state we're in, having to pump that much gov spending into people working 40 hour weeks, essentially us as tax payers subsidising businesses to allow them to keep paying shit wages. In turn, adds context to why we shouldn't pay too much attention to the recent bleating about taxing employers more, the money has to come from somewhere and clearly over half the population don't have the ability to contribute more 🤷🏼♂️
Problem is on 60k the networth is likely to be higher because they can invest more, so over a 10 year period they can have 250k + investment where you can’t on 12k
same here doing an apprenticeship currently, but I owned a few bitcoin which has gone up almost more than my yearly salary in the past few weeks. It's madness.
Don't worry about that imbalance. The asset price crash will even that stuff out (who wanna own a house in Britain??) I don't know when, but it will happen very suddenly when it does.
Actually have you calculated what would be the real return taking into account inflation. Don't get suckered in by the nominal value of your home, especially if you have to move, could afford a similar home in an area where you'd want to live? Probably not. You'd have to downsize. In that case, how wealthy are you really?
Go do a study/episode on companies House (free to veiw)on how much tax is ACTUALLY PAID BY THE MEGACORPS,and look into how much these companies DONT PAY!!!
Don't forget that the incidence of taxes paid by employees is on employers, as are most of sales taxes and the business rate charge on property occupied The main effect of taxes on wages is to destroy jobs.
Appreciate that the true 1% will pull strings to never let it happen, but feel a shift to reduce income tax and increase wealth tax would be a huge win for society as a whole. As an analogy it feels like we're playing an advanced video game, where new entrants (school leavers, if you will) are so far behind those that have already levelled up that many will just find it increasingly difficult to survive. Sure, there will always be a small number that still thrive, whether through talent, luck or having links to the most advanced players to shield them whilst they level up. But the majority are simply unable to ever reach boss level and take over from the established top dogs. Makes a mockery of any suggestions we are or want to be a meritocracy and the playing field can only be more level if we limit (or even reduce) the power of those at the very top (tax wealth) and ease the burden or those putting in the effort to grow (less income tax).
One thing that is happening is that people who are good at something are getting a lot more of the pie and leaving others behind. Take for example UA-cam streamers - some have very many followers and views - others don't do well. Natural selection applies and the result is that income is concentrated. And what goes for UA-cam applies widely - even to things that you might not believe will be affected in this way. This is just one aspect of the large developing issue of inequality, and this aspect of the problem is caused by technology - or more to the point that some people and some occupations can leverage technology and others can't or aren't as good at it.
This guy actually takes a useful look at statistics at times! I'll put in a like of this video for once. I should put in the effort to look at how the key figure of interest rate divided by the tax rate correlates with the wealth enrichment of the 1% already richest. Taxes IS their income. Inverse interest rate IS their multiplication rate, I surmise. And especially look at the 0.01% of the richest, the 1% of the 1%. And the 1% of that (one in a million, yeah, look at that!) That's where the BIG money accumulates. But all of this is perfectly democratic! Since everyone votes for it, and noone votes for anything else. And as long as it i Democratic, it is good, right? As long as those who know nothing make the decisions. Hoping that their own house price bubble will sustain, which it won't. But hush, don't tell anyone! Your wife wants a new kitchen, so you can't greedily afford an asset bubble depreciation, can you? At least not until your children have grown up to homelessness and out of chance to form their own families. So this looks like it will all work out nicely, doesn't it?? Throw in a lost war in it all, that'll surely help, right? So that's the plan. By 100% of the voters. Good luck! British farmland being so valuable. Well then, why did so many emigrate to colonies because of their better farmlands? And those were the ones who knew something about farming. They knew that not-so-foggy is better for crop yield.
Point of instability for top earners is often overlooked. There is a huge distribution change over the life span of most people - including at the very top.
I don’t think the richest 1% is such an important distinction. I couldn’t find any figures, but I expect a lot of people pass in and out of being in the top 1% in the course of their lives, as their income changes, the value of their house changes, and so on. I think the Sunday Times Rich List is a good rough-and-ready guide to who is seriously wealthy. To make it onto that list, you need a net worth of £350 million, and they only count the top 350 people.
When it's not income but asset appreciation, but if at the end of the year you just have the same assets and have no intention of selling eg it's a farm you want your offspring to manage and pass on to the following generation it's not the same as hard cash income.
@@rdyson Thank you. Yes, I can see high value businesses being sold by owners at BADR of 10%. That must be how the 11% comes about. Such owners would usually have made it so that they have very little other income in the year they sell their business. Makes perfect sense, thanks.
@@auldfouter8661 This surely would not be counted as income, because it is not income? Sounds like you are talking about uncrystallised capital gain that does not become income until sold/liquidised.
