Out of interest, how much does a tax rise have to be per month in order to become ‘large’? If we say £10 per month is ‘small’ (as above) then what about £20? £30? How much is ‘too much’?

Second point, you say those earnings £30,000 are in the top 25% of earners, but a lot of those are from in and around London. Cost of living is a lot higher in London and a person on £30,000 could easily be very tight and will find it awkward giving up £120 a year in tax.

Claude,

I’m not sure this is really the ‘right-wing’ notion of middle class but, rather, the public’s self-perception that they are almost all middle class. To quote Dave Osler on this blog:
http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2009/06/24/how-can-we-convince-the-public-of-re-distribution/

“Regardless of where they actually do stand in the income rankings, most people consider themselves as somewhere close to the middle. Over two-thirds believe that everybody has at least the opportunity to get on in life.”

I would guess that the right are reflecting rather than driving that belief. And, it isn’t necessarily wrong. Of course, if you class “middle” as the person on exactly the median wage to the nearest penny then clearly very few people are “middle”, but that clearly isn’t very meaningful. I’m not sure there is a right answer to what range middle should encompass.

Isn’t it quite encouraging that the public basically understand the world as being composed of the “poor” who are on very low incomes, the “rich” who are on very high incomes (over £100,000 or even more) and then a really big middle? Isn’t that a promising basis for a certain social solidarity that the left might embrace?

I.e. the left might enjoy greater success embracing the popular notion that we’re all a big middle rather than playing up differences in income. That could just as easily be used to support universal benefits as it could to attack tax hikes, as the Mail has.

Best,
Matt

Wow, loving the disdain for nurses and others in this post. As has already been said, if you’re a nurse on £30K in London then you’ve probably got expendable income after gas, electric, rent, mortgage, home insurance, travel costs, food, phone of bugger all already. Jesus wept, a family of four where only one works at £50K will even find living in some parts of the country tough. These sort of sweeping generalisations about salary without factoring in regional costs and differing circumstances etc is weak.

Look this is nonsense because that paper is based in London and if you make £20,000 a year in London then you are middle class so it’s not a surprise that the journalists and editors who control the content of the paper are writing based on their experience. When I look at that number and think about the difference that £7.50 would make in relation to my outgoings I cringe at your response to this article because it’s the difference between 4 and 2 dinners for someone in this city on that wage. If you want to write a real critique then I suggest taking some regional context into account instead of simply looking at statistics. My rent and council tax for a 2 bed flat in zone 6 is cheap at £1050 a month which is not possible on £20,000 a year. I have never made more than £20,000 and that means that in this area my weekly wage is equivalent to putting my daughter in nursery for 3 days a week so don’t tell me it’s not class war because for the city with the largest concentration of people in the country it bloody is.

A suitably brutal response from the commentors above, and rightly so – what a pointless, ignorant post.

Mmmmmmmmmm well now let’s see – if we had not had massive immigration designed not to fill job vacancies but to expand a client voter-base, a welfare culture which encourages state-dependency instead of self-reliance, a government so incompetent with public finance that our descendants are settle with a debt-burden ‘yeah, even to the tenth generation’, a third-world aid programme which hands tax payer’s money over to corrupt officials and tin-pot dictators, the EU contribution we make each year and… oh yes, a compulsive desire to send our troops into far-flung conflicts at the behest of our great American allies then perhaps…just perhaps… we would have the money available to raise people out of poverty and help the less fortunate at home. Why is the British taxpayer handing over more money to a bunch of crooks and incompetents who have proved, beyond all shadow of doubt, that they are unfit for purpose????????????

Warren Buffet takes a good look at class. He says the class which has been winning is the rich class. The economy is structured around them. So the class issue has never gone away and for the Tories to criticise a class war is idiotic as they are also engaging in a class war. The Tories are for the rich and these rich people will want something back if the Tories get back into power.

“These sort of sweeping generalisations about salary without factoring in regional costs and differing circumstances etc is weak.”

I agree, it is indeed weak. But then so is calling an (effectively) 1% tax rise and a 1% cap on public sector pay “hammering” anyone, let alone the level of people the papers have alluded to being affected, without factoring in regional costs and differing circumstances.

I wouldn’t disagree with that Lee. A single guy on £50K that lives outside London will probably not find the tax changes anything like as significant as a family of four living in London on the same amount. If anything though it kind of shows how inherently screwed the tax system has become.

So basically the “little people” are fucked, aren’t they?

