To not understand why so many people view the wealth of others as public property

[FrogspawnSmoothie]

I've been noticing a lot of posts lately saying things like 'we need to sort out the wealth divide' etc and calling for the wealthy to pay for xyz 'because they can afford to', and I must say I've never quite shared this mentality.

I can see why people start to think this way when we're constantly told things like '99% of the nation's wealth is owned by 1% of the population', making it sound like they're hoarding resources. But the thing is, it's not a tin of biscuits given to the population which is now being hoarded by a few greedy chubsters. It may well have been foreign investment, for instance, which wasn't otherwise going to be invested in a UK business to then benefit the economy through taxes as it does. I go to work and earn my income, and that money is mine - I imagine most people would consider their paycheck to be their own.

I think of it like two farmers. One innovates in his processes and works out how to grow more apples with the same resources. He then reinvests his extra profit into better equipment and buys more land. Eventually, he owns 75% of the apples in the town, despite being only one of many farmers. I'm not convinced he now needs to start giving his apples to the other disgruntled farmers who envy his wealth, especially as he's now paying much more tax.

I'll admit it's a pretty simplistic way of looking at it (I'm no economist) but I'm not convinced that all the people moaning about the rich have given it a particularly nuanced consideration either. I was listening to some prat of a manbunned barista banging on about socialism and 'redistribution of wealth' in Costa today, and gotta admit I just thought to myself 'sounds like you should've worked harder at school, mate.' 🤷‍♀️

[quote Porcupineinwaiting]@Orchidsindoors normal wealthy backgrounds

The one thing that separates private school kids from none private school kids is money. You can work as hard as you like in most jobs (and plenty of professions) and not be able to privately educate your children no matter how much you scrimp and save and do without.[/quote]
Maybe true for the top private schools, but most are pretty normal really.

My parents sent my brother to a private school - mother was a secretary and Father was a shop worker. They paid for it by doing overtime and mother taking a second part time job, driving an old car, not going on holidays etc.

One of our friends is a plasterer. One of their son's went off the rails at the state comp, so they paid for him to go to a residential/private school where the school got him back under control and on track. He managed to afford it by doing more work and they saved money by cutting back of lifestyle for a few years.

So, yes, "normal" people can do it. A lot of private schools are pretty affordable, especially those outside London and other affluent areas.

Even a modest private school is not pretty affordable if you are having to pay for it out of taxed income. Most average earners could not afford it the median wage is around £30k. So a modest private school is a big chunk of that.

So, yes, "normal" people can do it. A lot of private schools are pretty affordable, especially those outside London and other affluent areas.

What today as opposed to 10-20 yrs ago?

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-charts-that-shows-how-private-school-fees-have-exploded-a7023056.html%3famp

I think it's the extreme wealth of a very few people, some of whom do nothing to make the world a better place, which is particularly annoying, the like of oligarchs who came by their money dishonestly, the people who inherit vast sums and keep it in offshore accounts to avoid paying tax - same goes for the hedge fund managers and the venture capitalists. What about the saudi royal families and all their hangers on with their ridiculous penchant for gold rolls royces - the people who treat thoes they see as beneath them so appallingly; the treatment of migrant workers in Dubai by their wealthy entrepreneurial overlords?

Jeff Bezos is 'worth' $193 billion. Why? And more to the point, who on earth needs that much money? He could quite easily pay Amazon staff 20% more and it would barely put a dent in his worth. For thos pp saying most of the product sold on Amazon is via small businesses and Amazon gives them a market place, it appears it won't be long before Amazon will get a percentage of every single thing we buy, from groceries to cars, because Amazon will be the market place for everything - not because they have invented an excellent product, but because the world is moving towards the position whereby we can't or won't buy product from anywhere but Amazon. That can't be right, or even safe, surely, especially when they should be paying taxes on profit made on UK sales, but they don't.

It also worries me that companies like Amazon and Google, with their extremely wealthy CEOs, CFOs COOs etc, wield a huge amount of power and influence, but are unelected.

And for those who believe that anyone can be wealthy, they just need to work hard, who will be doing the jobs of cleaning our hospitals, waiting on tables, caring for our children, if all of us are supposed to be entrepreneurs and earning squillions.

Dfriend is a highly qualified nurse with many years experience, earning approx £35K for working long shifts helping to improve the life and health prospects of her patients. Her son works in the computer gaming industry and his BONUS last year was more than she earns. It's a topsy turvy world.

My issue is that some people can never have enough wealth. It's people like Phillip Green who already has more wealth than he can possibly spend in his or his children's lifetimes, and yet still puts it in his wife's name and lives offshore to avoid tax. Or people who earn millions and arrange their tax affairs so that they pay less tax than the people who run the corner shop.

Anyone who has £20 million wealth has more than enough money to live an extremely good life. Why do they need to reduce their tax burden, keep their employees salaries low to increase their own profit-share?

