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?

But it is a guess, isn’t it? You don’t know. Meanwhile there appears to be an exodus of high worth Americans to London.

https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/new-yorkers-in-london-why-americans-move-uk-b1240772.html

According to my DB they are leaving the UK and moving their money elsewhere. And not just the billionaires, but so many of the multi millionaires too.

It’s not “just a guess” it has some basis in facts, as I have read this. I would need to do real digging to back it up with stats but since Truss and Labour getting in, many are leaving in droves.

I am not sure what high net worth Americans entering the UK has to do with it - that seems to be a separate matter.

You said it was a guess! The influx of wealthy Americans kind of makes up for those leaving.

www.theguardian.com/news/2025/jul/07/non-doms-labour-super-rich-leaving-the-uk

I know far more self employed workers openly committing tax evasion and cheating the benefits system than i do rich people doing the same thing!

https://moneyweek.com/personal-finance/tax/where-rich-relocate-to

Multi millionaires and billionaires. Look at how their wealth has increased while the CoL crisis has impoverished everyone else.

www.henleyglobal.com/publications/henley-private-wealth-migration-report-2025/what-driving-uks-millionaire-exodus

They can’t move assets like buildings. We need to tax income made in our country here wherever the cheat making it hides.

YABU and sound jealous, bitter, and not very clever. I know tons of rich people and without exception they have all worked hard for what they have.

My friend works in tax advice to the ultra rich and said many pay less in tax than the lowest earners and many see any tax as an insult. It's disgraceful. And we are talking multi- multi millionaires who resent £10k in tax. So little they wouldn't even notice it. But they think thry are above tax, that tax is for the little people.

Yes they dodge taxes through legitimate tax allowances but also tax avoidance.

Btw, if you can't think of any examples how about Amazon, the Take That boys, Ebay.
realbusiness.co.uk/six-companies-that-avoid-paying-their-taxes

More scaremongering - "Oh dear the billionaires are leaving, perhaps we better let them carry on doing what they were doing before?"
Good bye.

You must have a very poor understanding of maths. The cost of benefits cheats vs non doms, and vs huge corporate tax avoidance and money laundering? You ignorance would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic.

try reading something other than the daily mail and turn off gee bee bees?

I might now be considered rich. I came from a poor working class family. I earned my money through many years of hard work and putting in hours and taking risks that others did not. I did not steal anything. For people of relatively modest means in the UK we tax at 50% (40% income tax and 10% NI). This is madness. We need a smaller state with less benefits.

You are deluded if you think benefits cheating money even comes CLOSE to the money that is gained via tax avoidance and corporate greed. It is a drop in the ocean in comparison.

For a lot of people it is not about maths. It is about taking something which is not yours from someone else vs. not giving someone else something which is yours.

Tax avoidance (which is legal) is about not wanting to give away something which you have, and doing everything you legally can to avoid doing so. Benefit fraud is about illegally obtaining something from someone else.

Personally, I don't lose a lot of sleep over benefit fraud, because I think it is a natural symptom of an overbloated system, which is what we should be tackling. But I can understand why people feel about it the way they do.

You aren’t rich 8n the context of this thread. And you aren’t taxed at 50% either - not on all your income, only a portion. If the actual rich paid their way, either through tax or through paying the people making their wealth a bit better we wouldn’t need to tax the middle quite so much. The differential between top pay and average pay is massive now.

In a civilised society people are happy to pay a portion of their income to support those in need. It’s not ‘taking something which is yours’ - it’s contributing to a better, safer society for everyone.

Yanbu. The banks took most of our money back in 2008. Then they started printing loads extra so that what little we had left was worth even less. And they're still doing it - still printing money I mean.

Now we get told that all we need to do is work really really hard and the reason we're not rich is because we're not working hard enough. When in fact the reason we're not rich is because they fucking robbed us.

It's not the top 1% (bottom end) that's the problem. Thinking it is misleading. Ordinary people such as senior doctors and head teachers reach this bracket doing important work that benefits society. Its the 0.01% that are the problem. These are the people who have all the money and they get it from hoarding profits and paying poverty wages to their staff who are doing the actually work that makes the money. The workers end up having to live off UC because the wage they're paid isn't enough to feed their kids, meanwhile the big bosses have so much money they holiday in fucking space.
I honestly think the only reason some of these billionaires don't keep actual slaves as their workers is because it's illegal.

The workers end up having to live off UC because the wage they're paid isn't enough to feed their kids, meanwhile the big bosses have so much money they holiday in fucking space.

Omg yes 👏💪

I know that.

It's not about the money.

It's the attitude. One just annoys me more than the other.

70% of our land is owned by 1% of our population

Yep. And loads of that (from the overall total, at least 30% but likely really 47%) is owned by royalty and aristocrats.

We never got rid of them, so are sitting ducks for exploitation - we already have all the mechanisms in place that enable wealth concentration.

There was a thread the other day asking why there's no tradition in England of families having a little shack in the countryside like you see across lots of the rest of Europe, Russia, South America etc - that's why. There's nowhere in England you can just go out and build a little two room place with a vegetable patch because some fucker owns it all. I mean, shit, there are huge swathes of England you can't even walk across, because some fucker owns it all.

And technically, the king owns everything. Freehold and leasehold are just lesser interests in the land.