You ask to raise the minimum wage or any low wage to HUMANE levels and the reply is invariably that doing so would wreck the economy (which, not always, but more often than many would like to admit means preventing their boss from buying yet another Bentley).

You point out that maybe it’s a bit unfair that those on the lower end of taxation pay 20% of a monthly £900/1000 in tax while millionaires fork out a maximum of 40% and accusations are thrown that the Bolshevic Seventies are back.

You ask to make insecure jobs a little more secure so that people don’t get the sack at a one-hour notice (which means having to apply for benefits) and can feel a little more financially secure and they yell that Britain will lose competitiveness and businesses will up sticks in no time at all.

You try and introduce measures designed to help those on shitty incomes such as childcare help or wage supplements and they yell that the state is fostering parasites, the market’s being distorted and nanny state’s taking over.

So then you try and get those on higher incomes to pay a bit more so that those on low and low/middle income can pay a tiny bit less in tax and have a couple of extra banknotes available at the end of the month and that triggers reactions including words such as “ignorant”, “class War”, “clobbering”, “pointless” and “disdain”.

The message is therefore: do your shitty little job, keep your head down, shut up and don’t you dare ask the wealthier ones to help out a bit, one way or the other.

Some have attacked this entry, but look at the problem here. For the fuss that has been created from the middle classes, look at what little concession has been made for the poorer end, and let us not forget that what small amount of relief is given those below 14k, this will be reviewed in April of 2010, with the likelihood of it being shelved if the economy makes that 3.5% growth spurt. The point is that it is not only a small price to pay for the middle classes, but it is not enough if the remuneration is feeble at best.

I have decided I am a paid-up member of Sunder Katwala’s “angry middle”. People who believe we’re being ripped off by the rich *and* the feckless.

I think your own analysis is skewed. The richest people in society don’t earn an income, in the recognised sense, they live off their wealth.
It’s also worth pointing out that a salary of £25K equates to a monthly post-tax income of around £1,500, if you are a 20 something living at home then that’s ok money, but for anyone else; housing will take case of at least a third of that, basic bills another third, leaving £500 a month for everything else, there is no way you can afford a “middle class” lifestyle on £25k.
For me middle class doesn’t even start until you are on double the national median income (which is just below the point at which families stop getting tax credits £58K).

Never mind all this stuff about up the middle classes, the back bone as well as the stomach of the nation, and the rich bankers because Gordon Brown is just an old-fashion class warrior. Try this instead:

“There has been mounting speculation in recent months about the personal wealth of the leading figures in the Conservative Party. Interest has heightened after the Tories announced that they would implement an austerity budget, slashing public services, if elected to Government. Research carried out last year by the News of the World recorded 19 millionaires in the Shadow Cabinet, giving some indication of the level of wealth at the top of the Conservative Party. Here Times Money has updated the list.”
http://timesbusiness.typepad.com/money_weblog/2009/11/10-wealthiest-tories.html

The richest people in society don’t earn an income, in the recognised sense, they live off their wealth.

For the top 0.1%, true. For the top 1%, mostly not true; for the top 10%, definitely not true.

For me middle class doesn’t even start until you are on double the national median income

Doesn’t that kind-of negate the, erm, “middle” point?

Doesn’t that kind-of negate the, erm, “middle” point?

That rather depends on what sense you’re using the term “middle-class” in… There are several different and incompatible definitions, based variously on disposable income, education levels, type of employment, economic relations, accent, background, etc, etc… Is an independent CORGI plumber working class (as he earns his living by manual labour) or middle class (as he owns his own business, almost certainly owns his home, and earns a pretty good living)? Is he higher or lower on the socio-economic scale than a university lecturer who lives in a rented flat? Does it make a difference if one or the other of them went to a private school, or drops their aitches?

I’m increasingly coming to the conclusion that our traditional definitions of class are not well suited to our current social and economic situation. Which is not to say that class has dissappeared, just that we need to re-evaluate what it means.

@ 15 This is where people get confused and imagine they are higher up the socio-economic scale than they are. Income distribution is non-linear, and being on a middle income is not the same as being middle class.

12. “I have decided I am a paid-up member of Sunder Katwala’s “angry middle”. People who believe we’re being ripped off by the rich *and* the feckless.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Producerism

18 – Have you ever seen Sunder and Pat Buchanan in the same room? Have you?! The conspiracy goes wider…

Let me repeat what I said on another thread. Go on, let me!

Middle-class and middle income are two completely seperate things, yet the deliberate blurring of these two distinct categories has been an absolute god-send to the Thatcherite / Mail agenda, falsely convincing people on £25k, or for that matter £30k that they were on the “same side” as the ruling interest in society.

