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.' 🤷‍♀️

remember also that my ex-housemate's friend used to claim child benefit and do undeclared work as a cleaner each week (my housemate worked FT and always complained her friend was better off)

Child benefit is a working benefit available to everyone earning less than around £50k. You’d expect and want a parent to be better off than a child free person, wouldn’t you?

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/business-47623277

I wouldn't be against every adult over 18 including pensioners just getting £10k a year and nothing else and a flat tax (eg 33.3% tax/NI for all or 209% tax/NI or 10% depending on size of state we wanted) for everyone on income over that of all kinds. If it weren't enough to rent on even in Sunderland then people could move 4 to a house.

You do love your race to the bottom don’t you @Xenia?

Child benefit is a working benefit available to everyone earning less than around £50k

Technically it's available to everyone - it's just that people earning over £50k have to pay some of it back through extra taxes (on a sliding scale up to £60k) and people earning over £60k while still entitled to claim it, have to pay all of it back through taxes.

For some families this might still be a benefit (as its effectively an interest free loan from the government), although given the amount relative to the family's income, many people just opt out at £60k instead.

@LonginesPrime

Child benefit is a working benefit available to everyone earning less than around £50k

Technically it's available to everyone - it's just that people earning over £50k have to pay some of it back through extra taxes (on a sliding scale up to £60k) and people earning over £60k while still entitled to claim it, have to pay all of it back through taxes.

For some families this might still be a benefit (as its effectively an interest free loan from the government), although given the amount relative to the family's income, many people just opt out at £60k instead.

Sorry. I didn’t realise this was pedants’ corner.

didn't child benefit used to be available to all?

I wouldn't be against every adult over 18 including pensioners just getting £10k a year and nothing else and a flat tax (eg 33.3% tax/NI for all or 209% tax/NI or 10% depending on size of state we wanted) for everyone on income over that of all kinds

I do think any scheme like this can work unless housing is provided by the state so it's a fair price.

Sorry. I didn’t realise this was pedants’ corner.

Didn't mean to offend - just thought the finer details were relevant to a thread about the rich propping up the poor when the OP is aghast at people claiming child benefit and working and musing on how government policy might help/hinder that.

E.M. Forster illustrated a lot of these ideas rather elegantly in Howard's End. He sets the right-wing but practical Wilcoxes against the compassionate but misguided Schlegels. Ultimately neither of them do anything to help the genuinely needy characters in the novel.

One hundred and ten years later, very similar debates are still rumbling on...

I can't think why, if PPs on this thread are to be believed that everyone in the UK has received a 'good education' - it's almost as if the concept of 'good education' is subjective and/or not accessible to all, isn't it @Orchidsindoors?

It’s unfortunate that the people who actually have the capacity to bring about change are the ones being conned into ‘they are after your money even though you have worked so hard for it!’.
We need a more strict system that can scrutinise out people who are trying to cheat the system at every level.
However, it’s obvious that giants like Amazon and Facebook are never going to agree to it willingly. Their tax evasion is the issue here, not the people earning £80,000 a year after years of grafting and hard work.
But the whole idea is to let these wealth collectors get away by making the plebs fight each other to death, as evident on this thread.
Rewarding people who are sitting on their backside, doing nothing is awful. Rewarding big global companies get away with billions of taxes is equally awful if not more.

This cartoon explains it well:

Not everyone wealthy has 'earned' it - that's the issue. Like Trump the 'self-made' man who started with $20m from his dad or Bezos who, while creating an empire, started with $200k from his parents.
My parents didn't have a spare penny to give me, I'm doing okay but I can tell you now that if I hadn't had to work since I was 16, and supported myself through uni, and my parents had been able to help me financially, pay my uni costs or set me up with somewhere to live then my life would be very different now.
My kids will have a headstart on many, many other kids because they're essentially MC kids with parents who are putting savings away for them no. I was a WC kid who's parents worked like dogs their whole lives for a very modest existence.
I've met some very wealthy people over the years - ALL inherited or came from upper MC/UC backgrounds. They didn't work hard to be wealthy, they were handed it, and now compound on that.

That image is shockingly bad quality, here's a link:
static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/privilege-explanation-comic-strip-on-a-plate-toby-morris-1.gif

@Xenia

I wouldn't be against every adult over 18 including pensioners just getting £10k a year and nothing else and a flat tax (eg 33.3% tax/NI for all or 209% tax/NI or 10% depending on size of state we wanted) for everyone on income over that of all kinds. If it weren't enough to rent on even in Sunderland then people could move 4 to a house.

I would get behind this.

Yes, child benefit use dto be for all as when it came out a good few women with very rich husbands were not given enough money to feed the children and suddenly here was universal money paid to mothers. Before that there had been child tax allowances which mostly men claimed.

By withdrawing childbenefit from single parent mothers of 5 who work full time like I am the state made it clear we had moved from a welfare state where if you paid in you took out to a system where only certain people benefit. It was a big change in my view. In the 1940s my doctor uncle got a council house as everyone took out and paid in and even I remember when if you were unemployed there was a massive difference in payments based on if you had a national insurance record or had never worked a day in your life. We lost all that.

thanks @Xenia i was sure my parents got it & my dad was a high earner so by today's standards it seemed weird.

And yet you still keep voting for the party that withdrew your child benefit Xenia. Odd, isn’t it?

I do agree with Xenia that more low cost social housing is highly desirable for everyone.

Mixed communities, rent money going to the state for the provision of public services rather than into the pocket of btl landlords, everyone knowing that they're weren't going to end up on the street if they didn't want to.

Labour is much much worse for me - at one point they were proposing a £30k a year tax on my house never mind over 50% tax rates and much else. I certainly supportr many fewer benefits but much lower taxes but we always seem to get the worst of all worlds. This Tory party got in because it is high spending and middle of the road - that always tends to be the party which wins power in the UK as Blair found too. there is no small state low tax party in the UK.

Eh? How can you support many fewer benefits but believe it was better when there was greater access to council housing and rue the day when child benefit was no longer universal?

This Tory party got in because Labour did such an effective job of eating itself, fuelled by the media disseminating misinformation such as 'Labour want to tax your house' to describe the proposed changes to the current council tax system.

@christinarossetti19

Eh? How can you support many fewer benefits but believe it was better when there was greater access to council housing and rue the day when child benefit was no longer universal?

This Tory party got in because Labour did such an effective job of eating itself, fuelled by the media disseminating misinformation such as 'Labour want to tax your house' to describe the proposed changes to the current council tax system.

I know. There’s absolutely no logic to it, is there?

I think there is an important point about child benefit and financial abuse in the family.

It used to be paid in cash to women as a 'failsafe' to ensure that children still got fed. I have read many a thread on here where women in abusive living situations have been persuaded by their spouse or partner to get child benefit paid into a bank account that they do not control.

I grew up in a family where access to money was tightly controlled by my father, even though we would have been perceived as middle class.

Yes, the universal principle of child benefit is an important one.

Even if a higher tax payer has to 'pay it back', claiming it still protects the claimant's State Pension by paying NI contributions until the child is 12 if the claimant isn't working or receiving little income.

@christinarossetti19

Yes, the universal principle of child benefit is an important one.

Even if a higher tax payer has to 'pay it back', claiming it still protects the claimant's State Pension by paying NI contributions until the child is 12 if the claimant isn't working or receiving little income.

You can still get "credits" for state benefits but not actually receive child benefit. You claim as normal but then tick a box to say you don't actually want to receive it. Far simpler than receiving and having to pay it back.