AIBU- to thing that being very rich is inherently immoral

[Antonia87]

My very good friend and I have been discussing this at length. She believes that it is fine to be very rich and that the pursuit of wealth for his own purpose is not immoral. I believe that retaining considerably more money than you and your children need to have a life without financial worries is potentially immoral as every pound that you retain for your own indulgence is a pound not spent on alleviating the suffering of the poor. Thoughts for a friendly debate?

I don't think being wealthy is "immoral", what I do think is immoral is being wealthy and finding every loophole to avoid paying the taxes that comes with that. I do also think that if you have millions in the bank it's nice to help the less fortunate, but to be honest that's a personal decision.

Neolara- yes, we are rich in global terms with our clean water and hygienic sanitation.

All this wealth does get re-distributed. People on 250k can only save 10 k into pensions, don't get tax free allowance, don't get any frèe nursery hours, often go with private education and healthcare and pay six figures of tax that gets spend on the poor.
Wanting to take more from them, comes across quite greedy and jealous.

YABU. We all pay taxes which prevent people (who aren't behaving ridiculously) from slipping into poverty. Thanks to the welfare system everyone has reasonable access to healthcare, education, housing etc-what moral obligation is not discharged by this? Are we supposed to buy them televisions? Or pay their phone bills? Or maybe send them all on an annual family holiday?

Interesting debate, I will be followoing for sure.
My initial position is that the idea of a wold where everybody has enough to live decently and you can get rich but up to a certain limit (even talking couple of millions) is ideal but not possible.
First of all it should be worldwide, so even the tiniest country shouldn't accept residents or even bank accounts holders who own more than the limit - basically impossible.
Then if you take the money off the people who today own more than the limit, they would just stop anything they are doing, so any company they owned would close and make lots of people out of a job. Of course new companies can be created but what happens in the meantime?
Just my first thoughts...

In a way, taxes are society deciding that an individual has enough wealth that they should give some to be spent on those who have less. As well as things like roads and defence that need to be paid for as a group rather than individually, a fair amount of tax income goes on pensions and benefits. (Which I'm happy with, BTW)

x-post with Ttbb...

I see taxes as the bare minimum that people should contribute to society. Decent people give back more, whether in cash or in kind

I agree with fencesitter.
I am richer than most of my schoolfriends. In that I have a higher disposable income, a nice house and a nice car.
We have come from similar backgrounds but made different choices from a fairly young age. Some of them def get a little jealous but they could all have had what I have now. Equally there are things they had / have which I chose not to but that I would have liked

Interesting points. There is certainly immorality in the love of money per se. There is certainly immorality in seeing something bad that you could change and doing nothing.
Then there are issues around paternalistic society relying on others charity rather than ensuring no one lived in poverty or was homeless. The notion of deserving poor versus 'scrounging' is also complex as is the idea that charity begins at home.
There are children dying because drug companies make exorbitant profits from things like vaccines and drugs that could save millions of lives very easily. That's immoral.
The frail elderly living alone with just two 1/4 hour care visits a day is immoral. It's brought about by a 'market driven economy' and a society that votes in a government driving austerity as a policy decision rather than financial effectiveness.
Owning a home isn't immoral. Those that can afford to provide fully for themselves and their future should be releasing public housing for those with greatest need.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation does absolutely stupendous work, all off the back of Bill Gates’ fortune. So I’d disagree. And some of the stuff the foundation funds is long term research which would never be funded through taxes.

Many people work very very hard for lots of money.

Every person should be allowed to earn what they wish and spend it how they wish imo.

Many people in this country work very very hard and are still on very low incomes.

ODFOD

I don't know how the extremely rich can live with themselves. Sometimes it seems obscene.

It is a moral question though, but everyone's idea of rich is different.

We area low income family, but do well enough as low outgoings.
My dd doesn't get lots of cash off us, but does well enough.
She can't walk past a Sally Army tin without putting whatever she can afford into it.
She has seen the work they do and she feels strongly about giving.

There are a lot of people who are rich who do this on a bigger scale.
I don't believe there are many people who aren't prepared to donate to charity, when they can.

I do think businesses should reward more to employees as well as shareholders. Why can't the min wage grass roots workers get the fat bonuses?

I have often pondered this OP. I have friends and acquaintances on both extremes, trustafarians who will never have to work a day in their lives and people who were brought up in poverty and still don't have two pennies to rub together, have been sleeping rough etc. Financial inequality is entrenched in our society and the sheer greed of the already fortunate is astounding. Those born into a wealthy family have the advantages from the off that will mean they can go on to make good money themselves, they will have an education and opportunities that will always be out of reach for children born into poverty. People often seem very ignorant of the advantages they have had that has got them to a position of privilege, often citing that they have worked hard to get there. And of course they probably have, but there are many many more people working hard who will never see the financial reward for it because they were not encouraged to go into a career with the potential to make oodles of cash or don't see it as a possibility for 'someone like them'.

