AIBU to not understand why some people seem to have an absolute hatred for rich people in this country.

[Barbierella]

I cannot understand why people find it acceptable to slate rich people as if they are all the same and responsible for all that is wrong in society.

Surely people can understand that many rich people do pay tax and generally are an asset to society? And without the many successful businesses in the private sector we would not have a public sector?

AIBU to think that people who like to lump all rich people into one tax avoiding bunch of tossers can be the very same people who get outraged at the lumping of all out of work people as benefit scroungers?

Neither are ok in IMO.

And I don't think the rich need to be sharing their wealth in order not to be considered cunts. That is an example of class-war in action. They can do/not do what they like with their money, it belongs to them.

YABU. I have a lot of admiration for certain rich people who use their wealth and status to help those less fortunate and raise awareness of certain causes. People like JK Rowling and Angelina Jolie. I have nothing but scathing hatred for rich people like David Cameron who claim DLA for their disabled child even though they don't need to at all because they're multi-millionaires. Yet take away DLA from poor people who rely on it.

Softly Softly....best comment ever! Most of the "celebrities" are the most cynical, vain money grubbing people ever. I don't care how many times that they climb Kilimanjaro or open a football academy or expose rape culture in a war zone.
But they are not stupid. They know that people will fall for the okey doke and feed the slide into nihilism that many of the not so well off aspire to.

SirChenjin

I absolutely do not only see those with money as an asset to society. I am a low wage earner and I rate my contribution to society highly.

Just as I don't think all unemployed are feckless and lazy, I also don't think all rich are tax evaders taking from the poor.

Why can't people stick to their intelligent liberal ideas of not tarring all with the same brush through all sections of society?

Scarlettdragon why am I being unreasonable to ask that all rich people are not hated and lumped into one group?

Who are these 'people' who find it acceptable to slate (all?) rich people?

You really don't see it?

Nope, I don't see it. I see some people who are not rich slating the rich, and I see some rich people treating poor people with contempt - but that is vastly different to the claim that 'people' generally find it acceptable to slate rich people.

You are totally right

do you have an example? I'm not being snotty it's just that I can't think of one or find one but I'm assuming there is one that you are referring to.

I am just trying to think of a time I have seen someone, anyone, get slated simply for having money and for no other reason. Not for anything they've done, or an opinion they've expressed or anything. Nothing but their bank balance.

I have seen lots of times when individual people have been slated for, for example, news reports of them trying to avoid paying tax, or whathaveyou, but I don't recall ever seeing anything that is 'you have lots of money you bastard, that fact makes you scum'. I have always read that in those cases it is the individual being slated, not everyone with a similar bank balance.

Nobody adds to society simply by their presence on the planet (well, except me . ) It is what you do that does that. So a rich person may add to society by, I dunno, donating to charity, or economically by employing people, producing goods, etc. Or they may add nothing to society because they piss their money up a wall and do nothing of benefit to anyone with it and actively try to hold onto it so that the country gains less than it otherwise could via taxation.

A poor person might volunteer in the community and massively enrich it, or they may contribute nothing at all their entire life.

To answer CompsHats point about tax avoiders: no there's nothing wrong with legally avoiding tax. It's their money, they're entitled to keep it if they can find a legal way to do so. If we don't like the ways they find, then change the law. The vilification of tax-avoiders is another example of class-war in public life. (Can't believe that even Conservative politicians have now climbed on that bandwagon.)

There is this pervasive sense in the UK that other peoples money somehow belongs to us, that them being well-off is somehow the cause of our own relative poverty.

Hecate - spot on.

You mean the villification of tax evaders surely?

Hecate

Please read rinabean's posts on this thread. They are good examples of what I hear quite a lot.

I don't think people hate them enough- a certain type of rich person anyway. People are too in awe of wealth and celebrity and value it above all else, and lots of people who are well off have no real idea how anyone else other than their own kind lives as they have lived in a little privileged cocoon all their lives. Perhaps even worse are the self-congratulatory self-made ones who think if everyone else got off their arse they could be as well off as them, not realising their own good fortune.

I don't necessarily hate someone for being rich but I wouldn't necessarily think they are amazing either and I'm rather unimpressed with ostentatious displays of wealth. I judge people on far more important factors.

Hecate

I totally agree that everyone contributes in different ways I have made that very clear. I am a low wage earner.

I am saying that people generalise about rich people as if they are all the same. If you haven't heard it then fantastic, unfortunately I hear it/read it a lot.

partialderivative

"I heard a story a long time ago that if an American sees someone driving a Rolls Royce, he says "That will be me one day", but when a Brit sees the same he wants to scratch it with a coin.

I wonder if there is any truth in the thoughts behind that."

I've seen examples of this and I think it’s sad. I wonder if it’s a hangover from our old money class system. If you are Rich in the UK you are seen as inherited wealth (still) haven't earned it don't deserve it. While in the US everyone is seen as self-made, so well done to them and anyone can achieve that. Not everyone can be born a Duke.

There is this pervasive sense in the UK that other peoples money somehow belongs to us, that them being well-off is somehow the cause of our own relative poverty.

BUT IT IS! Have you been on another planet since 2007? Incomes have stayed static - except for FTSE 100 directors who have had very nice pay rises thank you very much while costs have risen of many of the goods and services their companies provide. Everyone's standard of living has fallen apart from the top 1% of earners. They have robbed us all blind.

I can only surmise that you mix in different circles, because - as Hecate says - I have never, ever heard someone saying that they hate all rich people simply because they are rich. In fact, Ive never heard anyone say that they hate someone purely on the basis of what they have (or don't have) in the bank.

I'm someone who hates the socio-economic inequality in the UK, and tbh I spend a lot of my time with people who are wealthy, and I see three things: firstly the philanthropy, which is real, good etc, and the complacency that being rich can bring (which stymies creativity), and the most often unspoken reality that however philanthrophic rich people are, they know that they benefit much more from the unequal socio-economic state of the uk than they redress it with their philanthrophy. And I think there's a bit of shame and guilt in that unspoken but intuited reality.

Read this and think on:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/07/one-per-cent-wealth-destroyers

It's the inequality in wealth that causes issues.
I work really hard in a nmw job on zero hour contract, when it's quiet I get sent home early or told not to go in. They save themselves £££ by doing this while I'm juggling every penny I've got to keep us fed and a roof over our heads. The people who own these companies are benefiting greatly from workers like me.
It doesn't help me form a very high opinion of them.

AIBU to not understand why some people seem to have an absolute hatred for poor people in this country? Especially those on benefits including ones working full time on a minimum wage so low they get referred to food banks and people with terminal cancer assessed as fit to work by ATOS and sanctioned of all their support?

It was the rich bankers and their greed that caused this recession, and the poor that have been paying for the coalition's austerity measures ever since. Does anyone think it's just that the poorest 10% of the population pay 48% of their gross incomes back to the state in taxes while the top 10% pay only 35%?

You do sometimes see some choice posts on the State v Private Education bunfights threads. Not from the posters who have a reasoned ideological objection to private education but from the odd one who happily stereotypes all private school pupils and parents.

YY absolutely PiratePanda

People look up to the rich far too much and the poor are seen as lazy, feckless scroungers.

Piratepanda

It is possible to understand your very valid points but still not lump together all rich people as the cause of all that is wrong surely?

fraidy I made no comment on the legality of tax avoiding tax. I am fully aware it is legal. Likewise greggs example her employers aren't acting illegally, but Iin both cases I'd say it was shitty, immoral behaviour. Both of which has consequences for other people.