TAX WEALTH, NOT WAGES: for a legal maximum income

 

Contrary to all the fuss and brouhaha, Boris Johnson's new taxation for health and social care is a pitiful failure to match the scale of monumental crisis in both social care and the NHS.

And equally damning, the Tories' new taxation scheme is one of the most unfair and regressive of all, in a state awash with taxes that hammer the lowest-paid whilst tickling the tummies of the grotesquely rich.

First, the headline facts. From next April, and for the three subsequent years, National Insurance Contributions will increase by 1.25 percentage points - which is a rise of over 10% on the current rate. In total that will raise an additional £36billion, spread over 3 years.

It's a UK-wide tax. In response to the backlash about this being Boris's 'social care poll tax', levied on Scottish workers to (allegedly) bail out social care in England, the Tories have conceded that £1.1billion a year will come to Scotland from this 'health and social care levy'. They furthermore 'magnanimously' granted the Scottish government the powers to decide how to use that extra funding, after being accused of undermining devolution.

Broken Tory Promises

In once again breaking a Tory election promise not to raise taxes – at the same time as also spitting in the faces of those who believed the Tories when they promised not to end the pension 'triple lock', whereby state pensions rise with inflation, average wages or by 2.5% - they try to fool people into thinking they are dealing with the catastrophe in social care, so blatantly exposed during 18 months of pandemic. They are not!

For starters, only £5.4billion of the total £36billion is to go to social care; the rest is to be poured into the gaping hole in NHS funding, which is facing its own escalating crisis. And of that sum, only £2.5billion is being allocated to funding of the social care workforce, training and associated council costs – despite England alone suffering 120,000 unfilled vacancies in that sector! Age UK reports that at least 1.5 million elderly people are not getting the care they need (and deserve).

The £1.1billion a year allocated to Scotland certainly puts to shame the pitiful £148million previously promised by Nicola Sturgeon – and now officially signed up to by the Scottish Green Party – in their entirely bogus claims of establishing “a National Care Service on a par with the NHS”.

But it still goes nowhere near tackling the crises in Scotland's care sector or Scotland's NHS.

Scotland's Health and Care Crisis

Shocking new figures by the nursing union, RCN Scotland, reveal that our hospitals are suffering the highest levels of unfilled vacancies in history. Almost 5,000 full time equivalent posts in Scotland's NHS remain unfilled – 7.1% of all roles in the service. In areas like the Highlands, Shetland and Dumfries & Galloway, over one in every 10 nursing and midwifery posts lies empty, unfilled, adding to the health catastrophe exacerbated by Covid-19. As a mental health epidemic sweeps the country, one in every 12 mental health nurse positions remains vacant, unfilled, unfunded.

And that says nothing of the terrible state of affairs in Scotland's social care sector.

NIC: Regressive, Unfair Tax on Wages

But as well as being nothing like adequate to the urgent tasks posed, the entire health and social care levy – the 1.25 percentage points increase on NIC contributions – is obscenely regressive, hammering those least able to afford it compared with the rich minority.

Under uproar about increased taxation of workers whilst share dividends were to remain untouched, the Tories have conceded that tax on share dividends will also rise by 1.25%. But let's not get too grateful! Let's look at the relative taxation rates, and how they hammer workers rather than wealth.

NIC is one of the most regressive taxes in the UK. The existing rate for all incomes between £9,658 a year and £50,268 is currently 12% - rising to 13.25% from April 2022. By stark contrast, all income above £50,268 only contributes a miserly 2% NIC – or 3.25% from April!

Wealth Inequality Even Wider

And of course it gets worse. Wealth inequality is infinitely greater than income inequality.

The millionaires and billionaires sink much of their wealth in mansions, yachts, super-cars, diamonds and the likes, and hire vast armies of accountants to devise devilishly ingenious ways to dodge paying taxes on their ill-gotten wealth – whereas you or I would face the jail for refusing to pay taxes on our wages.

Instead of walloping wages, health and social care should be properly funded by taxation on wealth. Here are a few illustrative examples of what could be done, in a fashion that would at least trim some of the worst excesses off the inequality inevitably produced by capitalism - a system that is constructed to create inequality.

Wealth Tax

Even a 5% wealth tax on all couples 'worth' more than £1million would raise £50billion a year – dwarfing the paltry £12billion annual income from the Tory scheme that disproportionately comes from the incomes of the lowest paid worker.

