As the Guardian has noted of the Sunday Times UK Rich List, which has apparently been published today, even though it is not a Sunday:
The amount of wealth shared by UK billionaires climbed to £683.8bn, which is almost £31bn more than last year.
But, with inflation in double digits, that 4.5% rise represents a fall in real terms.
Oh dear.
There is an obvious point to make, which is that case for a wealth tax on such extraordinary levels of wealth is overwhelming, to be paid by all those with British citizenship wherever resident.
Even a modest charge to indicate the desire to tackle inequality would be of massive significance.
I do not live in hope on this one.
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Apparently Sunak and his wife has been losing an average of half a million a day.
Due to falls in the share value of her father’s IT company.
“Losing” seems odd in this context. I’m assuming that this actually means that they are not gaining half a million from interest and investments that they had projected based on other times or criteria. If that’s so they’ve “lost” nothing, merely failed to gain something they hoped for?
If that’s so, then do we need to take aim at that kind of language which implicitly asks for our sympathy for their “loss” when in everyday terms they wouldn’t have even noticed it unless someone tells them that on paper they’ve not done as well as they might.
“The value of investments can go down as well as up” …
Would the inflation rate diminish their wealth in real terms as the rate of price inflation is based on the cost of goods and services?
Most of their wealth is in assets like property , shares and patents and their income on interest and dividends.
I don’t know how many billionaires are on the Rich List -around 170?-but £683 billion is equal to about 30% of GDP.
Their wealth is not the same, of course, as their income.
Your question is wholly appropriate
The richest man in Britain is Charles III. He is worth a little short of two billion. Much of this was inherited from his mother at her death last year. He was not liable for inheritance tax/death duties, unlike the rest of us. His mother’s funeral cost 162 million. That was paid for by the state – in other words, by British taxpayers like you all reading this, and me. This in a land of foodbanks, potholed roads, disintegrating NHS, crumbling schools, housing shortages, and so on. He is the extreme case of a rich man paying little or no tax, but it is a general rule, at least in Britain, that the rich pay proportionally less tax than the poor. I don’t know whether it is the same the whole world over, but ain’t it just a blooming shame: it’s the rich wot gits the gravy, an’ the poor wot gits the blame.
I am not arguing for or against a constitutional monarchy although I suspect it will not survive the 21st century. In the last few years I have become more ambivalent about its retention.
However, there is a discussion to be had about your statement “That was paid for by the state – in other words, by British taxpayers like you all reading this, and me.” MMT might argue it was not paid for by taxpayers although taxes have to offset state expenditure.
A lot of the Royal wealth is in property and art collections which, in practice, the King can’t spend or flog off like other oligarchs. If he was subject to inheritance tax and didn’t have the arrangements of the Grosvenor family, then the assets could would be eroded by sales . I am not sure selling chunks of the Crown estates, or Clarence House, to a rich Arab or Indian investor is a step forward. The Crown Estates profits -over £300 million this year, go to the Treasury and the sovereign grant to March of this year is £86.3 million, so over two thirds is a gain for the state.
There are other perks and sources of income. Some of those might well be transferred but I have the impression most of the property of the Monarchy are effectively nationalised. I stand to be corrected.
To conclude, I would contend the key arguments about Monarchy are the symbolism and the political role being inherited. Possibly about the burden being placed on individuals. It is not a role they choose which perhaps is why Harry opted out.
Having a political Head of State still comes with costs. The German President is about 30 million euros a year, about a third of the price. So you have a point about price but in my opinion it is not conclusive.
Is Charles ONLY worth about 2 Billion pounds? He’s a relative pauper then compared to the many multi billionaires existing in the world today. Maybe we should increase his allowance so he doesn’t feel inferior when he goes abroad!
Unlike most of them, he is not really in a position to sell it off or spend it.
Would taxing the rich 1% be the best way of reducing the government deficit?
We don’t need to reduce the deficit because it is of no concern
We do need to reduce inequality
All tax raised should be redistributed
And we need to reduce the influence that extreme wealth provides.
The real issue here, especially for a supposedly ‘growth-obsessed Government (and I am now unconvinced that perpetual growth is wise or even possible, but am convinced that raw ‘growth’ is not a good way to measure economic ‘success’) is that these billionaires will not spend more because they have more. They will ‘save’ (= hoard) this extra wealth, taking it out of the real economy except if they ‘invest’ further, which will mean that some poor soul is expected to pay the return on this investment from an ever-decreasing share of national wealth.
In a word – ‘unsustainable’.
Put money in the pockets of ‘real’ people, the poorer the better, and they will spend, creating economic activity. Or in it the hands of billionaires, and they will just bleed more wealth out of everyone else giving them their return which they demand.
I know, it’s called ‘Capitalism’ and it is one of the major idols the West worships.
It’s where the untaxed money ends up that bothers me.
In parts of the economy that cause inflation.
In political bribes known as ‘party funding’.
Essentially, rich money is money that it not under control. And that’s a big problem everyone else ends up paying for.
« Thé Collapse of Antiquity » by Michael Hudson is an most interesting and informative account of the harmful effects upon society of excessive wealth, conspicuous acquisition, wealth addiction and the corrosion of Ancient Greek and Roman societies because they could not manage the exponential growth of interest and debt plus the socio-economic instability resulting from oligarchies which do not care about societal health and well being.
It also uses relevant comparative contemporary comparisons and makes the most powerful point that our attitudes, laws and so on to these matters are much the same as those of the ruling oligarchies of Ancient Greece and Rome.
A ‘desire to tackle inequality’.
