£7600 dram of whisky was a fake

[nickyboy]

No we should not be telling anyone, rich or poor, how to spend their money. But we should be looking at why we have such incredibly unreasonable distribution of the stuff in the first place.

I'm struggling to understand what you suggest in relation to this example

The guy has some skill in writing stories that people want to buy. As a result they voluntarily give him money for these stories. He gets taxed (China has a progressive income tax system broadly similar to UK)

What would you have happen in this circumstance? To curb his earnings all you could do would be to set governmental limits on pricing of his stories and/or have a more progressive tax system

But even if you made the tax system super progressive he'd still be rich

 

[MacB]

I'm struggling to understand what you suggest in relation to this example

The guy has some skill in writing stories that people want to buy. As a result they voluntarily give him money for these stories. He gets taxed (China has a progressive income tax system broadly similar to UK)

What would you have happen in this circumstance? To curb his earnings all you could do would be to set governmental limits on pricing of his stories and/or have a more progressive tax system

But even if you made the tax system super progressive he'd still be rich

I already have hinted towards the skewing of the 'free' markets that's caused by IP laws. I understand where you're coming from, the individual artist/creator/inventor is the closest we have to a self made person. But even they benefit from laws and regulations created by others that just happen to cover their practices as well.

I'm not trying to make anyone poor, and have no objections to varying degrees of wealth, I just consider too big, and increasing, wealth gaps to be a dangerous thing. If you lift the bottom up far enough then I'd be extremely relaxed about the idea of people being rich beyond reason. Until that happens then I'm kind of in the tax them til the pips squeak camp.

 

[Bollo]

Moddy McModface

I'm not going to get the red pen out but this is heading a long way from a chap buying a glass of snide whisky at London prices into full Politics & Current Affairs territory. If you want to talk taxation feel free to take it there, but can we keep the Cafe thread light and fluffy please.

 

[I like Skol]

Moddy McModface

I'm not going to get the red pen out but this is heading a long way from a chap buying a glass of snide whisky at London prices into full Politics & Current Affairs territory. If you want to talk taxation feel free to take it there, but can we keep the Cafe thread light and fluffy please.

I'll drink to that