Or a puny 1% wealth tax on households worth over £4million would give the state an additional £20billion a year to fund health, social care and other public services.

Capital Gains Tax comes from selling something which has increased in value. But the highest rate of CGT is a modest 28%. If that was raised to 40%, it would give the state an extra £9billion a year.

Entrepreneurs Relief!

One of the lesser known, perfectly legal, tax schemes is called Entrepreneurs Relief! No, this is not some dodgy form of recreation, but legalised theft of public funds by the hard-at-profiteering. Over 50,000 business people benefit from this state handout. If it was included in Capital Gains Tax, and increased to 40% instead of being zero-rated, it would bring in £13billion a year!

The lowest paid millions unavoidably pay income tax starting at 20%. Just to show how 'equitable' capitalism really is, tax on earnings on stocks and shares is a puny 7.5% right now; we can hear the screams of agony from the big shareholders at facing a tax rate of 8.75% from next year!

Even a hopelessly inadequate rise to 15% taxation would gather £7billion a year extra for health and social care.

Legal Maximum Income

All these facts and figures are mere samples of what a progressive taxation system could do, at the expense of the millionaires, for the benefit of the millions.

But they also serve to highlight the need to transform the whole system with measures that would mean a vast transfusion of wealth and power away from the rich to the rest of us; the opposite to what has actually happened, particularly under successive Tory and Labour governments since the Dark Ages of Maggie Thatcher in the 1980s.

One of the policies pioneered by the SSP over the 23 years since our formation is a Legal Maximum Income, set initially at 10 times the legal National Minimum Wage. It's a policy which in turn I fought for and won as national conference policy in my own trade union, USDAW, the fifth-largest union in the country.

Frankly, the idea that a legally-enforced national minimum wage of at least £12-an-hour should be accompanied by a Legal Maximum Income equivalent to £120-an-hour is absurdly over-generous to the rich. But it would be a good start, in tackling inequality and providing Universal Free Basic Services.

And it could raise a fortune! At risk of boggling your brain, imagine such a policy applied even just to Scotland's 10 billionaires, whose combined wealth rocketed to £22.4billion last year. If a legal cap was imposed on them, at 10 times the proposed £12 minimum wage, that would leave about £21billion for Scotland's public services!

Or extend the geography of this Legal Maximum Income to the whole UK: the richest 250 people increased their wealth last year by over £1million a day, each, on average – every day!

A mere 171 people, the UK's billionaires, have a combined fortune of £597billion. Slap the cap on them, at 10 times the minimum wage, and you can do the sums for yourself.

Capitalism is Designed to Create Inequality

Capitalism by its very nature is a grotesque machine for creating inequality. As even the right-wing Sunday Times was moved to write when it published its annual Rich List in May 2021,

“Many readers will feel uncomfortable that such astonishing fortunes have been created as Britain battled a virus that has so far claimed 128,000 lives, increased unemployment to 1.7 million, ramped up government debt, clipped civil liberties and heightened levels of depression and other mental health illnesses.”

Uncomfortable? Furious more like, but all the more resolved to overturn that system. Which would require democratic public ownership of the major industries and services to fully tackle, but which a Legal Maximum Income would certainly begin to transform.

Socialism – not Tinkering with Capitalism

The Tories are openly the political wing of capitalism and its inherent inequalities and exploitation. Labour under Starmer is the New Labour New Tories! It's led by the knight of the realm who led the opposition to mild increases in Corporation Taxes on the giant corporations in this year's Westminster Budget debates!

But neither the SNP nor Scottish Greens fundamentally oppose the continued rule of capitalism, and therefore satisfy themselves with minuscule measures to redress the balance of inequality; measures that are puny in their scale.

The health, social care and general well-being of the population will not be noticeably improved by the funds raised by the regressive taxation schemes just announced, which will serve to exacerbate inequality.

The SSP's policy of a Legal Maximum Income of no more than ten times a living, minimum wage, rapidly reduced to ratios of 5:1 or less – alongside our fight for democratic public ownership of energy, transport, construction, major industries, landed estates and the entire financial system – is what is required.

Successfully proposing Legal Max Income policy at 2018 USDAW National Conference

NOW WATCH THE VIDEO!

This video was made over 3 years ago, so a few of the statistics are dated: we need a MINIMUM hourly wage for all aged 16 upwards of at least £12. 

