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 agree that this is more about the global elite & not those earning 250k etc. As other posters have said it's more about the tax loopholes & business structures.

Also a footballer, musician, etc earning loads doesn't bother me. If you don't like it don't watch football, buy their music. However I don't think it's moral that Philip Green can take delivery of a new yacht during a pension crisis, or pay himself a massive dividend & not pay tax on it.

People spend at different rates.
My student DD lived with her student friend. Both had the same income. However, friend spent it on dresses and computer games, shouting she had no food and wanting DD to pay for her. My DD much more careful had savings towards buying a house.

I think it's unlikely people would want to work for enjoyment. Why would I do an extra shift if not for the money?

I would be happy to pay more tax to see less people sleeping rough and no food banks

but what if those people had drunk/gambled/snorted/tattoo'd your excess wealth away and ended up on the street - would you still think it is right? Or should that money have gone to the hungry child.

Or, say your money helps a soup kitchen for the homeless - aren't THEY wealthy by comparison to the homeless in Africa without soup kitchens?

Yes , according to the Care computer programme we are indeed rich beyond belief. We have a car, computer (on which I am typing) a (heavily mortgaged flat), food on the table , clothes on our back, a UK holiday with our in laws every year. I am completely aware of how lucky we are which is why we give about 5% of our income to charity. As I have said, we would happily pay more tax and tighten our belts. If incomes were capped there would be far more lucky people like us and less people with super yachts.

As I have said, we would happily pay more tax and tighten our belts.
Well why not just give 10% of your income to charity in that case & tighten your belt further like that?

Agree with Getout. Of course a £250k salary sounds a lot to many people, but after tax that's about £125k. At that income threshold many people go the independent schools route. In London this will cost over £20k per child per year. So if you have 3 DC that's over £60k per year, before mortgage and living costs. This is a fairly typical scenario in the area we live. People know they are wealthy on paper, but they don't feel as if they have masses of disposable income. A family on £90k living outside London and using free schools may have a very similar spending power.

Of course independent schools are a choice which the vast majority are not able to make. Other people may move into the catchment areas for good state schools and pay the equivalent of many years' worth of school fees in stamp duty.

In many parts of London a 4 bed semi will cost 2-3 million pounds. Many older couples purchased their houses 30 years ago for a fraction of that. However, few people can afford to move house unless they downsize. Few can afford to pay stamp duty of say £400k to buy a 5 bed house when the same house in most parts of the country would cost £400k! So people stay where they are because they can't afford to move. They need to maintain a salary to survive in a more costly area, so it becomes a vicious circle.

the tax system redistributes money.
I'm for an increase, however I'm not sure the tax system is moral either.

I don't think it's right for a person to work an extra shift and pay more tax for that shift. at certain points that extra shift is not worth doing.

Giving is not just about money.
Its about who runs the football team, the brownies?
Giving to charity by clothes bags etc.

One of the five pillars of Islam is zakat, where you give a proportion of your wealth to charity each year. Im not Muslim but I try to embrace this as well as doing good deeds and giving to others. I like the sentiment and it’s a real positive from Islam that isn’t mentioned enough, in my opinion.

Nikephorus, we have been discussing doing exactly that.

Anyone is free to give as much money to the tax man as they like. They don't have the wait for a tax increase.

Funny how they never do. Funny how they usually avail themselves of every tax allowance/relief also.

Instead of pointing a finger at those perceived to be a bit richer and squeezing more tax out of them or capping their salaries, how about we look at the systemic tax avoidance of large corporations?

How about we look at non doms?

How about we look at the investment arms of banks?

Re: independent schools, if no one could afford them think about how good state schools would be when everyone has to use them. Standards would be driven up massively.

Possibly Antonia? But there is such disparity between state schools now, particularly in grammar areas. So often it's a postcode lottery. If the super- rich had to use state schools would it not just create more disparity between and within areas? How would the government fund all the extra places, particularly in inner city areas, when the education budget is so stretched as it is?

I have no problem with people being rich. As long as they don't avoid or evade their tax or other obligations, good luck to them. There will always be people who are risk takers and innovators like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Should they not be rewarded for taking the risk? We should encourage more philanthropy amongst them. As others have said, Bill Gates' money is well on the way to eradicating malaria.American billionaires seem to be better at it (with the obvious exception of Donald trump who inherited rather than earned his wealth). We should deal with the likes of Philip Green and should not have allowed the banks to get away with spending pensioners investments on guaranteed bonuses and suffer no consequences.

The vast majority of the middle classes already use state schools. They have been priced out of the private sector.

Yet they've brought no pressure to bear. In fact we've seen the worst budget cuts to education in a very long time. Coupled with ridiculously rushed and ill thought through new exams.

If you think a handful of parents in 250k can revers that, you're living in la la land, OP.

The proper elite won't rock up at the local comp just because Eton closes.

Antonia, if more children had to be catered for in state schools, they’d be even more overstretched and the state would need to spend almost 10% on education! How would that make things better?? Reading your posts, it feels like you should move to North Korea and see how your ideas work in practice. (Clue: they don’t. Utopian tosh).

I have far more issues with people who expect the Government and the taxpayer to keep them than people who go out, work hard and earn good money and pay their taxes. My DH works darned hard in his business often to the detriment of our family life to earn a good income, we are self sufficient, pay our taxes, make provision for our futures and look after our own. We will never have an equal society due to the different lifestyle choices that people make. No amount of handouts will change that unless you can control how the money is spent...........

There will never be equality where everyone has the same amount of money, nor should there be.

Give 3 people £100 each - a year later one will have blown the money, one will have saved it and one will have turned it into £1,000.

The top 1 per cent of earners pay almost a third of all income tax received by the Treasury.

I get what the OP is saying.

Fwiw one thing that springs to mind is that the 'poor' give more generously to charity than the rich. Does becoming rich make you less generous or do the less generous become rich....?

No, some people do great things with their wealth.

Most people don’t of course... hit some people do.

Really OP?

Capping incomes would mean more people would have more money?

How would that work?

Good lord, the deliberate naïveté in some of these comments is overwhelming. Apparently the rich work super hard and deserve their piles of cash. The poor are feckless and lazy and just want handouts.

Some of the hardest working people I know are paid a pittance - they work multiple jobs and work themselves into an early grave making ends meet, whereas I've met people who were gifted a lot of money, give it to someone else to invest it them and live comfortably on the abundant profits. Or they run a business for which hundreds or thousands of people work for a pittance and work their asses off, while those at the top hoarde their cash and evade tax. I don't understand how anyone can look at this situation and make excuses for it, it's disgraceful.

The biggest issue is the pay gap between lower level workers and directors, which has rocketed over the last few decades. Arguing over minimum wage increases while stockpiling funds that will never be spent.

The standards in private schools are much the same as in state.
However it's the pupils that are different.
If you matched a pupil from stare with one from private according to their ability and parental academic ability you don't see a difference.