Important to make the point that the wealth is based on households (ussually 2 or more people) so a household worth £1m is likely to be 2 folk with £500,000 each
The distribution of income will not be a symmetrical bell shape; it will be heavily negatively skewed (asymmetrical) with most people nearer the lower end where the median is and a tiny minority receiving astronomically high incomes.
The large drop in "inequality" was just lots and lots more work being done for money instead of mostly self sufficient families or clans exchanging for money only their surplus :-).
Living Up North! Very few people I know will be earning the median income of just over £32,000 a year, most considerably less. I appreciate housing is cheaper but all other expenses are pretty much the same and therefore these people are considerably worse off. I think in order to have a fairer idea of what household income actually is, we need to remove the top and bottom rates of pay in order to show a more realistic income level. The very top 1% are a deferent breed altogether and a well insulated from the decisions made by most of the general population about their finances. Having access to large sums of money allows you to use it to make even more money, which is why the top 1% have become so much wealthier. Just as an aside, I had noticed that on the occasion of a very large lottery win going to an average UK earners their first thought is how much of it they can redistribute to family, friends and charitable causes, just a thought. Maybe Charitable donations would be an interesting future video posting.
I'm very much interested in wealth inequality in the UK and Europe, and am wondering if there's more to say on the topic. What is the interplay between the microeconomics and decisions of the 1% (e.g. buying up property), and the overall macroeconomic trends regarding inequality? Is there really a shift in assets from the UK's poorest (and the councils) towards the richest as they gobble up assets? Is the shift and rising price of assets pricing the bottom 50% out of owning their homes and investing in other asset classes? What to say of different policies and their demonstrated effects on inequality and quality of life? Should a society be aiming to elevate their bottom 10%, to depress the top 10%, or instead aiming to maximise quality of life for the median income earner? Would love to learn more on the topic.
Income tax in the UK, US, and EU are absolutely confiscatory. At least, in the UK and most European countries you get a reasonable public education system and public universal healthcare. In the US the government takes 43% + estate income tax (0% to 13%) and offers close to nothing.
Yeah but 43% doesn't kick in until you are earning pretty high. If you are a pretty decent earner but not a 7 figure person you are only paying in the 20s (including state) until you get past 400k or so (if married). That +40% kicks in way lower in UK and Europe. Yes you get bugger all but there's a massive difference in tax if you are in that pretty good category of 200-300k ish - and yep I've lived both places.
You're absolutely right. That's because someone on a median income (say £30k as a round number) will have a disposable income, (available to save for a house deposit or overpay a mortgage) of just a few hundred pounds. If the same person then inherits a £300k house and is then able to live rent/mortgage free, their disposable income, (available for luxuries) is likely to be a few thousand pounds.
Granted in very simple accounting terms, but the public debt is equal to the EXACT penny or cent of the private surplus. Think about that for a minute and then wonder in whose hands the bulk of that private surplus rests. Collectively we are ALL to a greater or lesser extent responsible for the interest bearing public debt but we don't ALL get to benefit from the interest bearing surplus. Much, but certainly not all, wealth is 'earned' by a relatively tiny number in their sleep ie with little to no effort or risk. Something to reflect on...
*SIMPLY ASTONISHINGLY RICH* so rich that the human brain can not actually comprehend it However rich you THINK you understand they are - they are about 1000 x richer Elon Ponzi could buy over 1 Million acerage UK houses. That is basically EVERY house in Wales
To buy all the houses in Wales, he needs to liquidate is wealth, but you see wealth is in large part perception: When he liquidates his wealth (Tesla stocks), the perceived value of those stocks go down, while the perceived value of the houses goes up. We saw this in practice, when Musk bought Twitter: the Tesla stock price went down from 300$ to 100$ because he flooded the market with Tesla stocks. For you It is probably more easy to relate to the situation when the house prices go up once a new development is announced in an area. So while Musk is crazy rich, he could certainly not be able to buy every house in Wales.
The moral is a good income and live in the NE I kid you not Why would anyone who has choice live in London or the SE the congestion the cost is madness Been there done it sold up in the smoke moved to the North Yorks and i own a helicopter to fly south on business the contrast in my two lives is madness because i am in the top 1% but when i lived in London i was a very small fish in a very large congested pond sold up 10 years ago and i have never regretted the move north
In USA the top 350 individuals, if they would agree to receiving a net $100,000 per DAY, the tax revenue from the gross income would cover 40% of all college tuition. Now take the top 5000 dudes and you’re really talking.
First you have to understand aristocracy and feudal tenure, which if still enforced would end this whole problem which is: equating wealth with money. Wealth is not money nor is it property you must keep them separate then the solution will dawn on you. The use of money causes a divide which does not exist but on paper, notice all the high income are in finance, a paper pusher!