But the message and policy is even more relevant today than then, with galloping inequality, exacerbated by the Tories' 10% hike of NIC taxation of ordinary workers. 

Copy and paste this VIDEO link in your search, or right click on it for options:

https://youtu.be/oIqKUohclN4

 

FOR A MAXIMUM INCOME - initially 10 times the Minimum Wage

UK's richest capitalist, union-busting, fracking Jim Ratcliffe

We may as well live on two entirely different planets here on Earth, given the grotesque and growing gap in wealth and power between the rich and the rest of us.

Just 61 billionaires now own more wealth than the poorest half of the world's population - 3.8 billion people.
The richest 0.1% of the human species - about seven million people - grabbed as much combined wealth as the poorest 3.8 billion since 1980. And the infamous '1%' robbed 27% of the world's newly created wealth over the same period of 1980-2016.
Stinking Rich List 
Closer to home, the Sunday Times' 30th annual Rich List is enough to make you vomit at the nauseating greed on parade by the 1,000 richest people in Britain. You need to be 'worth' a minimum of £115million to gain entrance to this exclusive club. 

Between them, the richest 1,000 now sit atop a Himalayan pile of wealth totalling £724billion. Yes, that's an average of £724million each! 

And amidst this gathering of the stinking rich, Britain's 145 billionaires are greedily clinging onto £480billion - exactly two-thirds of the total. 

Publication of this latest parade of obscene wealth was trumpeted by cries of joy, in the Sunday Times and other capitalist media, that inherited wealth has been replaced by 'self-made entrepreneurs'. Far from being 'self-made', these are people who've crawled to the top by exploiting workers - robbing the unpaid labour of the working class they employ - or speculating on the upper-class casinos known as Stock Markets, hedge funds and banking. 

Jim RATcliffe - 'Worth' £21billion? 
The media odes of joy were especially triggered by the man who climbed to the top of the money mountain, Jim Ratcliffe, 60% owner of petrochemical giant INEOS, the biggest private company in the UK. He's now officially 'worth' £21.05billion... and figures from INEOS insiders suggest he could even possess as much as £27billion.
This creature should be all too familiar to workers in Scotland - especially those at Grangemouth petrochemical plant and oil refinery.

Back in 2010, Ratcliffe moved INEOS headquarters to Switzerland to dodge taxes in Britain. The Grangemouth petrochemical plant made operating profits of £31m in 2011 and £49m in 2012 - as part of global profits exceeding £2bn. Not content with these gargantuan profits, Ratcliffe consciously planned a showdown with the Grangemouth workforce and their powerfully organised trade unions in 2013. 

He demanded cuts to pay, pensions, shift allowances and bonuses that robbed workers of £10-15,000 each. He set out to smash the unions, victimizing the Unite union convener - aided and abetted by the witch-hunt against him by the Blairite UK Labour Party leadership. And he perversely exploited the fact Grangemouth accounts for 85% of Scotland's fuel supplies and 30% of England's to hold a bazooka to the heads of both Westminster and Holyrood, demanding £150m in subsidies for INEOS' profits. 

Grangemouth workers, 2013

Capitalist Dictator 

In an insult to language - 'INEOS' is Greek for 'bright new dawn' - Ratcliffe plunged the Grangemouth workforce and the whole of Scotland into darkness and despair by shutting down the petrochemical plant, putting it into liquidation, when the workers fought to resist his wholesale butchery of their conditions in pursuit of even greater profits. This poisonous cocktail of blackmail and bullying forced the unions to accept devastating cuts to conditions, a 3-year pay freeze, removal of union facilities and a 3-year no-strike agreement. And it wrung £9m in grants off the SNP Scottish government plus £125m loan guarantees from Westminster - to pursue a course of profiteering based largely on the use of the environmentally destructive fracking process.

This whole episode blows to smithereens the alleged fairy tale of the 'self-made man'; the 'rags to riches' tale we're peddled - not only to justify Ratcliffe's obscene personal wealth, but also to dupe us into thinking that, with a bit of graft, anyone can become a millionaire or billionaire. 

Fairy Tale from Hell 

This fairy tale has a monster at its core, a one-man capitalist dictatorship, who not only threatened to wreck 1,350 Grangemouth workers' livelihoods, and those of 2,000 contract workers, but held the elected government to ransom. Successfully! Now he is suing the Scottish government for banning fracking, and issuing legal threats to anti-fracking protestors in England. This truly is the dictatorship of capital, in the form of one multi-billionaire, robbing workers' families, trashing our environment, trampling democracy underfoot, but lauded by the sycophantic capitalist media as a success story.

