AIBU. The richest 1,000 people see their wealth increase by £155bn

[GetAllTheThings]

Since the banking crisis the richest 1,000 people in Britain have seen their wealth increase by £155bn.

1000 people. £155 billion pounds.

That's enough to pay off the whole government deficit of £119bn in one go.

I fail to see how 'we are all in this together'.

How is this right in a civilized society when millions of children live in poverty ? Surely money is like water, and it's all flowed into the hands of a select few.

Guardian and Guardian again

second link again

It is disgusting. Prices are going up and wages are standing still. People that are rich are always shafting others somewhere along the way. Always.

YANBU.

It's why I get cross when people roll over and say "Well times are hard, cuts are the only way".

The rich will never let you take their money off them, the poor don't have a choice. AND by poor and mean everyone who is worth less than a million... comparatively speaking, they're poorer than the true rich.

The super rich simply will not allow a sharing of the wealth.

Of course it's not right, it's not surprising either sadly. Apart from revolution I don't see what we can do about it though.

It's not right. Sadly it's what's happening all around the world as the gap between the rich and the poor widens.

'We're all in this together' should really be 'YOU'RE all in this together, plebs'.

EAT THE RICH!

Interesting.

How terrible. Why not jail them, while ignoring the rapists, burglars and petty thieves?

Theres currently a violent rapist on the loose where I live. I find on a day to day basis that my life is far more affected by that than people who have a that well known human talent for making money. Particularly in a recession.

Isn't it mainly because the pound has dropped in value and so much of the richest people's wealth is held overseas?

The deficit isn't the same as debt. The deficit is the difference between what the government have coming in, and how much they spend.

It's not a crime to make money. There will always be people with a talent for it. Once they have broken no laws and pay any taxes they owe I have no issue with it. Along the way they probably create a lot of employment. They earned their money fair and square ( I assume). At what threshold do you decide people are no longer entitled to their own income and it should be redistributed to the needy?

YABU. The 1000 wealthy people probably haven't got wealthier on the back of the UK taxpayer. They may have nothing to do with banking and you have no idea what proportion of their extra wealth has come back to the treasury in tax. They may be doing useful stuff with that wealth like investing in companies, providing employment or donating to charity. Fed up with this dumbed-down idea that 'rich = bad' at the moment.

Geegee, I fail to see the logic in your post about rapists.

If the police had a bigger share of the money in this country, maybe they'd be able to find this person a bit more quickly. No one has suggested jailing people with lots of money, have they?

Take the top 1% out of the UK and what do you get?

The top 1% create jobs, create wealth for the UK, bring in foreign investment I could go on and on.

Where there is a will there is a way. The government could easily pay a very good wage to very good HMRC inspectors/lawyers to close all these loopholes. The fact that they don't shows that the government (be it Tories, Labour or Lib Dems) are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Obviously they have a vested interest in keeping things how they are, probably have shares or will get jobs in these companies when they retire from politics. Cynical I know but I think our MP's are a corrupt, greedy bunch of self-servers.

Eds If the police had a bigger share of the money in this country, maybe they'd be able to find this person a bit more quickly. No one has suggested jailing people with lots of money, have they?

I doubt it. They could hardly be hunting him harder than they are. Theres police all round the area it happened and I was stopped and "advised" of the incident when I was out running the night after it happened, when it hadn't appeared in the newspapers yet.

OTOH we'd still be living in trees if we prevented clever people succeeding in being successful. I can't stand jealousy like this.

The top 1% create jobs, create wealth for the UK, bring in foreign investment I could go on and on.

Sorry but I can't really see very much wealth creation going on at the moment, quite the opposite from where I'm standing.

Unless you're talking about wealth creation for the wealthy which is what these figures bare out.

Its just a headline grabber to keep the middle class in their place.

It reminds me of the funny news headline the Scottish Government promotes every so often:- " profits made by oil companies" (or similar). Whats obscene about them? The companies being criticised genuinely do pay masses of tax, and employe masses of people on very high salaries in this country. Why would you want companies to make less profits?

Yet the same Government First Minister is all over lottery winners who technically haven't "earned" their money.

Agrees entirely with Cogito. Ophelia they do pay; believe me they do. DH recently didn't want to take on a case relating to loopholes because he had more than enough work so he quoted a ludicrous fee and it was truly ludicrous ...........and they said yes ...............and he is still gobsmacked.

You can't say people shouldn't be allowed to earn a lot of money with one hand and with the other say some people should be paid huge amounts of money to stop it happening.

Broadly, people with very high incomes do tend to have more positive effects on the economy than otherwise and to make taxation so punitive that they go elsewhere really will not help the UK to recover.

Of course wealthy people create wealth. Its basic economics for heavens sake. For starters they employ people, hundreds and thousands of people. They spend their money in the economy. The people they employ spend their money in the economy. They pay taxes which filters millions into the treasury. They donate and fund raise for charity.
Getting wealthier is not an indicator of doing something wrong. It just means that enterprising people have found ways to make money despite the economic situation.

Yabu. And really, a bit silly and naive for all the reasons clearly stated by others on this thread.

Sooooo.... what the figures quoted in the Guardian DO show is the increasing gap between the rich and poor: rich have wealth increasing, poor get poorer.
The people who think OP is BU, do you think this increasing gap is a good thing? Or do you think it's bad but inevitable that it will happen in this country given that it's also happening globally?

Because it's not something that has happened throughout history and will always happen - at other times the gap has diminished. So something must have changed for it to be happening. And it can't be that the rich are getting cleverer and more hardworking and the poor are getting thicker and lazier, so this is just what everyone deserves. Can it?

Yes something has changed. The world is in recession. When this happens the majority of people become poorer. Some people don't . This of course can be because of illegality or corrupt activities which I absolutely do not agree with or it can be because people adapt and grow despite the challenges. Not everyone is capable of doing this of course, and being wealthy in the first place helps as you have expertise and experience on tap.
But it is not a scandal that people make money (legally) when others are struggling, it's life, it's economics, it's capitalism.

Yabu. And really, a bit silly and naive for all the reasons clearly stated by others on this thread.

They pay taxes which filters millions into the treasury

Take one example, Philip Green. Built his empire off the back of sweatshops in Asia ( wealth creation ? ) . Paid himself a £1.2 billion bonus in 2005 but channelled through a network of offshore accounts, via tax havens in Jersey and then to Green?s wife?s Monaco bank account. Thus paid no UK tax.

Incidentally she owns Arcadia, from Monaco and pays no UK tax.

Where do you think he spends his money ? Blighty or Monaco ?

The thing that has changed is rapidly increasing globalisation - the rich are no longer competing, and being rewarded, within modest national parameters.

Has anyone actually looked at the list? The fortunes of the Top 3 actually fell last year, and many others have seen big increases in the past 12 months off the back of big falls previously. There are big increases for people like Paul McCartney (because he married an heiress), JK Rowling, David Hockney (who donates more in art than he earns), James Dyson, the owners of JCB, Home Bargains and B&M; they're not all tax avoiding scumbags.

OP - if you don't like things the way they are, propose something else to replace it. Seems to me the only alternative is to ban wealth accumulation. How would you feel living in a communist country?