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Thursday 23 April 2009

income tax

I've been reading student forums about the 50% income tax.
It's comments like this that rile me:

"Firstly how is it fair if someone who works hard to such an extent that they can provide a better quality of life for themselves and their family, has to shoulder the burden?"

How is it you define a better quality of life?

I feel a bit ill when I think what 'quality of life' might mean to this person.

To me a 'good quality of life' would be having a happy family with food on the table, heating in the house, the ability to save a bit and enough left over for treating yourself to a DVD or pizza every now and then.

But then I'm a stingy cow and wouldn't know what to do with a £150,000 income anyway.

Quality of life.

What does it mean to people?

Hm.

2 comments:

  1. Wouldn't it be great if instead of a few people having a "good quality of life" (whatever that maybe, I'm sure it differs for all of us)how about EVERYONE having a fair and equitable quality of life, although some people I'm sure couldn't give a s**t about the rest of humanity.

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  2. I agree with Dave, whilst as a race we should not be focused on our own personal quality of life and aim to better the lives of everyone, which I believe should be the sole purpose of the human race. However, I can see how these people come to making these kinds of comments.

    In a society which is dominated by capitalism and the constant advertising barrage of must have products, people are going to want this for themselves. I have no doubt that these people have worked hard to get to the position that warrents earning this kind of wage and that they must feel a sense of injustice. I mean lets face it we all feel a sense of injustice, however necessary taxation must be.

    Also, I have a feeling that this person is most probably middle to higher class, I dont like to stereotype or generalise but I feel quality of life would also depend upon class "aspirations". Take the "lower class" (if I had to be classified by this degrading classing sytem then I would consider myself as lower class) the majorty of people of this class would probably consider quality of life to be having a job which pays enough to put food on the table, go on holiday once a year and be able to atleast treat yourself and your childern now and again.

    I do share these so called aspirations but I feel as a human I have more that I want out of life than just that as I am sure every other person is. Not in the sense of more money or a bigger house but to see the world, to help another person out when they need it most or my favourite is simply understanding why we are here, is there a purpose for us or is it simply that we are here by chance and that we have nothing of great importance. However, that is an entire different can of worms. The issue here becomes money. No matter how much me may want these things without money we are not free to explore and do they things we truly enjoy.

    Sorry for the rant, but my main point is that I feel that the whole subject of quality of life is a biproduct of the greed that has been promoted by capitalism and is an extremly effective method for social control.

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