If all the wealth in the UK were split evenly amongst inhabitants...

[eurasa]

Where would we all sit?

If the assets/money of the 68 million inhabitants were collated and split between us all (for arguments sake let's say adults only, but trying not to get into the tiny specific semantics here), how much would we all get?

There are so many people with no assets and living in poverty, but then there are a number of people with such outrageous wealth.

I guess I'm asking where the mean would come out at.

(Just following a conversation between DH and I, who don't know economics enough to make a good suggestion! Not a journalist!)

90% of success in capitalism has nothing to do with intellect or hard work though. It's more so how much are you willing to exploit others and ruin the environment to satisfy your own greed.

And 100% of the success of communism in China has ruined the environment and exploited everyone.

You can be sure the elite in every country look after their own, China and India have a far greater gulf between the highest and lowest income than any western country.

Tbf we are highly consumerist now. I like ease as much as the next person but some of it I try to pull back from.

This 💯
If that was a good model we'd all be using it

Agree

The thread would be very short If it went by your logic.

Where would we all sit?

Some folks I know live on various exotic islands of the Caribbean and some not so well off live in various parts of England. So if we average that out I can only assume I would be floating in the ocean somewhere between the Isles of Scilly or the Bay of Biscay. This seems somewhere between the two.

How long is a piece of string?

How do you work out what constitutes wealth 'in the UK' as opposed to wealth held by UK residents, or wealth held here by people who live overseas and pay no tax here? Or, dare I say it, non-does who get to live here and pay virtually no tax here despite being very wealthy.

Once you have decided on that, how do you put a value on these things and how do you distribute them? Are you going to give everyone a small post of land, even if they can't farm and don't want to? In this new world, how much is land even worth? Are you going to make everyone hand in their grandmothers' engagement rings and dusty antiques for valuation and tell them they have to pay to keep them? And if they can't afford to keep them then are you going to have a massive great national boot sale and distribute the funds raised? Those question might seem absurd, but hopefully they illustrate the point - it is impossible to know how much wealth there is and it would be impossible to redistribute it in its entirety. The act of trying to do so would devalue a lot of it.

We already have capital gains tax, dividend tax and inheritance tax. These all hit wealth, not earned income. They happen at the time of transfer. So if you sell shares or a second home then you pay CGT on the capital gain (in increase in value since acquiring the asset). This goes into the HM Treasury pot (along with income tax etc) and that pot gets distributed to pay for public services, the welfare system and everything else. So we already do this to some extent.

china people have to pay before seeing a doctor.
if a poor sick person with no money, the hospital won't give him any treatment, and let him die. literally.
true story, oh no, not a story, it is happening every day in china.

Not the ‘best’ - just the most successful, and the people in power/control are the ones who benefit most from it.

It is not just extreme consumerism and not cooking from scratch. There are many pros to intergenerational living, for example, for all concerned but most modern day Brit completely baulks at that idea. We are pretty spoilt and entitled and selfish as a nation and perhaps it is time to face the music. No politicians can magic away the structural issues. We need to move away from our sense of entitlement towards more kindness and gratitude and less envy.
Unless the whole world cracks down on the super rich we have no choice but to pander to them somewhat and I agree there is too much power in the few. That is the reality.
However, despite the moaning we have pretty good healthcare and education and transport and free stuff and should value what we do have. There is also some kindness everywhere and I regularly encounter amazing volunteers and we have a great charity sector. It is not all doom and gloom just a recession and crisis most other countries are facing too. In fact, the constant negativity across the media isn’t exactly productive as it increases people’s fears, insecurities and anxieties and makes things seem worse than they are.

Poor people are "workshy idlers". You may not be rich, but you sound like you are - and a Tory to boot. I doubt Rishi Sunak has worked hard a day in his life, but he certainly hasn't done so recently. What a crass comment to label poor people as workshy idlers. BUt you knew that, didn't you?

