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?

I don’t think that’s the case. Top 20% maybe. Not top 1%.
I agree with your views on the super rich though.

Someone cheating a bit to get a bit above poverty - and spending it all so it goes round the economy again - annoys you more than some on who has more than they can ever spend cheating us all out of tax they owe and wouldn’t miss? Weird.

That's one where you saying it.
Or you could say lazy people taking what they don't deserve.

That dog-in-the-manger attitude from people like @FenderStrat is an absolute gift to the ones who are really milking the system.

Even if that’s the case - it’s more the case for tax avoiding billionaires. They won’t miss the money. They didn’t earn it through work, it’s passive income. They won’t spend it, they’ll hoard it. If you don’t find those attitudes abhorrent it’s a bit odd.

Where did I say I didn't find it abhorrent?

Big Multinationals base their intellectual property and group functions in low tax rate jurisdictions. It’s a perfectly acceptable thing to do. Wealthy individuals such as Rishi Sunaks wife pay a low rate of tax here as they are not uk domiciled and are therefore not subject to tax on their overseas income. That’s accepted. The wealthier you are the more likely you are to be a citizen of other countries. These are multinational individuals. They have no set international base.

The take that boys took part in some fairly iffy looking tax avoidance schemes based on film rights if I remember correctly. These avoidance schemes have been closed down but also that was years ago and you still you remember this, which is why practically no big company would touch any dodgy tax schemes these days. You will be caught and the PR will be dire.

It’s not too long ago that tax avoidance by large companies was rife. There really isn’t the appetite for it these days whatsoever.

Have you ever lived around poor people? They're just as bad, most will take anything they can from you. It's a mainly human problem and desperate people are worse imo, even down to parking spots people are territorial and will take whatever they can. Atleast people with more money earn it whether it's fair or not, the fact that in this country you can live on a cleaning or food delivery wage yet people still complain is ridiculous when you think of how other countries are.

An acceptable th8ng to do? No. Legal - yes. Acceptable, no.

You're envious because you are in one of the most tax heavy countries in the world, and no matter how hard you work you cannot get ahead. Your burden is heavy and your future is uncertain.

Some rich people cheat and steal, many worked incredibly hard or were just lucky or a combination of both.

But a poor person taking a little more doesn’t damage society. They pass it around again because they have nothing. Billionaires take and hoard and damage us all.

The tax burden on working people is higher than it would be if billionaires paid their fair whack. Look back even to the 70s and 80s. The differential in wealth between business owners and workers was much smaller.

I mean, shit, there are huge swathes of England you can't even walk across, because some fucker owns it all.

@BassinBas where are these huge swathes?

@Juststop2025 who's envious? I don't think the super rich are better than me so I don't envy them. I envy people who eg have some mad talent, like music or writing or football, I look at them wistfully and wonder how it would feel to have a mind/body capable of such.

The super rich, I don't see anything to be envious of. I just think it's not a good use of wealth to have such a small portion of people hoard it and not do anything with it. It's inefficient.

It’s accepted by HMRC as legitimate. Companies have to prove the services are actually supplied by Google in Ireland to their UK branches. Contracts are drawn up and the value the intra group transfers must be based on some form of legitimate methodology.

And Google etc are ultimately US companies and Trump will ramp up the UKs tariffs in the blink of an eye if we try anything too radical. These are exactly the sort of things he builds into his made up formula for calculating tariffs.

You must be pretty well off not to envy wealthy individuals. It’s natural to do so to some extent. Do you have no financial struggles in your life? Do you have a trust fund?

YABMU

Link?

As I said. Legal. Doesn’t make it right. Doesn’t make it the best thing for the economy. It’s another example of the rich and powerful writing laws to please themselves.

Already provided.

@Barbadossunset a lot of the 59k square miles of England and Wales is owned, fenced off and often unregistered and untracked. 2% is urban built on. Obviously you can walk on paths around that. You can walk on the 2% owned by conservation charities too. For the rest, including the crown, aristocracy (30/47%) and foreign interests (18%!) your only way through is footpaths. There are supposed to be 140,000 miles of them but 14,000 are blocked or unusable and 10,000 are missing entirely. And you can't step off the path. If there's no path, you can't step at all. Try walking in a straight line from your home. See how far you get until you come across someone asking if they can help you.

Nope. I know one dodgy guy (he’s been in prison for tax evasion) but I wouldn’t call him wealthy by any stretch, though he’s comfortable. I do know a fair few well off people and they did get there (bar a few who inherited their wealth) by working hard at professions that remunerate well - plenty of people work very hard but not at careers that will reward them well. But not one of them cheats/steals/or even bends a few rules. In fact most are scrupulous about their finances and monitor things closely. That may be no small part of growing their wealth too.

Of course they do. But because they are rich and have power it’s called things like ‘privatization’ and creating trickle down economics.

It’s the economic history of Britain since at least Enclosure. It used to be well known that law in the Regency and Victorian period was essentially there to protect the assets of the rich. It was overturned gradually with the various fights for the return of rights through the Victorian period which gathered huge pace after the First World War, eventually resulting in the post war settlement and welfare state. That enabled social mobility and a flattening of society that hadn’t been seen since pre-Enclosure times. But as soon as it seemed to start getting serious results, neoliberalism and globalism both started.

There are loads of known stories of individuals and organisations at the centre of the world today that got where they were by exploitation and shady deals - IBM, Microsoft. At least Carnegie, following an earlier pattern of Victorian entrepreneurs (all very exploitative), gave wealth back, with no conditions or strings attached. That kind of elite philanthropy has gone - if Carnegie had followed Bill Gates’ model, all of our old public libraries would only have been able to order books from Carnegie’s own publishing company.

@Dingledongledell I just think "envy" is an inaccurate word in this context. How can you envy mere wealth, in the abstract? In and of itself it's meaningless. When I look at people I wish I was more akin to, they are people with a particular gift, flair or talent. Surely that's true of most of us. Wealth accumulation is not especially fascinating or awe inspiring.

after watching the show billions, and reading real life cases basically you need to rig the outcome as much as possible to make profits etc