To think money is mostly about luck, not effort?

Look at the immigrant population. Majority were not well off in their home countries but most would value education and saw this as a way of ensuring their children would be financially better off than them. I do feel though your peer group is very important as well.

Bit of both. But doesn't bother me that there are very rich people

Studies indicate otherwise..

Yet the wealthy family’s can all trace their roots to the Norman conquest ?

I agree that it's easier to take risks if you are wealthy. The reality is though that the majority of small businesses etc are unsuccessful so it is also easier to lose your wealth. 70% of generational wealth is lost by the second generation and 90% by the third generation. The idea that families get rich and stay rich just isn't generally true.

Or a different way of looking at it is that if you have nothing, you've nothing to lose by taking risks.

But even people with nothing can still access education if they're not risk takers to improve their chances of better jobs etc. Lots of free courses on the internet these days that people could do to upskill themselves, such as FutureLearn and funding available for mature learners doing Uni degrees etc. It is possible for people to turn around a poor education

Yes but it's much easier to take risks if you come from privileged background in the first place.

Or if you have the safety net of moving back in with parents, rather than risking being on the streets if you can't pay next month's rent.

It’s both luck and hard work. I think of it like a game of poker—some people are dealt a really good set of cards, and others have a bad set of cards. Yes, money and connections are an advantage—but you can still lose at poker when you were dealt a fab set of cards. Example: Liz Harley’s son’s father, who was an heir to a huge fortune, lost it all, and ended up taking his own life.

You can also win at poker even if you’ve been dealt a bad hand—yes, it’s MUCH harder, but it can be done.

its far easier to risk it all if you have a safety net somewhere lurking in the background - and if you have something to risk in the first place

if you don’t have 10k to invest you can’t take a chance

if you have financially secure parents you can bet your home much more easily than someone with no backstop

This is very true and what people don't factor into discussions about the wealthy. They have often had to risk complete ruin to succeed. It is also much more likely that they have made huge sacrifices to make the money they have. Far more than someone plodding along in a 9-5 with a decent wage and pension. If the risk taker is in the minority of people that end up with a successful business then a decent chunk of the population will assign their success to luck and question why the owners are so much wealthier than the employees in a secure job taking absolutely no risk. They will also seek to tax them out of existence. It's mad when you think about it really.

But are they full-time?

The benefits statistics only ever mention x percentage of recipients are in work, they never say x percentage are working 38 hours a week or more.
Actually I think the BA class about 25 hours as full-time.

@Needspaceforlego
Define succeed?

Is the cleaner successful if between her and DH probably also in a low paid job manage to get the money for an ex-council house?
And manage a holiday once a year?
Keeping themselves of benefits?

Exactly.
When I look back at my life so far, I've succeeded. I have battled so much. But only people who know me well know this. I'm unemployed at the moment and when I finally get a job it will be low paid. But people don't see the effort it has taken me to grasp even the bottom few rungs of the ladder.

Element of both I would say and also being a risk taker. Very cautious people struggle to grow wealth while having a good time alongside it as they always fear a rainy day and plan accordingly. Risk takers tend to live for today and accumulate more wealth due to this.

My mum was very cautious. - passbook etc. happy to accept 0.25% on her savings when interest rates were low rather than invest the money.

My friend gambled on a business venture. Had it failed it would have cost him £100k. He ended up selling it for over a million less than 10 years later.

Well said.

This is ridiculously naive. We live in a global economy. Lots of businesses are owned by people or institutions outside of the UK either directly or in the form of shares. Even within the UK, businesses are owned by institutions such as pension funds that many people rely on in their old age. It would cause lots of issues to suddenly make these businesses globally uncompetitive by paying employees a huge wage.

The UK is also competing with other countries for businesses to setup here and to create jobs as well as to export goods. High wages actively harm the UK in this regard and will ultimately lead to higher unemployment and a higher benefits bill.

One problem. Most of the wealthy aren't in the UK - they're abroad. So outside the scope of UK tax authorities unless they become UK resident.

let me try and explain
say there is a total amount of money in the county - we can give most of it to one or two people or we can share it around evenly or something in between
if most of it goes to very few people then we end up having to scrape together benefits form taxes to help out those who don’t have enough - money that could be better spent on education and the NHS

if the very rich people paid their staff more they would have less money but the staff would not need benefits to survive - benefits that are raised from taxes that people just above benefit level are paying

Huge numbers of people in low paid but FT work, are on benefits - basically because the wealthy want to hang onto to every penny they've got

I cannot understand this reasoning. It's the wealthy wanting to keep their wealth that causes some people to be eligible for benefits while in low paid FT work?

But there still needs to be a differential between unskilled and highly skilled professional work, otherwise people wouldn't bother with the hard work and sacrifices they have to make to reach the top.

Huge numbers of people in low paid but FT work, are on benefits - basically because the wealthy want to hang onto to every penny they've got.

No one on higher rate tax bands are "worse off" and why should the well off get benefits, like child benefit or free childcare???
If they really cannot afford to pay for their children on these salaries, perhaps, like they are keen to tell others "Go with out" ?

Someone on 120k will be taking home around 4x what a min wage worker will be getting, even more when pension is taken into consideration, they may also get fringe benefits like a car and health insurances, far better redundancy as well.

The better off are, according to stats, on average, going to live 19 years longer than the least well off.

Define succeed?

Is the cleaner successful if between her and DH probably also in a low paid job manage to get the money for an ex-council house?
And manage a holiday once a year?
Keeping themselves of benefits?

The more I think about this thread the more distasteful I actually think it is.
We need everyone to contribute to society. We can't carry loads of people on benefits.

But equally not everyone will achieve promotion after promotion not everyone can be the top dog.
Not everyone wants to be top dog and thats OK too.
Sometimes people get to a comfortable level, happy with their work-life balance. They don't want the stress of the next rung on the ladder.

But what also cannot be allowed to happen is for those who do have the lucky breaks, talent, ambition and drive to get to the top to be put off because taking the next steps will cost them child benefits or start reducing their tax free income. And at huge cost to their work / life balance.

Personally, I don’t know anyone who’s worked hard and then not managed to succeed.
I’ve seen luck come into effect more with those who’ve coasted yet became successful.

The point is we can't all be high flying Surgeons and Bankers. We need people at all levels in society

In ensuring the successful outcome we need cleaners, the nurses, the surgeon, the anesthetist.

But no matter how hard the cleaner works they are never going to be as successful at the Anesthetist or Surgeon.

But without the humble cleaner, delivery driver, shelf stacker or carer, what would the skilled and highly educated do?

These are the people who we rely on, as we saw during Covid.

It’s a combination of many things - luck, hard work and resilience/determination.

@PlutarchHeavensbee- you deserve every penny of your money and current position. You worked hard and made sacrifices. Where luck came into it was that you didn’t experience ill health that resulted in you being unable to work for a time/indefinitely, or a series of financial disasters meaning your savings were exhausted, you acquired debt and the cost of servicing those debts meant you were no longer able to save. That doesn’t take away from your achievement as some people can have good luck but fail to get ahead.

Resilience is also a huge factor. Knock back after knock back takes its toll on people and some give up striving as it never seems to get them anywhere.

Even having the intelligence to get qualifications could be considered luck, or the temperament or wellness to stick at it (more is coming out now on the relationship between adverse childhood experiences, trauma and the impact on things like physical and mental health).

its not true to say it’s all luck. Some people have definitely earned their success against the odds. I think it’s more true to say that for some people who haven’t achieved material success it’s not down to a lack of hard work but a lot of bad luck and circumstance.