Or you could start a business and give more value than you take and after 30 odd years of 50-70 hr weeks you may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife and a beautiful car, and ask yourself, how did I get here?
The really big incomes are mostly not earned. If you dig down you will find that it consists substantially of rent, and for the rest, monopoly intellectual property and other rights. Land is not wealth. The notion that land is wealth is one of the great fallacies of the age. Financial institutions are also recipients of rent, under the label "mortgage interest".
Attempts to justify the unjustifiable aside, ultimately it all boils down to what sort of society we wish for ourselves and our kids to live in. Increasingly unequal, deliberately economically skewed, divided societies which growing numbers of people feel disenfranchised from is ultimately a 'frogs in the pot' recipe for discontent.
I do not understand why the Government has not gone after Trusts which are really the best tax avoidance schemes around. After all what is a trust but not unlike charities where the Government considers them to be Tax free. Trusts are basically a self created charity designed for the fundamental reason of avoiding inheritance tax. Why go for the small farmers?
My mum was in the top 1%. She is a single parent to me a single child in central London. She earned as a partner in a city law firm around 500k with her bonus. I was sent through private school, went to university relatively debt free, and my house is worth around 1.8 million. Yes this is a lot and yes this is massively privileged in London. But for what she has put in and what she has got in return is not worth it. The problem with thresholds is that there is a massive disparity between 100k, 500k and 1m + salaries. Especially if you live in London as we do. It is so true that living in London is so fucking expensive and is actually not that easy. Yes we are comparatively much better off but we have a small 4 story 3 bedroom 2 bathroom house in central London and she has worked her arse off for it dealing with sexism and paying for childcare on her own. Yes we are privileged and lucky, but taxing people like my mum who have worked so hard is not the same as taxing institutionalised wealth. Ultimately It is asset wealth vs income wealth and this is where taxes should be made fairer. Edit: this is not a cry for poverty, far from it but it puts into perspective the problem of simply criticising and wanting to tax high incomes.
You represent part of the wealthiest sliver of people in the history of the planet in both assets and income - of course she and you should be taxed more on both.
@@glassmuxxic Fine but more point is that working ridiculously hard (90+ hour weeks) and all the stress that comes with. Is it worth 50+% of your income being taken away by the state. thats just over 200k in this instance. We don't mind paying this to an extent but my point was more about asset wealth vs income wealth. My mum could have just bought a load of houses in wales in 2010s and made a shit load more money more tax efficiently but no. The system punishes earned wealth it does not punish asset wealth through capital gains efficiently enough.
Question is the increase in fram land values of 351% in 23 years, true, false,a tax dodge, or for people who like cleaning up cow shit with over complicated Hoovers. Not sure ? You can Ask the audience, go 50/50 or phone a friend.
LoL first stat used is income tax. The truely rich do not give a gnats backside about income tax. Anyone who has the majority of their income subject to income tax is not the problem. The real problem is the 0.01% and the more you are worth and earn the less tax you pay on a percentage basis and that is what is truely unfair.
Take a look at how much the dollar billionaires own, in comparison to the GDP (for lack of better yard stick). In both the UK and in the "third way social democratic paradise" of Sweden. And, hee, you across the North Sea there, you are now in the shadow in that game! Come on now, try to get ahead again!
Two ways to grow wealth or rather 'get wealthy'. The average person on minimum wage should: 1. Double your working hours (if you are able bodied and not lazy). If you currently work a 40-hour week - start working 80-hour weeks and do this for 6 or 7 years and invest that extra money. You will get there much quicker if you make sacrifices along the way such as not going on holidays or buying the latest iPhones etc etc 2. Earn a higher wage. There are many ways to do this. There is no shortage of apprenticeships out there, and there'll always be a need for plumbers, electricions and so on. You get paid in proportion to the value you bring. So if you work a job and your employer could easily replace you with the following day - you are probably being paid accordingly.
@@piccalillipit9211, in my younger days I worked those sorts of hours and still managed to go out and drink 2 or 3 nights a week without any problems at all. Now that I'm in my 30's I would find it much more difficult to 'work hard and play hard' at the same time.
Become an entrepreneur. No other way. I myself run a business generating £150K a year. However, I have overheads of wages, etc. Thankfully, I am only 26 years old, and I'm expected to get my business to 7 figure business within the next 5 years. However, to make this kind of money, you MUST save and invest that saving into a buisness, otherwise you will always be stuck in the rat race.
Farmers in the top 1% based on wealth but as we've been hearing they're struggling from a cash perspective. I think assets and income needs to be taken into account bearing in mind if the person owns his ppr outright or not.
@@garyb455 The UK corporate tax rate on both main rate and small profits has more than halved since 1982. Even the introduction of 10% patent box rates from 2013 had little to no impact on investment. What you've said is demonstrably untrue.
