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.' 🤷‍♀️

A fedora and a conspiracy theory doth go hand in hand.

Sadly the state does. I would rather income tax were more like 10% including national insurance not about 50% never mind much higher once we add all the indirect taxes in. May be the 50% paid by the state during CV19 and who got furlough should face higher taxes and those who got nothing get a tax cut to 10%?

Op it doesn’t matter what he looks like. What hair he has.

The same could be determined about anyone not in same group, about you as you buy your coffee.

If everyone got the same money no matter what job they did or if they worked at all then society would collapse. There would be so few people willing to do the more difficult jobs. I'd pack in work tomorrow and go work at an animal charity.

Thanks for clarifying that you are not, in fact, an economist.

Not to forget the trenchcoat...

Not true. Experiments with UBI have generally been pretty successful.

To those raging against the wealthy because somehow they’re not working hard. Wealth is not created through lard work, it is created through innovation and risk taking. Do you think pharmaceutical and tech advancement is created through hard work. No, happens when people take a risk and try something that average Joe would not take a risk on, it happens when over time profits are ploughed back into try and try and try again for better results. It takes enterprise and free market capital to do this.
Quite frankly, this socialist anger against the rich is nothing but envy. We already have re distribution of wealth through a progressive taxation, anything else is just pure tried and failed socialism, equality of poverty.

If everyone got the same money no matter what job they did or if they worked at all then society would collapse. There would be so few people willing to do the more difficult jobs. I'd pack in work tomorrow and go work at an animal charity.

Exactly my point.

I thought I must be oversimplifying it, but when I asked several people about it their answer was along the lines of 'everybody would have their place'. Mine would be working as a security guard, watching films for most of my shift and doing a quick walkaround every hour or so (but of course getting paid the same as a neurosurgeon).

You sound charming. I worked my arse off at school and got three A*s and an A at A-Level and I spent years doing crappy office jobs before I was able to make it as a freelance translator, because we all have to start somewhere. You don't know that barista's life story. And not all people who work in coffee bars are thick, thanks.

What's with the commenting on people's hairstyles as a represntation of their worth? Does the colour of their hair affect your ability to work? Pay attention to actions not appearences.

How do you feel about celebrities, bankers, and sportsmen? Although they have 'earned' their wedge of cash, isn't what they get paid out of kilter with what the rest of us can earn?

But that'sthe point @sst1234. A lot of the wealth sloshing round today was made centuries ago and the "innovation " involved were things like slavery or taking over other countries and robbing them. And I think you'll find that most of the wealth created by innovations in pharmaceutical etc does not go to the people who actually do the hard work but to the shareholders of the companies who are wealth because their ancestors were able to exploit others and pass their ill gotten gains down to their descendants.

You dont have to be a socialist to look at how money and wealth are created and perpetuated and protected to see that the system is inherently skewed in favour of the rich.

@JohnMcCainsDeathStare I know, right? I have long brown hair that's rapidly going grey. I'm also quite proud of the fact that I have a Masters and I worked hard to get where I am. It took me about 6-7 years before I was able to start translation work. If I dyed it pink it wouldn't make me thick or worthless.

People on this site can be so damn snobby sometimes. It's just hair. Why should we all have to look the same?

theld someone accumulating wealth doesn’t necessarily mean they will be happy with their lot and live a life away from crime. People always want better and better. They’re comfortable but then want to be richer. Even the richest people in the world don’t take their foot o& the pedal; they always want more.

It's cliche but still true. There's no reason today for there to be abject poverty.

If the multi billion dollar corporations around the world, paid fair taxes, it would help this more than we realise.

Also individuals. Like Bezos ex wife giving away money. She has billions and apparently not so easy to give that much away.
These type of individuals can make a huge difference.

Government corruption. Eliminating even some of the waste and corruption would make a difference too.

I don't see that this would make any of these companies less successful or the people less wealthy.

Many of the menial jobs will be automated.

For women, the most poverty inducing situations are not finishing their education in something that pays a decent wage, having children at a young age, and getting a loser for a partner.

I haven't read the full thread yet but I will in a sec because I'm interested to see other people's views on this. I think for me though when I think about redistribution of wealth I'm talking about billionaires and multi-millionaires (not people on £85k) because I don't believe that anyone needs to be that rich.

I also think people over play the link between hard work and wealth. The hardest working people I know aren't the richest and we aren't taught how to work 'smart' at school, so unless you have someone to mentor you about these things you're likely to end up as just a cog in a machine on a salary making money for someone else.

