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.' 🤷‍♀️

I already am.....I alone make 450,000 dollars a year. My husband makes roughly the same. The only bills we have is car insurance,property taxes and utilities...

God, so you just scrape only one million? Why not more?

For probably the sixth time: What happens after five years if those people don’t ‘figure it out’? Do we kindly give them and their children the lethal injection, or do we punish them more by starving them to death?

@userd

Wow, someone is telling others to work hard & not rely on the state while simultaneously expecting others to generate an income for her in the form of rent & then states how equal society it is & you just need to work harder. 🤣🤣

😂😂😂

@userd

Wow, someone is telling others to work hard & not rely on the state while simultaneously expecting others to generate an income for her in the form of rent & then states how equal society it is & you just need to work harder. 🤣🤣

And here comes the hate for landlords....Just to make it easier to hate me all the property I own in England is only rented out to Americans. I bought houses where I loved and when I moved I rented them out. It's not my fault that I saved and punched pennies to make sound investments. I earned my properties. I worked years for them and people can't have shelter for free. They are going to have to pay someone. Either a landlord or a bank. It might as well be me

I came from poverty. Extreme poverty so bad that my grandparents kidnapped me and moved me back to Wales...No clothes,no food, had to literally walk a quarter of a mile to use the out house. Also, I still outside of the home. No one is providing me a living. I worked my as s off and I still.do.

@Pumperthepumper

I already am.....I alone make 450,000 dollars a year. My husband makes roughly the same. The only bills we have is car insurance,property taxes and utilities...

God, so you just scrape only one million? Why not more?

For probably the sixth time: What happens after five years if those people don’t ‘figure it out’? Do we kindly give them and their children the lethal injection, or do we punish them more by starving them to death?

@Pumperthejumper...No we remove the children until they can stop neglecting and abusing their children. We place them in foster care,with family and friends until their parents get their shi t straight. If they can't the children can be adopted out.

I came from poverty. Extreme poverty so bad that my grandparents kidnapped me and moved me back to Wales...No clothes,no food, had to literally walk a quarter of a mile to use the out house. Also, I still outside of the home. No one is providing me a living. I worked my as s off and I still.do

Why did they do that? When, by your logic, your parents were responsible for having more children than they could afford?

If you really came from poverty, why do you not want to help people in the same position who don’t have kindly grandparents who can step in? Is it selfishness or stupidity?

SEVENTH TIME: what happens after five years?

Extreme poverty so bad that my grandparents kidnapped me and moved me back to Wales...No clothes,no food, had to literally walk a quarter of a mile to use the out house

You’ve gone too far now. I was kind of half buying into this fantasy until you overegged it past credibility.

Outcomes for children who enter the care system are terrible. A very large proportion end up in prison as adults.

We already have more children in care than anybody wants to adopt.

I haven’t RTFT as threads like this are always goady and bring out the worse of MN.

All I want to add is that I never understand this anger over high earners wanting to protect their own money.

The REAL issue lies with the inheriting of wealth and the inequality of opportunities at a young age. The concept that somebody becomes wealthy for doing nothing angers the masses of people struggling to get by in minimum wage jobs.

Surely the real answer to this is to stop the inheriting of wealth, Chanel that funding into equalising opportunities at a young age and throughout education then allow people to perform the way they will. Society will still have low earners though and they will still be annoyed that high earners have more than them.

@Pumperthejumper...No we remove the children until they can stop neglecting and abusing their children. We place them in foster care,with family and friends until their parents get their shi t straight. If they can't the children can be adopted out.

Jesus wept - WHAT HAPPENS TO THE PARENTS? DO WE PUT THEM TO DEATH?

My home has about 500k in equity & my parents home which cost 60k in the 80s is probably worth 2.5m now. Neither I nor they did anything to earn this money, it was just luck & buying at the right time/in the right place.

I don't hate landlords & think they serve a purpose but it's deluded to say it's a level playing field. For one it's much harder to build a property empire these days due to higher prices & taxes & restricted lending.

Plenty of people work hard & save their pennies & wont ever own one property let alone 11. You had a high earner partner so could live off 1 salary, some people don't even have partners.

I don't know anything about the military but is it easy to land a job with a 300k salary?

@Pumpertrumper

I haven’t RTFT as threads like this are always goady and bring out the worse of MN.

All I want to add is that I never understand this anger over high earners wanting to protect their own money.

The REAL issue lies with the inheriting of wealth and the inequality of opportunities at a young age. The concept that somebody becomes wealthy for doing nothing angers the masses of people struggling to get by in minimum wage jobs.