We need to understand in this country that those on £70k a year, despite being in the top 10% and being a higher rate tax payer, have far more in common with someone on £27k a year than someone on £700k a year.
People on good money in honest jobs don’t deserve to be tarnished with the same brush as the ultra rich.
*tarred
I think we need to realise there is a huge difference between those who derived their income through earnings and generally pay tax progressively and those who take an income from familial wealth.
Yeah £70k would only be able to afford you, assuming 4x salary mortgage and a 10% deposit, a property valued at £320-330k or so which isn’t much above the national average. Also, those on £70k are more likely to live in more expensive areas, so they could realistically only afford an average house. Yes this is not dual income but it’s still crazy that you’d need a top 10% salary for an average property.
@@ellisbriggsbikes
Income from familial wealth = RENT
However, most of the income received by financial institutions, energy companies and monopoly utilities is also RENT.
In London 70k allows you to live paycheck to paycheck
I think the whole notion of the top 1% emerged out of the idea that these people don't have all of their income declared - so the ones we can figure out as being the top 1% are supposedly not the real top 1%.
This reminds me of a moment in the 2019 UK election campaign, when someone earning £80,000 heckled Labours plans to tax the top 5%. He declared on TV (BBC Question Time) that he didn't think he was in the top 50% let alone the top 5%...
dude, I love your channel's content
We need to tax the wealthy, but not people trying to become wealthy. I think these taxes like capital gains should only really kick in above atleast £1million. Helps incentivise investing and generating wealth for the general public.
have you tried being an actual man, and not dependent on other men ?
We need an interest rate that balances the demand for borrowing with the supply of savings. It's the free credit that redustributed most wealth to the richest during the last couple of decades of catastrophically devastating mismanagement by all the VOTERS in Europe.
@@puppets.and.muppets Can you elaborate on that?
@@puppets.and.muppets what does that have to do with it?
@ohrun3106 , the problem is that if you tax the wealthy - they move their buisness across shores where they aren't taxed. Meaning less UK jobs.
We’re mainly an urban society. This means that the value of land varies massively by location. In parts of Kensington and Mayfair the land value exceeds £1 billion per square mile. Inaccessible rural land can be worth as little as £5,000 per acre. You can’t deduce someone’s wealth purely from the area of land they own. It depends where that land is.
1 square mile is 640 acres. That puts the cheap farmland at 3.2 million for the same amount of land area. Lots of land (especially productive land) is more expensive than this at 10-15k per acre. So the square mile people would think of as farmland is probably 6-9 mil per square mile.
I feel like this much land in central London would be far more than £1b. Maybe not though. Does 100x decent farmland feel right?
@@andrewmerrin You may be right. I asked chatGPT to estimate the highest and lowest valued land in the UK, and those are the figures it gave me. Obviously valuations are subjective, and can change, sometimes quite rapidly. During the peak of the Japanese economic bubble in 1989, one study claimed that the land in central Tokyo between Ginza and the Imperial Palace was worth more than all the land in California. I suspect that wasn’t even true then, but within a year the bubble burst and Japan had its “Lost Decade”.
Did they do anything to contribute to the increase in value of their land? Or did they just sit on it?
The problem with using stats like “top x% of earners” is that it is not telling the whole story. For a start, high earners have other sources of income which they have flexibility in declaring which means their true income is much higher. And importantly, benefits distort incomes at the lower level. Benefits top up wages so the median net income is actually higher. Someone on !60k isn’t actually 5x better off than someone on £12k. They can actually have pretty similar net incomes due to the effect of tax and benefits.
Have you tried to live on £12,000 pa? You can't. So your example is not so useful. Rather look at two single people, with no children, both working 40 hrs a week. One is on the minimum wage - that's £11.44 an hour; the other is earning £57.20 an hour - 5 times the person on minimum wage in 2024. After tax, NI, pension deductions, and a student loan repayment, Person 1 will take home just over £18,748 per year or £360.55 a week. Person 2 will will take home under the same deductions as person 1 £57791.46 or £1111. 37 per week. Person 2 still takes home just over 3× the amount that person 1 does. And as far as benefits are concerned, even with benefits, which are of course tapered downwards if you do get it. If person 1 was supporting even 1 child on that money, he'd still be broke, as childcare is incredibly expensive, and benefits are limited as well. There's a lot of working full time families having to use food and getting universal credit and housing benefit. And they're the lucky ones. And the low pay problem is much more widespread than anyone imagines. All most people want is what the previous generation had. 1 job that could keep them and a family with a roof over their head, and that's becoming nigh impossible due to real wages having fallen so far behind inflation since 2008.
