British fail?

[drfchound]

There are some amazing opportunities for people to become really wealthy now BST.
Some people get there through hard work and some by luck but as you know, money makes money so invariably, wealthy people can more easily add to what they have.
There will always be super rich people.

[Bentley Bullet]

Well I don’t agree with strikes for a start.
Lots of lads I knew back in the days of mass strikes daren’t vote against going on strike.
They felt that they had no option.
The union leaders had them over a barrel.

This is true. I know miners who were told where to put their cross on the voting slip and were watched as they did it.

Before you ask I have no proof of this but I know it's the absolute truth.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Hound.

I'm not questioning that. I'm questioning whether you are happy with the AMOUNT going to the very richest. If you are, just say so.

[drfchound]

I am neither happy or unhappy about it.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Would you mind if I give you a bit of context then. See if it helps you get off the fence?

That graph I posted on the previous page. It shows that from 1979-today, the share on national income taken by the richest 1% (that's about 300,000 people) has gone up from 5%-15%.

That 10% increase is equivalent to about £250bn per year.

That's enough to pay for the following Government services.

The NHS
The police and courts budget
The housing budget and
The transport budget.

Now, when the unions were being crushed by Thatcher, she insisted it was essential that we allow the wealthiest off the leash, because they would provide the dynamism and entrepreneurship that we needed to get the economy flourishing.

Guess what?

UK average economic growth per year from 1980-now (when we've had weak unions) is significantly lower than it was from 1950-1980 (when we had strong unions).

So there you go. The unions have been crushed. The economy has done worse since then. But the very richest have pocketed most of the proceeds of the growth we have had.

Still happy with that?

[Bentley Bullet]

Have the 3 thousand UK lottery winners affected those figures?

[BillyStubbsTears]

Work it out BB. It's primary school.level sums.

If you assume that everyone of them won £10m, that's £30bn. Over 25 years. That's about £1.2bn per year. Or 0.5% of that increase.

[SydneyRover]

Private train operators have creamed off £3.5billion from running our railways over the past 10 years to 2017.

All those 2% add up?

These gigantic profits come despite passengers having to deal with overcrowding, delays, cancellations, strikes and among the highest ticket prices in Europe.

It got worse yesterday as fare increases averaging out at 2.3% were introduced.

An investigation probing for the first time the true cost of rail privatisation, has found that tens of millions of pounds are spent on fatcat wages.

Scrutinised the accounts of 10 private firms involved in running train services and found they made £407million in profits last year alone.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/board-gravy-train-rail-firms-9553889