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

You can bleat on about this all you want you are never going to stop consultants participating in private practice in fact the NHS wants us to use more of it.

This, absolutely.

I think SM are to blame for this division - inequality has always existed. People, their skills, talents, ambitions, intelligence, work ethics are unequal. Rich world and poor world didn't overlap much so the differences one was able to observe were mostly within their immediate community. With SM it's all in your face now, but you only see a nice cover, you see first class holiday, you don't see how brutal work /responsibility is to pay for this holiday. And you feel it's unfair.

Edited to add - I work with people who are on 3-500k+ packages and more. I know what brought them there. I'd really love to earn that much but I know that I don't have required qualities. I do think these people should exist and flourish.

@Rjejej "And poorer people don't work hard?

Not particularly no.

And before you reply, not every job is the same. It depends on the skill."

Skill level and hard work do not necessarily correlate.

Really?

Does somebody on a wage pay less or more tax than a company owner-manager who takes their income in the form of capital gains?

As for benefits, the rich have greater access to GPs than the poor, access to better state schools, use leisure facilities more, benefit from policing more, etc.

Landlords & company owners benefit from low earners having their poverty wages made up to liveable levels.

Then you've got the lottery of council tax, where you can have an oligarch in West London paying less than somebody in a modest home elsewhere.

We had a government that sat down with the figures telling them that austerity would lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of the poorest, and it saved us nothing. When a one off wealth tax would have done the opposite. You wouldn't even need to kill a single rich person.

There are quite a few patients who actually say - “ It’s ok I want to go private and can afford to, frees up a space on the NHS”

You’re starting from a false premise, Op.
I don’t believe that most people do want to eradicate the rich. Communism is not popular here.
Nor do I believe in “the politics of envy”. That’s just a silly phrase dreamed up by people with a great deal of wealth who want to keep it that way.

What I do think is much more popular is the socialist model that you’ve taken great care to avoid, though several posters have laid out what they believe.

Most people are indifferent to others’ wealth so long as they themselves are comfortable. They don’t envy the rich, they simply want themselves and their families to afford to eat decently and access good schools, housing and healthcare.
That’s perfectly achievable without doing away with rich people or taxing them into oblivion.

What does anger people is the super-rich sitting on their billions when others are living in poverty.
The trickle-down philanthropists don’t work - and why should their priorities be indulged when they are unelected? Why should we have to beg for funds from someone playing God Almighty, and enjoying the power it gives them?

The rich might pay more tax, but proportionally they do not. A poor person, with less, or even no disposable income pays a far greater proportion of their income on tax.

Stop quoting stereotypes about the politics of envy and consider the reality: the ordinary people who work long hard hours, yet struggle to put food on the table, or worry about heating their homes, or the next unexpected bill that they cannot afford.

You’re blaming them for their poverty - the undeserving poor who made bad life choices. That’s another stereotype the wealthy love to use to ease their consciences.

Defining rich as the top 10% of earners will give a very different answer than if the question was, "Does the world need billionaires?".

Because of the income distribution curve >£67k may represent the top 10%, but it doesn't feel like very much and is within the aspirational belief limits that define what's acceptable as tax policy (people earning <£30k believe they could earn £60k so object to higher rate taxes on principle).

Should billionaires exist? - it's questionable what the value of billionaires is to society, and with Musk predicted to be the first trillionaire it's clear that money doesn't buy common sense but does come with a lot of entitlement.

Should anyone earn £5m/year? - debateable, but it's alien to me what would motivate someone to carry on working with £10m in the bank.

Of course it's not all leveraging other people's hard work, but it's impossible to make money without a functioning society around you. No-one makes money by themselves, they need customers, engineers, workers, investors, etc.

dammit88 · Today 13:32
I think there is a world of difference between being able to buy a posh handbag or fancy holiday to being able to buy better healthcare or education

I think this government would love to tax private healthcare but they can’t risk even more pressure on the NHS.

You appear to be living on a different planet from me

On my planet, Andrew Tate can make millions from promoting misogyny, porn site owners can make tens of millions from questionable content, financial professionals can make money from gambling other peoples money without consequences.

This is not a result of hard word and dedication, it's a result of exploiting thousands of years of hard work that have gone into building technological platforms in which a single person can automate something that would have taken years to do in order to profit from others misery.

For you to laud this as an "achievement" is disgusting.

@RedHelenB
I'd like to try true communism. So far that hasn't happened anywhere in the world.

Could you enlarge on what ‘true communism’ means to you?

Couldn’t agree more. And to hold Musk up as an example …. 🤢

I think you'll find that private health insurance is taxed as a benefit in kind.

Yes, rich people need to exist. They employ many of the poor people. 🤷‍♀️

No, sorry I don't accept this criticism or many of the assertions you have made in your post.

Firstly I haven't started with a false premise, it just isn't the question that you would like to be asked. Why don't you start your own thread asking how many people support socialism and the socialist model? Judging by previous election results, I don't actually think that the majority of the population support this at all though.

Lots of people do envy the rich even when they have more than enough themselves. I know so many people like this that any of your protestations to the contrary are pretty futile. I'm sure most people on MN also know people like this. They are never happy for anyone with more than them. In fact I know some pretty rich people like this so envy is certainly not confined to the poor.

I don't know why you assume I am not an 'ordinary person'. Most people by default will be this. I have made sacrifices and made certain life choices so that I am not in poverty, this is true, but this doesn't make me any less ordinary. I perhaps have less sympathy for your view that the poor are automatically victims of the rich as I know through life experience that this absolutely isn't the case. Life choices are huge and this isn't emphasised enough to those that would really benefit from knowing and understanding this. Preaching victim hood and powerlessness only harms those who are already in tough circumstances. Some people are genuinely victims of circumstance but many people have more power and control over their lives than they think.

They're happy enough to put the extra pressure on education so I wonder if it's a matter of time!

As a pp pointed out healthcare insurance provided by an employer is already a taxable benefit.

This thread is why economics and civics should be core subjects at school. Very few people on this thread have a clue what they are talking about.

It's all just meaningless opinions based an a limited world view. And people vote based on these uneducated opinions. Coupled with a majority right-leaning media, no wonder the country has made awful choices in the past few years.

It's a bullshit question as well. No rich people? It is phrased as extermination, rather than limiting the wealth of individuals. Earning 65k is not wealthy. If that is the top 10%, that shows how fucking expensive it is to live in the uk. That is not the fault of rich people, just an unfairly twisted system.

"The politics of envy" is also annoying and insulting. Using that phrase, makes me think "self-pitying prat".

What point are you making? That some skilled jobs are easy to do?

Don't be ridiculous. Andrew Tate has absolutely nothing to do with what I have written. Why would you even bring him up? He hardly represents the average entrepreneur and I can only assume you needed to use some weird and gross red herring.

I believe that everyone should at least have the potential to be well enough off that they own a house outright and do not have to work

Not everyone has insurance - lots of people do actually just pay the fees. And paying tax on "earnings and benefits" isn't the same as paying tax on fees - with income that has already been taxed too.

He wasn't an example of an amazing entrepreneur. He has some of the most successful businesses in the world though and has documented the level of dedication and risk needed to achieve his success. It was certainly not just about leveraging other people's hard work.

I like what Elon Musk is doing with Tesla and SpaceX

Taking huge amounts of government subsidy?