To think rich people steal money all the time and that’s often why they’re rich?

[MyAmusedOpalCrab]

We hear so much about “hard work” and “smart investments” but let’s be honest, so many rich people didn’t get wealthy by being ethical. From dodgy business practices to exploiting workers, tax dodging, insider deals and straight-up corruption, wealth often comes at someone else’s expense.

Governments bail out billionaires while ordinary people struggle to afford rent. CEOs cut wages and benefits while pocketing massive bonuses. Huge corporations find loopholes to avoid taxes while the rest of us get squeezed.

Obviously not every rich person is a thief but AIBU to think that a lot of them are? That the system is rigged in their favour and they keep getting richer by bending or outright breaking the rules?

Do you mean me? My house is worth nowhere near £1m, less than half. Granted, our house has increased in value since we bought it, paid £220k and have spent over £100k on it, now worth about £400k so taking in to account mortgage payments, I’d say we've not benefitted all that much from inflation.

You can’t take into account mortgage payments. If you hadn’t bought a house you’d have paid rent - and had nothing to show for it.

Swings and roundabouts. When we first moved here, our mortgage rate was high and rentals actually cost less than our mortgage payments, and we wouldn't have had to pay for roof repairs, boiler replacement and servicing or buildings insurance. And given so many MN threads, we’d probably have been able to claim UC so would have had at least part of our rent paid. At the end of the day, it’s likely we’ll have little to show for the house anyway, given nursing home fees, Labour’s will we/won’t we wealth/property tax, and the predicted property price crash.

Stats?

It depends on what you aspire to though, doesn’t it. My husband and I both earn much more than our parents and have a far far bigger house than they ever lived in. If we felt the need we could by a fancy car cash tomorrow. We’re not wealthy, but are well off, have a horse, kids in private school etc etc. We studied hard at school (while taking beatings for being boring swots) then at uni, then masters then years of professional exams. It’s doable for any intelligent child. Not being born with a trust fund hasn’t damaged our chances of getting a comfortable-not-wealthy life. Aspiring to be Uber wealthy is less realistic.

This is the estimate of tax evaded in 2023/24. £46.8bn. Only 5% of that evasion was the wealthy. It’s the small businesses that are ripping us off. But hey, it’s ok to steal from the public purse in order to feed your kids apparently, even though many on minimum income don’t…

www.gov.uk/government/statistics/measuring-tax-gaps/1-tax-gaps-summary

Very well analyised, explained why the existence / dominance of the super rich and powerful (formerly known as aristocracy / imperial dynasty) has endured throughout history despite numerous attempts to replace them with a different social structure.

How old are you though and what did you buy your house for vs what it is now? My wife and I have done the same as you, professional qualifications, uni, masters and both decent paid. I couldn’t dream of putting my child through private school though or buying a car in cash anytime soon. That is not a sob story, we just can’t put any money away after housing, nursery costs etc

Do you always throw crazy accusations at people? No he's not a bloody multi millionaire! I said he built a career as did I! He's a senior IT engineer for an NHS trust and I'm a Health and Safety practitioner so no we don't earn huge pay packets and we earned it by ourselves!

How dare you attack my partner like that without asking what career has! He grew up with a violent piss head mother who never encouraged, his mates all became smack heads, never knew his biological dad and he got out of that shit and built a career, I'm very proud of him, he doesn't need to be a millionaire to be a guy that made something of himself!

Do you always make yourself look such a twat?

Washingupdone · 06/08/2025 18:32
Certain wealthy families in the UK owe their financial positions to the slave trade.
To stop this trade in human lives, the UK government agreed to compensate these families, for the loss of their property, by paying money that came from the ordinary UK people through taxes from their own hard earned money, to the tune of some £20m. The debt incurred was finally paid in 2015.
Maybe these wealthy families should pay this money back with interest as they have benefited from it for so long, through education and investments etc etc.

MyNameIsX · 06/08/2025 18:33
For context the UK welfare budget this year is estimated at GBP 313 bn.
Knock yourself out.

This represented around 40 per cent of the British Treasury's annual spending budget, ant the time and has been calculated as equivalent to around £16.5bn in today's terms.

A drop in the ocean maybe but every penny counts and with interest added it would be a pretty penny as well.

Says the person who massively punched my NHS worker partner down and accused him of being a lazy bastard millionaire who earned all his money by enslaving others! He earns less than 50k a year!

But why you would support that? Why would you think that it's great to steal that money from real disabled people? Is this you admitting that you commit benefit fraud?

The point of disability money is to help those that have conditions that make impossible to work a full time job or people that need extra help and support and house / car adaptations to be able to function! It's not for people who don't have disabilities to buy themselves presents so they don't have to use their own wages to pay for it!

When people want to blame someone for the disability benefits being toughened up, they should come to you! The person who admits openly online that committing fraud to give yourself extra money for luxuries is fine.

Here you go.

Google Michelle Mone. Google COVID VIP lane scandal. Rich people getting getting special treatment, making millions off taxpayers and using every weapon their rich pickings can buy them to avoid paying back.

And for unethical practices just look at how Jeff Bezos and Amazon exploit their workers. They're not doing anything illegal but just because the law isn't strong enough to prevent this are we all ok with a billionaire who can never spend his wealth in in own lifetime getting richer And richer off the back of low paid workers being monitored within an inch of their life and scared of losing their jobs?

It comes down to morality and ethics in my view.
Rich people here on Mumsnet are just scared someone's going to come after their hundreds of thousands that they get from their medium business or corporate job. That's not the level of rich OP is referring to.

Also, people are reverent of multimillionaires and billionaires because of pervasive propaganda that tells them if only they "work hard" they too can be rich rich. 1) Plenty of people work extremely hard and they'll never even have hundreds of thousands. 2) Most ultra rich were already wealthy to begin with, they paid money to clever people to do the work to get them even richer, yes they had ideas but that's not the same as doing the work- see Elon Musk.

I was quoting the report by the Common Wealth think tank that was in The Guardian this week, which discussed the way Thatcher's policy contributed to the housing crisis and its true cost. But please don’t bother to reply. You are abusive and, in my opinion, that doesn't contribute to any form of debate.

That’s a party flyer isn’t it ?

Where is this from?

1st post nailed it. They are the real thieves and it is NOT a tiny amount!

The figures are from HMRC and DWP. It says so on the image.

It says estimated and anyone can create that basic graphics. Its simply not true.

Selling off council housing didn't reduce the number of homes, it just shifted the tenure. The housing crisis is largely due to not having enough homes, the change in family structure, and having too many people; net immigration is the primary driver of population growth, and while we’re told not to blame immigrants, if they are one of the largest reasons for the housing shortage, why are we blaming someone who died before high immigration became a thing? Labour were in power for 13 years prior to the last Conservative government, and they didn't see fit to reverse or change the policy. Owning something, having a stake in it, makes someone more likely to look after it and remove the enormous maintenance costs from the state.

If they know the figures for benefit fraud, why wouldnt they just stop it? Or perhaps the estimated figures are just the tip of the iceberg.

https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/127/public-accounts-committee/news/205235/55billion-lost-to-tax-evasion-could-be-significant-underestimate-pac-report-warns/

https://www.communities-ni.gov.uk/articles/benefit-fraud-cost-and-results

They know the far higher figures for tax evasion, why wouldn’t they just stop it?

Its still all estimated. All the thousands of ppl working the system unknown wont be on their estimations. Its still a disgrace. Yes so is tax avoidance.