Rich-poor divide 'wider than 40 years ago'

Can we pin this one on Thatcher?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8481534.stm

The gap between rich & poor is irrelevant IMO
How poor the poor are, is

All I know is that I have this next to me now so all is good 😆

For a Labour Government I think it's shameful!

+1 to uplink, relative poverty is just a stupid idea.

The gap between rich & poor is irrelevant

Not if there is inequality within the gap, as would appear to be the case.

The gap between rich & poor is irrelevant IMO

IIRC, there's a pretty strong inverse correlation between the happiness expressed by the a country's population and the gap between rich and poor, rather than a correlation between happiness and a country's wealth.
Can't remember the sources of this nugget of research, though I got the impression that it was generally accepted.

Where is that lad in green tights when we need a bit of robbing of the rich done?

The gap between rich & poor is irrelevant IMO
How poor the poor are, is

Indeed, in the words of the great lady:

"They'd Rather the Poor Were Poorer Provided the Rich Were Less Rich"

IIRC, there's a pretty strong inverse correlation between the happiness expressed by the a country's population and the gap between rich and poor, rather than a correlation between happiness and a country's wealth.
Can't remember the sources of this nugget of research, though I got the impression that it was generally accepted.

Yup – research suggests peoples' health is negatively affected by a wider gap between rich and poor, including strangely for the rich.

I don't know who is to blame for our society's self-centredness and inequality, but I do reckon Thatcher played a big part in in yes. The fact that a supposed Labour government failed to do anything about it is equally shameful though.

Where is that lad in green tights

What will Peter Pan do to help?

makes no difference if you consider yourself in the middle – does it?

Can we pin this one on Thatcher?
always.

I don't see what good comes from the richest controlling ever more wealth.

makes no difference if you consider yourself in the middle – does it?

Only if you don't care about living in a decent society.

Can we not just add this to the list of charges at warmonger Blairs ongoing court case 😉

I blame Chipps. STW have divided the posters into the Haves and Have Nots and seem to think a 'P' is aspirational or something worthy to the Have Nots. Why people need to know who has a subscription etc is beyond me.

Chipps is Son of Thatcher.

I don't see what good comes from the richest controlling ever more wealth.

Likewise I don't see why the rich should have to pay hugely higher rates of tax and be forced back down to moderately wealthy.

But standing up for the rich is never going to be a popular opinion 🙂

There seem to be a lot of factors being jumbled about in that article. Income and wealth are very different things. Many people have become 'wealthy' in the past few years (even with a recent dip) simply because the home they live in has raised in value. So are we comparing the 'wealth' of a homeowner who can't realistically mobilise the value locked up in their house against the savings of someone who rents their home?

The gap between rich and poor is important but its important to measure it in a way that meaningful. Without delving into that particular article, when this has been tossed around in the media recently its been to look at the very poorest 1% and the very richest 1% and the fact that that gap has increased. Well the very richest 1% are rich beyond imagining, by themselves they pay something like one fifth of the UKs tax. With business becoming an ever more global affair there has never been a better time for the very very rich to get a bit richer. So measuring the gap between the super super rich and the very poorest in a country with a social safety net is a wee bit dumb.

The gap between most poor, the the bottom 20% and most rich, the top 20% is much more important. Countries with a large gap between those two groups (Us, the US, portugal have the rich earning 9 times what the poor earn) have all the sorts of social problems we associate with deprivation – crime, murder, mental illness, teen pregnancy the whole lot. Countries that have a small gap (Japan, the Nordic countries, where the rich earn 4 times what the poor earn) have far fewer of those problems.

Here in the UK although the wide gap between rich and poor persists, the poor are better off now, in real terms, rather than relative terms, then they were 10 – 15 years ago.

And as much as we like to think otherwise, all the phenomena related to poverty have been steadily improving.

Rich people all inherited their money or obtained it by deceit and/or the exploitation of others.

Does this honestly come as a surprise to anyone?

A quote from the man who is the real leader of the political party that claims to represent the working class in this country

"We are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich"

Yes Peter… but only certain people eh? Particularly when you then spend your time licking their arses on their huge yachts

Churchill believed that in the same way the rich inherit their riches, the poor inherited their poverty. He believed poverty could be eradicated by simply preventing the poor from breeding.

The gap between rich & poor is irrelevant IMO

Disagree totally generally countries with the greatest gap between rich and poor are the least happy and stable.

Someone above mentions "bizarrely" the rich are also unhappy. Its not really the strange basically there will be a large number of poor people trying to steal your money if your rich.

Hence places like South Africa/Columbia were the rich people have armed guards and cant walk on the streets.

Also a lot of kidnappings in these countries hence why alot of unhappiness.

Rich people all inherited their money

And I too would like to think I can inherit the wealth of my parents without the government getting their paws on any of it.

