Summary:
The middle of the country is being economically erroded by billionaire wealth.
The local economy needs to be restructured to protect this group as it is key to maintaining the local economy.
Improving the fortunes of all those with less than £3.6M in income and assets (the 99%) and therefore protecting the climate is my priority.
Full text:
The top 500 richest people in Britain own 10% of the country’s wealth. The 1% richest in Britain own at least £3.6 million per household in assets and income. That 1% are getting richer every week, through assets accumulated from the remaining 99% through the money they spend - often money spent on essentials.
The top 500 richest are those that need to be targeted with economic measures. They pay proportionally less tax than I do and most likely than you.
Take heating, you pay the bill and unscrupulous shareholders in oil and gas - who in the majority are not pension pots but the superrich - are receiving your money.
The government, which taxes your income or pension, dishes out the energy discount scheme; this money discounts your bill but almost directly goes to the shareholders of the energy firms.
The other way the superrich profit is privatisation, like privatisation of the NHS. They own shares in the private firms, so taxpayer money goes to the superrich. Not only that, the built in profit reduces service levels, meaning tax has to be increased as the system becomes less efficient. So the government also suppress wages, like those of nurses. The nurses need greater income to cover essentials, which are owned by the superrich, so they take out loans. If the nurses wages are increased the national debt would also be covered by the superrich.
Another so-called solution is to raise pension ages. Pension ages do not need to change - the tax system does. If the superrich were taxed and not allowed to parasite off the state, the state pension age would be 60.
The economic and political system of the UK is destroying the lower middle/middle class. The same group which the majority of people in Marske belong to.
The government’s levelling up scheme - which gave nothing to Redcar and Cleveland - is worth £2,500,000,000. It is essentially another scheme for billionaires because they own the debt and the private infrastructure.
During covid, billionaire wealth increased by £700,000,000,000 through government policies. Rather than social welfare, governments are involved in corporate welfare - to fund billionaires.
A 50% tax on the fortunes of the richest people in the UK would bring in £800,000,000,000. This is only fractionally more than what they earned through government schemes in 2022. A 1% tax of all those owning £3.6M would make every person in the 99% £15000 richer overnight.
Such cash would allow inflationary increases for pensioners, an increase of 10% for all public sector workers, fix the NHS overnight and allow a reversal of recent tax rises. It would remove tuitions fees for all future students and eliminate historic student debt.
It’s a political choice to live like we live today - worrying about debt, energy bills and hospital queues.
On to the climate:
The 0.1% are also responsible for 50% of carbon emissions. So taxing their wealth to create better conditions for all will also help reduce carbon emissions by reducing private jets.
The reason why a superrich tax - of tax for fortunes over £100,000,000 - isn’t proposed in Westminster is because many of the MPs are from wealthy private school elite university circles. So we need to remove those MPs and install policies that protect our islanders and take on the elite.
However, a wealth tax isn’t enough as we’d have to tax billionaires every year. The best way to readdress the economy - which is collapsing and will continue to collapse if we don’t address inequality - is to cooperatise it.
The economy requires consumption on the current model. The less the 99% have the less consumption there is. The less consumption, the less growth, and the poorer the 99% is.
So we need to lock money into local financial systems. One way is to have local banks, the other is to cooperatise energy supplies and local business.
Remodeling the local economy:
A cooperative is a company owned by its costumers or its workers. The profits go to those who make the business a success. You can’t buy into the co-op if not either a direct customer or worker.
This is why I’m pushing for a local consumer renewable energy cooperative among other cooperatives. We will be able to control the prices and cut out the shareholders, who most often are hedge funds and billionaires - not our pension pots.
We need transport, care and retail cooperatives aimed at reducing the stranglehold of multinational companies. My thinking is, by doing this, we can reduce the tax burden of those in the middle and reduce cost burdens on those towards the wrong end of the income scale. So, unlike the levelling up scheme, for every £2.50 going to you and me - £700 won’t be going to Britain’s 500 richest.
So from May if elected, my aim is to demand to restructure the economy locally to make us as self sustainable as possible and put money back into the pockets of local people. The test is making other elected members recognise that the sink economy funding billionaires is the root cause of the financial disarray around Redcar and in the UK - we must act.