Wealth inequality - we've been fooled

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I've read loads of threads recently about benefits: cuts, caps etc.It's all over the newspapers too. There's a massive sentiment that austerity is necessary, we can't afford a generous welfare system, benefits should only provide the most basic of needs. Without going into why we seem to accept all this without question, why is there so much focus on how much the poorest people have, and no focus at all on how much the richest have? The product of all the austerity propaganda seems to be that we've forgotten the massive increase in inequality in this country, that only the very richest benefit from.

inequalitybriefing.org/

So people in the middle bitch about the people at the bottom, but no-one seems to notice the people at the top creaming off all the profit. This affects everyone. Living standards of the very poorest and also those in the middle. We should be really angry about this. 20 years ago a professional, like a doctor or teacher, could afford a good family house in London and private education for their children. But wages have stagnated and living costs have rocketed, we're all worse off except for the very wealthiest.

I feel like there's a huge amount of focus on benefits scroungers, immigrants and none on what we can do to stop the gap between rich and middle/poor getting bigger and bigger and bigger. AIBU?

And sport! We could see that in the 2012 olympics. Most competitors were privately educated, disproportionately so. But of course state schools have not got the time and money to heavily invest in all but a few mainstream sports because they are too busy throwing every resource they've got at Maths and English.

The privileged people in Britain don't know they are privileged.

I think there was a time when wealth trickled down - someone set up a business, employed people, aid them a wage and in time some of them became wealthy too. And the local economies were healthy because people spent money there.

Now the odds are stacked against ordinary people. And the super rich treat London like a holiday hotel. There is no trickle down.

Plarail123, which part of China are you in, if you don't mind me asking? I'm in Shanghai, and I don't observe much dissatisfaction here, under an autocratic communist system. The man on the street seems pretty happy (that's speaking mostly for the middle classes whom I encounter mostly. No doubt the millionnaires are even happier, and the 'peasants' less)

I very much believe that it's down to ideology. Whatever status quo a government and its handmaiden media can convince its people to follow, it can maintain control. Whether that's the benevolent hand of communism, or the cut-throat tenets of capitalism, it's all the same. Any political model after its third or fourth generation will begin to show cracks.

I don't really understand economics but there must be something wrong when someone like me, who pays a small amount of income tax, is helping to subsidise employers who don't pay enough wages to their workers and rip-off landlords who exploit the poor.

Yanbu. It has made me so angry for years. So much so I now volunteer at the food bank. A very small thing but I feel better for doing something

Yanbu. And it is deliberate. The wealthy own the vast majority of the media and so are able to manipulate the masses with their benefit bashing, immigrant blaming propaganda.

I also disagree with the PP who said things got worse under Labour. The financial crash happened under labour but this was caused by the global banks and would have happened anyway. At least whilst in power Labour spent money on good things for the benefit of all - Sure Start Centres, new hospitals/schools, training for extra teachers and nurses, as well as introducing the minimum wage. They made some effort to address the balance of inequality. This Tory government is utterly vile; how on earth people can't see through them is beyond me. They are on an ideological mission to dismantle the welfare state. God help anyone who is ill, disabled or poor. And God help anyone who ever becomes vulnerable at any time in their life - they'll be fucked.

There's an anti - austerity march in London on the 20th June (I think that's the date). I've never been on a march before in my life - not even when I was a student and Thatcher was in power- but I'm seriously thinking of going to this. It probably won't make a jot of difference but I feel so helpless and terrified for the future of our children that I can't just stand by and do nothing. I need to feel that I'm at least doing something.

if your children go to a state school, the richest 1% have paid for over a third of it with their taxes. If you use the NHS, the richest 1% have paid for over a third of it with their taxes.

Some rich people are criminal and immoral, some are hard working, honest and of huge benefit to us to have in our society.

it is just a lazy form of prejudice to slate rich people.

Ynbu

I don't think anyone is slating the rich. I know I'm not. But inequality is bad for a stable society. And when I came home from the food bank last week my friend emailed from the superyacht he works on. Where he had just arranged for a private jet to fly back to NY from the Caribbean to pick up a very particular type of bagel requested for the following morning's breakfast. That contrast made me sick to my stomach.

YANBU of course, but you are ignoring the fact that saving money was only part of the issue.

The other part is re-addressing the moral unfairness that someone can choose to not work and still expect the same or better standard of living as many people who work full-time.

A full-time NMW job pays about 13,500 a year yet there was a thread yesterday in which people were talking about destitution and workhouses because benefits are to be capped at 23,000 and so the unemployed might not be able to afford to rent three-bed houses in London any more.

Let's keep a sense of perspective.

caroldecker, your point about home-owning Londoners is a great example of how different things look from alternate ends of the telescope. You see an army of asset-rich Londoners, I see millions of people who are forced to pay quite ludicrous amounts of money to stay in the place where they can find work, or where they have family and community.

I'm not pleading poverty, but I am saying that the amount I have paid for my asset is much, much more than i would have liked to have paid - an involuntary investment, if you like. An asset is not much use if you can't realise it, and though I accept that some have played the property ladder and made money, for the majority we are just saddled with large mortgages. We can only cash in if we move to somewhere much cheaper - but my career is based in central London, and so I compromise by living in the outer suburbs and paying huge travel costs. As large tracts of London have become colonised by the super-rich, I've become more and more resentful of the 'well if you can't afford it don't live there' rhetoric of the DM - this is my city, where I was born and raised and where all my family live. Why should I be forced out for the comfort and convenience of international capital?

