Following Labour’s recent general election (GE) policy announcement that they would raise tax exclusively on people who earn over £80k a year, the BBC has, once again, reacted to discredit this very popular policy proposal, getting “tax expert” advice from highly paid elitist professionals making well over the £80,000 threshold.
As has become standard practice at this point, the Beeb wheeled out this “tax expert” from the neoliberal, corporately funded IFS “think tank” to offer his expert “impartial” advice on Labour’s high-wealth tax policy during a recent BBC News interview.
Both the BBC interviewer and the Director of the IFS, are part of the elite ultra-wealthy group that Labour is seeking to tax — that 5% of the population.
How these two men, both working inside elites institutions on wages above the £80,000 threshold, feel about Labour’s tax rise on elites should be no surprise — the last thing we should expect is that they would be impartial.
Once again the BBC has demonstrated exactly why they are so biased against not just Corbyn, McDonnell, and Labour, but also against the will of the British public.
The Tories’ tax policy for the GE has so far been unclear, indicating that they are likely to raise taxes should they get into power — not on the elite, of course, but on the rest of us – just as they have been doing for these last 7 years.
The recently published Sunday Times Rich List illustrates just how obscenely wealthy a lucky few are at the moment — while the rest of us are left behind with decreasing wages, insecure work, and public services bludgeoned.
The Rich List boasted that:
The fortunes of Britain’s super-rich have been supercharged by a “Brexit boom”, with record wealth and more billionaires than ever before
At the same time, Oxfam illustrates how a large majority of the population have been getting poorer – and inequality in our society continues to grow and grow.
According to a report by the charity in 2016:
The richest one per cent of the UK population now owns more than 20 times the total wealth of the poorest fifth
Much of this is the result of neoliberal economic policy, of which the Tories are unquestionably the most dedicated proponents. Oxfam notes:
The UK is one of the most unequal developed countries in the world. Three decades of high-level inequality have had a profound impact, leading many people to believe that they have little stake in society and to feel locked out of politics and economic opportunity
During the last Budget, the Chancellor Phillip Hammond announced yet another tax giveaway for the very wealthiest in society — meaning that we would be losing between £70-120 billion in tax revenues, at the same time as cutting public services, and disability benefits (to name just a few).
Yet, despite all of the evidence to support Labour’s policy — it seems that the BBC fails to accept that raising taxes on the rich is of any use to the country.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9egHL5scxz4[/embedyt]
When asked about the £80,000 tax increase Johnson said:
Well, I think it’s all about reassuring MOST people that they’re not going to be paying tax
Johnson goes on to say that think it’s all about politicians not wanting to have:
an entirely honest coversation
Adding that it’s all about saying that:
someone else will pay the public service. Whether that someone else is the rich or companies, or what have you
He went on to say that the those earning over £80,000 pay the most tax and that the rich have seen some pretty big increases in the amount of tax they pay.
The IFS and the BBC often use this line when discussing tax increases on the rich. As we’ve debunked this claim before on EvolvePolitics, there’s no need to go over it again.
It is also worth mentioning that the reason the rich pay more income tax is because their earnings have grown massively whilst everybody else’s have shrunk and stagnated.
That Johnson would defend the rich is no surprise. As the Director of the IFS he makes at least £100,000 a year — according to the IFS’ account report from 2015. The exact amount he makes is hard to clarify, the website Salary List estimates that it could be up to $400,000.
Of course, the BBC itself is not exactly unfamiliar with paying these kinds of high wages. Although a specific figure for the BBC reporter here is unknown, it is likely to be in a similar range to that of Johnson.
The BBC’s website only lists the salary amount of senior members of staff. They list Keith Blackmore, Managing Editor of BBC News & Current Affairs as making £161,000— so one would guess that it likely that a newsreader is making at least £80,000 a year.
In an interview with The Telegraph, BBC newsreader Nicholas Owen, whose father worked for Rothchild’s, states that:
When I was working for ITN I was earning enough to pay off another mortgage and so I have been mortgage-free for many years.
So we can safely assume from this statement that newsreaders for major television networks are almost certainly within the top 5% of earners.
Perhaps then, given that we are talking about a group of people who are in the 5% who Labour is aiming to tax more, it is not surprising that the Beeb would do their best to discredit the policy.
That we, as license fee payers, fund the wages of these people, as well as the service — only for them to turn around and feed us this kind of misleading political propaganda in order for them pay less tax — should outrage us all.
This is precisely why the BBC are so hated, and shows just how biased they are. Johnson from the IFS, speaking as one of the 5% to another member of the 5% on a taxpayer funded service run by the 5%, supposedly in the interests of all: including the 95% — you know, the majority of the country.
How we can ever expect to get a sane level of honesty on matters such as taxing the rich from this kind of set-up is beyond me. Clearly, the BBC is a state run taxpayer-funded propaganda service, designed to make us think that grotesque wealth inequality is fine, and because the rich pay enough tax we should all be nice to them!
Well, the rich have anything but our interest at heart, and the corporate media which promotes their interests above ours is a testament to that fact.
