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Row as Starmer suggests landlords and shareholders are not ‘working people’
(www.telegraph.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2024
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Okay, so (hypothetically) I can be working for 50 hours a week to make ends meet. If I put any little savings I have from time to time into stock, I am not working people anymore? Just because I want to be financially responsible?
By your definition I should be called a footballer because I play football once a week casually. Ignore the 50 plus hour weeks of my actual job. I got $50 from football as season champions (it's a gift card, for the bar, at the place I play). I better go update my linkedin!
You're funny, good one.
What are you talking about? This is exactly what Keir Starmer is saying and is what I am calling stupid.
If Starmer suggested taxing football income you would be being a bit daft if you claimed that it was going to hurt the guy you just replied to on the grounds that he earned fifty quid from football.
"But he's a worker too and he's not rich and you promised not to tax him" is sillier than saying that he isn't covered by the promise to not raise taxes on working people.
That's because (and this is the bit that's not quite got through to you somehow yet) the vast, vast, vast majority of his income is from working, not from football.
This isn't hard to understand.
Owning stock doesn't make you a worker. Being a landlord doesn't make you a worker.
If you work on top of the above, you are a worker. If you do not, you aren't.
There's a big difference between "a landlord isn't a worker" and "a landlord cannot be a worker."
An absolutely based comment from Starmer.
I agree with you, but that's not what Keir Starmer said. His spokesperson recanted it, but what he said originally was stupid.
Lol whatever you say.
Read the news please.
But if he said "income from owning shares isn't eligible for PAYE taxation and therefore isn't covered by a pledge to not increase taxes on workers' earnings" he wouldn't have a headline and you would be accusing him of talking like a politician and breaking promises.
But no, he was asked this in the context of some disingenuous question like "bbbut you promised not to raise taxes on working people, and this will hurt working people, aren't people with a hardworking fast food day job and a tiny bit extra from a few shares or renting out their spare bedroom just to make ends meet exactly the working people you promised not to raise taxes on?"
And Starmer says no, and now we have a headline because a bunch of shareholders who are experts at hoarding money because it's all they really care about are as pissed as they ever get because tHe GovErNmunT iS tAkiN aLL MY mUnnY.
It's the daily telegraph, for goodness sake. When did they ever care about ordinary people's finances?!
No he did not.
He said that in his definition of working taxes. No, that person is not a worker.
And the Tory party agrees. That is why they call it capital gains tax rather than income.
This whole argument has been stirred by the right wing press since the election. Tories have constantly tried to claim the manifesto promise of no rise in working taxes means no tax rises at all.
It is an out right lie. And Starmer et al make it worse by refusing to address it.
Nothing the Tory party says or believes on taxation matches these claims. It is just a desperate attempt to sow division.
you’ll put those savings into a stocks and shares ISA where any gains from stocks are tax free guaranteed.
If you have more than £20k a year to put away into stocks and shares then yeah you need to pay some tax bruv.
That's not what Keir said originally, he said people who own any stock should be excluded from "working people". Then people got (rightfully) mad and his spokesperson had to recant for him.
🤡
No he did not.
He said people who own any stock should be excluded from “working taxes"
More accurately, he said they do not fit his definition of working taxes. Because that was the question the telegraph was trying to miss represent.
As does the Tory party and every government since the 1950s. That is why we have capital gains tax as well as income tax.
This whole argument is nothing but absurdly biased reporting from right wing press. Intentionally launched to try and sow division in the electorate. Just like every Tory tactic since the election was announced.
Why are you so cross about this? He only means that he'll tax their unearned income a bit more, and if they really are working people out won't affect them much.
The extent to which it affects workers is the extent to which they aren't workers. It isn't the logical gotcha you seem to think it is.
Why am I so cross? Because I am stripped my working people status by Starmer despite me working all my adult life and still can't start buying a house, for putting a bit of my savings into stock, just so he can claim he "didn't raise working people's taxes".
That's just peak slimey politician behaviour.
Do I think people who own a lot of stocks and assets should be taxed. Hell yes, let's tax those motherfuckers. But just don't lie and stop twisting the definition of working people.
Edit: typo
So sorry, there's a typo in your second sentence and I can't figure out what you meant to say.