Wealth inequality in the UK
Вставка
- Опубліковано 20 жов 2024
- Inequality has been rising for 30 years. The gap between rich and poor is the widest since the second world war. If current trends continue, we will have reached Victorian levels of inequality in 20 years. Sign up to our weekly email briefings to get the full facts. inequalitybrief...
The government borrows more every year whilst spending less on the things that matter most. Where does all that money go? I think we have the answer.
Well I woke up this morning
On the wrong side of the bed
And how I got to thinkin'
About all those things you said
About ordinary people
And how they make you sick
And if callin' names kicks back on you
Then I hope this does the trick
'Cause I'm sick of your complainin'
About how many bills
And I'm sick of all your bitchin'
'Bout your poodles and your pills
And I just can't see no humor
About your way of life
And I think I can do more for you
With this here fork and knife
Eat the rich
There's only one thing that they are good for
Eat the rich
Take one bite now - come back for more
Eat the rich
I gotta get this off my chest
Eat the rich
Take one bite now - spit out the rest
So I called up my head shrinker
And I told him what I'd done
He said you best go on a diet
Yeah, I hope you have some fun
And a don't go burst the bubble
On rich folks who get rude
'Cause you won't get in no trouble
When you eats that kinda food
Now they're smokin' up their junk bonds
And then they go get stiff
And they're dancin' in the yacht club
With muff and uncle biff
But there's one good thing that happens
When you toss your pearls to swine
Their attitudes may taste like shit
But go real good with wine
Eat the rich
There's only one thing that they are good for
Eat the rich
Take one bite now - come back for more
Eat the rich
I gotta get this off my chest
Eat the rich
Take one bite now - spit out the rest
Believe in all the good things
That money just can't buy
Then you won't get no bellyache
From eatin' humble pie
I believe in rags to riches
Your inheritance won't last
So take your gray poupon my friend
And shove it up your ass
Eat the rich
There's only one thing that they are good for
Eat the rich
Take one bite now - come back for more
Eat the rich
I gotta get this off my chest
Eat the rich
Take one bite now - spit out the rest
Eat the rich
There's only one thing that they are good for
Eat the rich
Take one bite now - come back for more
Eat the rich
Don't stop me now, I'm goin' crazy
Eat the rich
That's my idea of a good time baby
Love it.
@@closingtheloop2593 Aerosmith.
@@periurban Ya I know man. My sisters favorate band was Aerosmith growing up. I know all there songs haha. Cheers.
The rich need their money!! How else can they buy their country estates, diamonds, art collections, expensive cars, property portfolios, private education for their children, luxury yachts polo ponies etc. They also have to pay their servants, stable staff, chauffeurs, accountants, lawyers. It's an expensive business being rich.
It is but we work bloody hard for it
Sorry to say but my grand father and father worked extremely hard going from land Lord and engineer to colonial industrialist and plantation owner, (Grand Father) and to Doctor and Head of Medical research (father) for me to be able to get have a good education and live a comfortable life The problem quite frankly, is with those who don't study and get into University or work hard enough. It is not that my Father and Grand Father, or anyone for that matter, can determine their wealth. Every thing is by God's will.
Hard work only counts when oppertunities are present to work at.
What you might be missing is that the bottom 40% have so little there aren't even minor oppertunities.
Marlinspike hall Obviously my comment was light hearted, but I disagree that it is down to hard work. It is more to do with life chances. If your parents are illiterate or lacking in basic education you are less likely to succeed in your own education. If your parents don't teach you how to speak correctly and correct your mistakes you will be at a disadvantage as soon as you start school. If your parents watch football and soaps all day instead or documentaries you will get off to a bad start. There will always be exceptions, but the tendency is for educated and successful people to come from good homes. If hard work made you rich there would be a lot of rich coal miners and nurses.
Marlinespike hall: Assuming that you deserve to be rich because you *think* you worked harder than everybody else is a logically fallacy. It is intellectually dishonest. Also, thinking that you *deserve* to be rich just because you work hard, is also a fallacy. Hard work doesn't equal rich, and rich doesn't equal hard work. They are mutually exclusive. Millions of people work incredibly hard everyday and they are not even close to being rich.
Are you saying doctors don't work hard? Engineers? Nurses? Architects? Vets? Scientists? The computer engineers that made your smart phone? Don't they work hard? None of those people are *rich* compared to CEO's and other big players. The 1% is not a guy that went to university for 10 years and earns 100 thousand a year. That is *nothing* compared to the 1%. The 1% have multiple millions or billions. Something that is only possible by using many people in the process.
Nobody *NEEDS* that kind of money whether they *deserved* it or not. Yes you can have it if you *earned* it legally, thats only fair. But also, if you have *that* much money (that you *clearly* made off of other people's backs), then its only right and fair that you should pay a larger amount of tax in return, as the *only* way you even made that money, is by using other people. As long as that tax actually goes to the public, and not syphoned off into private companies, but that is an argument again political systems. It has nothing to do with the widening inequality gap due to tax cuts and tax avoidance/evasion.
I think, you have no idea what God thinks about wealth at all. What did Jesus say? Can you really answer.
good to see our representative democracy functioning as it should.
Thank you, Inequality Briefing, for this excellent video. We had noted that a similar video had gone viral in the US last year and hoped a similar film could be produced for the UK. Great work, well done.
The Golden Banana Bankers
Inspired by the fact that I was eating a banana when my friend asked me to explain banks to him.
In the beginning there were golden banana trees all over the country. People lived in small tribes and had several golden banana trees to sustain themselves. Life was good. The people in a tribe would happily share the golden bananas between them. After many, many years the tribes began to grow in size and knowledge, and many valuable discoveries were made in the process. After a while, some tribes noticed that other tribes had more valuable items than others, so they promised large amounts of their golden bananas to the other tribes in exchange for their items, skills and knowledge.
