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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #2730 on: 15:35:44, 17-08-2007 » |
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I was always told that that quotation was "LOVE of money is the root of all evil", though I can't say I've bothered to check; so it's all right to have it as long as you don't love it.  |
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George Garnett
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« Reply #2731 on: 15:48:54, 17-08-2007 » |
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First Book of Timothy, Chapter 6 Verse 10, Mary "For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." Well put, Timmers. (I'm beginning to wish I hadn't mentioned the new Axe Tax  ) |
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« Last Edit: 15:50:38, 17-08-2007 by George Garnett »
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time_is_now
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« Reply #2732 on: 15:50:36, 17-08-2007 » |
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You learn something new every day, George. I never knew Biblical verses were subdivided into marys.
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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Milly Jones
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« Reply #2733 on: 15:51:45, 17-08-2007 » |
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And who is rich? I would say that anyone who owns a house worth more than £300,000 and another house that he will have to pay 40% tax on if he sells it is doing quite nicely. If we're going to have sympathy for people and the money they have, there must be more deserving causes we could begin with.
As Lord B says, scrap IT by all means, but you'll have to say which services you want to cut or else which taxes you would want to increase.
"Doing quite nicely" isn't rich. These days it is just that...doing quite nicely. So then - 40% on earnings, 40% on savings, 40% on selling another property, then when you die - another 40% on the same amount of assets with IT. So, for those who have worked like Trojans from nothing to provide for their families and hopefully consolidate their future, the scenario is as follows:- Because IT has to be paid up front before any other bequests are received, those left behind may have to sell their own homes to pay it before being able to have anything at all that was left to them. In conclusion then - taxed, taxed and re-taxed by people you didn't vote for, who do not provide adequate services and squander resources with the money they do have, who will probably use it to start a war in Iraq or somewhere and otherwise spend your hard-earned cash on stuff you don't agree with a lot of the time. These people are not the landed gentry or the aristocracy any more. They are hard-working Joe Public. I was going to carry on by suggesting where they might begin making cut-backs but perhaps I'd better not go down that road. P.S. You're right about the Scripture - St. Paul did say it was "the love of money" that was the root of all evil. |
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We pass this way but once. This is not a rehearsal!
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time_is_now
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« Reply #2734 on: 15:55:10, 17-08-2007 » |
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Well put, Timmers. I'd love to take the credit (  ), but Milly's right: I think my old grandad Timmers was quoting the words of Great-Uncle Paul. |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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George Garnett
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« Reply #2735 on: 15:56:35, 17-08-2007 » |
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You learn something new every day, George. I never knew Biblical verses were subdivided into marys.
Only in the New English Folk Bible, tinners, in the Letters from Peter, Paul and Mary to the Columbians. Well put, Timmers. I'd love to take the credit ( ), but Milly's right: I think my old grandad Timmers was quoting the words of Great-Uncle Paul. Whoops, yes, it was to Timmers wasn't it. I'd better pop my cilice back on for another ten minutes for getting that wrong. |
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« Last Edit: 16:08:52, 17-08-2007 by George Garnett »
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thompson1780
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« Reply #2736 on: 16:08:29, 17-08-2007 » |
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Tinners, timmers, time, and Grandpa George, Sorry I missed the sub-text lurking behind your . Just didn't read that much into it.... Tommo |
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Made by Thompson & son, at the Violin & c. the West end of St. Paul's Churchyard, LONDON
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increpatio
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« Reply #2737 on: 16:16:25, 17-08-2007 » |
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Well, my computer crashed so I frantically ( with help of course!!) started it
Oh, you in safe mode ( eventually) and saved ... I thought... my itunes and photos on my external hard drive. I have a 30gb ipod vidoe about 20g full and a shuffle. I put my shuffle in and it wiped. My feller worked out how to get this back - all is now there but in the wrong order so even putting 1g in the right order ( the '48' for example!) took ages. I also have several books on my ipod and these come up as track 1, 2, 3 etc . I presume all would be muddled if I put my ipod in , and the tracks of my books would be absolutely entangled... so I am going to use it as a sort of static library and I think I may get a nano for 'daily new stuff' If you see what I mean.
I am , I have to say a bit confused... this happened once before when I changed comps, I answered 'yes' instead of no.... etc... and wiped all my itunes then too!!!
Ah well, still a bit of a grump , but a bit more of a resigned grump now !!
A
Oh, you mean they all have funny file names and are put in nonsensical directories? If you import them into itunes and have it set to copy all files into the itunes library directory it should put them in the right place (that is to say, in nice folders, and renaming the mp3s nicely), so long as the tags are in the mp3 files still (which I would presume). |
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #2738 on: 17:14:02, 17-08-2007 » |
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With no taxes there are no services for those who need them, and we are taxed less than some countries, I believe. I don't resent paying taxes, but I must say I wish I could choose what my taxes pay for - NOT wars! I'm rather like Margo in The Good Life when she goes to argue about the rates - "Drains I will not pay". (Presumably because they were no good, not that she didn't want drains - a faulty argument, now I come to think of it.)