I count my blessings every single day for being born into a family who could provide the best for me throughout my childhood and continue to support me now. I try my best to alleviate others suffering in small ways whenever I can, whether that is putting up a friend who has found themselves with nowhere to go, giving all my change to a charity collector or giving a homeless person some cash or a hot drink and food. People do not give enough back, tax is the bare minimum you should contribute, but the majority of people who find themselves with a few thousand pounds to spare each year will spend it on a new car/holiday/handbag rather than donate it to their local women's shelter or food bank. Our society has become so commercialised and focused on getting new things, and then better versions of those things. That's why you get people saying they are 'skint' on £100k because they have adjusted their expectations to include many luxuries they come to regard as basic necessities. I think very often the wealthy are immoral, they are the people willing to backstab and trample their way to the top and personally I think that the pursuit of wealth for wealths sake is pretty disgusting.

Not all wealthy people earn a salary though. For example, musicians, actors, etc.

How do you cap their earnings, when it's through sales, box office takings, etc?

I know those people are a tiny percentage of the very wealthy. But trying to find a solution for this is something many people spent the 20th century doing, and failing. I'm a socialist at heart and am happy to pay a higher tax rate, so I don't disagree with you.

But part and parcel of living in an open and free democracy, is also having an open and free economy.

And Winston (sort of) said - democracy is a pretty crap system, but it's better than everything else out there.

I agree with silkpyjamas.

The "I'm rich because I'm brilliant" brigade will never want to accept that they have (probably, but not always) benefitted from structural advantages.

What a ridiculous notion

Look at what bill gates and elon musk are doing. They would never have been able to do all this great stuff if they werent rich

It's not intrinsically immoral to be very wealthy but the vast majority of paths to becoming very wealthy require a fundamentally selfish and exploitative attitude in order to get there and stay there.

Being wealthy doesn't have to mean that the wealth is being hoarded away benefitting no one but the wealthy owner. Money spent on commissioning a bespoke luxury yacht benefits the family of the boatbuilder. Spending £5000 on a handmade suit benefits the skilled tailor. Investing the wealth in businesses provides finance and backing for companies that drive our economy, benefiting us all.

An ethical wealthy person should certainly be generous in their philanthropy, and ought not prioritise the pursuit of increasing their wealth to the extent that they exploit or oppress those less fortunate, but if they can manage that then they aren't immoral just because they are rich.

Someone who earns £250k a year isn't rich, not on the true scale of global wealth, and the scary thing is that the gap between them and the very poorest in this country is insignificant compared to the gap between them and the very richest in the world. People who can afford to buy houses in London costing tens of millions of pounds, and then just leave them empty. People who can buy a Maldive island. These are the ones we should be focusing on, because I agree that that level of wealth cannot be obtained and maintained morally. It is the proceeds of exploitation somewhere along the line, and often it is used to fund corruption and horde privilege at best, and crime and terrorism at worst. People like Bill Gates, who use their money for good, are the exception to that, but what he is able to do still isn't right. It's a coincidence that he uses it for good, and that level of power and control shouldn't be held by an individual, it should only belong to a democratically elected and accountable government.

Getting hung up on people who get paid a bit, even a lot, more than you? That's what Marx called false class consciousness- exactly what the real players need us to do so we don't turn our attention to them. Don't fall for it! Anyone who is dependent on a job, or on government policies, or anything else beyond their own control, for security and survival, is in the same boat.

OP put your details in here

www.globalrichlist.com

It's an extremely interesting tool. I think you will find you need to give away a lot more of your money.

Rich people aren't the problem. Business structures that make it possible for one person to pull billions into their own pocket at the expense of workers is the problem.

So I've no major issue with rich people but they would be and should be less rich overall if businesses were more carefully controlled. That's the job of government.

Agree with you Karate.

But part and parcel of living in an open and free democracy, is also having an open and free economy

There is no such thing as an open and free economy. It is a false god.

Bank rate. Bailouts. Armies. Taxes. Roads. Public education. Cartels.

And the freer the economy the more likely the rise of monopoly and oligarchy. Smith admits this.

Being comfortably off is not wrong. Obscene wealth ownership is wrong. I always wonder how some super rich can carry on spending money on a colossal level when rest of the world suffers. It is a moral question though.