In this way, all the tribes began trading items between each other using their golden banana supply. As time went on, the tribes realised that they needed more land to grow their golden bananas. Tribes quickly began to claim land as their own. Many tribes fought battles over land due to its value. After many years, nearly every spot of land in the country was owned by a tribe, and some tribes had a lot more land than others. Some of these tribes realised that they could use their great supply of golden bananas to their advantage, by loaning them to other tribes so long as they returned them after an agreed length of time with a few more bananas than had originally been loaned out. In this way, the golden banana-banks were formed. Every time someone was low on golden bananas, they would ask a banana-bank for some more golden bananas, and they would return later with an increased number of bananas. In this way, the golden banana-banks became richer and richer and began buying out other banana-banks and land. They also offered to look after people’s bananas for them and keep them safe, with the promise that people could come and collect their bananas at any time.
While all this was going on, the tribes had become so big that they formed a United Kingdom of tribes, and chose a leader to run their kingdom and make important decisions for them.
After a while, the banana-banks were so rich that they decided to make the leaders of the country loyal to them by giving them lots of golden bananas. Every time the leaders questioned the banks, they would simply give them more golden bananas to keep them happy. Now the banana-banks were essentially running the country.
A big problem for the banana-banks was that some people were still growing their own golden bananas, meaning that they were losing out on some possible people to loan golden bananas to. So they came up with a plan. They decided to buy out every golden banana tree in the country, and then made it illegal for people to grow their own golden bananas. Some people were very unhappy about this and complained to the leaders, but the banks dealt with this by bribing the leaders with more golden bananas. Now the banana-banks had the banana trees AND most of the bananas.
With the public banana farms now closed, there was a limited amount of golden bananas for the people of the kingdom to trade with. They had no choice but to go to the banana-banks and take out golden banana loans in the hope that one day they would be able to pay them back. The banana-banks were more than happy to loan out lots of the golden bananas to the people, and so trade continued. People traded valuable items using their bank loaned bananas. As the population grew, more bananas were needed to share between the increased numbers of people, so the banks began growing bananas to adjust to this at a sensible level.
The big problem with having a limited number of bananas being traded around the country was that the only way someone could get rich (have lots and lots of golden bananas) was at the expense of someone else getting poorer (having less bananas). Many people at the top of big businesses were earning far more bananas than people at the bottom of the business despite working the same hours. This meant that the country began to split into 2 groups: rich people and poor people.
Unfortunately, the people in the banana-banks weren’t intelligent enough to realise that their system was flawed (or they simply didn’t care), so when the poorest people in the country came to the banks asking for banana-loans, the banks were happy to comply. After a while, so many poor people came to the banana-banks asking for loans that the banks ran out of their stock of golden-bananas (including the ones that people had given to the banks for safekeeping). So the banks came up with a plan. Instead of focusing on the obvious fact that there was an unequal banana-wage problem in the country, they decided to start growing more and more bananas inside their banks to give out more loans. With no limit on the amount of banana-loans that the banks could now give out, the country flourished. With big banana-loans, people were able to afford lots of expensive items like houses and cars. The amount of golden bananas owed to the banks was massive. To adjust to the fact that people could now afford all these expensive items with their banana-loans, the prices of things like houses increased as well.
Suddenly, some of the banana-bankers realised that they may have made a big mistake: golden bananas were first used to trade for valuable items. Now people had lots of golden bananas that allowed them to buy things they couldn’t usually afford. The country had essentially been built up on golden bananas that had been grown out of nothing. The banks realised that when the time came, people might not be able to pay back their banana-loans. They got worried. So suddenly, they stopped giving out banana-loans. This made the people in the country very worried about their banks, and the safety of the bananas that they were storing in them. So suddenly, they all rushed to the banks to withdraw their bananas. Disaster struck. The banks had made so many loans that they couldn’t pay back everyone’s bananas.
This is when the government stepped in. Because they were in league with the banana-bankers, they decided they couldn’t lay the blame on the bankers despite the fact that it was their fault. Instead, they decided to blame the people of the country for the crisis. They borrowed 850 billion bananas from their reserve of banana-tax-payers money and paid it to the banana-banks to ensure they could pay back everyone’s savings. This was a big favour towards the banks, but the government decided to call it “the national banana debt” and told the people of the country that it was now their responsibility to pay it off.
The conservative government decided that the best way to get bananas from the people was to cut the amount of banana-tax-payers money going towards public services and charge them more banana-tax. Obviously the public were not too happy about this so the bankers wrote special complicated nonsensical speeches for the leaders to read to the population to confuse them about their intentions. The public easily fell into their trap. From this day forward, there were less and less golden bananas in the country for people to use. The government also decided to pump billions of bananas into the stock market (dominated by the rich) so that the bananas would “trickle down” to the poorer people. This didn’t work because there are so few rich people in comparison to the number of poor people, the rich people aren’t spending many of their bananas, and when they do spend, they spend them on rare and expensive items that don’t really have anything to do with many people at the bottom. So basically, even more bananas went to the rich.
Due to the limited amount of money in our economy, as rich people get richer it is inevitable that the poorer will get poorer. Cuts will not solve this problem - they will simply make it worse.
In our current monetary system you cannot have the rich without the poor and money cannot exist without debt. It’s time to change it.
Anarchy doesn't mean chaos. for 40,000 years, human tribal societies lived without police or jails. It actually means people would need to cooperate more. Anonymous is an anarchy based organisation and they mobilise on all sorts of things.
