To think the problem with wealth inequality is that rich people don't know how rich they are?

Oh I’ve just realised the OP hasn’t been back in an hour. We’re getting a lot of these threads at the moment - post something controversial than not return to the post. @Neeroyare you coming back to argue your point ?

Depends on the work you do, though, doesn't it? Are you sitting in an office chasing promotions, brown-nosing and pressing buttons all day?

I think wealth as a concept is too focused on money these days. Which to me is really strange considering money is fake and worthless now.

Wealth comes in many forms. Money is one form and people only care about monetary wealth when they see someone who's done well for themselves, ie envy.

An example of that I've seen on here a few times is when people talk about siblings sharing bedrooms. Comments about you need a 5 bedroom house, why have you moved to a 3 bed/4 bed?
I don't know anyone who lives in a 5 bedroom house, very few I know live in a 4 bed and that's usually a loft conversion and a tiny box bedroom included in bedroom numbers. I don't even come across many 4+ bedroom houses when I'm searching for property because I live in a deprived area. People living in affluent areas are so out of touch that they think it easy to find a 4+bedroom house.
People with 6 figure salaries may not have a huge disposable income due to mortgage increases. However, if they lived in a 2 up 2 down, bought second hand cheap cars instead of expensive lease cars and shopped at Aldi like many average earners need to do just to make ends meet, they would see a huge difference.

And many, many people work just as hard, if not harder than the wealthy and successful, and they're barely putting food on the table. You seem to have a rather naive view of work and success.

Yup, when I was poor I had to use toilet paper as tampons. Some public toilets only had the old, hard toilet paper so I had to use that. I seldom had the luxury of proper tampons.

If you can afford proper tampons without having to worry about the cost then quit complaining about your income.

Just to add, I am fine now financially. But that is my yardstick.

There's a lot of misplaced denial in this world. Where the very rich folk feel bad looking at the poor folk so they decide to take those feelings out on them instead, spreading the message that it's those in council houses, with addiction issues, single mums etc thats the problem. Nothing to do with the people up top of course

Yes. Many things disappear from public discourse if people just stop talking about them. Deprive something of oxygen and it dies.

As someone who was dragged up, beaten, abused, starved and humiliated by my mother, and frequently came home to an empty fridge and survived on sweets and ready meals either nicked or bought with my paper round money, I know what it is to be poor, dirty cold and sick all the time. The adults decided I was an anorexic bag of hormones and dismissed me out of hand, so my situation only got worse. Then my hatred of grown-ups, you know, the ones who are meant to actually give a crap, who turned out didn't care one bit, fermented to extreme levels.

Being poor made me value money and success, not hate people who were better off than me.

Yes aside from the mega rich and the poor most of us leave within our means .
Whether that’s a combine income of 50k,live in a fairly deprived area in a 2 bed house, 2 kids, 1 uk holiday , 1 old car and a few thousand in the bank.
Or 600k income with a four bed house in central London , two car loans, a nanny, private school fees , 3 abroad holidays a year and 50k savings. Both examples probably feel like there’s not much spare cash rolling about and will compare themselves to their peers.

I'm pretty sure I heard Kirsty Allsop on R4 this morning saying that income tax needs to be increased and stamp duty abolished, the Hon Kirsty is of course married to a property developer billionaire.

100k isn’t a middle earner and pretending it is is called lying to get your own way

No, the problem is that the super rich have directed all attention at high earners who work extremely hard in skilled and necessary professions, and then are taxed extremely highly. These are not the people who should be penalised - attention should be focused on the super rich who avoid their share of taxes, ie Rishi Sunak's billionaire wife who claimed non-dom status to avoid tax.

Yes! This is fair (& correct!) i typed in haste.

Glad we agree its still valid.

I think OP is misdirecting her (correct and understandable) frustration at the uks economy.

The point upthread about wealth being "not have to think before you buy something" is a good one.

If you are Susan and you are making 130k and being told you are a top 2% earner!!! Woopee!!! you fairly reasonably assume you will be able to buy something reasonable and not think twice...after all you are top 2%!!!
And then back in reality you find you actually can't just go ahead and buy a pair of shoes from russell and bromley or buy that £300 dress that looks great and instead you get in your 6 year old yaris and drive to aldi for the weekly shop and it (understandably, i think) feels frustrating and muggy because you arent supposed to be in this position because you are in the top 2% and you are supposed to be able to afford it! And what the fuck are you doing wrong?
Apart from you arent doing anything wrong. You are just trying to raise your family and dont have generational wealth to offset your massive mortgage for your slightly nicer than average house.

To billionaires and people with net worths of 100m + there is zero difference between someone on benefits and someone making 200k per year. We are all on the same (shitty) team.... just the billionaires are an actual team pulling together for their own interests while we are infighting and squabbling while they consolidate more wealth and assets and widen the already cavernous wealth gap.

