Who are these beneficiaries of the budget (Osborne poised to slash top rate of tax from 50p, 16 March)? These persons earning over £150,000 a year are the highest paid 1% in the population. But they are a very unequal group. The top 10th of them, according to income tax records, have average incomes over £1.2m, or 50 times national average earnings, rising to £4.5m for senior corporate executives all the way up to Bob Diamond (Barclays) and others at around £16m, or 666 times average earnings.
But not only does this top 1% take 13% of all UK income, they also own 23% of all UK wealth. Again this conceals even greater inequality within the group. The wealthiest 1,000 persons among them now have total wealth of £1 trillion. They have also been living through a golden age for the rich: they increased their wealth, according to the annual Rich List, by £297bn over the last 15 years.
Osborne advances three arguments for budget largesse for this group. One is that they increase Britain's wealth. In reality their money is spent largely on hugely expensive homes, yachts, bling, overseas speculation, and widespread tax avoidance (including extensive offshoring of properties); very little goes into UK industrial investment and job creation. Second, they allegedly raise productivity and growth. In the last three years UK productivity and growth has been stagnant or failing, but total earnings for directors of FTSE 100 companies rose 49% last year. Third, it is said if they're not kept sweet, they'll migrate abroad. Given the non-dom tax loophole which allows so many of them to stay in the UK virtually tax-free, it seems very unlikely they'll leave. But if they did, would we miss them?
Michael Meacher MP
Labour, Oldham West and Royton
• It will be disheartening if Osborne does reduce the 50% tax rate. It would be the wrong policy on every level. Those who pay it know they can afford it; those who find taxes a disincentive are perfectly happy to pay advisers on tax avoidance. But we should not be surprised as this is what Tory governments always do.
One of the first pieces of economic research I undertook, back in the 1980s, compared postwar Tory and Labour governments in terms of tax burdens. The overall levels of public expenditure or tax revenue relative to GDP do not differ much whichever party is in power, but the distribution does. Tory governments alter the tax structure to favour richer individuals, whereas Labour governments alter the structure against the rich (even if only slightly). Plus ça change.
Professor Oliver Morrissey
University of Nottingham
• It is right that the chancellor puts serious thought into ending the temporary 50p top rate of income tax in next week's budget. Only four countries in the world have a higher top rate of personal tax. This risks deterring the much needed people and investment that will create jobs and growth for the long term. However, any cut should be accompanied by an accelerated increase in personal allowances, which would not only provide relief for those on low incomes, but also boost consumer confidence and spending. Cutting taxes in the current economic climate will always be difficult, but growth must be the chancellor's priority.
Jo Valentine
Chief executive, London First
• Cutting salaries of well-paid public sector workers in poor regions will not stimulate the private sector: it will do the very opposite (Osborne plans lower pay for poorer regions, 17 March). Living near the deprived area of Stoke-on-Trent, I have seen at first hand how essential it is to have a thriving professional class that earns decent money. This income is spent locally. Cut it, and local private sector businesses such as restaurants, shops and services will suffer.
In areas such as the north-east where public sector employment reaches 70%, the remaining 30% private employment is dependent upon the spending power of civil servants and health and local government workers.
Either Osborne doesn't understand the basic economics of what happens in a depressed area when you depress wages further or he simply doesn't care.
Laura Marcus
Leek, Staffordshire
• Only a cabinet of millionaires could come up with the self-serving notion that workers in the poorer areas of the UK should be paid less. Flexible pay for some, flexible tax payment for others.Three more years of this lot – I despair.
Sue Smith
Stourbridge, West Midlands
• While David Laws and Tim Farron rightly make the point that the budget must help the many and relieve pressure on the "squeezed middle" (The liberal litmus test, 16 March), Oxfam is more concerned that nobody is making the case for a budget that protects the "squashed bottom".
The people who are struggling to get by on the lowest incomes are the ones who are being hit from all sides with spiralling living costs and cuts to the benefits and support services they rely upon most.
The government needs to rebalance its deficit reduction strategy, putting more emphasis on raising new tax revenues from those who can afford it and relying less on cuts that disproportionately impact the poorest in society. As Laws and Farron say, now is not the time to give away billions to the richest.
Chris Johnes
Director of UK poverty, Oxfam
• Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats talk much about taking low earners "out of taxation altogether" while appearing totally to ignore the regressive system of national insurance contributions (NICs) – seldom, if ever, covered in articles and debates about taxation and fairness. Raising income tax allowances to £10,000 would still leave many lower earners – ie from £7,592pa upwards – paying a marginal rate of 12% NIC, while higher earners from £42,484 right to the top paid a marginal rate of only 2%.
If the Liberal Democrats really want be seen as committed to fairness, they should be proposing the raising of the "primary threshold" starting point of NICs to £10,000 and the abolition of the upper earnings limit, so that NICs were levied at the same rate right up the income scale – arguably compensating for the latest "wobbling" on the 50% tax rate.
They might also advocate the amalgation of the income tax and national insurance systems, following the recommendations of the Mirrlees review published by the Institute of Fiscal Studies in September 2011: this would help to make this unjust anomaly more apparent and more widely understood.
Peter JC Halfpenny
La Bourboule, France
• The financial crisis is turning out to be the opportunity Tories always wanted to mould a society in their image – one in which the wealthy are allowed to enrich themselves further at everyone else's expense, in which their friends get increasing slices of the public sector, in which the poor and needy go hang, in which "two nations" divide further, in which the public sector is sold off to their mates and in which the health service becomes a "for profit" organisation. Everything that made this country worth living in despite a deeply conservative culture is unravelling. Remind me again, what mandate for such a thoroughgoing and fundamental shift to the right does this coalition of the selfish have?
David Lusted
Watford, Hertfordshire
• Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine explains the ideology behind the government's economic policy (This Ebola economics has Europe eating its own flesh, 16 March). Led by Milton Friedman, the Chigago School advocates the creation of, or taking advantage of, a crisis to privatise social programmes, while the population is distracted and opposition fractured.
Ron Houghton
London
• In an article last September the journal Accountancy Age estimated that the extra tax income from the 50p rate of tax for 2011-2012 would be about £1.1bn. This sum has been described by Tory MP David Ruffley in his blog as "chicken feed", and by other Tories as insignificant, being "less than 0.5% of total tax revenue".
The tax I pay is even less than this; adapting Mr Ruffley's metaphor, it is probably in the range of bacteria feed. May I therefore assume that my own tax (at present just below the 40p rate) ought to be reduced, since it is so very significantly less than even the revenue raised by the 50p tax? I am sure that this would encourage me, as a very minor entrepreneur, to work even harder.
Rolf Clayton
London
• Osborne's solution to the pay differential between the public and private sectors is to lower public sector pay in poorer parts of the country.
According to the Chartered Management Institute, women in the UK are paid, on average, 79% of what men receive for similar work. Can we now look forward to Osborne imposing a national freeze on men's pay until women achieve equality with them?
Neil Holmes
Bromsgrove, Worcestershire
• I suspect I am going to be unpopular, but I approve of George Osborne's plans to bring public sector pay in line with that of the private sector. Working as a teacher in a state comprehensive, I look forward to earning the same as my colleagues at Eton. Or vice versa.
Stewart Harrison
Market Drayton, Shropshire
• The Tories are the Goldman Sachs of politics, helping their rich friends become richer and treating the rest of us like muppets.
Anthony Ferner
Leamington Spa, Warwickshire