We know communism doesn't work, but to accuse the whole of humanity of having no other motivation to work than to screw over their brethren is a little short sighted.
Fascism is intuitively repugnant, of course, nobody would want that.
But these three thing you've said aren't the only options available.
Capitalism isn't the best system available, you just think that because you can't conceive of an alternative.
In fact capitalism is probably nearing the end of its useful life. You don't need much foresight to figure out that 3% compound economic growth will ultimately lead to the entire planet being concreted over. You can't grow anything at compound 3% forever in a finite space, especially not an economy given the extra population, outlets, warehousing, and transport infrastructure it would need.
Unless you have a massive war and kill enough people to let the system start from a rollback position. Is that what you want? It's a genuine choice for the 21st Century, whether we just keep fighting over resources, or whether we come up with something better.
Capitalism is 'the best yet' but it is far from perfect. I wouldn't be so gloomy as to say we can't do any better than this.
Thomas Harker you mind if I steal that?
+Thomas Harker I think your story is great..Where do you start really to tackle it tho?
+Thomas Harker That was good but I feel like I've read the word "banana" more times today than the rest of my life combined.
+MusicalDudeMayhem Why are you so sure Communism doesn't work? Was it really given a good shot? I think the economy has to be planned to some extent to distribute the necessities accordingly. Having learnt what I have about Socialism recently, I'm really convinced by it.
FREE MARKET WILL FIX IT
no it won't. while most capitalist systems are state subsidised to a fairly high degree, generally, the more free a run you give them the more inequal the country in question is.
you can still have systems which are very business friendly but much more pro-equality like those in the nordic model
+TakeshiAndTheKid how does the free market lead to inequality?
Taxation is the foundation of democracy. Remember the phrase "no taxation without representation"? The idea is that everyone supports the government so that the government can support everyone else.
Tax money doesn't go to other rich people, at least it shouldn't. If it does, then there is corruption. Corruption is the problem not taxation. Every business, every company, every citizen and every non citizen of a country depends on tax money. Tax money builds roads, rail roads, provides subsidies for new and existing business and in UK, well it pays for our health as well. When we are poor and jobless, we look to mother Britannia for help. We don't go knocking on rich peoples door begging money for food and medicine.
The next time you say something bad about taxation, remember that computers, internet and the cables, man on the moon...etc all funded by tax money collected from citizens and business alike. Without it, no rich man would risk his/her money for a vision of a man on the moon. The industrial revolution could have been stopped if the British government didn't support the businessmen who wanted to link Manchester to Liverpool with rail roads. Guess who subsidised the cost of building it? tax payers.
DO you know why our government is short in cash? because they are covering losses made by private business. Tax payers even pay for rich people to be rich.
A free market also means that the only way to acquire wealth is by pleasing as large a number of consumers as possible - enriching the lives of the masses :) And with no taxes, those low income earners will have more money to spend, and thus will be able to have much greater living standards (of course, their wages will naturally rise on a free market due to competition between employers).
Also, you said the only way to get back "money that they work for" is through taxation - but if that money belongs to someone who happens to be wealthier than them, then they aren't getting their money back, they're just having it stolen from somebody else.
Money would circulate back into the economy through saving, which in turn leads to investment, as banks lend the money to entrepreneurs, and spending. No need for taxation to achieve this - it happens naturally.
Also, to label the middle east as having a free market is very inaccurate, because a simple google search of "most economically free countries" reveals that the majority of middle eastern countries are not free at all - the only middle eastern country in the top 10 most economically free countries is UAE, and their living standards are great and improving.
I must also add that my initial comment was merely meant to highlight that the free market doesn't cause inequality, as inequality is the default human state - not even the same man is equal to himself on different days :)
In response to the notion that the situation can be improved by ''people working harder'', this is clearly nonsense. One only has to compare our economy to much more egalitarian societies like Japan, the Scandinavian countries and Australia to realise that the issue is STRUCTURAL. Much higher minimum wages, stronger trade unions, pay ratios and employee representation on company boards ensure much better distributions of wealth and happier, healthier societies.
Well done - a nice clear video. I hope it helps to increase awareness of the increasing gap between the richest 1% and the majority of the UK population :-)
Hi from the future. It didn’t.
@@JacobMarleySellsFish I like that you waited 8 years for this. Well played.
The first poll is a mute point. How the people surveyed think wealth should be distributed is ridiculous. In this example, a typical new graduate would earn £15,000 and a typical senior executive would earn £25,000 ... If that were the case, all the talented Brits would leave. Here's the interesting point. The richest 20% have 60%... & the richest 1% have 20%. It shows the 1% throw out the stats massively. A closer look actually reveals that it's the richest 0.1% who really throw things out.
This is a lot more equitable in comparison with the US considering that in the UK, the wealthiest 10% have 40% of the nation's wealth while in the US the wealthiest 10% have 70% of the nation's wealth. Granted, this trend is seen in most economies of the world, the top 1-10% have a significant chunk of the overall money pie chart. Maybe that's just the way societies have always been, throughout the world and throughout history.
A Nony Mouse "That's the way societies have always been..." - yes, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to change it.
A Nony Mouse No it is not how societies have always been. The neoliberal policies of the usa and uk consecutive governments have led to today's situation. The powerful and rich have been writing the rules, they make rules that benefit themselves.
Actually, back in the past, society was mostly equal, especially before the:
-Industrial Revolution
-Founding of governments
-Creation of money
Not saying any of those are bad, but they were used in a way which increased the disparity of wealth significantly.
The only equality should be, OPPORTUNITIES! It's up to you to work for it!