@@CuriousCrow-mp4cx Benefits would top up the income of someone on £12k to have a similar net income to someone on £60k, especially if there's children involved.
@@kenville1429would be interested to see a breakdown of the numbers behind that claim.
Assuming it's accuracy it shows what a state we're in, having to pump that much gov spending into people working 40 hour weeks, essentially us as tax payers subsidising businesses to allow them to keep paying shit wages.
In turn, adds context to why we shouldn't pay too much attention to the recent bleating about taxing employers more, the money has to come from somewhere and clearly over half the population don't have the ability to contribute more 🤷🏼♂️
Problem is on 60k the networth is likely to be higher because they can invest more, so over a 10 year period they can have 250k + investment where you can’t on 12k
I'm low on income but high on asset wealth , inflation has increased the cost of my home but not my earnings.
same here doing an apprenticeship currently, but I owned a few bitcoin which has gone up almost more than my yearly salary in the past few weeks. It's madness.
Don't worry about that imbalance. The asset price crash will even that stuff out (who wanna own a house in Britain??) I don't know when, but it will happen very suddenly when it does.
It's the price of land. Land is not wealth.
Hah-hah!
Actually have you calculated what would be the real return taking into account inflation. Don't get suckered in by the nominal value of your home, especially if you have to move, could afford a similar home in an area where you'd want to live? Probably not. You'd have to downsize. In that case, how wealthy are you really?
Go do a study/episode on companies House (free to veiw)on how much tax is ACTUALLY PAID BY THE MEGACORPS,and look into how much these companies DONT PAY!!!
Don't forget that the incidence of taxes paid by employees is on employers, as are most of sales taxes and the business rate charge on property occupied
The main effect of taxes on wages is to destroy jobs.
System is done in a way to protect the richest
I was in the top 3% in the UK and lived in Canary Wharf, London. I didn't feel rich, just middle class.
Appreciate that the true 1% will pull strings to never let it happen, but feel a shift to reduce income tax and increase wealth tax would be a huge win for society as a whole.
As an analogy it feels like we're playing an advanced video game, where new entrants (school leavers, if you will) are so far behind those that have already levelled up that many will just find it increasingly difficult to survive. Sure, there will always be a small number that still thrive, whether through talent, luck or having links to the most advanced players to shield them whilst they level up. But the majority are simply unable to ever reach boss level and take over from the established top dogs.
Makes a mockery of any suggestions we are or want to be a meritocracy and the playing field can only be more level if we limit (or even reduce) the power of those at the very top (tax wealth) and ease the burden or those putting in the effort to grow (less income tax).
Just can’t thank you enough for the valuable information .
I was making 100k in London in 2015+ and was living what I considered a normal middle class lifestyle 😅
One thing that is happening is that people who are good at something are getting a lot more of the pie and leaving others behind.
Take for example UA-cam streamers - some have very many followers and views - others don't do well. Natural selection applies and the result is that income is concentrated.
And what goes for UA-cam applies widely - even to things that you might not believe will be affected in this way.
This is just one aspect of the large developing issue of inequality, and this aspect of the problem is caused by technology - or more to the point that some people and some occupations can leverage technology and others can't or aren't as good at it.
Pick your ancestors with care, then you don't need to be good at anything
This guy actually takes a useful look at statistics at times! I'll put in a like of this video for once.
I should put in the effort to look at how the key figure of interest rate divided by the tax rate correlates with the wealth enrichment of the 1% already richest. Taxes IS their income. Inverse interest rate IS their multiplication rate, I surmise. And especially look at the 0.01% of the richest, the 1% of the 1%. And the 1% of that (one in a million, yeah, look at that!) That's where the BIG money accumulates.
But all of this is perfectly democratic! Since everyone votes for it, and noone votes for anything else. And as long as it i Democratic, it is good, right? As long as those who know nothing make the decisions. Hoping that their own house price bubble will sustain, which it won't. But hush, don't tell anyone! Your wife wants a new kitchen, so you can't greedily afford an asset bubble depreciation, can you? At least not until your children have grown up to homelessness and out of chance to form their own families. So this looks like it will all work out nicely, doesn't it?? Throw in a lost war in it all, that'll surely help, right? So that's the plan. By 100% of the voters. Good luck!
British farmland being so valuable. Well then, why did so many emigrate to colonies because of their better farmlands? And those were the ones who knew something about farming. They knew that not-so-foggy is better for crop yield.
Great video. It really shows the great wealth transfer that has happened and how the wealthy stay wealthy
The numbers for the UK are sobering. That the top 1% income bracket is so low blows me away.
Point of instability for top earners is often overlooked. There is a huge distribution change over the life span of most people - including at the very top.