There's also the issue of inherited resources which is missing from your farm analogy which assumes both farmers start from the same point and one fails to get rich because he wasn't as hard working. A better analogy would be if one farmer had 1000 acres of land 50 cows and 3 tractors given to him by his parents whereas the other farmer had to work another job to save up to purchase the land and the cows before he could even start farming.

My biggest bugbear however is when people are allowed to become rich via the exploitation of others. I think Jeff Bezos should be ashamed of the amount of money he has (193 billion I think) when he does not pay many of his workers a fair wage. That is hoarding money whichever way you look at it. He isn't rich only because of his hard work in setting up amazon. He's also rich because he doesn't distribute the profits in a fair way. I feel the same way about companies who pay people so little that the have to use the government to top up their income. If you can't pay your employees fairly then you aren't running your business properly and you shouldn't be running it at the expense of other people's lives.

Greed disgusts me and I don't understand a society whereby a person can be working full time and still have to top their wage up just so they aren't living below the poverty line.

@WiseUpJanetWeiss

Very few people will want to put in the overtime and do the high risk dirty jobs if there's no monetary incentive.

High risk dirty jobs like working in social care and driving buses at the height of a pandemic?

But what about the key workers? the most simplistic, least thought through argument ever. Those jobs don’t exist in a vacuum, someone has to pay for the public sector and key jobs to exist. It is the private sector and wealth creators that spin the wheel while everything else spins with it. There would be no paid social care if there was no private enterprise and taxation.

How do you feel about celebrities, bankers, and sportsmen? Although they have 'earned' their wedge of cash, isn't what they get paid out of kilter with what the rest of us can earn?

I'm not sure you can lump them all together. Pop stars, movie stars, sports stars have to perform well in order to succeed. If no body buys Taylor Swifts music or watches Man United on TV & buys their merch Taylor Swift & those footballers won't be raking it in for long. Lots of bankers have their incompetency rewarded.

[quote IdblowJonSnow]@Devilishpyjamas

Absolutely agree with what you said below:

We value the wrong things in the UK. We value jobs that create money rather than those that contribute to wellbeing. Until that changes inequality will grow & that benefits no-one - inequality is steady a huge problem in this country.[/quote]
Well being is created out of thin air is it? Perhaps in a hippie utopia. Pretty difficult to create well being if there is no money to pay people to do the things that we consider ‘well being’.

Quite frankly, this socialist anger against the rich is nothing but envy. We already have re distribution of wealth through a progressive taxation,

So if you think it's wrong that Philip Green lumped Arcadia with debt by paying himself a 1bn dividend, has everything in his wife's name (Monaco resident), took delivery of a new super yacht, has a massive pension pot deficit for his workers & will likely drive Arcadia to the ground & create more issues for his staff it's not because there is anything wrong with the system but because of envy? 🤔

@hotdoggone

It's quite telling that many of the responses have echoed "i can't be bothered to say anything but educate yourself".

YANBU op

Yep, Typical leftie response. When people don’t agree with you, they are simply stupid and need to educate themselves to be as enlightened and socially woke as the drum beating, rich bashing, protesting activists. While the rest of us get on with real life.

I think the person who said we value the wrong things is spot on. We do indeed value things that create money over other things and then Focus on ‘economic Growth” based on those things . Esentially, growth measured by money creation involves buying and selling more, so our economy is Based on consumption - which is exactly what we need to reduce! The economy cannot endlessly grow In this way, As we have finite resources. We urgently need to shift our measurements to value the jobs which are a better gauge of society’s wellbeing - especially those who care for others, including those not currently being paid for it, like grandparents. It’s all a valuable contribution.

Yep, Typical leftie response. When people don’t agree with you, they are simply stupid and need to educate themselves to be as enlightened and socially woke as the drum beating, rich bashing, protesting activists. While the rest of us get on with real life

That’s as reductive as the posts you’re criticising. There are vast tranches of us getting on with real life who observe what an appallingly unjust society we live in.

I really hoped that lockdown would teach us something when society was entirely reliant on the lowest paid and their work was the only work that counted in practical terms. That lesson didn’t last long.

There are very few innovative, creative money makers in the UK.
Our systems seem to encourage dozy practices and cronyism.
I see it in the government's handling of the not overly technically complex issue of ordering up face masks reported on widely this week. And these aren't even socialists op! The guy running the country is apparently massively clever, the creme De la crème as it were.

It's sad.