"Soaking the rich, again"

To be fair the headline grabber "Soaking the Rich" is a bit unfair. The actual context of this is in respect of the proposed elimination of USC. FG are rowing back on this somewhat by retaining a small additional tax charge on those earning over 100K. It seems reasonably equitable in that it will only apply to excess earnings >100K and be below the existing 8% USC rate!
 
Purple said:
They are already being soaked a lot. If we want to soak them a bit then we'll have to reduce the amount of tax they pay.
Click to expand...

In the (fudge) of statistics , it seems that the (richer) are getting (richer) a lot faster than Joe Soap.
If that is true , at what point do we decide there is a divide that is too large?

The (richer) hold the levers of power and (if ) too rich ,would we end up with a rich cohort and then the plebs? (USA seems to be heading that way).

Just asking?
 

You're referring to the Oxfam report, Gerry? Hold your fire, it's nonsense. A typical US (or Irish) family with functioning mortgage & other debt is not poorer than a typical debt-free Eritrean small farmer, as Oxfam assume.
 
Last edited:
T Mc Gibney,

I wasn,t referring to Oxfam report .

It does appear that the balance in income is being skewed too much in favour (not of the rich on sayK200) but on the super -super rich.
The super-super rich used to be those who owned Land and controlled tenants etc, eventually the plebs revolted; now the super-super rich have different levers but I suggest no less greedy ?
Even in our own mess , the super-super rich were not watched ? and believed their own entitlements. We all paid a price..

There does appear to be too large a disparity twix super rich and wealth spread?
It can,t be a positive sign , can it?
 
The problem is that it's so easy to distort the statistics and this is being done wholesale at the moment to feed the politically-motivated "income equality" agenda. http://www.iea.org.uk/blog/beware-oxfam’s-dodgy-statistics-on-wealth-inequality

Even in this discussion, the repeated mixing-up of income and wealth is very misleading. George Best earned huge income for years, but lived miserably and ended destitute. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...ad-died-I-ate-beans-for-Christmas-dinner.html
 
Last edited:
George Best is a poor example to be fair , Best did not earn huge amounts.
This was an era before agents , sky tv money & the spread of the game from pretty much a working class base & of course Georgie was never transferred so as such did not benefit from signing on fees , a portion of the transfer fee etc. added to the fact that he was managed for most of his career by the famously parsimonious Sir Matt Busby .
It is telling that John Giles who played in the same era said on the Ray Darcy show on Saturday that the most he earned in one year was £10,000 & that was playing in a far more successful team than Georgie.
Good money granted at the time but certainly not huge !
 
T McGibney said:
The problem is that it's so easy to distort the statistics and this is being done wholesale at the moment to feed the politically-motivated "income equality" agenda. http://www.iea.org.uk/blog/beware-oxfam’s-dodgy-statistics-on-wealth-inequality
Click to expand...

Yeah, I heard RTE report that the top 1% own more than the rest of us combined...

But to get into the top 1%, you need around €700k in assets, so that is a lot of people in Ireland.

I don't know the stats, but I imagine that most of Ireland's population fall into the top 10% of wealth worldwide.Anyone with a bit of equity in their house and any sort of pension fund would be unbelievably wealthy by the standards of the majority of the World's population.

Of course, because of the huge amount of negative net wealth in Ireland, we also have our share of the poorest. The people who have no assets, but no debts either, are not the poorest.

Brendan
 

Best earned millions but was never rich. "I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered."
 
I remember reading somewhere that if you redistributed all the money in the world and shared it equally with everyone then within a couple of years the same wealth divide that existed before hand would return , most people are poor for a reason and vice versa. That's life , tax them all you want they will move or do whatever it takes to maintain/increase wealth , I don't think the wealthy should be overly taxed , I think they should be applauded, most poor people think wealthy should be taxed more because they don't understand anything about money in first place thats why they are poor. Harsh but true.
 
George's career as a top class footballer ended at age 27 , he then was sporadically employed as a footballer for hire - I actually saw him play in his pomp & also for Shels !
He earned some money outside the game for endorsing products including a well remembered ad for Cookstown sausages & by flogging stories about his various travails to the press & in latter years by appearing on the speaking circuit.
The reality is that sadly he made a good but not excessive living from the game over a short career , it should be noted that Calum Best was born in 1981 when George was 35 & his best years both earning wise and as a footballer were over & given George's spiralling drink problem was lucky to get beans for Christmas dinner - the good times did not arrive for footballers until the 90's when John Barnes became the highest paid player at £10,000 a week. Of course George squandered his money but the reality is that he did not have excessive amounts to squander.
 
I used Best merely as an example but there are many more who earned way, way more than €75k/€100k p/a and never actually became "rich", or if so only for a very short time. Just as there are many rich people who have never earned €75k and never will.
 
A couple earning €100k between them are absolutely in the squeezed middle. Rent/mortgage, childcare, etc.

They are not "rich".

I know plenty of people who live month to month and the tabloid headline would be that they are "rich".
 
I think we agree that the word (RICH) means little in isolation.
I think we agree that the nominal rich ie over k100 are not rich/wealthly in any meaningful way.

I think we have 3 camps ,
The under k100 who mistakingly believe that k100 = rich & wealthy .
The k100 people who work hard to provide for their families ,who by no means can be called wealthy.

Those who inherited wealth by virtue of birth .
Am inclined to believe these inheritors should be (soaked) ( its the pinkie in me !)
 
I made the argument here before for high inheritance taxes and low income taxes and I was castigated.
 
You won't make much of a dent in the personal tax burden by jacking up inheritance and gift taxes, as the tax take from the latter is tiny compared to that from personal taxes. In fact, inheritance and gift taxes are already so ruinously high that they are only sustainable by virtue of the various reliefs for businesses, farms and family homes.
 
...and that's why I was castigated
 
Inherited "wealth" in Ireland is extremely low in terms of any perceived tax take from same. The vast majority of inheritances consist of family homes. A few of these may be palatial but are caught by the net 33% CAT rate. An increase on same for "trophy" houses would make no meaningful difference to the tax take. In terms of wealth the bulk of inheritances are business assets (mainly farms). A penal tax on these types of assets would destroy the farming community and many family businesses.

This is really the Sinn Fein/ Joe Higgins type of popularism that there is this large core of wealthy people in Ireland who avoid paying their fair share of taxes by means of shady schemes and cronyism. Unfortunately the reality is that this type of "political rhetoric" is just another opiate for the masses. The perception that "soaking the wealthy" is an alternative to us all paying a fair share of taxes is a myth and as yet no proponent has put forward a verifiable and independent study supporting the contention!
 
The Indo had this yesterday peddling the same BS about the top 1% being richer than everyone else.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register