Even if there were no other 'Jim Ratcliffes' on earth, this one story should be enough to motivate and mobilise for decisive action against the grotesque gap between the rich and the rest of us. But he's not alone. For starters, the other two shareholders in INEOS have joined him in the top 20 in the 2018 Rich List, at joint 16th.

Scotland's Eleven Billionaires 
Among the filthy rich with some residential link to Scotland itself, we now 'enjoy' the company of 11 billionaires - whose combined personal wealth totals £16.2billion. That's over half the entire annual budget of the Scottish government for the entire Scottish population in the hands of 11 billionaires.
And just looking at the top 3 alone, we see their personal wealth INCREASED last year by £920million!
Glenn Gordon and family guzzled a net increase of £202m from their whisky and gin empire.
John and Kiran Shaw made the Gordons look like paupers, with a wealth increase last year of £606m from their pharmaceutical company, making a sickening profit from the treatment of cancer, diabetes and autoimmune diseases.
Sir Ian Wood and family may have observed crises in both the oil and fishing industries in recent times, but managed to scrape together a mere £112m EXTRA in the past twelve months.

Grotesque Wealth Divide 
In the land of a million living below the poverty line, 52% of them working to stay poor, these figures are obscene.
In the state whose workers are enduring wages worth £24-a-week less than in 2008, a full 10% rise in the incomes of the richest 1,000 is an infuriating insult.
In the nation where the equivalent of the entire population of Dundee last year relied on emergency food parcels from food banks to avert hunger; where people on benefits can't exist and are driven to the edge; and where energy-rich Scotland condemns at least a million families to fuel poverty, these displays of wealth are grotesque.

Why does all this matter? When we're told there's not enough money in society to pay an immediate £10-an-hour minimum wage to all workers over 16 (rising to match inflation since that figure was unanimously agreed by the unions 43 long months ago!), it matters. When workers march and strike for equal pay for women, it matters. As we struggle to guarantee a living pension after a lifetime's contribution to society; for investment in free public transport, a modern NHS, top-class education or other services... when the rich government of and for the rich tell us it's unaffordable, don't forget the Rich List!

Maximum Income 
Alongside battling for an immediate £10 minimum wage, and some job and income stability through a legally guaranteed 16-hour minimum working week, we need to popularize the demand for a maximum income, to start to close the yawning gap between the billionaires and the billions, the plundering rich and the rest of us. 

Let's illustrate the advantages of an initial 10:1 ratio between the maximum allowable income and the national minimum wage; the policy which the SSP stands for, and which I proposed and won 58% support for at Usdaw union national conference last month.
If we use the current (miserly) £7.83 minimum wage for those aged over 25, that would make the maximum income £78.30 an hour - hardly penury! Assuming a maximum 35-hour week, it would allow the richest to earn up to £142,502 a year; not exactly making them scream in agony! 

Let the Rich Scream Blue Murder! 

Even looking at the tiny list of the UK's 1,000 richest, the overly-generous 10:1 formula for a maximum income would still permit them to roll around in combined incomes of £142million. How in hell could anyone object to that ceiling on their wealth? What on earth would anyone find to spend £142,000 a year on? And if (or when) the monstrously rich scream blue murder about a maximum income killing off incentive, we should laugh in their faces. Remind them that they have always argued and practised the policy that the best incentive to make the rest of us work is low pay; the whip of poverty to drive people to work. 

This policy of a maximum income initially set at ten times the national minimum wage is a powerful weapon in a necessary war on both poverty and inequality. Allowing the current crop of Rich List residents to possess £142m between them, as we've calculated above, would hand back well over £723billion to the rest of society this year alone. Imagine what that could mean for wages, NHS spending, education, public transport, job creation. 

A Modest Demand 

Of course, socialists don't just want to limit the size of the slice of cake grabbed by the rich minority; we want collective, public ownership of the entire bakery! That way society could democratically plan to meet social and environmental needs, rather than allow capitalist profit-hunting wreak havoc on both people and planet. 