If you want to earn more money you have to study and work hard. Very simple. There is no reason why anyone in Britain can not do well if they really want to achieve. It will not land at your door.
It's a mild level of inequality
I find the statistics presented in this video are shockingly similar to those in an also surprisingly similar study conducted the U.S......
hologei repository I disagree, the study of the us makes Britain look almost socialist. 1/2 of Americans are around or below the federal poverty line.
The myth of the uk being the land of fair play and fairness doesn't fool anyone anymore, I'm afraid.
We agree! This doesn't tell you everything (or maybe even enough) but we hope it will start a debate.
@@analogeit why turkeys vote for Christmas and why slugs vote for salt.
This will always be the case as long as globalisation continues. When you let the worlds richest in to buy property as they wish, of course the gap will continue to widen.
Enabling things like unrestricted buy to let might sound great, but in reality only make things worse, as the rich get richer and the poor can't get on the housing market, as property has all been bought by the rich to rent out.
This problem will not be going anywhere anytime soon.
A fantastic vid that is a great educational tool but its TEN YEARS OLD!! It doesn't include how the superrich have got even wealthier since Covid. Please UPDATE!!
Can we have an updated video? (spoilers, it's even worse now)
That's not how democracy works though is it, you don't get to vote how much money others should be allowed to have.
The reason we don't fight this is because it's actually the richest 0.01% who have all the wealth in Briton. The top 1 in 10,000 people. These people are often people who stole massive wealth from a collapsing economy in Eastern Europe or Africa and then brought it to Briton. It's not a nice thing to own up to but the government wants them to keep coming to London.
Maybe those who are so stupid they can’t even spell the name of the country that they live in should be given more, right?
Interesting, and well presented, but it includes 'the whole population'. Given that most of those under 18 have no wealth, it is not surprising that the 'poorest 5th' have almost nothing.
I would like to see this for the adult population to gain a more meaningful understanding.
That is a good concise view. I like it. I also wonder where the survivable income line lies relative to these shifting sands. That is perhaps the most devastating effect - that more and more people do not have enough to survive.
Mrs Anna is legit and her method works like magic I keep on earning every single week with her new strategy
My first investment with Mrs Anna gave me profit of over $24,000 us dollars and ever since then she has never failed to deliver and I can even say she's the most sincere broker I have known
Who's this professional everyone is talking about I always see her post on top comment on every UA-cam video I watched
I think I'm interested how can I get in touch with Mrs Anna
I lost $1200 carelessly trading on a platform then I was referred to expert Mrs Anna she recovered the loss and made an extra profit of $4600
You can reach her via WhatsApp.👇
Oh sure ±➀➄➀➇➂➀⓪➁➁➁➂🇺🇸
How exactly would removing minimum wage laws HELP income for the poorest in the nation?
excellent summation using visual informatics, auditory and written language.
the current economic system doesn't allow everyone to succeed. it doesn't matter how determined people are. unless the system is changed there will always be poor people
excellent clip i wish we can see a comparative with other countries
How exactly did the rich steal their wealth?
They worked hard but in the UK we have a strange BELL SHAPED TAX curve where the system peaks at doctors and lawyers and then decrease for Bankers and it is the least for extremely wealthy. A top Fortune 500 ceo pays the same amount of tax as a school teaching assistant. And we mostly can’t do anything about it as it’s in the name of capitalism.
How you ask? By exploiting their workers, giving them minimal pay and keeping all the profits for themselves.
Interestingly mental health and inequality are interlinked. WHO has shown that mental illness is becomes more prevalent as a country's wealth inequality increases.
How many of the top 20% started nearer the bottom. Most people start at the bottom and work their way up to the middle or top end, subject to how well they do in life. Utterly misleading to make out the top and bottom is a static group of people because they aren't.
I honestly think that within my lifetime I will see the Palace of Westminster ablaze...
Another Scotland is possible - vote YES on 18 September 2014 and set the example. It is the fastest way of improving the lot of everyone on these islands.
Peter Mechan If Scotland becomes independent, what will the remaining UK be called, and what will be the flag of the remaining UK?
The United Kingdom of South Great Britain and Northern Ireland?
+carultch It would still have been the UK: just the Ununited Kingdom
Do that and you drive the rich (and their money) abroad; and then you haven't redistributed any wealth, you've just removed it from the equation.
do *what* and you drive the rich (and their money) abroad? they didn't sugest anything to be done. did you even watch it?
Finally, someone else who actually gets it!
The super rich may be wealth creators, overseeing huge industries, but if much of that wealth is based on driving down wages or removing jobs from the nation by using the cheapest labour possible abroad and then not even making a full tax contribution - why should we care about unshared wealth creation? Many politicians talk about the economy as though it is the be all and end all - but a sharing economy were the experience of wealth was more fairly enjoyed would be better for most people.
And what do you propose is the "idealistic" solution to this inevitable problem is exactly?
more tax but too much more and slowly
The problem isn't so much that the wealthy have that huge share but that the middle class is being wiped out. Birth rates are starting to plummet in Britain because most working aged people cannot afford the costs of living required to raise a family. This has terrifying social effects to an entire generation.
any ideas on how to accomplish that? :D
Sorry, but this is about wealth not income. Income distribution is far more important than wealth distribution, as it actually determines how much people have for their day to day spending, and this video completely fails to mention that.
+Pure Wealth and income are closely linked. Those without much income have very little wealth.
really great vid would watch again
xx
Wealth isn't distributed, it is earned. There isn't a fixed level of income. Try to share the pie and it will shrink. End of.
