Zero sympathy for people who had £10 million worth of jewellery stolen

[TwoCreamEggs]

People are struggling to heat their homes, feed their kids and pay their rent - whilst this 'millionaire influencer' has £10 million worth of jewellery stashed in a safe at home - I find this morally abhorrent and have zero sympathy. They have so little insight and social conscience that they feel it appropriate to flash jewellery and other signs of huge wealth all over social media. I'm glad no-one was injured obviously but hope the stolen jewellery is used to re-distribute some of their enormous wealth.

I know, let’s nationalise Taylor Swift then. That’ll sort it out 😂

She will have paid literally hundreds of millions in tax, and created no doubt thousands of jobs around the world at venues, stores, merchandise businesses and so on. Would the less fortunate in society really be better off if she hadn’t created billions of pounds of value?

Wealth is relative to those surrounding you.

A starving person in a third world country might well say that you are greedy buying a bike - if you donated £100 to charity instead of buying a bike, then you could walk the 90 minutes to work instead of cycling to work in 10 minutes.

To you owning a £1mil necklace is really greedy and unnecessary. To a penniless person you owning a bike, or a TV, a mobile, or owning more than 1 pair of shoes is greedy and unnecessary. It’s all relative.

It’s easy to feel righteous about yourself and throw scorn on anyone richer than you. However that influencer might have made £20 million last year, donated £10 million to charity, 50% of all their earnings. You may have earned £25k last year and donated just £2500 to charity, 10% of all your earnings. I’d argue that even though they own millions in jewellery that they were more charitable and generous with their money, a better person than you.

Unless we are all perfect humans then we shouldn’t criticise others. Get down from your ivory tower.

You think the amount of people who aren’t in work, or aren’t working full time who could be, is negligible? Really?

my bike was free

No, I'm saying their effect on the distribution of wealth is negligible compared to the concentration of money at the top of the tree.

No, I never.

You asked why there was a difference in the reaction to these two crimes. I explained.

Do you want assets to be forcibly seized? Because that has, historically, not worked.

@Tryingtokeepgoing Not heard of Robert Maxwell or Philip Green? Criticisms around working conditions at Amazon? Boohoo & modern slavery?

If people don’t think Taylor Swift deserves to be rich they can stop
listening to her music or buying tickets to her concerts then.
We live in a capitalist country. Most of you whinging about it can move to a communist country if you think the system is better.

There are 11 million people of working age not in work in Britain. That’s a quarter of the working-age population. You still think that has a negligible effect on wealth distribution?

Do you use Amazon? Facebook? Netflix? Well direct your anger at them, as they avoid paying millions more than that in UK taxes. Money that really could be redistributed and benefit us all.

I want them to be taxed more on those assets. If that means they then have to sell them to pay the tax, so be it.

@Ladamesansmerci

How does singing mean you should earn a billion pounds like Taylor Swift? And this is coming from someone who loves that sort of music. Why should they earn more than someone with several years medical training who saves lives, for instance. I’m not saying she deserves a billion quid for what she does, and she’s certainly less deserving than someone who can save lives. But her wealth comes from people like you, who want to listen to her sing. What would you like her to do? Bogof offers on her tour tickets? Or tell her fans that she’s earned up to the moral limit for that year, so the remainder of the tour is cancelled and she’ll be going quiet for a year or two until she’s spent her earnings up to that point? And if we’re basing income levels on who is most deserving, would you be willing to take a pay cut to improve the salary of someone who does even more than you?

It's not jealousy to think billionaires are unethical and yo believe that 1% of the earth owning a vast amount of the earth's assets is wrong And yet lottery tickets for Euromillion jackpots of £100 million plus are still regularly sold in the UK. I’m assuming that none of you wealth distributionists have ever bought one? Also, you didn’t address the hypocrisy aspect.

Part of eradicating poverty is wealth redistribution. Again, I'm not talking about a high earner of 100k. I'm talking about literal billionaires. Do you realise how much money that is? Yes, I realise how much money that is because I’m not an idiot. Again, where is the cut off point? Is it ok if they earn a couple of million? Or a couple of hundred million? And who takes the money from them? I mean, our government can’t manage to take taxes from the people and organisations who should be paying it, so please explain who and how will be confiscating and divvying up the cash? It’s ridiculous and completely unworkable.

You asked why there was a difference in the reaction to these two crimes. I explained.

It’s an illogical explanation, you can’t cherry pick who is a victim or not. Well you can but that’s then reductive as I said.

I want them to be taxed more on those assets. If that means they then have to sell them to pay the tax, so be it.

Wealth & income taxes should be more aligned as it’s wealth that perpetuates inequality.

“Using anonymised data from personal tax returns, we show that in 2015-16 the average rate of tax paid by people who received one million pounds in taxable income and gains was just 35 per cent: the same as someone earning £100,000. But one in four of these paid 45 per cent – close to the top rate – whilst another quarter paid less than 30 per cent overall. One in ten paid just 11 per cent—the same as someone earning £15,000. The rich, it seems, are not all in it together.”

We actually live in a socialist democracy where the influence of freemarket capitalism has now eroded the social safety net to the point that our public institutions are crumbling. God help you if you ever fall into need.

Well said!

So you want assets to be seized, because a 100% tax on assets will lead to them being handed over to the government.

Those assets will not be handed to the public.

I think Taylor deserves to be rich. Just not that rich.

I don't think it needs billions or even millions to incentivise people to do good things or to work hard. Most of us seem to manage to do both without all of that cash.

Yeh! Read the room! Ffs

35% of £100,000 is £35,000

35% of £1,000,000 is £350,000

That is a huge amount more

Well 'we' could. Personally I buy used phones or get hand me downs, never spent more than £100 on a phone, SIM only woman. Not much of a consumer myself.

Where did I say a 100% tax?

I totally agree that theft is illegal and should be prosecuted, and that all citizens, rich or poor, should be protected by the law, but why do we have to feel sorry and all empathetic on top?

1/ the victims will NOT be financially impacted, either they are insured or they are rich enough to replace without hurting their budget, they are at the level of endless wealth 2/ the case will receive priority from police in a way 'regular' crime does not 3/ they won't even have to call their insurer on Monday or fill a form, some staff will do 4/ the only thing they got hurt in the end will be their feelings. Real emotional trauma, but that's all.

It's trauma, but not the same quality and quantity of trauma as living and going through stuff when you are poor and sh*t keeps on spiralling ...

I’d be certain others find your spending choices to be disgusting. Grow up.