But a 10:1 maximum compared to a legal minimum wage would be a great start. A very modest demand. But compared to the 183:1 gap between top company chief executives and their average workers - not the lowest paid employees, but average! - it's also a revolutionary change. One pioneered by the SSP, but now also adopted by the mass, 430,000-strong Usdaw union after a full debate at our recent national conference. 

Join the Battle! 

Join us in battling for a Charter of Workers' Rights that together could transform the lives of millions, including an immediate £10 minimum wage for all over 16, rising with inflation; a guaranteed minimum 16-hour contract for all workers who want it; and an initial maximum income set at 10 times the minimum wage, to combat inequality and win back some of the stolen wealth which workers create in the first place. 

RICH LIST 2018: enough to make you sick!

The capitalist rich keep their snouts in the trough at all times

The Sunday Times is about to publish its 30th annual Rich List, spelling out the grotesque greed at the top of society. 

This report produces the league table of personal wealth for the richest 1,000 people in the UK. 

An important detail not known to many of those who read it: the figures of billions and millions amassed by those sitting at the top of the wealth mountain doesn't even take account of what these individuals have in the bank! For mere mortals, any modest savings in the bank are included in calculations for miserly top-up benefits or other entitlements. But the rich flaunt their wealth without having to add their bank balance to the total; so they're even richer than the Sunday Times Rich List says! 

Why does all this matter? When we're told there's not enough money in society to pay an immediate £10-an-hour minimum wage to all workers over 16 (rising to match inflation since that figure was agreed by the unions 43 long months ago!), or to meet equal pay claims for women workers, or guarantee a living pension after a lifetime's contribution to society, or invest in free public transport, a modern NHS, top-class education or other services... when the rich government of and for the rich tell us that, don't forget the Rich  List! 

Two Scotlands in the One Nation

For now, ponder two stark figures amongst many in the 2018 Rich List, as it directly impacts Scotland. 

We now 'enjoy' the company of 11 billionaires - whose combined personal wealth (excluding their bank accounts, remember!) totals £16.2billion. That's over half the entire annual budget of the Scottish government for the entire Scottish population in the hands of 11 billionaires. 

And just looking at the top 3 alone, we see their personal wealth INCREASED last year by £920million!

Richest family in Scotland quaff obscene sums

Whisky Galore... for the Few

Glenn Gordon and family guzzled a net increase of £202m from their whisky and gin empire. 

John and Kiran Shaw made the Gordons look like paupers, with a wealth increase last year of £606m from their pharmaceutical company, Biocon, making a sickening profit from the treatment of cancer, diabetes and autoimmune diseases. 

Sir Ian Wood and family may have observed crises in both the oil and fishing industry in recent times, but managed to scrape together a mere £112m EXTRA in the past twelve months. 

In the land of a million living below the poverty line, 52% of them working to stay poor, these figures are obscene. In the nation where the equivalent of the entire population of Dundee last year relied on emergency food parcels from food banks to avert hunger; where people on benefits can't exist and are driven to the edge; and where energy-rich Scotland condemns at least a million families to fuel poverty, these displays of wealth are grotesque.

Demand a Maximum Income

Alongside battling for an immediate £10 minimum wage, and some job and income stability through a legally guaranteed 16-hour minimum working week, we need to popularize the demand for a maximum income, to start to close the yawning gap between the billionaires and the billions, the plundering rich and the rest of us. 

Let's illustrate the advantages of an initial 10:1 ratio between the maximum allowable income and the national minimum wage; the policy which the SSP stands for, and which I proposed and won support for at Usdaw union national conference last week. 

If we use the current (miserly) £7.83 minimum wage for those aged over 25, that would make the maximum income £78.30 an hour - hardly penury! Assuming a 35-hour week, it would allow the richest to earn up to £142,502 a year; not exactly making them scream in agony! 

Again, if we look at the three richest families in Scotland, and very generously assume a total of ten of them are 'working' adults, that would still allow three families a combined income last year of £1.42million... instead of the £920million they actually got! It would leave £918.58million to spend on the rest of us. 

Without even the full socialist measure of democratic public ownership of the fabulous wealth these three families preside over - to tackle production of green energy and a fully-funded NHS, amongst other things - just this one modest step of a maximum income could begin to transform working-class families' lives.

Which Families Do You Side With?!

Read the Rich List for yourself, and before your blood stops boiling over, commit yourself to battle for measures that will enhance the lives of about 3 million families in Scotland, at the expense of the richest three families and their gluttonous cohort of capitalists and speculators.