Australia and the Scandinavian countries are some of the richest countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita so of course they are going to have a higher minimum wage than the UK. It is relative to their level of development and average wage. Japan is a great example to use! Japan has suffered 20 years of stagnation. Japanese economists call it the lost decades with real wage growth being sluggish. When I said "people working harder" I was not talking about hours per week either.
Bear in mind the correlation between inequality and violence. The USA and South Africa are examples of very unequal and very violent societies and as the UK becomes more and more unequal so it is becoming more and more violent. And if you want a peaceful world then you have to have an equal world.
What on earth do you mean? The rich aren't paid by the State, they make their money through private enterprise.
the richest group do nothing to help the groups below, and the responsibility lies with the middle 3 groups to help the poorest. So the first 4 groups might even out over time but the richest will stay the same. This is why charity doesn't work as well as it should, it's taking from the poor to feed the poorer
Yeeeaaa, great job. absolutely amazing lad
By allowing people to work whom are not capable of providing enough value to reach the current min wage rate, they are then abl eto work (albeit for long hours) and get out of the benefit trap.
Currently, this spare capacity is redundant because others in the far east can work at these wage rates.
If it's the richest 1% and 0.1% throwing things out, then that means the 'talented' people wouldn't see as much of a decrease in a more equal distribution. And plenty of other developed countries seem to do just fine with much better income equality, without haemorrhaging magical wealth creators and dooming their economies.
People's thoughts are relevant because it shows the kind of society the majority want to live in, which the current system does not and will not allow
Also people move in between income scales, which makes this whole idea idiotic.
Shocking!
I wonder how this would be for the Netherlands.
It's kinda shocking, I didn't realize that UK is such a ripoff...
Hold all the rich hostage and take their money!
(Freedom?)
Okay Karl Marx, you have a point.
How would a government, rightly or wrongly, bridge the gap between top and bottom?
A robin hood tax funding higher minimum wage?
Stats like this are always interesting but the discussion over should the top and bottom be brought closer together and how would this realistically happen are far more interesting.
Alex McNamara because - explain a feasible method to do such a thing
Joe, what level of income would you consider to be rich and poor? Is100,000k per annum rich? Private tuition helps but it is not compulsory. I went to state school and know of people who got straight A grades. When I went to University I used a Library instead of buying books. Most Journals can be accessed online now anyway. Tuition fees are high but you do not pay it back until earning a reasonable amount. Alan Sugar, JK Rowling, David Beckham, James Caan, James Dyson are self made.
So true in what world we live work hard in the end you struggle to pay the bills that not fair
Niaive
That's interesting, maybe reverse causality is also valid and more prevalent mental illness causes wealth inequality.
Reading latest OECD skills table today correlates with inequality.
Education is the key - no more political dabbling and self interested posturing - let the (good) teachers teach and the (good) politicians provide the fertile ground for them to do it - lets get on with fixing this. Now.
It's more fair than US but not more fair than Belgium, Netherlands, and Sweden.
the problem is that most people are too skeptical about it and scared of change. some sort of revolution will have to occur for people to realize RBE is the best way to go. they are too comfy sitting in their sofas, watching tv and eating crisps to care about change
The sooner Scotland breaks FREE FROM THIS SYSTEM THE HAPPIER WE WILL BE..........ALBA GO BRAGH!
All the banks and resources of the country, should be publically owned by the people of the country and not by corporations, it should be our legal right and not theirs.
0.26 Why is fairness of opportunity always mixed up with fairness of outcome?
Wealth in the bank is all money that's been saved up. So if I earn £15k I spend it all living/on my pension. So I save nothing.
If I earn 100k I might spend £15k on living £5 on holidays and invest or save the rest. EACH YEAR for 50 years and leave that to my kids who do the same..
Earnings not net worth are better indicators of fairness. Provided no one doing the same job as me earns more (unless they work more hours or are better at it!) I can live with the fact my humanities degree earns me less than a science one.
In the UK anyone of any race, religion etc only need to do these 3 things to move up an entire class in their lifetime- Get ANY 35hr a week job (and don't get fired!), Don't get divorced and don't have kids out of wedlock.
98% of people who do this move from the working class into the middle class the 2% are people who suffered illness or a mental health breakdowns.
thats extreme inequality
There really isn't much the government can do without pissing off someone involving this matter, If they tax the wealthier people (most likely people who have worked hard to get to were they are) then they piss them off and truthfully it isn't right to say well done your making a lot of money now give us more. But at the same time they should potentially be looking at companies that employ cash in hand jobs or other jobs which are not even legal which are also causing the business owners to make more money and the employees to make less.
I disagree - a decent human being would know its going to making the country and everyone in it better, if they cry about it then they are simply selfish and evil. I blame that mindset on the myth of meritocracy and the desire to be some sort of massive selfish consumer who has some sort of empire - everyone needs to grow the fuck up
tom whitehead thank goodness someone can say the bloody obvious and stop skirting around the issue,yep everyone needs to grow the fuck up for the sake of all our childrens future...its getting very stark for many reasons and all the stupid talent shows in the world cant distract us from this forever
+FibreGlassZebra Tax should be based on income. A higher income, a higher tax rate.
Vanpyro Gaming yes but you start to meddle infringements on freedom when you take more than half of someones earnings - personally i think extreme wealth can and should deal with perhaps up to 60% and thats got to be some real big wealth for me to consider that rate as 'agreeable for all'
+FibreGlassZebra If the rich don't like being taxed fairly then they can leave the country. See how long it takes them to find a country that will take them for the rates of tax they think they should pay. I'm guessing they'll end up somewhere remote and far away.
Hence, workers of the WORLD, unite.
So the top 1/5 have 60%. But then the top 1% also has 60%? I don't get it. How can the top 1% have the same as the top 25%. Am I missing something here or does this not make any sense?