I don’t think the richest 1% is such an important distinction. I couldn’t find any figures, but I expect a lot of people pass in and out of being in the top 1% in the course of their lives, as their income changes, the value of their house changes, and so on. I think the Sunday Times Rich List is a good rough-and-ready guide to who is seriously wealthy. To make it onto that list, you need a net worth of £350 million, and they only count the top 350 people.
Most of Central London is owned by the same aristocratic families as in 1700.
He said it in the video, more then half won’t be there.
How do you only pay 11% tax on an income of £1m?
When it's not income but asset appreciation, but if at the end of the year you just have the same assets and have no intention of selling eg it's a farm you want your offspring to manage and pass on to the following generation it's not the same as hard cash income.
Maybe this is capturing those claiming business disposal relief that year?
@@rdyson Thank you. Yes, I can see high value businesses being sold by owners at BADR of 10%. That must be how the 11% comes about. Such owners would usually have made it so that they have very little other income in the year they sell their business. Makes perfect sense, thanks.
@@auldfouter8661 This surely would not be counted as income, because it is not income? Sounds like you are talking about uncrystallised capital gain that does not become income until sold/liquidised.
If being in the top 1% is unstable, are you sure it isn't affected by retirement lump sums moving around?
Important to make the point that the wealth is based on households (ussually 2 or more people) so a household worth £1m is likely to be 2 folk with £500,000 each
The distribution of income will not be a symmetrical bell shape; it will be heavily negatively skewed (asymmetrical) with most people nearer the lower end where the median is and a tiny minority receiving astronomically high incomes.
Top 1% salary vs Top 1% wealth on asset is totally different.
Wealth inequality is a far bigger problem in my opinion, because that can stagnate the economy due to wealth being out of circulation
The large drop in "inequality" was just lots and lots more work being done for money instead of mostly self sufficient families or clans exchanging for money only their surplus :-).
Living Up North! Very few people I know will be earning the median income of just over £32,000 a year, most considerably less. I appreciate housing is cheaper but all other expenses are pretty much the same and therefore these people are considerably worse off. I think in order to have a fairer idea of what household income actually is, we need to remove the top and bottom rates of pay in order to show a more realistic income level. The very top 1% are a deferent breed altogether and a well insulated from the decisions made by most of the general population about their finances. Having access to large sums of money allows you to use it to make even more money, which is why the top 1% have become so much wealthier. Just as an aside, I had noticed that on the occasion of a very large lottery win going to an average UK earners their first thought is how much of it they can redistribute to family, friends and charitable causes, just a thought.
Maybe Charitable donations would be an interesting future video posting.
We need a land tax. Can't hide land in overseas bank accounts.
Time to leave UK? Many are..
I'm very much interested in wealth inequality in the UK and Europe, and am wondering if there's more to say on the topic. What is the interplay between the microeconomics and decisions of the 1% (e.g. buying up property), and the overall macroeconomic trends regarding inequality? Is there really a shift in assets from the UK's poorest (and the councils) towards the richest as they gobble up assets? Is the shift and rising price of assets pricing the bottom 50% out of owning their homes and investing in other asset classes? What to say of different policies and their demonstrated effects on inequality and quality of life? Should a society be aiming to elevate their bottom 10%, to depress the top 10%, or instead aiming to maximise quality of life for the median income earner? Would love to learn more on the topic.
Progress and Poverty by Henry George says it all.
Wow, I never realized I was in the Top 1%... Of the bottom 😂
Income tax in the UK, US, and EU are absolutely confiscatory. At least, in the UK and most European countries you get a reasonable public education system and public universal healthcare. In the US the government takes 43% + estate income tax (0% to 13%) and offers close to nothing.
Yeah but 43% doesn't kick in until you are earning pretty high. If you are a pretty decent earner but not a 7 figure person you are only paying in the 20s (including state) until you get past 400k or so (if married). That +40% kicks in way lower in UK and Europe. Yes you get bugger all but there's a massive difference in tax if you are in that pretty good category of 200-300k ish - and yep I've lived both places.
Incomes alone don't paint the full picture. A worker on median wage with inherited house is light years ahead of a top10% worker.
You're absolutely right. That's because someone on a median income (say £30k as a round number) will have a disposable income, (available to save for a house deposit or overpay a mortgage) of just a few hundred pounds.
If the same person then inherits a £300k house and is then able to live rent/mortgage free, their disposable income, (available for luxuries) is likely to be a few thousand pounds.
@@MartynThomas1 no one earning 30k can afford any "luxuries" regardless of house being owned or not.
What’s the top 1% for household incomes?
DEFUND THE GOVERNMENT, STOP PAYING TAX
Brilliant discussion
Excellent Analysis
Thank you Sir
I’m in top 25% and I live in a bedroom (share house )😢
Granted in very simple accounting terms, but the public debt is equal to the EXACT penny or cent of the private surplus.
