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 Originally Posted by poop
The state taxes us, that is taking wealth from people. I suppose you want to abolish that too? Ok, no more roads, etc.
No. Taxing people is not the same as telling people what they can and cannot do with their assets.
And I don't have a problem with inheritance in principle. I have a problem with the royal family getting £100m a year of our money to walk around being useless.
Ok, it's just inheritance is an important factor when it comes to dynasty families.
£100m a year is chump change fwiw. Jude Bellingham will cost more than that this summer. If that's how much it costs to maintain and staff their properties, and pay for their security, that's fine. They obviously need security. That's not their fault, that's the fault of bad actors.
Fine, let them keep some of their property.
Try to absorb the tone of this comment.
"Let them keep..."
You're talking as though you have the authority to take away legal possessions of someone else based on your moral opinion of whether they deserve their possessions.
The RF has exactly the same rights as you do when it comes to property. Nobody can say you don't deserve a nice car so we'll just take that away from you and leave you with a Fiat Panda. That's essentially what you're implying with language like "let them keep...".
I haven't lived in Europe, but I doubt it is an issue the way it is here. My postdoc is French, and she says class is not a thing in France the way it is here. That's what happens when you abolish the monarcy.
I mean, you seem to think we have class in this country because of the monarchy, like that's the reason for it. That's utterly ludicrous. It's not the 1400s anymore. We're not a society of royal landowners and peasants in the 2000s. The RF might represent the extreme elite, but that's not something any normal person can relate to.
Class happens because of income inequality. It's socioeconomics, nothing to do with the constitutional status of a state.
France definitely has social issues, mostly Paris and Marseilles. Migrants are not treated well and are treated as a lower class. You've got a fine wining and dining culture, world class museums and galleries, this shit is expensive. French culture is so refined that it's going to breed class into their society. Do you think the poor people gazing through the windows of Paris' finest eateries and hotels think class doesn't exist in France?
In Canada and the US (where I have lived), no-one talks about what class a person is. It just isn't a thing.
We regularly use terms like "working class" and "middle class" but that's nearly everyone in the country and basically mean the same thing. Then you've got "lower class" which is the unemployed and low earners, and the "upper class", which is a small class of people. It's almost entirely casual economic classification. These same groups of people exist in the USA, and if you think it's not a thing you obviously don't know the terms "redneck" and "trailer trash". These are highly classist terms. Maybe Canada is different, which is funny because they aren't a federal republic, as you're aware. They're a constitutional monarchy, like us, because they have the same king.
And I know for a fact that class has been historically a bigger issue here than in Germany, France, and Italy.
Sure, historically, given our RF did once yield ultimate power over the population. And there was near constant rivalry and vying for the throne. Loyalists get rewarded with land, rivals get exiled and executed, it was a completely different world back then. I don't think there are many RF supporters who want to go back to those days.
I know a fellow prof who has a bug up his ass because he comes from a working class family. Nobody where I'm from would give a shit, they'd just say 'so what?'.
Most people in the UK don't give a shit, and you'll find individuals in USA and Canada who have the very same bug up their ass, if you're unlucky enough to meet such a person. Doesn't everyone in USA want their kid to be a doctor? Class exists in USA because people naturally seek a better lifestyle.
You met an arsehole. There are tons of them in the UK and everywhere else.
Even the language you use here. People use the words 'working class', 'middle class', 'upper class', all the time when they talk about politics. So again, obviously it's a big thing.
We use those terms because we recognise it instead of pretending it doesn't exist.
And you shouldn't have a whole group of aristocrats who's biggest contribution to the world is say "pwahhh!" and riding around on horses and shooting foxes.
Well they shouldn't be shooting foxes for sport, it's illegal, but other than that you're quite literally being classist here. Why do you care what they do with their spare time?
btw, as much as fox hunting is brutal and definitely a sport to them, its purpose is to ensure the fox is terrified of human contact. If they weren't hunted like that, if they didn't have as much reason to fear humans and dogs, they'd be a bigger problem. It's not pest control it's complete and utter dominance over a potentially dangerous predator. Fuck foxes. They're not our cute furry friends. They need to be kept in their place.
You recognise that income inequality and class are related, but I think you're underplaying how related they are. A country with no class is a country with no income inequality, which very probably means everyone is poor. Even Qatar has class, a country where every Qatari citizen is rich, because they import labour and don't grant economic migrants citizenship.
For the most part, income inequality is driven by market forces. Footballers are filthy rich because so many people around the world are willing to pay absurd amounts of money to watch them play. Everyone agrees they get paid too much, but how do you control it? It's a free market, people can and do choose to pay. So footballers are paid what they are economically worth.
People are paid what they're worth to their employer based purely on economics. How do you close the income inequality gap? By regulating the cost of goods and services?
The inequality gap in a civilised country is the natural evolution of a market. It's like a civilised food chain. You can't close the gap by design, not in a free market, it happens if market forces dictate. All you can do is climb the food chain. The cost of inertia is you are plankton, drifting through life for the benefit of others.
You can create the socioeconomic conditions to improve job opportunities, such as bringing in hi tech jobs, but that might increase the wage gap, not decrease it. If 10000 people who were previously earning the average suddenly got a pay rise of 50%, the wage gap just increased slightly, despite the fact that the average wage also just went up.
So this is why low income inequality probably means more serious problems. It's likely a low income society.
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