Lucy Mangan: a bit rich [shared from Weave for Windows Phone]
Lucy Mangan: 'The rich will always be with us. The problem is that they've never been quite this rich before.' Photograph: H Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Corbis
Sometimes a set of figures emerges that is so simple, so elegant, so lucid that even a pea-brained arts graduate such as myself can understand it. So it is with Oxfam's recently released finding that five families in the UK possess more wealth than the poorest 20% of their fellow citizens, the domestic equivalent of its previous finding that, globally, 85 billionaires have as much money as half the world's population.
Regard: the Duke of Westminster (worth £7.9bn) + David and Simon Reuben (£6.9bn) + the Hinduja brothers (£6bn) + Earl Cadogan (£4bn) + owner of Newcastle United Mike Ashley (£3.3bn) = £28.2bn. Average wealth of bottom 12.6m people = £2,230 x aforementioned 12.6m = £28.1bn. I get it.
Obviously, I accept the Thatcherite argument that if we were to supertax the rich, or cap their earnings, or limit in any way the motivations and rewards for hard work, innovation and entrepreneurship, they would all depart and leave everyone in the UK worse off. Earl Cadogan would stop Cadoganning instantly. He'd lay down his Cadoganning tools and go off to Cadogan elsewhere in a heartbeat, closely followed by the Duke of Westminster, as soon as he'd managed to close the lid on a steamer trunk packed with his 190 acres of prime Belgravia real estate.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/mar/22/lucy-mangan-5-richest-own-more-than-bottom-20-percent
Εστάλη από το Windows Phone μου
Lucy Mangan: 'The rich will always be with us. The problem is that they've never been quite this rich before.' Photograph: H Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Corbis
Sometimes a set of figures emerges that is so simple, so elegant, so lucid that even a pea-brained arts graduate such as myself can understand it. So it is with Oxfam's recently released finding that five families in the UK possess more wealth than the poorest 20% of their fellow citizens, the domestic equivalent of its previous finding that, globally, 85 billionaires have as much money as half the world's population.
Regard: the Duke of Westminster (worth £7.9bn) + David and Simon Reuben (£6.9bn) + the Hinduja brothers (£6bn) + Earl Cadogan (£4bn) + owner of Newcastle United Mike Ashley (£3.3bn) = £28.2bn. Average wealth of bottom 12.6m people = £2,230 x aforementioned 12.6m = £28.1bn. I get it.
Obviously, I accept the Thatcherite argument that if we were to supertax the rich, or cap their earnings, or limit in any way the motivations and rewards for hard work, innovation and entrepreneurship, they would all depart and leave everyone in the UK worse off. Earl Cadogan would stop Cadoganning instantly. He'd lay down his Cadoganning tools and go off to Cadogan elsewhere in a heartbeat, closely followed by the Duke of Westminster, as soon as he'd managed to close the lid on a steamer trunk packed with his 190 acres of prime Belgravia real estate.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/mar/22/lucy-mangan-5-richest-own-more-than-bottom-20-percent
Εστάλη από το Windows Phone μου
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