The UK needs a wealth tax
Polly Toynbee, writing in The Guardian, argues that we need a wealth tax in the UK. In my opinion, it’s massively overdue. The only people who have benefited from the financial crisis and Brexit are those who were already well-off.
Given that you don’t get to choose how wealthy your parents are, advantages that you get in life from their wealth are a massive impediment to social mobility. Obviously.
Over the next 30 years, an unprecedented avalanche of £5.5tn will land in the laps of those who have chosen their parents wisely. The inheritocracy is ascending into the stratosphere: asset-rich parents are buying homes and advantage for their children and their children’s children, securing ever-rising privilege. Those born in the 1980s are on average due inheritances worth twice as much as those born in the 1960s. Parental income and wealth is a stronger predictor of someone’s lifetime earnings and wealth than in generations before. Inheritance is becoming an obstacle to social mobility.
No politician concerned about inequality, fair opportunities or financing the public realm can ignore wealth any longer. While wages have stagnated for 16 years, wealth has accelerated. Traditionally, policymakers have focused on fairness of incomes. But today, the possession of wealth is proving the greater distortion, with so much of it in effect untaxed. The mantra for a long time was that wealth taxes don’t work. But that can no longer be the answer.
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If Labour wants to achieve things in power, it’s clear it needs more money. Wealth is the place to look.
Source: The Guardian
Image: The New York Public Library