Singer Adele is on top of the charts and her taxes, but that hasn’t stopped critics from trying to drag her down for comments she made about footing the bill for the British welfare state.
On average, British subjects earning more than £122,000 (about $200,000) take home only about 60.9 percent of their earnings, according to a UHY International study released earlier this month. In contrast, the wealthiest Americans typically keep around 70 percent of the money they make. In the midst of the 2009 recession, Alistair Darling, Britain’s previous chancellor, announced a new 50 percent income-tax rate. Tax rates have remained there, despite David Cameron’s pledge to take a look at a reduction once the economy stabilizes.
In the meantime, Adele isn’t pleased. Her first album, 19, released in 2008, sold 2.2 million copies by mid-July — and then the tax bill came due. Now she’s“mortified” to pay half her income in tax, and told Q Magazine:
I use the NHS, I can’t use public transport any more, doing what I do, I went to state school . . . ! Trains are always late, most state schools are s[***], and I’ve gotta give you like 4 million quid, are you ’avin a laugh? When I got my tax bill in from 19, I was ready to go ’n’ buy a gun and randomly open fire.
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At only 23 and worth a rumored £6 million, the chanteuse could be forgiven her harsh words. Careening from award to award — her latest album, 21, became the first in 2011 to sell 2 million copies last week and tops the charts in 15 countries — she hasn’t had time to learn the diva deal that the political Left affords stars: Make your music, but don’t have any politics but ours. And predictably, the Guardian’s Rob Fitzpatrick attacked her for her heresy and joined in the cacophony on Twitter by calling her “as greedy as the most moat-friendly port-stained Tory grandee.”
But Adele, born to a single teenage mum in working-class London, neither looks nor acts the part of Scrooge and spends her days hanging out with her mates and drinking cider in the afternoon. She won’t give up smoking, though it could end her singing career. And she’s far more generous than the cradle-to-grave welfare state she’s supposed to love. She dotes upon her mother and has endowed trust funds for her cousins who are “young mums.” Indeed, Adele aspires not to sing forever, but to motherhood: “I feel like I’m here to be a mum. I wanna look after someone and be looked after, give my all to someone in marriage and have a big family, have a proper purpose.”
By off-handedly criticizing the implicit purpose of Leviathan — higher and higher taxes with little to show for it — Adele is a danger to the public-sector spendthrifts. If you lose the glitterati, the jig is up. No less than Oprah, the doyenne of celebrity, confessed to Piers Morgan in January that she finds filing taxes painful. Her accountants bring her the forms — and her tequila. Not surprisingly, Oprah, who backed Obama in 2008, has declined to endorse him for 2012.
If Adele finds her taxes too high, she can always come to America, where taxes, at least for celebrities, have long seemed optional. The IRS most recently hit rapper DMX with a tax lien in May. Actor Wesley Snipes didn’t even file from 1999 to 2004, and as a result is currently serving a three-year prison sentence. Another rapper, Lil Wayne, owes taxes from 2004, 2005, and 2007. And singer and actress Dionne Warwick, according to the LA Times, owes $2.2 million in back taxes.
— Charles C. Johnson is both the Eric Breindel Collegiate and Robert F. Bartley Fellow at the Wall Street Journal.
That being said, it's nice to see that a singer like Adele recognizes the immorality of her working her butt off to become a famous singer and as a result of her hard work the government say that half of her income belongs to it so that it can do with the money as it pleases. May other famous people begin to recognize the immorality of the government, before it is too late.
Mike B doesn't care to see it but the rest of us do and apparently so does Adele. The government takes our money and usually wastes it, and if you live in Europe it's worse. What do the glitterati do about it? They talk about the wonders of big government and then use every tax dodge (legal or illegal) they can find. It doesn't matter if you're Wesley Snipes, Tim Geithner or Oprah, only "little people" pay their taxes promptly and honestly. If Mike B is looking for contempt it is in the attitude of the elites.
I think this is a typical reaction of someone who is poor becoming rich and realizing that yes someone pays for the welfare state. It is shocking. I think most people don't even truly and honestly realize that someone actually pays for the welfare state. If more people realized how the government welfare state works it would bring a great and positive change in the culture.