James Dyson and Richard Branson also come to mind. Both started their wealth in the UK and both now try and mitigate UK tax and business costs to increase personal wealth. It's quite nauseating.

Dfriend is a highly qualified nurse with many years experience, earning approx £35K for working long shifts helping to improve the life and health prospects of her patients. Her son works in the computer gaming industry and his BONUS last year was more than she earns. It's a topsy turvy world.

Money earned isn’t an indication of worth to society, more a reflection of market profit. If you accept they are not related then it’s easier to compute.

Still there is worth in considering the machinations of capitalism, and putting in moderate elements (taxes etc) rather than letting inequality go wild.

I’m not wealthy but I earn well and where I live, the money spreads out well. I was privileged in my youth.

Funny you should mention being a bin man - because I’m pretty sure bin men might do a ‘dirty’ job but they’re quite a long way from minimum wage and (from what I understand) can actually shorten their days quite significantly if they get through their route quickly. Unlike a care worker looking after elderly people who will often do 12 hour shifts at minimum wage - although don’t forget they have the opportunity to earn more by doing overnight shifts.

Anyway that’s not important.

At what point do should the really rich be saying ‘the money I am earning is not enhancing my life so maybe I can enhance others?’ Bezos for example. He is worth billions. He could eradicate healthcare debt in the USA and remain a billionaire, and other sound bites like that.

I saw this pic on Pinterest earlier which sums it up for me. JK Rowling set up a charity and went from billionaire to millionaire - I doubt very much that it’s impacted her quality of life. That is whah needs to change for the super wealthy.

The only wealthy family I heard much of growing up invested much of their spare wealth into charities, sports clubs and music philanthropy in our area. They were also thought of as fair employers from way before that. Their wealth was based on ideas that needed people and hence they needed people skills to succeed. Maybe today's squillionaires are more tech orientated and just miss the human side of life?

I think jk Rowling looks to be following a similar path of philanthropy.

Hardly anybody has an issue with truly self-made wealth
Oh yes they do because they don't bother to get to know more then as a person, they are judged on what they own, the holiday they take. That's why the rich people I know ride old bangers, dress in drabs and live in nice houses but nothing close to what they could afford because they hate having to explain themselves.

What I found areal eye opener was the attitude of my kids' friends to getting a first job. Despite being in a good financial position, I always made it clear to my kids that they would need to get a job after finishing their GCSEs and stick to it or during their studies, pay half at least towards their driving lessons, same with car and insurance.

Yet, very few of their friends did and that affected all classes, but as an average, those who did were middle class kids, with those I thought would be more desperate to get a job because of their parents low income taking a 'I can't be bothered' attitude, giving up after just a couple of applications and rejections.

Sadly, those who did start working at 16 will have a better chance to get their second job, better apprenticeship etc...

Most of my kids friends had the exact same opportunities, but some wanted to start earning their own money, keeping busy during holidays and gaining some maturity and experience whilst others had already decided that it was a stupid thing to do when you didn't yet need to.

Yet the latter will be the first to moan that life is unfair when the former will get the better job opportunities in their 20s.

MarshaBradyo, but it means, in effect that DFriend lives in a modest house, drives a modest 10 year old car, watches the pennies, so her job which has a 'worth to society' doesn't translate into any rewards for her which will enable her to live an easier more comfortable life, which seems wrong, somehow.

Those who do the jobs which have a societal 'worth', the nurses, teachers, bin men etc, can never aspire to the lifestyle of some trust fund Charlie, or a hedge fund manager. Are they supposed to feel that because their job is worthy that that's OK, and they don't 'deserve' a trip to Necker Island?

High earners are not really the issue. It's massive accumulated capital that entrenches inequality and destabilises societies.
This.

Most people who own a lot of assets do not accumulate them purely through hard work, innovation. Often their employees work equally hard for them but are not given an equal share because capitalism (as the name suggests) over rewards owners/investors of capital.

It is a system geared up to enable those who already have assets to hold on to them even where others are working hard/innovating.

DH works in private wealth, many of his wealthiest clients have acquired their wealth through inheritance, passive investment of huge trust funds etc.

Theres also a common pattern where offspring are given seed capital such that they are always the business owner from day one. Eg one clients son wanted to be in the hotel business. Instead of working his way up and perhaps saving/getting business loans to set up his own business, he was simply bought a boutique hotel.

It is important to be aware that there is a strand of political thought ( that has attained a mainstream voice now) that ermliterally says we SHOULD all earn the same. These thoughts used to be expressed by members of fringe organisations meeting in a local pub. They are now hinted at by people who pop up in the sky and BBC pundit roles with alarming regularity.

The other classic is the loopholes available to preserve wealth in certain classes. All DHs very wealthy colleagues own smallholdings or farms as sideline, as a) there were EU subsidies that made holding land very profitable and b) it is a way to pass assets through a family which attracts generous inheritance tax reliefs.