(This is in reply to #2740)
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Baziron
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« Reply #2739 on: 17:28:31, 17-08-2007 » |
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Well, my computer crashed so I frantically ( with help of course!!) started it
Oh, you in safe mode ( eventually) and saved ... I thought... my itunes and photos on my external hard drive. I have a 30gb ipod vidoe about 20g full and a shuffle. I put my shuffle in and it wiped. My feller worked out how to get this back - all is now there but in the wrong order so even putting 1g in the right order ( the '48' for example!) took ages. I also have several books on my ipod and these come up as track 1, 2, 3 etc . I presume all would be muddled if I put my ipod in , and the tracks of my books would be absolutely entangled... so I am going to use it as a sort of static library and I think I may get a nano for 'daily new stuff' If you see what I mean.
I am , I have to say a bit confused... this happened once before when I changed comps, I answered 'yes' instead of no.... etc... and wiped all my itunes then too!!!
Ah well, still a bit of a grump , but a bit more of a resigned grump now !!
A
Oh, you mean they all have funny file names and are put in nonsensical directories? If you import them into itunes and have it set to copy all files into the itunes library directory it should put them in the right place (that is to say, in nice folders, and renaming the mp3s nicely), so long as the tags are in the mp3 files still (which I would presume). But that's the trouble - you CAN'T "import" it into iTunes! When you stick your iPod into the USB port, iTunes asks you whether you want to synconize with whatever is in the iTunes directory. What it does not let you do is move anything at all from the iPod to the computer!!! If you in error answer "Yes" to the question, then your iPod is wiped clean and you lose everything. If you answer "No" then it leaves your iPod alone and closes contact with it (if you're lucky!). If, through uncertainty perhaps, you just click "Cancel", then iTunes simply dismounts your iPod and your computer no longer recognises its existence. Fortunately, some of us have found a crack in this process, and can now easily use the iPod to import its files actually into iTunes. The downside is that the directory created - even though it has all the sound files - is jumbled up and needs reordering. With up to 20 G of music, this is no small task!! Baz |
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John W
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« Reply #2740 on: 17:33:09, 17-08-2007 » |
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What gets me is, if you are an average earner or just above average, you never really know what tax you HAVE paid. You pay about 22% on wages, with the money you have left you buy petrol and that's taxed about 80%, buy meals and their taxed 17.5%, same with clothes, food etc etc., you pay community tax which might be say 5% of your monthly disposable income probably, and your TV licence, water, and vat on phone electricity and gas will be another 5% of your monthly disposable income so in effect tax likely accounts for 40% of your income.
Who said we are taxed less than other countries?
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Baziron
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« Reply #2741 on: 17:49:07, 17-08-2007 » |
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You are behind the times m'Lord. They have ALWAYS taxed the rich more than the poor. That's a bit simplistic. It all depends on how you measure it and which taxes you're talking about. Many taxes, such as VAT, are the same for everyone, however rich or poor, and so for the poor that represents a greater part of their money and in that sense they are taxed more than the rich. And who is rich? I would say that anyone who owns a house worth more than £300,000 and another house that he will have to pay 40% tax on if he sells it is doing quite nicely. If we're going to have sympathy for people and the money they have, there must be more deserving causes we could begin with. As Lord B says, scrap IT by all means, but you'll have to say which services you want to cut or else which taxes you would want to increase. With respect Tony, I think it is you who is being simplistic. You cannot justify stealth taxes like IT simply by accepting the moral validity of other stealthy taxes like VAT. Nobody needs a lesson in mathematics to calculate how much more money is being paid to the Exchequer by higher earners than by lower. Furthermore, you no longer need to own a second property now in order to become the agent through which your inheritors (through no fault of yourself upon your own death!) are suddenly landed with a heavy tax bill that they cannot reasonably afford to pay. Your only house + any other financial assets (however modest) needs only total over £300,000 for your heirs immediately to have a real tax problem. Furthermore, it is not one of their own making, and results (unlike VAT) in absolutely no choice whatsoever upon their part. If the threshold were to be raised to at least £1000,000, this might go some way to restoring the IT situation to what it was 30 years ago. (But then this is not the government's agenda! They simply want to find as many stealth windfalls as possible.) With regard to Labour's attitude to taxing poorer people, just spend some time thinking through Brown's so-called "abolition" of the 10p income tax rate - what it REALLY means is a tax INCREASE of 10% on the first level of taxable income. Those, therefore, with an income of less than £18,000 will be seriously clobbered, while other higher earners will notice an immediate drop in their tax bill (since most of their earnings will now be taxed at 20% instead of 22%). Politics is not about morality - it's about raking in as much taxation as the politicians can get away with. They have no interest at all in morality. Baz |
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« Last Edit: 17:51:04, 17-08-2007 by Baziron »
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perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #2742 on: 18:40:25, 17-08-2007 » |
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Who said we are taxed less than other countries?
