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?

We’re not in agreement. Benefit fraud is a red herring and it’s outweighed by unclaimed benefits.

Rubbish. Just because some people don't take the benefits they may be entitled to because they don't need them, doesn't make it ok for others to steal. The responsible behaviour of some can't offset the criminality of others. Benefit Fraud is no different to going into the council offices and stealing the computers. These people are the lowest of the low.

Economically the benefits budget is underspent by way of unclaimed benefits. Most of those are not because people who are eligible don’t need them but because they don’t know they’re eligible. The lowest of the low are wealthy people evading or avoiding tax.

Why are you so keen to defend people stealing from what is already one of the most generous welfare provisions in the world?

Nail on the head. It's a numbers game. Huge numbers of "small" people defrauding HMRC and/or defrauding the benefits system, causing a "loss" to the country far higher than the tax evasion of a tiny number of ultra rich people.

Wrong, the "budget" set by Parliament takes into account the proportion of people who aren't claiming, it's "baked in" that some people aren't claiming.

Just the same way that the tax revenue budget has it "baked in" that not everyone pays their legally required amounts of tax.

Rachel doesn't include in her budget spreadsheets the full amount of potential benefits claims nor the full amount of potential tax revenue. The official budgets only include the "likely" amounts of monies in and monies out, not the theoretical maximum of in's and outs. That's exactly how budgets and forecasts work!

The type of unclaimed benefits are more likely to be people like daughter. She is recently graduated and working to find a job. She could probably make a claim but she doesn't because we as a family support her, pay for her flat etc because that is what responsible families do. Not everyone tries to claim as much as they possibly can (and more in the case of benefit cheats).

The most unclaimed benefits are council tax support and pension credit. Lack of awareness to entitlement and complexity of application are cited as the most common reasons.

Why do you think it's OK for person A to defraud the benefit system because person B may not be claiming everything they're entitled to. They're two completely different things. Highly unlikely that someone fraudulently claiming one benefit isn't claiming another to which they are legally entitled.

Just because some people who are entitled to benefits don't claim them, does not make it right that others are fraudulently claiming

I don’t. Any more than I think it’s OK for person A to defraud HMRC because the vast majority of people don’t.

Quite, it makes no sense. It is only the fault of the rich, who already pretty much pay for everything.

So why do you keep banging on about it then?

Bollocks. The rich don't pay for pretty much everything. High earners do, sure. But they're not "the rich". The ultra rich pay significantly LESS tax proportionally than everyone else.

Higher Earners are rich in my book. Are you thinking that just Elon should pay for everything? Where do you draw the line? Most people seem to draw it at people who are a bit richer than them. The top 1% already pay 30% of the tax. Almost everyone uses the tax allowances the government sets up. Any tax allowance for high earners are driven by rewarding a certain behaviour like giving to charity to investing in start ups.

Nope I don't think taxes should be increased I. The top 1%. They already pay loads. It's the ultra high net worth individuals that own everything. The land, the houses, the loans (that we pay back as mortgages) the governments by buying up government debt, even the water companies are owned by the wealthy. There is only a finite amount of resources in the country (and the world for that matter) if we don't start taxing the top 0.01% in a similar way that we're taxing everyone else they'll just buy up more and more of the resources meaning there are less left for everyone else. We'll end up back in a Dickens type society. I'm pretty sure nobody wants that future for their kids (except the mega mega wealthy because they're the only ones who won't have their kids living that way)

We need to be taxing wealth not work.

The wealthy I know got lucky; had zero education and did little.

But, if you leave the morality out of it, £163 million is 'lost' in benefit fraud and £23 billion goes unclaimed.

So if the 'lost' amount is more than covered by the unclaimed amount then it's still a better situation than everyone who could claim, claiming and everyone cheating not doing so.

Of course a mix of the two is also possible, with worst case scenario being everything that could be claimed being claimed and benefit cheating going on.

That doesn't make it right that people claim benefits fraudulently, but stopping it isn't going to be the miracle solution people seem to think it is.

Now that is the problem with using AI. The £163m is the cost of benefit fraud in Northern Ireland (Benefit fraud - the cost and results | Department for Communities). Nationally across the UK it is £6.5bn. Here are the government stats.

Fraud and error in the benefit system, Financial Year Ending (FYE) 2025 - GOV.UK

@Wonderwendy if it’s any consolation, fortunes are lost as well as made. You might enjoy a book called The Splendour and the Squalor by Marcus Scriven which tracks the descent from riches to bankruptcy of three aristocratic families.

Or even more dramatic, the French & Russian revolutions.

People with money do spend it so the economy gets a lot from them, no I am not rich, still working aged 72.