+Jonny Marshall They don't have 60% of the wealth, they have more wealth than 60% of the population combined. Which is more. The video uses the number 60 a lot of times to I had to do a double-take there too.
+Carl Butcher Thanks that makes more sense.
Why is it always the 1% how much is owned by the 0.1% or even the 0.01%?
Seems like a similar video made about the US. It's very much alike actually. I mean videos not inequality.
Outrageous! Blooming outrageous! Tell me again, what's wrong with socialism?
+AFewReels It STEALS YOUR money and GIVES it to someone else that hasn't earned it. If you think that's fine with you then give me your bank details or else STFU.
+Itsmeeman1 You don't know what you are talking about!
Ryan M Speak for yourself. Moron!
Really showing your lack of education and Intelligence. It's like you didn't even watch the video. You were completely wrong and misinformed:
1. It does not steal your money!
2. Bank card comment was completely moronic to say
Here is some information: Socialist ideas are for the people by the people with the idea of sharing. Very popular all across Europe and in some northern European counties they are very socialist and their people have a better standard of living.
What taxes pay for is Education (you need some!), healthcare, Country's infrastructure and a lot of very important services. In a highly capitalist country like America... They do not guarantee healthcare to all people as a right, 1 in 5 Americans can't afford the prescription drugs they need . They have major problems because it is so rigged for the 1% and the UK is already moving in the opposite direction.
I am quite sorry that you feel like greed and selfishness is a good thing.. Only looking out for yourself. That is not a British value or real democracy. The NHS is can be classified as a socialist idea, the fact that if you lose your job you get some benefits until you secure another, if you have babies you get paid leave and you get time off work for holidays.... All quite socialist. In France my friend pays nothing for university know why? because they have social policies that say education is a right regardless of the income off your family.
Ryan M
Perhaps my comment got lost . . . I offer a set of solutions to all five economic mechanisms that create income- and economic-inequality in the papers' page at the interest free money pages. Depending on the language that you find congenial, this solution-set is variously called 'The Fair World Project', 'The Campaign for Co-operative Socialism' or 'The Kingdom of Heaven - by Tuesday!' (The latter is to be found at The Network Project). For local action, please search for BIEG.
You mean exactly like the UK right now, in every way?
Why is this shocking? Those who go out and invent something are celebrities, once you have capital you can earn much more
Indeed Simone
Our expense, that they refund five-fold, twice annually.
This may well be true, but its also the case that the poorest people are becoming *less* poor as time goes on, wouldn't you rather have a society where the poorest people are significantly less poor than they were 20 years ago yet have a larger inequality between the rich and the poor? Don't forget that we all benefit from the extremely rich through taxes. I'm not overly comfortable with billionaires that have no use for such a ridiculous amount of wealth, but on the other hand if the system benefits everyone then I would happily put my prejudice aside. Also what is the sources for these claims, I thought the ratio between the top 20% and the bottom 20% was 720%, not 10 000% (income) as being claimed in this video.
I imagine inflation and such is a concern
You set up a false dichotomy between:
the current system where the poor may be marginally less poor than they were 20 years ago but the inequality gap is bigger, and
an imagined situation where the poor people would be poorer because the inequality gap didn't get bigger!
How about this for a better aspiration: the rich don't get any more rich so the increased wealth of the country can be more fairly distributed ovearll by reducing sales taxes (VAT), establishing a minimum wage that is at the living wage level and index-linked to inflation, increasing tax-free thresholds so that people don't pay taxes until they are earning above the living wage, subsidise/nationalise water and power so that profits aren't made of the poorest etc.......
On your point about the ratios - the ratios are about wealth distribution not income distribution.
On income though, we don't all benefit from the extremely rich through taxes anywhere near as much as you seem to think because income tax only funds about 30% of all tax revenue. Regressive taxes such as NI and VAT, fuel and alcohol duties (which weigh proportionately much heavier on lower income earners) contribute more than half of tax revenue. As a result the top 10% of earners only contribute 16% of the total tax revenue thorough income tax.
The wealth is unfairly distributed and the income is unfairly distributed.
Phil Collie Yes and a system where the wealth is distributed unfairly comes with capitalism, it doesn't necessarily make it a bad thing. The poor are not marginally less poor than they were 30 years ago, the difference in absolute terms (taking inflation into account) is significant, and that is more important than the variance. I'm not saying there isn't an issue with the tax system, but you cannot tax the rich realistically anymore than 50%; I'm taking about income here, as by this point you are reducing incentive and becomes cheaper to use loopholes to evade. And in terms of income for the richest its already 45%. Wrg to other taxes, yes I see the issue there, though I see nothing wrong with heavily taxing alcohol being a non essential, and actually heavy alcohol taxes benefit everyone as taxation is the single most effective way to curb binge drinking which reduces strain on the NHS which we are also taxed for.
*****
Foods banks, people in full time work needing benefits, fuel poverty. The poor are too poor. Oh and the 1%' total wealth increased by 15% whilst this was happening.
Jack Byrne Inflation is a con .- manipulated down by leaving out some high rising price things - maybe food - and adding in high tech items that crash into the market at high price then come down. peoples wages and the national health services get their increases at this low rate. which is why both are struggling to keep afloat. Cost of living rises are massively higher. So for 30 years yuo been getting 3% max while the cost of living goes up over 20% at the worst of the recession. This inflation rate is called the cpi. This does not mess with the economy as there is a second rate of inflation the RPI for that; at the rise in the cost of living; and as pure coincidence would have it the MPS award themselves 11% - bang on the rise in the cost of living.
