Saw someone the other day saying Labour is the only party that will acknowledge that trade offs exist, but also that they keep picking the side of the trade off guaranteed to annoy their voters, which seemed like a pithy summary of politics.
EDIT: I see we’re once again failing the simple reading comprehension test.
If the Greens are serious about redistributing unearned wealth, they should widen their focus from Mr and Mrs Megabucks to well-to-do families across the country who, just by dint of being sufficiently old and/or lucky are sitting in houses that have rocketed in value since the late 90s.
While I do think more needs to be done about the ridiculous state of asset inflation, and the class of people who support it, this really undersells just how ludicrously wealthy the rich have become. From Equal Trust:
Billionaire wealth has grown explosively since 1990, with an over 1000% increase in just 31 years. This has occurred alongside an increasing inequality in the UK’s overall wealth distribution. By 2023, the top 50 richest families in the UK held more wealth than the poorest half of the population, comprising over 34 million people; in 2025, the £468bn held by the richest 50 continues to exceed the £466bn held by the poorest half of the population.
This is all true! The thing is, you’d collect far more from the billionaires by introducing broad-based progressive income tax rises. The idea we can design a wealth tax that does a better job than such an income tax is a myth.
Most billionaire wealth isn’t income though, it’s in assets. I’m open to the idea that the proposed wealth taxes are an ineffective means of redistributing wealth, Richard Murphy told Polanski exactly this, but income tax changes wouldn’t be effective either. All you’d be doing it taking more from the upper-middle to upper classes, not the billionaires.
So I agree that we should tax wealth. My point (and that of the article) is that there’s no panacea where we tax wealth (or only ‘billionaire wealth’) and thereby achieve a progressive outcome. Billionaires are a tiny fraction of ‘the rich’. Redistribution that only targets that tiny fraction will always be ineffective, not because there isn’t enough money there but because there aren’t enough people. I’m not saying this speculatively: successful redistributive systems always have steep progressive income taxes, with everyone contributing and the richest contributing the most.
You can essentially tax assets through effective taxation of capital gains and rents, which will also discourage rent-seeking behaviour in investors - which is also good.
So, yes, by all means find ways to tax wealth (just sensible council tax banding would be a good start). But on its own this won’t achieve much.
I think we agree with each other, but are kinda talking past each other. I was just trying to say that income tax is an ineffective way of addressing billionaire wealth in particular. Taxes in general should be higher for everyone, but especially the rich (I’d be a terrible politician). Any successful progressive regime needs to kill the idea we can have Scandinavian services with American taxes.
The people don’t want a wealth tax specifically. They want to have the mega-rich taxed appropriately, including corporations. They want those making money out of them to have to pay for the privilege.
This is basically the argument of the article?
Maybe the article should’ve picked a less shit headline then. Reading the comments it seems many in here haven’t bothered to read the article, myself included, because it’s such a shit initial take.
I don’t tend to comment on articles I haven’t read, because I think it’s stupid, but in this case I’m not inclined to bother reading the article because its title is stupid.
If you can’t read a leftwing commenter who mildly disagrees with you on a specific policy without dismissing their arguments as ‘stupid’, I’m afraid the problem is with you.
I didn’t dismiss their arguments as stupid, I’ve not read them. I didn’t choose the divisive headline. If they wanted people to read and take their article seriously they should have chosen their words better. That is, after all, the whole purpose of writing an opinion piece, choosing your words to portray your point.
As it is, I and others in here haven’t read the article because of their choice of words, and this post is sitting on 9 up and 9 down votes. Is the problem really with me?
This isn’t left infighting over a specific point, it’s just shite journalism.
You’re merely a conspicuously belligerent example of the problem.
I’m not the one writing opinion pieces in a national newspaper that in the headline generalise the entire left movement, and sums up it will achieve very little.
If you can’t see how that’s divisive and puts people off giving up their time to read then I don’t know what else to say.
generalise the entire left movement, and sums up it will achieve very little
No. It says a wealth tax will achieve little. Not that the left will achieve little. Please read… at all. The author is leftwing and obviously does not believe that the characterisation is insulting, or he would be insulting himself!
You are being over-sensitive by letting a generalisation upset you. And, yes, it is upsetting you, because your entire reaction to this has been to hurl insults and imagine ways to be offended. I am doing you a favour by assuming this is not how you behave when you’re not upset.
Yes, we’re doing totally fine, we don’t need the wealthy to pay their taxes. /s
Okay, for the third comment in a row - is it too much for people to read these articles before they comment? I don’t think you’ve even read the headline properly, given that ‘a wealth tax’ is not the same thing as ‘the wealthy paying their taxes’!
A tax on wealth is about wealthy people paying tax, because they aren’t taxed through work. But yes, reading the article is too much work. Guilty.
Can’t read the opinion because paywall, but the idea that a wealth tax would accomplish very little is a very stupid idea. Tie it to increases in government safety net services and a reduction of income and regressive taxes and see what happens.
I mean, again, this is basically the argument of the article. But doesn’t your second sentence contradict your first? You’re acknowledging it would accomplish little on its own and it would need other things with it to make it work!
I see your point (still can’t read the article, so I can’t tell whether that’s the argument hehe).
The author of the article admits that “doing something about it requires deep-rooted changes” and, like him, I suspect a lone wealth tax won’t be enough.
So why is he picking on the Greens about it when a wealth tax is just one part of their much broader economic agenda to tackle inequality? This is either lazy journalism or partisan.
That said, it wouldn’t hurt the Greens to publicise their whole package more.
Corbyn tried more far reaching changes, but the Guardian didn’t seem to like that either.