This is not an easy question to answer. There are lists of tax revenue as a percentage of GDP for OECD countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDPBut this tells us nothing about the balance of tax between private and corporate; and tables of tax rates, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_around_the_worldare no use without knowing the thresholds, or some of the one-off items (try buying a car in the Netherlands, for example, where you'll get stiffed for 40% of the list price in purchase tax). But, on the whole, these tables do suggest that tax rates are lower here than on mainland Europe - and, as someone who travels regularly to Europe on business, I do have a sense that things are generally done better there - decent and cheap public transport, cleaner and more salubrious city centres, better public infrastructure. Of course it partly depends on how the money is spent - much of our defence spending, even pre-Iraq - seems to me to have been much more about maintaining delusions of world power status than actually defending the realm, and that comes with a price tag. On inheritance tax, I think it is hard to argue that it's a stealth tax - it's been around for years - but I appreciate the unfairness. The counter-argument is that much of the increase in the value of houses is unearned increment, and in the last few years it has been part of a speculative bubble that has done, IMO, a lot of damage, and looks to be bursting in a very messy way (there are certainly economists who argue that the UK's obsession with bricks and mortar as investment has seriously damaged our economy, and is certainly seen as a sign of madness by our fellow Europeans). I think that one part of the cause is the current irrational tax regime - if, instead of raising money through death duties, profits on house sales were taxed, there would be less speculation and a market that, on the long view, seems increasingly unstable and significantly failing a large sector of the population, would be stabilised. But no politician would dare ... |
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At every one of these [classical] concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. (Shaw, Don Juan in Hell)
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Baziron
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« Reply #2743 on: 18:52:20, 17-08-2007 » |
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Who said we are taxed less than other countries?
This is not an easy question to answer. There are lists of tax revenue as a percentage of GDP for OECD countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDPBut this tells us nothing about the balance of tax between private and corporate; and tables of tax rates, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_around_the_worldare no use without knowing the thresholds, or some of the one-off items (try buying a car in the Netherlands, for example, where you'll get stiffed for 40% of the list price in purchase tax). But, on the whole, these tables do suggest that tax rates are lower here than on mainland Europe - and, as someone who travels regularly to Europe on business, I do have a sense that things are generally done better there - decent and cheap public transport, cleaner and more salubrious city centres, better public infrastructure. Of course it partly depends on how the money is spent - much of our defence spending, even pre-Iraq - seems to me to have been much more about maintaining delusions of world power status than actually defending the realm, and that comes with a price tag. On inheritance tax, I think it is hard to argue that it's a stealth tax - it's been around for years - but I appreciate the unfairness. The counter-argument is that much of the increase in the value of houses is unearned increment, and in the last few years it has been part of a speculative bubble that has done, IMO, a lot of damage, and looks to be bursting in a very messy way (there are certainly economists who argue that the UK's obsession with bricks and mortar as investment has seriously damaged our economy, and is certainly seen as a sign of madness by our fellow Europeans). I think that one part of the cause is the current irrational tax regime - if, instead of raising money through death duties, profits on house sales were taxed, there would be less speculation and a market that, on the long view, seems increasingly unstable and significantly failing a large sector of the population, would be stabilised. But no politician would dare ... Hear hear! Completely perfect sense! European transport systems aren't held together by rubber wheels (are they?)! I've forgotten who it was (somebody important that one of you will remind me of) who declared that "taxing the dead is the safest form of taxation". How could it not be since the poor folks have (by then) already moved on to pastures new. But it's their heirs I'm worried about. ...But no politician would dare... Of course they wouldn't - they spend their lives merely hiding behind white papers. Baz (the politicians' Anti-Christ) |
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Tony Watson
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« Reply #2744 on: 18:56:17, 17-08-2007 » |
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With regard to Labour's attitude to taxing poorer people, just spend some time thinking through Brown's so-called "abolition" of the 10p income tax rate - what it REALLY means is a tax INCREASE of 10% on the first level of taxable income. Those, therefore, with an income of less than £18,000 will be seriously clobbered, while other higher earners will notice an immediate drop in their tax bill (since most of their earnings will now be taxed at 20% instead of 22%).
Politics is not about morality - it's about raking in as much taxation as the politicians can get away with. They have no interest at all in morality.
Baz
Well, Baz, I agree with the above. A Labour supporter tried to convince me recently that we all pay less tax now than we did 10 years ago but I wasn't convinced, what with council tax especially. Of course the rich pay larger quantities in tax but I was thinking of the widow's mite. The poor pay a larger proportion of their money in tax. And there is not always a direct correlation between how hard one has worked and the amount of money one ends up with. Just one thought, perhaps a naive one, but is it possible to decline an inheritance and thereby avoid the tax? |
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