Is Oprah experiencing an epiphany like that of David Mamet?
Probably not.
I doubt she is on a ‘journey’ to conservativism. My guess is she is an old fashioned Democrat...all for social justice per se but a proud loyal American not inclined to the proclivities of the far left.
Also she is intelligent, hard working, and an astute enough observer to realize that President Obama's presidency is not the moderate one he advertised as a candidate.
It's always fun when someone that is assumed to be a loyal member of the vast, brainwashed left steps out and surprises her peer group by demonstrating an ability to think clearly and independently! As Oprah might tell Adele: "You go, girl!"
I always find it disappointing to see tax rates quoted as 30 or 40% though, because it does not come close to telling the whole story, here in the U.S. or there in G.B. If you add in the capital gains taxes, real estate taxes, state income taxes, sales taxes, excise taxes, licenses, fees, assessments, etc ad nauseum, the figure will be astonishing!
If you pay it to a government agency, it's a tax. They can call it a fee, an assessment, a surcharge, a levy, or a fine (as in the individual mandate "tax"), or whatever they want to call it, but if it looks like a duck...
Some of these are more or less voluntary - I can choose not to fish, or hunt, or visit a national park for example, and thus avoid the fees and license costs - and I object less to those, as I am directly paying for something I chose to do. Even a fine for speeding is in this category, as I chose to speed - although not to get caught! When I rent a car, as another example, over 30% of the cost goes to cover various taxes, user fees, facility fees, etc, etc. Crazy!
Others are theoretically voluntary, as in registration fees for an automobile or paying for a driver's license, although doing without either can severely limit your choice of occupation or residence, but whether the "tax" involved is "voluntary" or coerced, it comes out of your pocket and goes to pay for more government. Ipso facto, it's a tax.
So what is the true number, how much do we really pay in taxes every year? I don't know, but my guess is well over 50% for the average individual, and probably over 70% for the wealthy. Does anyone have this figure? Has it ever been worked out, or are we afraid to know?
But still, the Democrats want to raise taxes, not cut spending.
Where does it end?
I don't expect to change minds. I hope that some of you will stop to ask, "What if he has a point?"
Not that you'll agree with me, but at least you'll shape the bounds of your policies.
I certainly do the same here. For example, thanks to conservatives, I acknowledge the wide gap between the needy and the greedy and the importance of minimizing the unintended benefit to the latter that providing for the former often entails. I think I pay closer attention to this serious issue than I otherwise would, thanks to those here.
I had the same reaction as Adele when I got my first paycheck at 16. I wanted to find out who this FICA character was and beat him senseless. (Three cases of admittedly not very good beer they took out of my check!) It turned me into a fiscal conservative on the spot. This is why exempting so many from income taxes is a bad idea. They get the notion that government is free.
All positions that we hold should be rigously challenged and tested, and our toughest inquisitors should always be ourselves. When a specific belief or position falls in the face of strict scrutiny, it must be revised and rebuilt and challenged again.
Many of my generation, just slightly older than Adele's, are just now coming to appreciate the harsh realities of our world. Their sense of blind entitlement is eroding.
This is a good thing, brought about by a process of constantly questioning one's ideas - a process driven in large part by one's own "MikeB"s, both internal and external.
Here's a question for you: If taxes disappeared tomorrow, would a candy bar cost $1 or would it cost $0.10 or would it cost $10? How about electricity? How about heart surgery?
In any competitive market, where there are several providers for a given good or service, if taxes disappeared tomorrow then over a relatively brief time prices would fall more or less commiserate with the decrease in taxes on that good or service. Competition will ensure this.
However, Conservatives are not asking for nor do they have any delusions about all taxes disappearing at any point. There is a proper role for government and it should be paid for by the people through some form of taxation. What we disagree with is a federal government which is no longer constrained by the powers granted to it by the Constitution and the sheer size of that unconstrained government and what it is costing the American citizen. Currently spending on all forms of government (local, state, and federal) is around 40% of GDP and rising. Does that seem reasonable?
Can I get you to agree that there is some point at which the level of government spending becomes excessive and that there is some tax rate beyond which it would be unwise, unpractical, or immoral for the federal government to tax away a person's income? If so, where would you put those levels?