You’re out of date user if you think private schools are pretty affordable for the average family.

I live outside London and checked out the cost of the local private school as son needs to move at 16 and it’s 17k a year - that’s just for the tuition - the extras will be on top.

The average family doesn’t have a spare 17k lying around for one child.

Most people who own a lot of assets do not accumulate them purely through hard work, innovation
That's indeed likely if we are only talking about assets rich people, but they represent such as all % of people, I don't understand the hatred towards them.

Yet those who earn well and manage a very nice house, cars, holidays, private education and health get hatred just the sane, even more if they dare being landlords (even if the house was from before they were married rather then inherited or bought for the purpose of investment).

I agree with @NoIDontWatchLoveIsland

Yet those who earn well and manage a very nice house, cars, holidays, private education and health get hatred just the sane, even more if they dare being landlords (even if the house was from before they were married rather then inherited or bought for the purpose of investment).

But it doesn't exist in a vacuum. My parents came to this country to give me a better education. They also helped me onto the ladder. I would not be where I am without that help. Personally I think there should be much higher levies for landlords, because it's not an equal playing field.

I like the definition of wealthy that goes like this - that you can live comfortably not from what you EARN but from what you OWN. So there is the major divide - those who have to work and those who don't, and then those who don't being in the top positions of power.

@FrogspawnSmoothie

I'll admit it's a pretty simplistic way of looking at it (I'm no economist)

No shit

I'm thinking with increasing certainty that breakfast, lunch and high tea should be available gratis to all secondary-educated children in the mainstream system, and fruit, brown bread, sanitary wear, basic clothing and laptops made available for free, too. The population would eat healthily, the children would be buffered from and budgeting fails attributable to their parents; everybody would be happy that their contribution through taxes or voluntary gifts was being used transparently and tangibly to bring about good outcomes.

One thing which cheers me up the most is visiting our local library/leisure centre at 5pm and seeing those hardworking teenagers chatting together about their GCSE prep and using the computers to research. I expect many of them lack at home their own bedroom, peace away from noisy siblings and a WiFi connection. What a shining example of hard work, enthusiasm and dedication. In another context, I was made aware of the situation of one young lady who was expected to get average to good grades at gcse and who worked in a department store on Saturday and Sunday (pre-Covid). It wasn't easy for her to be fresh and prepared for her exams three months away. She gave some of her earnings to her mother and paid for her own clothes and touletries. What if she had had young siblings to mind, at other times, too. Not easy to do your best when you have a full life. Let's at least give our youngsters free, healthy food, and help market gardeners too.

There are a lot of champagne socialists around who talk the talk but don't walk the walk when it comes to City careers and children in private schools

I hate the champagne socialist trope.

These are people who literally put their money where their mouth is. They vote for a society where they pay more tax themselves in order to support the rest of society.

So much better than off-shore tossers like Phillip Green and Rees-Mogg who are just honest about wanting to shaft the hardworking poor by not paying fair taxes. The fact that they own their shittiness by not voting for a fairer society is no satisfaction at all to struggling families.

Neither Green nor Rees-Mogg were innovators who created wealth from creative industries and brought in income from overseas. Green's overseas forays all failed. All they have done is taken wealth from the country and moved it outside of the country, while avoiding tax. They vote and support the political party that enables and encourages this.

I know which group I loathe more.

Dontdisturbmenow, but it's not people with one extra property, it's the individuals who own ten, or a hundred, or a thousand, who are pushing people out of the property market. We were in the Highlands last week, and in some places most if the properties are now holiday lets. Imagine what that does to an area.

There was a segment on R4 this morning about the number of people buying rural properties so they have a sanctuary if there are further lockdowns - they're not selling their current city homes and buying rurally, they're buying second homes in the country. They're pushing prices up, so local people won't be able to buy a home in the area they work, where their children go to school, where their extended family live.

@dontdisturbmenow

Most people who own a lot of assets do not accumulate them purely through hard work, innovation That's indeed likely if we are only talking about assets rich people, but they represent such as all % of people, I don't understand the hatred towards them.

Yet those who earn well and manage a very nice house, cars, holidays, private education and health get hatred just the sane, even more if they dare being landlords (even if the house was from before they were married rather then inherited or bought for the purpose of investment).

Although that small % have decimated parts of the country.

Go to St Mawes in November for example.

@FrogspawnSmoothie

Absolutely pathetic and ridiculous point, I agree. Because no one but green haired drop outs can care about people. Makes me so fucking angry.

But it's true! The communist/Antifa/anti capitalist nutjobs do have a penchant for silly fluorescent haircuts, and the blokes always seem to have dodgy beards and hipster taches - a fair few of the pony tail/fedora combos too. They even call them 'beardy bros' in the feminist section on here!

Anyone who comes onto this thread, reads this and this the OP is still after a reasoned, intelligent debate needs their bumps felt.

What a twat.