But yes, overall I am a winner in this game - compared to those who cannot get on the property ladder, who cannot afford to rent anywhere decent. Another example of how the middle and the poor are pitted against each other, while the super-rich swan about buying up all the prime estate and pushing up prices for the people who actually live (and pay taxes) here. This is not the game most of us would have chosen, and it doesn't work to the benefit of the vast majority of people in this country. We want somewhere decent and affordable to live, where we can raise our families and do our jobs - not to slog our guts out for an 'asset' that makes us zillionaires in comparison to people living in Djibouti.

YANBU, the transfer of wealth to the top 5% in the last 5 years is heartbreaking.

what I don't get, as a SNP voter, is why the Tories got back in?

someone somewhere must like them

Great thread. I am comforted in knowing I am not alone in my thinking, nor my feelings of great unfairness and mistrust of this government.

Charis as a proportion of income the poorest 10% of people in the UK pay 8% more tax than the richest 10% of people. That's when you consider all types of tax. I'm not saying we don't want entrepreneurs, business, innovation etc. I'm just saying that there should be a bit more focus on the fact that the UK is much more unequal than it has been in the past, and more unequal than countries like Norway and Denmark.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality

Not only is it morally unfair for this to be the case, it causes problems for everyone. Social unrest, crime etc. Also, unless you're in the top 1%, you're affected by this! I don't think there's anything wrong with striving for a fairer society. I'm pointing out that it might be more productive to focus on this, rather than on how much all the poor people are getting, which is in the scheme of things, bugger all.

It is a good thread - and gives me hope.

I am not bashing the rich. I work for a few of the super rich - they pay me. (I do feel a bit sickened when I am in their houses and I see what they have and what they waste though)

We need aspiration, having money per-se isn't bad. True the rich do pay a lot of tax and that is all fine. But the scale of it is so unbalanced now - and getting worse. They pay tax but they still have millions of times more than others - so it becomes a bit meaningless.

I am not benefit bashing either but there are huge inequalities there too.

I said that it got worse under Labour and a PP disagreed. Yes they did do some good things but they also allowed the bankers to get completely out of control. I was working in an estate agent in a nice area of London and in February the young lads would come in and ask for details of houses in the £1m price bracket - and they would be paying cash. That had never happened before on that scale. This was the mid 2000's.

They encouraged immigration which drove down wages, (it certainly stuffed me), and encouraged the very rich to move here and pay hardly any tax.

It isn't as simple as Left v Right or Super rich v Benefits Scroungers or Immigrant Hating Racists v All Immigration is Healthy. Because the issue is difficult to discuss as a whole and we allow the "Divide and Rule" mentality we are unable to change things.

Thank you ffor the thread OP because I am learning from it

Because otherwise we'd live in a Communist state and we all know how well that works. I don't watch those benefit programmes. But people on low and average incomes didn't want to pay more tax under Labour which is why they lost the election. Why should people pay tax on £12K a year when the benefit cap is £26K a year tax free. Labour looks after a certain proportion of the population and the others are left out. Which is why I didn't vote for them this time though I did last time and wish I hadn't.

I agree Orange. So much of politics is a nasty blame game. I wish we had more of a culture where a politician could say, "we've tried this policy, it didn't really work, let's try something else". It'd be a hell of a lot more productive and might encourage people into government who are a bit less self-interested.

I am not bashing the rich. I work for a few of the super rich - they pay me. (I do feel a bit sickened when I am in their houses and I see what they have and what they waste though)

but people poorer than the uk population would feel the same about any of us.

But Vivienne the whole point of this thread is that while there may be problems with welfare, the fixation on welfare means we miss much bigger problems!

CaoNiMa Shanghai must be lovely! Where I am there is a much bigger divide between the super, mega rich and the have nots, and very little middle class. But we don't want to go into detail do we, DH will kill me if I get us deported.

what I don't get, as a SNP voter, is why the Tories got back in?

I know lots of tory voters and the reason they give are the same. Some were scared because of a potential Labour / snp alliance, though a conservative / dup alliance wasn't scary.

They also are largely over 50 and tell me how hard they have worked. When I point out that people now have to work twice as hard to have half as much it doesn't seem to register. Take my parents, they had a council house which they afforded on one wage, then they bought the house which they now rent out. They don't understand that most people I know, myself included, have to both work and can still barely afford to pay rent down here (SE)

I think there has always been a disparity between rich and poor. But the middle classes didn't give a shit when they were exploiting the middle ground.

They were very happy to perpetuate the status quo.

Only now they're finally waking up to being squeezed and panicking about their own DC are they Turning on 'the rich'.

if your children go to a state school, the richest 1% have paid for over a third of it with their taxes. If you use the NHS, the richest 1% have paid for over a third of it with their taxes.

Charis, no. I helped you with those figures, because you didn't want to look them up. It's just rude to keep using the wrong ones!

You've also forgotten the proportion of the total tax take contributed by income tax. (Hint: income tax is not the only source of government revenue).

And you've also omitted to consider where this 1% gets their very high declared (important point!) incomes from. Very often those incomes would not be possible without the work of those on much lower salaries, or the subsidy of businesses paying below-subsistence wages via tax credits, or other factors. The very rich do not live in a bubble.

It's also worth remembering that once non-progressive taxes such as VAT are taken into account, the proportion of their incomes paid by the lowest decile is higher than the top.

Word I only wish they were turning on the rich a bit more. I don't think there's enough will for things to change. All I see is the situation getting worse.