The old "if I cannot have it why should they" mentality stinks.
So does the 'I'm going to grab what I can and sod how I make it and sod the impact on everyone else' mentality. That's what the current anger is about.
Framing it as jealousy is a typical autocratic approach so you give yourself the excuse to criticise and crack down on legitimate anger. Look at Syria and Turkey for the best current examples of that technique!
Setting up a business and running it in a legal manner paying required taxes, providing jobs and treating your investors, suppliers, employees and customers with respect is completely and utterly viable and you can make yourself incredibly rich like that. Take a look at Timpsons if you want to see a family make itself very rich but doing so responsibly and ethically. I might add that they are very well connected with the Parliamentary Tory Party so by no means are they some kind of lefty collective!
Info here [url= https://www.timpson.co.uk/about/meet-the-timpsons ]Timpsons...[/url]
Worth also pointing out that the biggest cause of inequality in the UK is NOT earned wealth, but housing... House prices are only currently going up because the younger generation are being forced into a life of debt slavery to keep the whole bubble going...
[url= https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/20/property-owners-inequality-home-ownership-resolution-foundation ]Property driving inequality[/url]
In a new report, the thinktank noted that the baby boomers born in the 20 years after the second world war were the big beneficiaries of rapidly rising house prices, but had amassed most of the wealth through no skill of their own. Wealth disparities would have “worrying consequences” for the living standards of younger generations, it added.
Greater equality of wealth keeps economic growth running more smoothly. A rich man spends a lower proportion of his income than a poor man - there's only so much he can spend it on. So the more evenly spread a country's earnings are across the population, the more of it gets spent and the more growth you get.
If you want riots or the proles to come around and smash your windows then keep making sneery comments about inequality and keep making assumptions that people who're poor have had the same life chances as everyone else and therefore are poor from their own lack of hard work... and that people who're rich have somehow created every last bit of it through their own entrepreneurialism and hard work. That's a myth and not one you want to repeat to the face of someone tired of dealing with sneery middle class prejudice...
If we do get violence then it won't be because of our inequality per se, it'll be the nasty victim-blaming by the middle classes and the rich that generates the anger... I might point out that plenty of middle classes and rich aren't stupid enough to be like this, just an idiot few...
I've also been around the City for 15 years. Plenty of people there make their money legally and legitimately but I also saw a culture of real nasty backstabbing and general dishonesty... might be worth noting SFO being all over Barclays for an example of City culture...
tbh i think it's less funny than you might imagine. people pay tax according to their means. doctors don't become doctors by being grown in a vat. their parents had support from society to help them get there, as they were also supported. it's in society's interests to invest in people so they can put back through whatever means they can.
i'm not a doctor, i pay a reasonable level of tax (by which i mean above average ), and without kids i don't get any of that back in any sort of benefit payment. that's my contribution. i'd gladly pay more if it meant more kids had a better start in life as a result, services were better funded, and yes, the nhs was in better hands.
this concept of 'i got to be in the 5% all by myself and if you think you can take this money off me i'll just f off somewhere they won't' i find selfish in the extreme.
earn as much as you like, spend it on what you want, same as i do, but just chip in, eh?
brooess +1
The greater the inequality, the less happier society is - more crime, either the poor killing the poor (well, that's all ok) or (and it's always only a matter of time) the proles looking for it from the rich. I can't ever work out why the wealthy are so fearful of contributing more. They'd still have loads left and they'd be less afraid of the poor taking their stuff by force. Try living in a "middle class" gated community in Jo'burg or São Paulo - just to see what fear is like in societies ridden with inequality.
Great in theory, but I'd predict a brain drain.
Never happens and never will but is always predicted by those that like massive inequality.
Never happens and never will but is always predicted by those that like massive inequality.
This, all just people trying to justify why the shouldn't have to contribute to the society that enabled them to do well.....
Like the Scottish government? Odd when a left of centre, anti-austerity party are afraid of a brain drain too.
DAY OF RAGE! RAGE, DAMMIT! RAGE!
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Actually, nah. Sod it. I've just bought a box of Calippos, shall we sit in the park for a while?
Protesters would have been glad to have Borises water cannon turned on them today!