Think about that for a minute and then wonder in whose hands the bulk of that private surplus rests.
Collectively we are ALL to a greater or lesser extent responsible for the interest bearing public debt but we don't ALL get to benefit from the interest bearing surplus.
Much, but certainly not all, wealth is 'earned' by a relatively tiny number in their sleep ie with little to no effort or risk.
Something to reflect on...
Are these top 0.1% employed or are they selling something as a one off?
*SIMPLY ASTONISHINGLY RICH* so rich that the human brain can not actually comprehend it
However rich you THINK you understand they are - they are about 1000 x richer Elon Ponzi could buy over 1 Million acerage UK houses. That is basically EVERY house in Wales
To buy all the houses in Wales, he needs to liquidate is wealth, but you see wealth is in large part perception: When he liquidates his wealth (Tesla stocks), the perceived value of those stocks go down, while the perceived value of the houses goes up. We saw this in practice, when Musk bought Twitter: the Tesla stock price went down from 300$ to 100$ because he flooded the market with Tesla stocks. For you It is probably more easy to relate to the situation when the house prices go up once a new development is announced in an area. So while Musk is crazy rich, he could certainly not be able to buy every house in Wales.
@@feamatar Dude - its an illustration of the volume of the wealth - a thought experiment to help people visualise it.
Awesome thanks.
The moral is a good income and live in the NE I kid you not Why would anyone who has choice live in London or the SE the congestion the cost is madness Been there done it sold up in the smoke moved to the North Yorks and i own a helicopter to fly south on business the contrast in my two lives is madness because i am in the top 1% but when i lived in London i was a very small fish in a very large congested pond sold up 10 years ago and i have never regretted the move north
In USA the top 350 individuals, if they would agree to receiving a net $100,000 per DAY, the tax revenue from the gross income would cover 40% of all college tuition. Now take the top 5000 dudes and you’re really talking.
I can’t seem to move into the top 1% - there seems to be a huge gap in knowledge / information on how to do this 😢
Choose your ancestors carefully
Yep, there certainly does…
First you have to understand aristocracy and feudal tenure, which if still enforced would end this whole problem which is: equating wealth with money. Wealth is not money nor is it property you must keep them separate then the solution will dawn on you. The use of money causes a divide which does not exist but on paper, notice all the high income are in finance, a paper pusher!
Or you could start a business and give more value than you take and after 30 odd years of 50-70 hr weeks you may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife and a beautiful car, and ask yourself, how did I get here?
The really big incomes are mostly not earned. If you dig down you will find that it consists substantially of rent, and for the rest, monopoly intellectual property and other rights.
Land is not wealth. The notion that land is wealth is one of the great fallacies of the age. Financial institutions are also recipients of rent, under the label "mortgage interest".
Attempts to justify the unjustifiable aside, ultimately it all boils down to what sort of society we wish for ourselves and our kids to live in.
Increasingly unequal, deliberately economically skewed, divided societies which growing numbers of people feel disenfranchised from is ultimately a 'frogs in the pot' recipe for discontent.
Everyone should pay the same %
We need a flat tax structure not a scaled system. The people in the top 10% are just carrying too much of the burden.
I believe you're 100% incorrect.
No wonder economic growth is lacklustre in Great Britain. You can't have a large economy through the largesse of the top 1%,surely?
I do not understand why the Government has not gone after Trusts which are really the best tax avoidance schemes around.
After all what is a trust but not unlike charities where the Government considers them to be Tax free.
Trusts are basically a self created charity designed for the fundamental reason of avoiding inheritance tax.
Why go for the small farmers?
The richer you are is easier to avoid paying tax and hide your money
Tax Unearned Income at the same rate as Earned Income … ??? 🤔🤔
I like your haircut.
Everyone tells how much.
No one tells 'WHO'.
My mum was in the top 1%. She is a single parent to me a single child in central London. She earned as a partner in a city law firm around 500k with her bonus. I was sent through private school, went to university relatively debt free, and my house is worth around 1.8 million. Yes this is a lot and yes this is massively privileged in London. But for what she has put in and what she has got in return is not worth it. The problem with thresholds is that there is a massive disparity between 100k, 500k and 1m + salaries. Especially if you live in London as we do. It is so true that living in London is so fucking expensive and is actually not that easy. Yes we are comparatively much better off but we have a small 4 story 3 bedroom 2 bathroom house in central London and she has worked her arse off for it dealing with sexism and paying for childcare on her own. Yes we are privileged and lucky, but taxing people like my mum who have worked so hard is not the same as taxing institutionalised wealth. Ultimately It is asset wealth vs income wealth and this is where taxes should be made fairer.
