I didn't know it was a race, only just saw it.
Let's get something out of the way first and foremost - no man is an island. There's this idea from many of the wealthy that they are wealthy just because of the hard work that they have put in and anybody else who put in an equal amount of hard work and made the exact step for step choices in their life would have done exactly the same. This is absolutely, demonstrably false. The easiest way to demonstrate this is to give a personal example. My income is sustained almost entirely by word of mouth and I'm a keen member of what is now termed 'the gig economy', having more than one freelancing trade as it were and diversified income streams. Out of the two marketable skills that I have, one pays very comfortably and has great earning potential and the other/more enjoyable one has little earning potential but more satisfaction personally.
I'm able to afford to live this way almost entirely due to my educational advantages - I went to a phenomenally good school and met there a bunch of wealthier kids who would go on to be the middle to upper management of tomorrow. I also met a group of like minded individuals in University who went out into industry in various fashions, some of which became entrepreneurs. Through these contacts and my own hard work I am able to fashion a living for myself and a roof over my little boy's head.
These advantages that I had came from the ability to have some form of social mobility. My healthcare was provided for, my education was provided for, the Government contributed towards my food and milk and clothing in order to see that I was well fed. The pavements I walked to school on were passable, the grass I played footy on was maintained, the buses I got to college were subsidised. This is not a gift, it is an investment by the Government into a member of society. Investment as you well know it not a one way street and there's often a return on that investment through me paying tax, NI and other less tangible things such as giving my own son better life chances so that he may grow and pay taxes.
There are some people in the country who did not have the same advantages that I did in terms of education. There were others who didn't have the advantages I did in a stable home life which allowed me to have a stress free existence and concentrate on my studies. There were others who suffered from poverty, illness or all of the problems factoring in society that we term in "anti-social behaviour". While it is very much possible to escape your circumstances, the chances of you doing so are far less than they are elsewhere. A poor teenager in Longsight does not live in the same world as a rich teenager in Hale - that much should be obvious. If we take the average of both areas, there's much less of a chance that the Longsight lad will become an investment banker than the Hale lad and hopefully we all freely accept that reality.
So spin all the way back - why should the rich pay more than the poor in taxes?
Firstly, rich people should want to pay taxes because they should want to live in a country with a population that has basic living standards and educational ability. you think politics is bad now, think what it would be like if we decided to cut the educational budget by 90% as a tax break. Do you want to live in a country where the politics of the nation is decided by people who are barely literate? Think they'll make good choices on regulation of financial markets, on the need for immigration into the NHS, on things like patient international diplomacy? That's not a world I want to live in, just for my own sake.
Secondly, the rich should pay more specifically because they've benefited more from society. That's a truism of the statement of being rich and the acceptance that society and its investment in infrastructure has played a role in the development of that wealth whether it be from life chances or literally things like "having a road to my house". The more money you have the greater financial independence you have. The greater financial independence you have, the more freedom you have and your family has. That's you benefiting directly from society to a greater degree than poor people.
Thirdly, the specific tax rate on the rich isn't unfair because you're using linear scales for logarithmic effects. A person who earns £100,000 a year isn't TEN TIMES better off than a person who earns £10,000 a year. If you earn ten grand you can't feed yourself and presumably can't afford the monthly bills that come through the door while maintaining even the basic standards of a quality of life. That experience if we're going to try to quantify it isn't ten times worse than having a comfortable financial income which allows stability for you and your family as well as many lifestyle choices that are unavailable. No more than being a millionaire is ten times more life chances than somebody who earns £100k. In fact comparing earnings/tax rates linearly rather than understanding the logarithmic nature of them is literally a reverse type of "politics of envy" that people keep banging on about. A frankly absurd jealousy towards the tax rate of the poor.
British society works on a simple principle. The people invest in the people. That means that everybody invests in everybody whether we like it or not - it's the idea that together as a collective unit we can get more things done than as separate entities. I pay back the investment that society has made in me and then also put a bit more in to cover the people who couldn't cover themselves because they didn't have the same advantages that I had or have problems in mental health, physical health, or just really shitty circumstances like long term unemployment. They also have a right to live because the economic value of a person does not quantify the actual value of a person and the sick, the needy, the poor and the disadvantaged are just as valuable and important to society as the rich, the healthy and the well off. We have a greater tax burden because we can shoulder that burden comfortably and help design a better society so that more of us can be wealthy which in turn creates more wealth for us personally. The more people who have money in their pocket, the more people will spend that money on my services. That in itself is a plus and it doesn't even argue about the societal safety net feature whereas while you might now be earning well, there are people in your family that didn't always do that and needed the helping hand of the rest of the people in order to get through the day. Whether that's the same generation, the one above or the one above, every person is a sum of the experiences of their families and every family has at times failed to have that social bargain to "break even" on investment.
People's "fair share" as Corbyn daftly puts it is whatever they can afford to pay without robbing them of their own prosperity. Everybody in this nation sacrifices in some way for everybody else. I don't know what that exact number is in terms of a percentage but I don't feel that an extra 5p in the pound is going to force people out of their prosperity - and even if it does they can rely on the same social uplifting that they and everybody else pays for