And instead of moaning about the fact you're not up there with the wealthy people, do something about it to get there.
Ashley Tunley How? Not everyone can be at the top. Not everyone can afford the required education. Not everyone is able bodied or able minded enough to do skilled jobs. Not everyone has the family connections to be born into wealth.
See, this is the problem - simply saying 'work harder' or something similar isn't a solution. The system itself is the problem - not everyone can be a CEO or Megastar earning millions every year because the system can't sustain itself. It relies on having an underclass of lowly paid workers so that those CEO's and Megastars can be rich.
No amount of hard work as a care worker, nurse, telesalesperson, cleaner or primary school teacher will get you even in the 'middle class' of wealth (the middle 20%). Yet these are all high-stress jobs that are essential to modern life. And many people can't even get a job due to how bad the economy still is!
andromidius There always has to be someone doing the 'dirty' work - there always has to be people to work the fields, manufacture goods, staff the shops and transport the cargo between places.
That's why it's not possible at the moment for everyone to simply 'work their way up', because working one's way up involves standing atop the shoulders of others.
As time goes on and more work becomes automated, then more people will become structurally unemployed and there more than likely won't be enough newer jobs being created - at this point the vast majority of the economy: manufacturing, transport, service etc. would be automated apart from a handful of occupations where humans serve as quality control (politicians, judges and such, although it's worth noting that in the 1970s the Chilean leader, with the help of some British economists, designed a computer network to co-ordinate the economy known as 'Cybersyn' but unfortunately it was destroyed when Pinochet seized power with the help of the USA). These unemployed people are the ones who buy the products made by those machines, so without them having anyone 'on top' owning the machines would be pointless, so there would need to be some kind of universal basic income.
Exactly! I think a lot of people are living in the past where they think everyone HAS to have a job - in this society its actually impossible due to technology and economic.
andromidius Unemployment is even desired - no matter what a whole host of politicians say, it's intrinsic within the current system to keep people unemployed, ostensibly with the purpose of keeping down inflation
(for example, Conservative minister Norman Lamont said that it's a price worth paying (for low inflation)).
Unemployment also reduces the bargaining power of the working class, pushing wages down to a minimum, and squeezing as much output per worker as possible. If you're a business owner, you're going to bloody love unemployment as long as people are still buying your products (which people have generally been doing over the past 30 years despite suppressed wages thanks to credit, but this borrowed consumption needs to be paid for at some point, and with still-suppressed wages how likely is that?)
if it was that easy the rich wouldn't be rich and they always make sure that things don't get easy for the lowly peasants..
does this consider age? an 18 year old makes far less money than a 50 year old, is that unfair? now consider at one point that 50 year old at one point was 18 and was making far less than some other 50 year old.
Since when was 60 almost twice as much as 40 lmao
rounded. If you count the coins, it's actually 37 and a bit vs 62 (an a bit). Still not quite double, but it's getting close. Just a few more % shift and it's double. (33 to 66 would be it)
wealth inequality is not necessarily unfair - should a person working at a supermarket checkout really be paid the same as a CEO, doctor or lawyer? The answer is clearly no. Capitalism is an elegant solution where, as long as there is enough competition in the market, each person is paid according to their worth to society and markets naturally reach an equilibrium with the help of the price mechanism.
That's what happen when you don't EXPLAIN the concept to people you ask question to. Wealth(stock) and income(flow) are two different things.
The so called "ideal" wealth distribution of 25% for th 20% richer and 15% to the poorer is plain stupid. Even if you would give everyone the same amount of income this wouldn't be possible. Because wealth is a stock. Peoples who spend less would have more wealth. If you add to that the fact that we don't start at the same stage of life, some people are young and don't have much wealth and some people are old.
Sure... if you still believe the lie that wealth is something you earn. (And if you don't know about inheritance.)
The biggest, easiest source of income, in a capitalist system, is *already being rich*. Investment returns swamp skill / salary returns, always. So wealth inequality *automatically creates* income inequality.
*****
I am explaining concepts you moron. I study economics, I know what those words mean and you obviously dont.
I'll explain in a way you can understand: If I produce 1 bar of chocolate per hour this is the equivalent of the income (or the flow) and if with that production I have RIGHT NOW, 100 bar of chocolate, this is my wealth (or my stock).
You come here and say "OH! You are wrong because someone out there found 20 bar of chocolate!"... What the fuck does it have to do with the damn definition, you tool?
Wealth is the accumulation of ressources, income is the ressource you gain in a given period. This is true by definition.
I'm not going to adress what you asserted without any fact because your opinion is only based on bias, bigotry and good old popular ignorance.
If you would just search a little bit you could find that being rich by inheritance is extremely rare. And I don't see the problem with it. Their parents made a lot of money and didnt spend it all so that their children could inherit some money. Who are you to say that they shouldn't have that money?
God I hate anti-capitalist prick that think they should decide for everyone else.
Maxime Desrosiers surely you mean you study economics?
MsPositiveperson
Oh, sorry I am french.
Maxime Desrosiers
You may study economics, but you're clearly a poor teacher of it. (And, I believe, a poor student... since apparently you've "studied economics" without ever encountering the concepts of investment income, rent-seeking, or understanding why pure free-market societies rapidly cease to be free-market.)
Yes, wealth is a stock and income is, well, an income.
But in our current system, *possessing wealth stock automatically grants a proportional income*. This effect outweighs - massively outweighs - the income which an individual can earn by skill alone, in the absence of a wealth stock.
So let's use your analogy: Yes, people can earn from one to five chocolate bars a year (according to their varying talents at wealth creation). And yes, chocolate wealth has nothing to do with that.
