How much wealth is acceptable?

ninky_2

alfiesmum wrote: »

Somebody may have already done this link, my apolgies if they have, I haven't had time to read right through at the moment. It might interest a few of you: http://www.globalrichlist.com/
It will tell you where you are in the worlds richest people list.

thanks for that. it turns out i'm stinking rich.:D

seriously though it's a fair point. the real out and out poverty is not to be found (legally) in this country.

LilyRose

An interesting thread. As previously mentioned, the real problem in Britain is social mobility, or lack of. Two things I'd like to mention:

First, the Norman Tebbit philosophy - that the unemployed should 'get on their bike' and find a job - would be fine, if he applied it to work-shy rich kids, as well as the poor. Then we'd have something resembling a real meritocracy. The problem is that social mobility is only a one-way street, or 'upwardly mobile'. Some deprived children can become middle-class adults with enough graft and luck, but it's very, very difficult for a middle-class person to ever become truly poor. You could argue that in a true capitalist system, nobody - however rich at birth - should be entitled to anything.

Secondly, how do we define success? A tax officer or a venture capitalist might earn tons of money, but why should we admire their achievements any more than we would a teacher, fireman, policeman, nurse, etc? It's hard to put an economic value on certain intangibles, i.e. a nurse helping a sick patient. I personally would value the nurse more highly than someone whose job it is to help rich people reduce their tax bills (to the detriment of the British economy through lost tax revenues) but a free market system, as they say, knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.