The Labour government proposes to try to close Britain’s fiscal deficit by a combination of raising taxes on the working class and middle class on the one hand, and cutting public services on the other.
What is going to prove very painful for the working and middle class is expected to raise £40bn. The Labour government has, to date, ruled out levying a wealth tax on Britain’s billionaires.
The richest 250 households in the UK, however, have a combined wealth of £748bn, and according to an open letter to the chancellor from “economists, charities and ‘patriotic millionaires’” published in the Times of 24 October 2024, “Greenpeace has previously supported a temporary 2.5 percent tax on all individual wealth above £10m, affecting fewer than 75,000 people in Britain, which the climate campaign group has claimed could raise a minimum of £130bn for the government over the next five years.”
If Greenpeace’s suggestions were taken up, not only would far more money be raised for the purpose of putting Britain’s economy to rights, but the rich would not be left starving or homeless, or indeed suffering deprivation of any kind.
It’s such a no-brainer that even a number of Britain’s ultra-rich support the idea! But not, it would appear, the ‘socialists’ of Britain’s ‘Labour’ government!