I don’t think either side understands how the other half live. Those on a lower income dream of being a high earner but don’t understand the stress and sometimes debt that comes with it, there’s being a high earner and then there’s wealth.
the higher earners can’t comprehend what its like to put stuff back at the supermarket because the budget won’t stretch that far.
Neither are unreasonable, just not aware until you have walked in their shoes.

OP, the income tax absolutely rinses middle-higher earners. For example, take home pay of various salaries ex. pensions and student loan:

£100k = £68,557
£125k = £78,057
£150k = £91,286

The 62% tax trap (greater if you have children in nursery) clobbers you once you earn more than £100k. £25k in additional earnings brings in c.£9500 extra in real life and takes away 15 hours of childcare in England.

What with this and the cost of housing anywhere near centres of commerce, surely you can see why £100k is the new £50k?

History proves that Wealth inequality encourages violence and revolution, greed and envy

hostory and modern day societies shows that people are happiest in more equal societies - and what is the bloody point of living if we are not happy ?

it doesn’t encourage people to work hard . That’s a myth rich smug people like to propagate

and hard work and wealth creation are pretty crap goals for life / they should be the means to an end - and end of self fulfilment love and happiness and peace

One thing I 100% know for certain is that if they get poorer, I won’t get any richer and nor will anyone else on this thread.

Exactly.

OP I would argue the opposite of your statement is true. Too many people mistake this for ‘rich’ because of the 6 figure salary, they don’t realise the country is owned by a tiny number of multi-millionaires who pay proportionally minuscule amounts of tax and whose fortunes are very hard to pin down. They’re the ones we should be discussing, the rest of us are passing around the same £5 note.

Tesla are planning to make Elon Musk a Trillionaire, which makes me feel nauseous. What on earth is to be done about people like him and Zuckerberg/Bezos...not people earning six figures.

Do you think if we stop analysing wealth inequality then it magically disappears?

This is definitely the case. I was at university with friends who’d gone to private schools. There is simply no way the equivalent job would pay for that kind of education now - think GP dad, stay at home mum, two kids in private school all the way through, nice lifestyle including holidays abroad. No way could a GP fund the equivalent now.

Yes absolutely, and that's part of the problem. 'Keeping up with the Joneses' will bankrupt you when the Joneses are only posting the highlights on SM.

This is a forum where people understand when people with triple-hundred-figure incomes might struggle to pay the school fees but not understand why an ill or disabled person or single parent might struggle to put food on the table. So yes, as a microcosm of wider attitudes, yes. But it's not only the well off that don't realise they're well off, there's this chronic fawning towards them as well by people with fuck all. Sometimes people with fuck all don't seem to realise they've got fuck all.

I vividly remember seeing a part of one of those poverty porn programmes years ago where a skint family and a wealthy family swapped houses for a week and I will never, ever forget a single mother working two jobs saying something like 'it just goes to show you what can happen if you work hard'. She was working two jobs and raising her children and her hard work wasn't getting her anywhere near stable housing never mind nice housing.

I pondered this recently. I work in a small company, where 75-80% of people are very very rich and the rest are the polar opposite, struggling to the extremes to make ends meet. The richer people are full of life and energy and happier looking and tell the poorer folk to lighten up and then go on to tell them all about their adventures, ignoring the struggles if the poories. The poor folk don't say much back and let the richer ones rattle on. Im not particularly begrudging them that but when it's in front of you in the extremes, it does look very odd. Its like the reality of the other peoples situation is disregarded, in a 'not my problem' kind of way and the richer folk carry on regardless

Absolutely, wealth and income are very different. (I went for income, because that's what the OP is posting about, but clearly wealth is also a massive factor.)

Another quick google says that about 5.8% of the UK population own total assets of £1 million or more. So, a much bigger percentage than the six-figure earners, but still definitely a minority. (£1 million is obviously an arbitrary figure - apparently if I make the figure £500K in assets then that's about 23% of the population, which is pretty sizeable. Maybe £500K in assets is enough to make you protective to the extent that you vote against political parties who favour higher taxation/wealth redistribution?).

And yes, the six-figure earners do contribute a lot of income tax, but I don't think that too many of them would up sticks and move countries if the top rate of income tax went up by a few %. So a government could afford to piss them off a bit. I'm not suggesting that this is the best solution, though (a wealth tax on the very wealthy might make more sense, although I guess that population is more likely to just move elsewhere if they don't like the tax system.)

What really puzzles me are the large numbers of lower earners who vote for political parties who are very much against wealth redistribution/higher taxation for high earners. It seems to be at least partly an emotional thing ("benefits scroungers shouldn't be subsidised by working people"). Some media and politicians are totally playing into that emotion, and exploiting its power to influence those voters. Whereas I think that actually better public services and less income inequality would benefit pretty much everyone overall.

Sorry, just rambling and thinking aloud here.

Totally agree with this - do you have a source for that? It’s utterly shocking.