I have seen people sifting through rubbish near slums and people washing/taking water from sewage-polluted water-courses in poor countries. Those people are DIRT POOR.

In a country where almost everyonehas the opportunity clean running water, food, clothing, healthcare & education I have difficulty with the concept of 'poverty'.

40 years ago ordinary people, amongst many other things, did not generally have central heating, double-glazing, 2 (or even 1..) cars per household, home telephones, they did not routinely go on foreign holidays. Social mobility was more difficult. Shops did not sell the range of foods that they do now. Televisions were a luxury. Clothes were expensive.

Of course, some people are poorer than others, but there are complex issues involved. Mental health, medical health, intelligence, addiction, peer group etc. etc. all have an influence.

Is giving people money for nothing a good solution? I don't think so.

Work-fare/job creation/new deal schemes are good in theory, but like SureStart, many of the people who make best use of them are people who need the help least and those that need the help most often don't take the opportunities offered to them.
-You can take a horse to water……

I don't know about anybody else, but I would rather be living now than 40 years ago and I really do not care how much wealth 'the rich' have. If I can drive a Mondeo, I do not care that Simon Cowell drives a Maybach.

Churchill believed that in the same way the rich inherit their riches, the poor inherited their poverty. He believed poverty could be eradicated by simply preventing the poor from breeding.

Indeed. Eugenics was very popular before Hitler came along and "gave it a bad name".

I expect Churhill was right too, just I dont think thats an acceptable way of helping.

I would rather be living now than 40 years ago

Won't people also be saying this and making similar arguments in 40 years time?

Preventing the rich from breeding would have the same effect on the rich-poor divide.

And I too would like to think I can inherit the wealth of my parents without the government getting their paws on any of it.

I would guess that you've had better education, support, and home life than many "poor" people though, even if you attended the same school. Rich parents do more than just pass on their money when they die.

social mobility would appear to my view to be the biggest problem, having worked as a teacher in a very socially disadvantgaged area I've seen how hard it is for kids to break out of generations of poverty. Seriosu changes to the education system could help but the masses wouldnt accept them.

Someone above mentions "bizarrely" the rich are also unhappy.

I've found myself living next door to a castle, and the owners invited us over a few weeks ago for a knees up. Now they are a young family, have both grown up with wealth (he's just inherited the castle and everything you can see out the window) she grew up owning a large swathe of the upper Thames.

Now 'unhappy' isn't a word I'd use, but just as self destructive as the poorest people I've met.

HoratioHufnagel – Member

I would rather be living now than 40 years ago

Won't people also be saying this and making similar arguments in 40 years time?

Hopefully. And?

social mobility would appear to my view to be the biggest problem, having worked as a teacher in a very socially disadvantaged area I've seen how hard it is for kids to break out of generations of poverty

2 generations ago, my family were fairly poor. 3 generations ago, they very poor. Before that ancestors died in the work-house and were buried in mass, un-marked graves.

My family had a sense of 'pride', and a strong wish not to appear 'common'. I suspect that this was significant for the following generations.

I would rather be living now than 40 years ago

I was just as happy & content 40 years ago as I am today so it wouldn't bother me 1 iota if the tardis picked me up & dropped me back there today
I certainly have a lot more of life's luxuries now, inside toilet, a bathroom etc. but I don't believe it's made me any happier

Any of the changes needed to break the poverty gap won't be accepted by the masses, even though we'd all move to a much happier world if we took the medicine

If we wanted to have the kind of society we all crave we could have it in 10 – 20 years from now. But getting from here to there would hurt a bit. But we could all have better, happier lives if we did it. In a democracy that means asking turkeys to vote for christmas though.

Both political parties would like to get there, but we won't vote for either of them if they try. What they will do, especially cuddly Dave, is use the flowery words.

We now realise that the great problems in life are not those of housing and food and standard of living. When we have got all of those, when we have got reasonable housing when you compare us with other countries, when you have got a reasonable standard of living and you have got no-one who is hungry or need be hungry, when you have got an education system that teaches everyone—not as good as we would wish—you are left with what? You are left with the problems of human nature…

2 generations ago, my family were fairly poor. 3 generations ago, they very poor. Before that ancestors died in the work-house and were buried in mass, un-marked graves.

My family had a sense of 'pride', and a strong wish not to appear 'common'. I suspect that this was significant for the following generations.

One swallow doesnt make a summer

inside toilet….

Toilet? We used to dream of having a toilet. But of course, we 'ad it tough….

😉

One swallow doesnt make a summer

Indeed, but if say 60% of the UK people once lived in slum squalor and now very few people do, that huge number of people who got out of that squalor must have had something different about them to the ones who remain in a state of poor/poverty.

Could Attitude (or 'intelligence') have something to do with it?

As Zulu-Eleven quoted(?) above:
You are left with the problems of human nature…