I wonder whether my father’s words might be helpful here. Some of what he said is relevant to other issues that are current now as they were 87 years ago when he spoke them.
He was much older than my mother and served with the British Army in France during WW1.
On 10th November 1936 – the day before Armistice Day – at his Rotary Club, he considered, “How can we honour those 900,000 dead whose lives were sacrificed in our country’s cause?”
First, he suggested, ‘we can care for those people for whom they would have cared had they been here to do it.’ Here, he thought ‘we have less cause for reproach than anywhere else. The government pension provision [was] on a more generous scale than ever before, and there have sprung up numerous organizations to fill up gaps.’
‘Second, we can try to fulfil their ideals, to preserve those things they would have wished to be kept alive, to strive for the things for which they would have striven.
‘ … I think there are two things we can say they believed in and cherished. First they had the Englishman’s traditional love of liberty. … I believe quite frankly that they would have given unqualified assent to Mr Winston Churchill’s words the other day; “How could we bear, nursed as we have been in a free atmosphere, to be gagged and muzzled, to have spies, eavesdroppers and delators at every corner, to have even private conversation caught up and used against us by the secret police and all their agents and creatures; to be arrested and interned without trial; or to be tried by political or party courts for crimes hitherto unknown to civil law. …
How could we bear to be treated like school boys when we are grown up men; to be turned out on parade by tens of thousands to march and cheer for this slogan or that; to see philosophers, teachers and authors bullied and toiled to death in concentration camps; to be forced every hour to conceal the natural, normal workings of the human intellect and the pulsations of the human heart?” And I think we could say of them as he said of us “Rather than submit to such oppression there is no length to which they would not go.”
‘We shall honour them – if we too guard this our most precious heritage. … To me again and again it seems that European statesmen have considered what was at the moment expedient, safe and cheap rather than what was right, and the result is the wide¬spread disorder we see. And this right is absolute: it does not alter with the colour of a man’s skin, let alone the colour of his shirt. There is not one right for German and another for Jew. A thing is not, right for a Communist but wrong for a Nazi or a Fascist. In matters of right and wrong, humanity is one and indivisible, and he who fights on the side of right, whatever his personal fate, fights on the winning side. …
It is under my third head that our greatest failure lies: to fulfil our promises to the dead.
What promises we made!
This was to be a war to end war. Never again! was our current slogan.
After the war, we would make a land fit for heroes to live in.
We would have a new comradeship between class and class. Those who faced the common dangers in the trenches, had found so much heroism and simple human goodness in members of classes different from their own, that it was unbelievable that the old barriers would appear again.
‘Has war been ended? Is it further from those homes and hearths they died to defend? The order by the government for millions of gas masks for the civil population is more than sufficient answer.
‘A land fit for heroes to live in! Have the Jarrow marchers found it so? Or is there indeed anything heroic in the surroundings of millions of our unemployed? Heroism there may be, but it is in the fortitude with which their trials have been faced.
New comradeship between class and class? Do not recent incidents in the East end of London reveal an animosity and lack of understanding greater than anything before the war?
‘Why have we failed so badly to keep our promises? Is it that under the pressure of the misery and anxiety of the war we were ready to promise anything – but once the danger was over, like Pharaoh when the plagues were lifted, we hardened our hearts? Or is it that our promises were impossible, things we could never hope to fulfil? Somewhere between the two, is, I think, the answer. …’
Thanks
First of all, the question “Would you favour Britain becoming a republic or remaining a monarchy?” is ambiguous – I presume this is simply a heading to specific questions, i.e. monarchy? Republic? Secondly, this is like the EU referendum, those voting to leave had no idea what was going to replace UK membership. A republican at heart, what worries me is we have no idea what a UK republic would look like. The Irish republic is a good example, so might Germany, but not too sure about the US, a country which goes to war in the name of democracy but is one of the least democratic countries in the world. Someone like Trump, Johnson or Truss as President is a horrific thought. And who would decide on the new constitution? The present government and ruling party are becoming less democratic by the day. If left in power we’d end up with a dictatorship. Abhorrent as the idea of monarchy is, its need to remain popular seems to keep it, by and large, in check. As for wealth, there’s better examples of ludicrous inequalities which could be dealt with by legislation. The monarchy is a side show which probably brings in more money through tourism than it costs the state. These are not morally justified but they are, after all, practical realities. The Monarch as head of state has little real power, the danger of a President as head of state, beginning to exercise powerful control worries me more than putting up with the monarchy. UK Politics is broken and couldn’t cope with making the required changes without gerrymandering. Yes, this all needs much debate.
The monarchy probably brings in more money than it costs. We’re this even close to true the government would have produced figures prove it. Anybody seen those figures?
Who cares?
So do harmful drugs
Does that mean we encourage them?
Money is just about the worst arbiter of value.
“Someone like Trump, Johnson or Truss as President is a horrific thought”. How about someone like them as Monarch? Or dare one say it, Andrew? At least you get to choose the President at the start of their term, and you can get rid of him or her at the end.
I sent an email to my MP regarding a wealth tax. His response, by letter, came today.
While the UK does not have a wealth tax, we already have numerous measures in place that directly address your particular grievances across both asset and wealth taxes.
These taxes operate across many different economic activities, including the acquisition, holding, transfer and disposal of assets, and income derived from assets. The UK’s taxes on wealth are broadly equivalent to those of other G7 countries.
The UK’s progressive income tax system means the top 1% of income tax payers are projected to have paid over 29% of all income tax, and the top 5 % are projected to have paid over 50%, in 2019-20.
Thank you again for taking the time to contact me, please do not hesitate to do so again.
That was it.
How should I reply?
I will write a post on this