Do you believe that rich people should exist?

[Bumpitybumper]

Having read lots of threads on here, I am starting to wonder about the proportion of people that believe that rich people shouldn't exist at all and that policies should be enacted to ensure a more or less even distribution of wealth.

So out of interest and just to satisfy my curiosity please vote:
YABU - there shouldn't be rich people in this country and that wealth should be distributed evenly to the extent that people aren't significantly richer than others.
YANBU - rich people are a necessary (and potentially even desirable) part of society

That doesn't surprise me, my guess is that this is because those with less money are better able to identify with the suffering of others.
I think the wealthier you are the more likely you are see yourself as almost a separate species apart from the lowly ants (the ones who do the actual work in the world and upon whose backs the empires of the wealthy are built)

Yep, rich=bad, poor=good.

What's the tip over point when a poor person becomes too rich to be good and becomes bad?

I think that benefits should be kept low (except for disability ones) - and the minimum/living wage should be much higher. It's healthy for society to incentivise people to work - for their own mental health, self-respect etc etc, as much as anything else.

At the moment there's a situation where many people are reluctant to take work/increase their hours in case they lose benefits. That's not sustainable!

Also - some public services waste money hand-over-fist. I remember reading that the DG of the BBC was paid hundreds of thousands of pounds - it was a decade ago, so amounts will be meaningless now, but you get the picture. I was shocked - a person in this role might reasonable earn say, up to £200K, or about 7 times what a teacher earns. They shouldn't be earning 20 times that - especially since our taxes fund them. The BBC is a particular bugbear of mine (and I support public service broadcasting - not advocating abolishing it, just reform). They are NOT short of money - they spend it as though it's going out of fashion. At the time Jonathan Ross (ugh) was making obscene phone-calls to Andrew Sachs about his grand-daughter, he was on a salary of millions and millions, and the excuse was that if he didn't get that he'd have gone to ITV. As if anyone gives a damn!

1.5 times richer than you are? 2-3 times for the most conscious ones?

Poverty will always exist.
You could give every single person in the country £1M and you would STILL have poverty, and you would STILL have people who can't afford to pay their bills.

Why do you think that might be?

When the camel is still a blastocyst?

I'd like to keep my hard earned money thanks.

I don't really have a problem with millionaires. Lots of people have a few million in assets, mostly due to house price inflation, but also famous sports stars, pop music, actors, etc., as well as entreprenneurs, and of course gold plated pension schemes were the underlying "value" can quite easily top a million for higher earners such as doctors and dentists. Millionaires can (and often do) lead pretty normal lives. (Yes, better than a cleaner, but just "better than average" houses, cars, etc).

What I DO have a problem with are BILLionaires. Just no need! No one "needs" to own their own island or private aircraft, super yachts, etc.

Trouble is the billionaires are movable and will just move to a different country/tax haven if they don't want to pay as much tax. Look at Lewis Hamilton buying (I think) a helicopter via trusts and the Isle of Man to avoid paying UK VAT! Just wrong on so many levels! But how can anyone stop it? He'd just buy his helicopter somewhere else if the tax haven status of Isle of Man was scrapped. Likewise people such as Tyson Fury rumoured to be relocating to Isle of Man (and it's not because he likes steam trains!!). Or Shania Twain who years ago "moved" to Switzerland for "creative reasons", i.e. creatively avoiding tax on her millions had she remained living in USA/Canada!

Same applies really to those "worth" hundreds of millions who I'd put in the same category as billionaires. I don't really have much of a problem with people with millions or tens of millions as lots of relatively "normal" people will fall within that kind of range.

I also can't believe that a lot of the billionaires have achieved it through legitimate/legal means, a lot of it must be drugs, weapons, money laundering, fraud, etc.

I'd love some kind of Worldwide agreement to ban tax havens or stop the mega rich billionaires paying tiny amounts of tax (in proportion to their wealth), but can't see any way of making it happen. The tax haven countries/islands rely on being tax havens so you'd have to pay/bribe those countries huge amounts of money to change their rules to prevent them being tax havens to compensate them for all the multi millionaires and billionaires who'd leave when there was no benefit of staying in tax havens! Never happen!