There is an old joke about why splitting resources fairly will never work in the long run:

A teacher decides to explain the premise of communism by using this experiment in class: the grades for all the group will be averaged and everyone will get the same grade.

On the first week everyone tries their best, yet those who worked hard for a A got a B and those who should have gotten a C get a B as well.

Second week the ones with the high grades try even harder to be able to retain the grade average that they have worked so hard for. Those with usually lower grades relax as they realise they do not need to work as hard to get a better grade. The whole group gets a C

Third week coming the students who normally work hard see no point in trying hard anymore, while the less able take a further rest or make a mild effort to raise the standards. Everyone’s get a D.

By the fourth week everyone fails there is a revolution in the class with people demanding to stop this nonsense and give everyone a grade according to their own effort and capabilities.

The reality is most home owners have their "share" whereas huge swaths of renters have literally nothing. If you divide our total household assets by the number of residents we are spot on average buy these calculations, once the kids move out we will obviously be "better off"

China is not now a Communist country by any true meaning of the word. The best way to describe it is state run capitalism. It has a competitive market economy and people are allowed to own personal property. It encourages foreign investment and its companies compete internationally with other global companies.

Well, if you want to live in Merthyr Tydfil — named several times as the worst place to live in Wales — you could afford this. But it's a semi.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/121995305#/?channel=RES_BUY

So an 18yo who hasn't started work yet would get the same as someone who has put in 50 years and is about to retire..... not popular.

More interesting, how many generations would it take to revert to a clear split, but this time between those who are prudent, and those who prefer to spend?

I know there have been lottery winners who blow £10m in a few years, but what would happen across a wider group

I love the way this has ruffled some feathers

Not sure the people spluttering over the concept of wealth redistribution are bright enough to actually hold on to any wealth they gain themselves, given their lack of reading comprehension and inability to answer the question OP asked, but I have really enjoyed reading that spluttering all the same

Who is this to?

Can you quote or is it just your average mn superiority showing through based on very little.

What about everyone's debts, would they be shared too? A rich person may have money in the bank to share, yet owe a million pound mortgage on their property. Another might be a doctor who has 5 years university fees and debt to repay. People would give up working hard, and we'd have zero doctors/solicitors/dentists etc. What's the point In years of training, just to have your money stripped. We'd end up just growing/making and selling. As only fools would work harder for the same amount of money. Perhaps taking away the concept of money would work better. E.g. No-one gets any.money at all. Government assigns everyone roles pending on their iq and carreer assessments. We all work for each other, for free. Housing/clothing/schools and cars are all free and standardised. As long as we all work our roles.

The Crown Estate should disburse theirs first.

Good question, and a nice start to tackling inequality (assuming you can persuade those with above average wealth to part with it).

Going forward. People are still born with different abilities to earn, keep, make the resources they need so there is inequality in need.

The other half of that equation is the value of resources, houses, food etc, which also vary across time and place.

So sustaining utopian equality comes down to evening out underlying variation in biological and natural systems. Not sure we're there yet!

I think the problem also is that no one wants to address is, no one would miss the majority of the higher-paid salaried roles. Who would miss a marketing manager or an investment banker? The people who do the 'shit' jobs, the ones that literally stop us dying covered in filth from starvation, are the lowest paid jobs because we consider those roles 'low skilled.' Our whole society is propped up on the idea that that society considers uneducated, working class, unable to bullshit their way through a corporate role interview, do the grunt work to keep the country going.

In a truly equal society, no one is ever going to pick 'Toilet cleaner' over 'Fannying about on mumsnet in an office job.' for the same pay.

Who would miss a marketing manager or an investment banker?

Surely you've seen those people outside the stations "will business consult for cash" ?

Anyway, I have a plan to use leaves as currency. And I've asked my marketing team to work on "fire" which seems to be an exciting new concept.

Anyone need a haircut ?

AHAHAHAHA

Accurate.

Currently sat next to the marketing department.....