*But* for every hundred chocolate bars you own, you get to have five more every year. And if you have a wealth over 1000 chocolate bars, then people who have under 100 aren't allowed to earn their 1-5 chocolate bar income at all unless they give you one of their chocolate bars. And defrauding people of their chocolate bars is illegal (if you do it one at a time), but if you have a wealth over 10,000 chocolate bars, you're allowed to cut the corners off everyone else's chocolate bars and melt them into new bars for yourself, and you can pay the government two maltesers a year to ensure
(When you say "being rich by inheritance is extremely rare" - which statistics are you using? Even in London it's about 20%, and that's just about the lowest proportion of inherited wealth in the world, because it's become a tax haven for hyper-rich oligarchs. Forbes' say it's 30% of their rich list - and that's going to be an *under*-estimate if anything. If that's your definition of "extremely rare", then I recommend you put economics on hold and attend a class in basic mathematics.
Not that it matters; if a few oligarchs get to benefit from runaway self-compounding wealth concentration, privatising the profits from their ventures while socialising all the risk, it doesn't really matter whether they inherited their wealth or built it - the destructive effect to everyone else is the same either way.)
But the *really* tellatale sign of your foolishness comes at the end, under "God I hate anti-capitalist prick that think they should decide for everyone else." So, anyone who disagrees with your over-simplified and fundamentally inaccurate characterisation of our economics has to be "anti-capitalist", do they?
Gosh, that's weird. I thought I was just pointing out that one person had made a stupid and shallow analysis on the internet, and it turns out that *really* means I've reversed my lifetime support of the free market and changed into an "anti-capitalist" (whatever that means).
That last bit was sarcasm. I'm pointing this out in case that's another economic concept you've "studied" and don't understand.
Who stole the land and peoples labour?
I guess you're not counting the individuals with mental health issues who are incapable of working hard due to disorders.. is that not a good enough reason to be unable to work hard and study? How on earth can you say it's very simple to do well? Many struggle, for a number of different reasons outside their free will.
Honestly, I would be completely fine if the situation where "How we think it is."
And I am 100% in support of a communist revolution until that point.
In all countries people suffer mental health issues . 1 in 4 people suffer from depression at some point in their lives but not the length of a 45 year career. You are using a minority issue to make a point and I am talking about the population in general. If you don't like your situation only you can change it. As EU citizens we can try our luck in 27 other countries.
Everyone has a great chance to get on in hte UK. It starts from birth, we are given health, education and told by hte state to work hard at school and the opportunites will come.
We are a long way from the old boys club of years ago.
We all get a great chance, it's up to us how we take that chance.
What the heck you only put 99.6 pounds not 100
All these videos are failing to mention the difference between wealth and income. Poor people have nearly zero wealth. Rich people who rely on their wealth for income have proportionately more. It would be more accurate to compare both income and wealth and explain the difference.
At least you guys don't live in America and actually have something called safety nets. lol
I thought Britain was better than this. I already saw a video exactly like this for the US, shocker (not really). Am I now gonna see a video like this for Canada, I sure hope not, I hope we're better than this, but probably aren't
I don't buy into the argument that wealth inequality is a driver for useful human production.
If you believe that the profit motive is the only motivation to undertake any socially useful endeavour then you have the buy into the idea that humans are by nature selfish, uncooperative individuals. If you conceive of humans as fundamentally social animals with a capacity for such things as empathy, a need to create and the need to live in a community then socialism makes more sense.
If those who support massive wealth inequalities see the less well off as feckless and lazy, then I would counter that the 'heroic individualists' at the top of the pile are particularly ruthless and anti social. A whole economic system based on the creation of profits for individuals will inevitably favour those unburdened by basic concerns for their fellow humans.
How much wealth is created by socially unproductive endeavours like landlordism and financial speculation? Not only does the profit motive create the conditions for socially useless wealth creation, but socially and environmentally destructive behaviour.
This is before I even mention inheritance.
That worked out well in the Soviet Union....
What did? Are you going to claim that it's a simple binary choice between Stalin's Russia and runaway unregulated shareholder capitalism. 😂
And what is suggested to adjust this issue?
Redistribute wealth? Removing the incentive to create wealth to the point where no wealth exists at all?
Capitalism does unfairly distribute wealth, but all that socialism does is fairly distribute poverty.
The incentive is still there. The incentive difference between earning 100 times what you currently are and earning 10,000 times is negligible, if non-existent. It's like the difference between getting 100 years in prison and 10,000.
What's suggested is fairer taxes, stronger unions, rigorous regulation of the financial sector, some pretty simple stuff.
Apparently, when capitalism ends, money just magically teleports away. Mhmm..Also, that's not how socialism works. Look, if your only incentive to do stuff is because of money, maybe you should look at yourself in the mirror and think about the human being you are. People create for passion, fame, a sense of morality, duty or other personal reasons. The most passionate and brightest don't do it for the money. They do it because they like to do it, or feel obligated to do so.
i have been to Cuba and I can say its more fair than the USA
And what would your solution be to this "problem"? Make the rich just hand out money to the poor? Why would they do that, they earned that money.
While I believe that the poorest should have a little bit more money, just enough to get by a little better, I don't think that the richest people in the country should only have twice as much as the poorest, as your "what it should be like" graph would suggest.
That's worse than USA
What about inequality in India
lollolllll
So you want to compare us to India, please tell me this is a joke.
#whataboutism in action
still better than American wealth inequality
Way better
Way wurse
Sahbi 030 VDB
Look at America's wealth inequality then come back and talk
Yeah, if you can afford to just get up and move to another country, buying plane tickets and a house there like so many of the poorest people can... oh wait.