Edit: this is not a cry for poverty, far from it but it puts into perspective the problem of simply criticising and wanting to tax high incomes.
What wealth did the law firm produce?
Frankly, a 500k salary is essentially obscene. Also, millions of people « work their arse off » for a fraction of that.
@@physiocrat7143 2.3bn in revenue in 2023
You represent part of the wealthiest sliver of people in the history of the planet in both assets and income - of course she and you should be taxed more on both.
@@glassmuxxic Fine but more point is that working ridiculously hard (90+ hour weeks) and all the stress that comes with. Is it worth 50+% of your income being taken away by the state. thats just over 200k in this instance. We don't mind paying this to an extent but my point was more about asset wealth vs income wealth. My mum could have just bought a load of houses in wales in 2010s and made a shit load more money more tax efficiently but no. The system punishes earned wealth it does not punish asset wealth through capital gains efficiently enough.
Who 'are'
How top 1% is mentioned on the same page with salary?????? Obviously, the top 1% doesn't earn a salary....duh....
Question is the increase in fram land values of 351% in 23 years, true, false,a tax dodge, or for people who like cleaning up cow shit with over complicated Hoovers.
Not sure ? You can Ask the audience, go 50/50 or phone a friend.
LoL first stat used is income tax. The truely rich do not give a gnats backside about income tax. Anyone who has the majority of their income subject to income tax is not the problem.
The real problem is the 0.01% and the more you are worth and earn the less tax you pay on a percentage basis and that is what is truely unfair.
Stop aid domestic and foreign
top 10% on 69k? God help the UK
Take a look at how much the dollar billionaires own, in comparison to the GDP (for lack of better yard stick). In both the UK and in the "third way social democratic paradise" of Sweden. And, hee, you across the North Sea there, you are now in the shadow in that game! Come on now, try to get ahead again!
Two ways to grow wealth or rather 'get wealthy'. The average person on minimum wage should:
1. Double your working hours (if you are able bodied and not lazy). If you currently work a 40-hour week - start working 80-hour weeks and do this for 6 or 7 years and invest that extra money. You will get there much quicker if you make sacrifices along the way such as not going on holidays or buying the latest iPhones etc etc
2. Earn a higher wage. There are many ways to do this. There is no shortage of apprenticeships out there, and there'll always be a need for plumbers, electricions and so on.
You get paid in proportion to the value you bring. So if you work a job and your employer could easily replace you with the following day - you are probably being paid accordingly.
Did you do that? Work 80 hours a week for 7 years???
@@piccalillipit9211, in my younger days I worked those sorts of hours and still managed to go out and drink 2 or 3 nights a week without any problems at all. Now that I'm in my 30's I would find it much more difficult to 'work hard and play hard' at the same time.
@@piccalillipit9211, in my 20s, I worked 70/80 hour weeks and also went out drinking 3 nights a week without any problem.
@@piccalillipit9211 That is surprisingly common, not just doctors, but most City corporate lawyers work those hours, same for specialist accountants.
@@piccalillipit9211, in my 20's I went out boozing 3 nights a week and worked 80 hours weeks.
Guess what ? These taxes are too high.
The taxes are not too high. They are the wrong sort of taxes altogether. They should not exist. Adam Smith is good on this topic.
1980 the rot started to set in. That fits.
How to find a 1% job? How to become one?
Become an entrepreneur. No other way. I myself run a business generating £150K a year. However, I have overheads of wages, etc. Thankfully, I am only 26 years old, and I'm expected to get my business to 7 figure business within the next 5 years. However, to make this kind of money, you MUST save and invest that saving into a buisness, otherwise you will always be stuck in the rat race.
It depends on what skills you can provide or how much time and effort you are prepared to attain the skills that justify those sort of higher wages.
@@Stellarcleaning Dude get real - a £1m a year business is not going to get you into the top 1%
Het born into the right family.
@@RabJ208 No it does not - you people are delusional. Earning £500k a year is NOT going to put you into the top 1% wealth wise.
Tax avoidance!!! The self employed have tax PAYE.
Farmers in the top 1% based on wealth but as we've been hearing they're struggling from a cash perspective.
I think assets and income needs to be taken into account bearing in mind if the person owns his ppr outright or not.
top 0.1 %
You can't Tax your way to prosperity
You invest and build your way there - which the private sector has failed to do for 3 decades.
@@glassmuxxic there is no investment because the taxes on the profits are too high, no point in risking your money. Growth only comes from business
@@garyb455 The UK corporate tax rate on both main rate and small profits has more than halved since 1982. Even the introduction of 10% patent box rates from 2013 had little to no impact on investment. What you've said is demonstrably untrue.
Too much.
You’re kidding? Even fresh graduates start on £35K these days😂 How can you say median income is 30.2K? Rubbish