Date published: 2008/09/07
The BBC says:
People taking home more than £100,000 a year should pay higher tax rates, the Trades Union Congress has suggested.
On the eve of its conference in Brighton, the TUC said the "super-rich" were better off in real terms than their Victorian era counterparts.
The £27.7bn fortune of steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal was said to be double his nearest 19th Century equivalent.
General secretary Brendan Barber said extreme wealth was "socially divisive and morally objectionable".
The TUC says higher tax rates should be imposed on earnings between £100,000-£150,000 and over £200,000.
Barber is obviously up to the good old 1970s trade unionist tricks and games. So on the one hand he mentions the "super-rich" and naivly compares the richest person in the country with the richest person over a hundred years ago. (Naivly because the median wage will have more than doubled since then in real terms as well.)
On the other hand he then delibarately confuses that non-issue with an attack on the not-so-super-rich who earn 100k. Well, exacly why should these people pay more tax, in order to pay for the services that Barber wants for his members? Someone who earns 200k already pays around 70k in (income) tax per year. Gee whiz, obviously they should really be forking over 80k or 90k or 100k, that would be much "fairer".
It is unfortunate that certain trade unionists are still waging class warfare. It's time they grow up and join the 21st century.
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