{"id":74362,"date":"2024-02-26T08:10:26","date_gmt":"2024-02-26T08:10:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=74362"},"modified":"2024-02-26T10:04:34","modified_gmt":"2024-02-26T10:04:34","slug":"the-upward-redistribution-of-wealth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2024\/02\/26\/the-upward-redistribution-of-wealth\/","title":{"rendered":"The upward redistribution of wealth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Investment advisers Hargreaves Lansdown issued a press release this morning saying:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span data-removefontsize=\"true\" data-originalcomputedfontsize=\"18.666666\">Debts cost an average of \u00a3406 a month \u2013 as arrears mount<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<blockquote><p><span data-removefontsize=\"true\" data-originalcomputedfontsize=\"14.666667\">The average household spends \u00a3406 on monthly debt repayments, excluding the mortgage. Those with mortgages spend an average of \u00a3814 on top of this.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<blockquote><p><span data-removefontsize=\"true\" data-originalcomputedfontsize=\"14.666667\">Almost one in ten households (9%) are in arrears. Among the lowest fifth of earners this rises to 27%.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<blockquote><p><span data-removefontsize=\"true\" data-originalcomputedfontsize=\"14.666667\">One in five people are concerned about their debt position.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<blockquote><p><span data-removefontsize=\"true\" data-originalcomputedfontsize=\"14.666667\">Credit card debt is up 12.7% in a year to \u00a368.9 billion and other consumer debt (including loans, overdrafts and car finance) is up 6.7% to \u00a3150.4 billion (Bank of England).<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The arrears data worries me, as does the increase in credit. But so too does the bigger picture.<\/p>\n<p>There are about 27 million households in the UK. Around \u00a3132 billion is being paid by those households a year to service debt interest, exclusion mortgage costs. That is a staggering upward annual redistribution of wealth. And you wonder why I want interest rates to be as low as possible? That\u2019s the reason why. Those without wealth are being exploited by those with it, and that is a recipe for an unstable society, which is exactly where we are heading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Investment advisers Hargreaves Lansdown issued a press release this morning saying: Debts cost an average of \u00a3406 a month \u2013 as arrears mount The average<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2024\/02\/26\/the-upward-redistribution-of-wealth\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[204,35,147],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economic-justice","category-economics","category-inequality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74362"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74366,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74362\/revisions\/74366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}