I’d give it a read - quite a reasoned response I though. But, hey, what do I know?
Mods hold off, I know you’ve probably been working very hard on my poll over the last hour but it’s not needed, it’s ‘ne-go-she-ate’ that is the official pronounciashun.
There, I’ve said it. That’s it THE OFFICIAL Sotonians pro-noun-sea-a-schun.
Burn the heaven
Heaven?
Please don’t make me explain my joke cobs
Hyper-correction is an interesting phenomenon. It normally arises when people try to pronounce words in a way that they think to be “correct”, as the hirsute chap in the video states. It’s also not unknown for the resultant pronunciation to eventually become the accepted one - most people pronounce ‘gigolo’ as if it were a French word (so with the initial consonant pronounced like that in ‘Gitanes’), which isn’t how an Italian would say it.
How would an italian say it? ‘zjhyigolo’?
Jigolo. I’d love to know what sound you’re trying to represent there though - can you record it and post it up here?
Ever seen a cat leaving a room…that’s the shape he’s using.
I’m not disputing the effect of net migration on wages, but population seems to be an over riding factor. Sweden is one of the top 5 equal countries I mentioned, has a higher standard of living, a more generous welfare state, and is a member of the EU. What’s a major difference between us and Sweden? They have a population of about 10 million and a territory more than twice the size of Britain. If you look at the GINI coefficient table, that is the over arching trend, rich or poor the more equal countries have either relatively low populations or low population density. Membership of the EU or any other multilateral body doesn’t seem to be a factor.
Average taxation for Swedes is around 70%.
Is that something we can sell to the 70m living here?
I absolutely admire the outcomes that the Swedish are achieving, but the means place the burden on the citizen when the country is offering a relatively generous 21% corporate tax rate.
I’d argue that Sweden would have much more room to redistribute that burden if it were not a member of the EU. They know that if they tried to achieve any kind of parity on the corporation tax issue, both the multinationals and the entrepeneurial class can easily move elsewhere. No controls on flows of capital. A single market. Freedom of movement anywhere in the Union. The only thing they get to keep is the mineral business and local industry.
As stated before, I utterly admire the outcomes the Swedes are going for, but I think they’re constrained by membership of the European Union and have had to make extreme taxation choices to meet their ends.
You could argue that placing the tax burden on the citizens is more appropriate, as the generous public services it funds are most likely to be accessed by the citizens rather than corporations. Also, Sweden’s corporation tax hasn’t done it any harm in developing homegrown multinationals, IKEA, Spotify, Electrolux, SAAB, are all still Swedish owned and headquartered. I recognise that the EU exacerbates underlying drivers of inequality, but I don’t think you can claim it is one of those major drivers itself.
I think there has got to be a better balance than 70%. The Swedes are mostly cool with that. Fair play to them.
We don’t even ask that of our highest rate taxpayers.
Not so sure about that. I can’t find anything that backs up a 70% rate, though perhaps if you add together all taxes, direct (at the highest marginal rate) and indirect then you might come close to a figure like that. Even then, you can hardly say that the highest marginal rate is the average - it very clearly isn’t.
http://taxsummaries.pwc.com/ID/Sweden-Individual-Taxes-on-personal-income
Try Googling for 70% tax and Sweden.
I did a search on tax rates sweden 2019, and I’ve posted two of the results that I found. Yes, there are headlines on some of the resultant hits (such as this one) that mention a 70% tax rate. But even in that link (with data from 2017) it’s clear that the 70% rate is marginal and applies only to earnings above $98,000. So how many Swedes would have been paying this rate? And on how much of their income?
That may be the highest rate of income tax that a Swede would have to pay, but it sure as hell isn’t the average. And I’m not sure that it’s even current, as the two links that I posted are more recent and suggest otherwise.
This link says 62% for last year.