Surely the real answer to this is to stop the inheriting of wealth, Chanel that funding into equalising opportunities at a young age and throughout education then allow people to perform the way they will. Society will still have low earners though and they will still be annoyed that high earners have more than them.

I hate it when you come on to threads, we always take opposite sides and I’m worried people think you’re me 😂😂

@Stripesgalore

Selective schools may be seen by many as divisive and unfair, but that doesn’t mean that it is a principle of socialism that selective schools should be removed.

Really? So do you think a future left wing government in Britain would do nothing to dismantle private schools?

Over the course of this pandemic millions of pounds of tax payers money has been payed out to people with no skill, no talent in delivering what they propose to deliver, only a school acquaintance with Johnson, or Cummings.

There is no equity between people who are born knowing drug dealers on a council estate and people knowing tech companies advising governments on media manipulation. The drug dealers may well have better people management skills, more turnover, more skill, entrepreneurialism, hells, even more fucking morals.

It does not matter.

We live in a plutocracy.

had to literally walk a quarter of a mile to use the out house

I would have just gone in the nearest field! Guess that's why I'm so lazy.

Aren't you lucky you had grandparents to "save" you. Did you get into the UK military then? How did you get back to the US.

By your logic you should have gone into care, you really think your life would not have turned out differently if you had done so?

I was confused by the 2 pumpers!

‘Society will still have low earners though and they will still be annoyed that high earners have more than them.’

I don’t mind people earning more than me, and I don’t mind people inheriting some reasonable level of wealth, as ultimately what drives most people is providing for their kids.

What I do mind is that people doing low paid jobs are so poorly paid that they can’t afford the basics of life. A large part of that is due to the cost of housing.

@nellodee

Over the course of this pandemic millions of pounds of tax payers money has been payed out to people with no skill, no talent in delivering what they propose to deliver, only a school acquaintance with Johnson, or Cummings.

There is no equity between people who are born knowing drug dealers on a council estate and people knowing tech companies advising governments on media manipulation. The drug dealers may well have better people management skills, more turnover, more skill, entrepreneurialism, hells, even more fucking morals.

It does not matter.

We live in a plutocracy.

Give over

I would say that's an example right there, whatever education that poster received was clearly lacking!

Quite, @bloopie.

‘Really? So do you think a future left wing government in Britain would do nothing to dismantle private schools?’

They might very well do so. But abolishing selective education isn’t a principle of socialism. You can believe in both socialism and selective state schools without any contradiction.

Housing costs in many parts of the country are stupid & completely propped up. It's not good to have so much disposable income tied up in mortgages/rent & one reason the UK has such low productivity.

@userd

had to literally walk a quarter of a mile to use the out house

I would have just gone in the nearest field! Guess that's why I'm so lazy.

Aren't you lucky you had grandparents to "save" you. Did you get into the UK military then? How did you get back to the US.

By your logic you should have gone into care, you really think your life would not have turned out differently if you had done so?

I basically was in kinship care. I wasn't returned to my parents until they could prove to Wales Social.Service and WV Social.services that my parents could feed me and care for meThere were no fields just woods and our vegetable patch with a path to the outhouse. You didn't venture off the path due to wildlife such as bears and mountain lions. If it wasn't for my grandparents I would have never ended up in the States to begin with. They surrendered my mother to a maternity home when she became pregnant with my sister. She ran away with her boyfriend to the States to keep her daughter. They were illegal immigrants but since I was born in the US to UK.citizens I am a dual citizen as is my sister. I split my time between both countries. Which is why I am taxed in both countries

Hey @Leaannb - what happens to those people after five years?

So what would have become of you if your grandparents were not around to step in?

[quote Bananabread8]@NotMyTimes your dam right it’s not fair. The man who owns weather spoons would rather send his workers to get a job in Tesco than bail his staff out! Who’s money he is wanting? I don’t think that was fair![/quote]
What on earth has that got to do with the point I made? I said that we definitely need to fix the system. I said I don't have a perfect answer. I just shared a story about a champagne socialist that aggravates me, which seemed to be what the OP was alluding to in her first post. Now it just seems like you're trying to pick a fight with me over something unrelated.

Oh and it's not fair what tim Martin did, but equally Wetherspoons workers are begging people not to boycott now because all that means is that individuals lose their jobs. It ends up hitting the little guy first and the big guy gets away with it.

OPs view is dim by far & I was just saying. Giving you an example as you gave OP. A little more realistic however.