Is the reason we have billionaires....

Osboro

Well-known member
...the same reason we have abject poverty in the world and food banks operating in the richest counties in the world?.
I only ask as some people on this board , when discussing the markets, don't seem to think so.
If there is no link, or if there is an absolute link, what could we do , in simple terms ,to reduce the negative side of this disparity?
 
in order for capitalism to exist there needs to be a disparity of wealth that is what drives it. You needs the haves and the have nots in order for aspiration or the illusion of aspiration to exist ( look at the American dream for a perfect example of this delusion).
 
Capitalism, without restraint, was always going to lead us here. Believing that the wealthy being allowed to dodge tax would somehow turn them into a Christmas morning Scrooge, giving everything to people poorer than themselves was always a ridiculous notion. Yet the nation went for Cameron's Big Society guff.

But it goes back further than that. Reagan and Thatcher with their Trust The Markets dogma have a lot to answer for. It should always be the job of government to look after all of its people but from that point, governments increasingly bowed to the corporates and this is where we end up; the have-nots scrabbling for grit while their uber-rich overlords - often in truth just utterly selfish narcissists - live in opulence, giving nothing back for the privilege.
 
Don't any of the International economic experts ( and I know one who is a Boro fan and may well post on this site) remember that lovely friendly family games of monopoly end with either one person owning everything or someone kicking the board over?
 
Don't any of the International economic experts ( and I know one who is a Boro fan and may well post on this site) remember that lovely friendly family games of monopoly end with either one person owning everything or someone kicking the board over?
Or ripping the board in half along the fold at our house, Christmas memories.....
 
About time a few more of our people started kicking the board over but it won't happen.

I'm interested in what solutions there could be here.
Chatting to a good mate of mine at the weekend (he is in the seriously wealthy category) who does have a social conscience.
We got to the stage where a 'wealth tax' just appears a crude device which could also prove problematic to those who are property rich but not cash rich.
Moved on to CGT and wondered what the implications would be for a top rate to be applied to sales of shares. Clearly needs to be a caveat for those where you lose. In general tho - we buy shares and if we are fortunate enough to get upside it is 'free money'. Higher CGT just dilutes it.

My favourite but unpopular thought is inheritance tax - when you die, it all goes back to the state. It will also stimulate spend in later life too.

The difficulty with all this is you need a government who wants to spend any extra tax income on those in need.
 
I'm interested in what solutions there could be here.
Chatting to a good mate of mine at the weekend (he is in the seriously wealthy category) who does have a social conscience.
We got to the stage where a 'wealth tax' just appears a crude device which could also prove problematic to those who are property rich but not cash rich.
Moved on to CGT and wondered what the implications would be for a top rate to be applied to sales of shares. Clearly needs to be a caveat for those where you lose. In general tho - we buy shares and if we are fortunate enough to get upside it is 'free money'. Higher CGT just dilutes it.

My favourite but unpopular thought is inheritance tax - when you die, it all goes back to the state. It will also stimulate spend in later life too.

The difficulty with all this is you need a government who wants to spend any extra tax income on those in need.
Tieing up estates into trusts would need to be tightened.
 
I'm interested in what solutions there could be here.
Chatting to a good mate of mine at the weekend (he is in the seriously wealthy category) who does have a social conscience.
We got to the stage where a 'wealth tax' just appears a crude device which could also prove problematic to those who are property rich but not cash rich.
Moved on to CGT and wondered what the implications would be for a top rate to be applied to sales of shares. Clearly needs to be a caveat for those where you lose. In general tho - we buy shares and if we are fortunate enough to get upside it is 'free money'. Higher CGT just dilutes it.

My favourite but unpopular thought is inheritance tax - when you die, it all goes back to the state. It will also stimulate spend in later life too.

The difficulty with all this is you need a government who wants to spend any extra tax income on those in need.
Tighten up Corporation Tax. I'm a Ltd company but if I declared my profits and started negotiating with HMRC about how little I could get away with paying them I'd be prosecuted. Yet once a company gets to a certain level, this seems to be standard practice. We're talking billions here.
 
in order for capitalism to exist there needs to be a disparity of wealth that is what drives it. You needs the haves and the have nots in order for aspiration or the illusion of aspiration to exist ( look at the American dream for a perfect example of this delusion).
I think it's the other way round really. People become really wealthy because they invent some good or service that everyone wants, and they make gobs of money from that. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos and Sergey Brin weren't wealthy people who invested in businesses. They were regular people who started businesses and became wealthy. The wealth is a happy by-product but that wasn't the reason they started these businesses.
 
I think it's the other way round really. People become really wealthy because they invent some good or service that everyone wants, and they make gobs of money from that. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos and Sergey Brin weren't wealthy people who invested in businesses. They were regular people who started businesses and became wealthy. The wealth is a happy by-product but that wasn't the reason they started these businesses.
What have the other 2091 billionaires done?
 
Tighten up Corporation Tax. I'm a Ltd company but if I declared my profits and started negotiating with HMRC about how little I could get away with paying them I'd be prosecuted. Yet once a company gets to a certain level, this seems to be standard practice. We're talking billions here.
When multi national companies negotiate with HMRC it's because they are due to pay nothing, or very little Corporation Tax. What would you rather happen - they pay nothing, or have a negotiation and pay a little? Clearly this is an iniquitous situation but, at the moment anyway, it's very easy and lawful for multinational companies to declare revenue wherever they want and therefore move profits around accordingly.

With the UK outside of the EU it will be a bit easier to chase large companies for appropriate taxes, but in reality the only feasible solution to revenue shifting is a sales tax at the point of sale. That would be quite hard to implement and it's not going to help the poorer people at all because it'll drive up prices as the tax is passed on.

It's just hard to close this loophole, if it wasn't it would have been done by now.
 
Harry do you think any national government would have collectively got together to almost clear a number of illnesses that have killed 100's of millions in the way Bill Gates and Warren Buffet has?
 
We need a population who have the ability to recognise the gap and what measures were taken to expand it.

Contemporary history should play more of a role in education, that includes the way various political philosophies have been put into action and their outcomes.

We are well aware of the overt atrocities carried out by dictatorships but not of the more covert atrocities being carried out by what we celebrate as democracies, the USA and UK for example though there are more.

If we're to celebrate compassion, which for me is a necessary facet of civilised society, then we must condemn the greed and malice which has been steering this country since the mid to late 70's.
 
f we're to celebrate compassion, which for me is a necessary facet of civilised society, then we must condemn the greed and malice which has been steering this country since the mid to late 70's.

Greed and malice do need to be called out but we do have to find a way to do that so we don't create further unnecessary division. There are many wealthy people out there with a social conscience who do more than their bit.
 
When multi national companies negotiate with HMRC it's because they are due to pay nothing, or very little Corporation Tax. What would you rather happen - they pay nothing, or have a negotiation and pay a little? Clearly this is an iniquitous situation but, at the moment anyway, it's very easy and lawful for multinational companies to declare revenue wherever they want and therefore move profits around accordingly.

With the UK outside of the EU it will be a bit easier to chase large companies for appropriate taxes, but in reality the only feasible solution to revenue shifting is a sales tax at the point of sale. That would be quite hard to implement and it's not going to help the poorer people at all because it'll drive up prices as the tax is passed on.

It's just hard to close this loophole, if it wasn't it would have been done by now.
Hardly - the fact that the EU was working on rules for this, was one of the reasons the tories went for Brexit.
 
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