@CoffeeCantata

I think that benefits should be kept low (except for disability ones) - and the minimum/living wage should be much higher. It's healthy for society to incentivise people to work - for their own mental health, self-respect etc etc, as much as anything else.

Won't work. By increasing wages, it drives up inflation, so benefits would rise in line with inflation, and you'd just end up where you started with only minimal differential between living on benefits and living on minimum wage (like we have now). Businesses can't/won't increase wages without increase prices. And of course, those employed by the public sector would require their wage increases funded by tax rises, which makes the wage increase for everyone lessened by higher tax burdens.

People earning the average wage should risk some capital and start a business then

You think someone with average assets now could turn themselves into Musk by taking a bit of risk? Wow.

They get a society and the infrastructure that allows them to acquire and keep their wealth, more often than not through the exploitation of others.

You really believe that most people earn their money by exploiting others?

I think that benefits should be kept low (except for disability ones) - and the minimum/living wage should be much higher.

Have you thought about the consequences of forcing companies to pay much higher salaries??

Only because the society you live in tells you it's normal and sensible. A society shaped by a media run by impossibly wealthy people. What is actually sensible is everyone paying a proportionally fair sum of taxes to allow society to function. Billionaires own businesses, those businesses require a healthy, well-educated workforce to generate wealth for the owner. Why shouldn't the owner, therefore, contribute fairly to the health and education of their workforce?

Unfortunately, there's a large chunk of people in this country who will never, ever be wealthy, but they'll defend the wealthy to the death out of some misguided idea that taxing the super rich is taxing their own aspiration to one day be super rich themselves.

Ronald Wright said it best when he (mis)quoted Steinbeck "socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

I don't know. I am very confused. Keir Starmer says someone is not working class if they can afford to write a cheque when they get into trouble. It is all so difficult to understand. For example, Keir Starmer has glasses and clothes donated to him. Therefore he must be poor. He is definitely working class though.

What is actually sensible is everyone paying a proportionally fair sum of taxes to allow society to function.

Proportionate and fair is what tax policy and tax legislation achieves.

It is lawful to invest in a pension and receive 45% tax relief.

It is lawful to invest in a business start up and the government pay for half of your stake and you get to take the profit tax-free.

It is lawful to invest in an ISA and take the income and gains tax-free.

All these things are designed with a social objective in mind. It is proportionate and fair to invest for your retirement, to save, to back fledgling businesses. These rules were enacted after being introduced by functioning governments in a real democracy.

There is nothing immoral about it at all. In fact there is nothing moral about a tax.

Probably not. They won't have the business acumen or entrepreneurial drive/skill.

The tax in the UK is plenty high already, it's how the govt allocates it's resources that is the problem,

I think people tend to misunderstand that the redistribution of wealth does not mean that everyone should have the same amount of money. It’s that peoples ‘wealth’ (above and beyond what they need to live a comfortable life and fulfilling life) should be taxed in order to fund services for those who are poorer and/or vulnerable. That’s a middle path between the two voting options you’ve given.

I don’t believe that rich people should be afforded advantages purely due to the fact that they are rich. Doesn’t mean I don’t think rich people should exist. I’d love to be one!

Or the generational wealth, which makes the difference. It is simply not possible to make that kind of money without it (and certainly not without exploiting others).

Fair point

I know it's an exception but what generational wealth did Lord Sugar have?

I meant "its". I hate grammar errors!

@Rjejej I was interested to read a while back that the three Starbucks founders were two teachers and a writer with ordinary backgrounds. Howard Schultz, who took the company to the global level, was from humble beginnings, more so than the founders.

People love to hate global chains, but they didn't all spring from wealth. Same with Jeff Bezos, born to teenaged parents. He started Amazon in a garage!

Most of us won't take the necessary financial risks and I know that I'm probably not clever enough either!