Middle-class means Borgious, that’s the Marxist definition – employers, upper professionals. The ruling class is the upper middle class, the business owning and upper managerials. “Upper class” is the aristocracy and gentry, interbreeding with our ruling class, but essentially irrelevant. We are ruled by the richer part of the middle class. Fooling people into believing the manifest untruth that “most people are middle class” is the cleverest con the Right ever played, Thatcher and Reagan managed it better than anyone, and we have been reaping the fetid whirlwind ever since.

So when scum like Mel scream about “the middle-class are being mugged” when provate schooling / privat emedicine /properties over £1m etc etc are taxed the correct response is “Yes indeed, lets have some more of that!”

Let me repeat what I said on another thread. Go on, let me!

Middle-class and middle income are two completely seperate things, yet the deliberate blurring of these two distinct categories has been an absolute god-send to the Thatcherite / Mail agenda, falsely convincing people on £25k, or for that matter £30k that they were on the “same side” as the ruling interest in society.

Middle-class means Borgious, that’s the Marxist definition – employers, upper professionals. The ruling class is the upper middle class, the business owning and upper managerials. “Upper class” is the aristocracy and gentry, interbreeding with our ruling class, but essentially irrelevant. We are ruled by the richer part of the middle class. Fooling people into believing the manifest untruth that “most people are middle class” is the cleverest con the Right ever played, Thatcher and Reagan managed it better than anyone, and we have been reaping the fetid whirlwind ever since.

So when scum like Mel scream about “the middle-class are being mugged” when private schooling / private medicine /properties over £1m etc etc are taxed the correct response is “Yes indeed, lets have some more of that!”

I keep reading Letters From a Tory’s little ejaculation at no.5 and see nothing in the post at all ignorant or pointless.

My guess is that the article does a good job of yanking away another cosy ideological blanket the Right wraps itself in.

And when you do that, and the Right begins to feel the chill of reality, their singular response is to petulantly spit at you, like LFaT does here.

Still no-one has addressed my first point – how large does a tax rise need to be for it to become large? The article says that £7.50 per month more on someone earning £30,000 is not a lot. If we assume that “it’s only small” is a reasonable justification for a tax rise it follows there must be a point where the tax rise is no longer considered small. How much does the author think the ‘middle-class’ can afford before they start being hit hard?

The point is:
if the Telegraph & the Mail had written that £20 or 30K a year is too low a threshold to increase NI contributions, then I’d say fair enough. It’s actually be a reasonable point to make.

One of the commenters mentioned “a nurse in London”. But that is not what the right wing press have been banging on about. In fact, for the record, throughout 2009 both papers have been calling persistently for a pay freeze on nurses.

Their reference of “middle income people” being battered is not nurses in London. It’s executives on £40 or 60K a year – which really grates.

I emphasise. The Daily Mail actually refers to “middle income earners” more than “middle classes”, which is just crass. It shows how self-referential the world inhabited by Mail writers is.

As for Mark M @23, of course there comes a point where a tax rise becomes too much, offensive, ridiculous and unaffordable.
The actual point depends on a load of circumstances and detailed studies, so I’ll refrain from making sweeping black ‘n’white statements.

For sure, £7.50 per month on someone earning over £30,000 a year is not a lot at all. But, for instance, current levels of council tax clobbering people irrespective of income is. Current electricity and gas bills are.

@9 Dizzy: “If anything though it kind of shows how inherently screwed the tax system has become.”

Interesting thought there, Dizzy. You seem to be suggesting that, because many occupations are low paid relative to cost of living in the south east/London, the problem lies with the tax system. The proposal is that: a modest tax increase that can be absorbed by families in other regions is unaffordable in the south east/London because of government policy, rather than poor wages.

Perhaps, the UK should determine tax allowances on a regional basis to address this problem. On top of London weighting of salaries in the public sector and in many private companies. That sounds like a good way to reduce bureaucracy.

Alternatively, we are looking at market failure in wages. I agree without qualification that a job which provides a comfortable lifestyle in the north and midlands of England will deliver subsistence in London. Wages, adjusted for London weighting, have not kept up with cost of living differences.

Again, Dizzy, I agree that the UK tax/benefit system is a mess. But poverty caused by low London wages can only be addressed, somehow, by increasing wages or reducing cost of living.

I think we have got ourselves into a bit of a state if we are redistributing money away from people on £21,000.