US & UK are poor societies with some very rich people.

I have little expertise in this but interestingly, the British public, if I read correctly, still owns a considerable amount of the RBS after bail outs. For now, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) estimates that saving RBS cost the public £27 billion. Do Government stocks help with this?

I must reiterate - yet again (no doubt some of you will be bored by this) The B of E was formed out of a group of merchants who lent money to the then king to enable him to fund a war against France at the end of the 17th C and the beginning of the 18thC. The Bank of Scotland, on the other hand, was set up mainly to help the expansion of Scottish businesses.

England, via the Bank has continued to borrow money, usually to fund wars. The National Debt grew with the Napoleonic Wars, was repaid and then grew again (and was repaid) with WW1 and WW2.

As Maizie said, this is done by issuing government stocks. People invested in those stocks and in returned were paid interest on their loans. Government stocks have been and still are, safe investments for individuals.

Simplistic again I'm afraid.

I don't pretend to know about economics, but the concept of knowledge being time-dependent is interesting. Is it knowledge at all, if that it the case, or is it just a perspective?

If it is a perspective, then one point of view is neither better nor worse than another, and neither is objectively 'true'.

DaisyAnne, it was the way wrote your post, almost like demand and I did put down any qualifications before I came back to you, it’s just the way you came across and it sounded nasty.
GSM good to see you are keeping up with you legal information and I think I have explained to DaisyAnne that it was her tone. We are all experts in our own field.

Norah

It wasn't the Duke who donated money to the NHS, it was the Westminster Foundation which is a registered charity set up in 1974. This would have been funded by the various family trusts or members of the family personally. It's possible that the charity receives some government funding for some of its work.

As well as cash, property, land and shares can be given to a charity and there is tax relief available for such gifts.

I'm sure that you are aware that in the UK the threshold for paying inheritance tax is £325,000. Above that threshold the rate of tax payable on estates is 40%. There are many reliefs available to taxpayers, such as if your home is left to your children. In that case, provided that your estate is worth £2million or less, the threshold will increase to £500,000.

The fact is the Grosvenors and others like them (such as the Vestey family) pay no where near as much tax as is paid by most of the population.

You ask if the Duke's assets were taxed how would that benefit anyone else? I'm not talking about a wealth tax but the avoidance of tax (perfectly legal) on assets by the transfer of those assets into trusts. Included in the various trusts would be the properties occupied by members of the Grosvenor family. Once held by a trust the assets do not belong to the individual. Trusts are for the benefit of future generations, to keep wealth within the family.

On the death of his father the present duke inherited £9.6 billion. That represents rather a lot of tax not benefiting the country.
The treatment of trusts and charities is highly complicated and my response is necessarily short and simplistic.

I make my own clothes

I entirely agree Norah. The way of life of many is not conducive to saving. Their choice (thankfully not my son’s choice) but they can’t enjoy the lifestyle and complain about being unable to save.

I've never had my nails done, ever. Neither have my children and I've never drank coffee

MaizieD "The BoE has been quietly issuing money for decades to ensure that there is enough money in the economy (just as it says in the article). Why do you think that, despite population increases over the years, and increased prices and wages, there is still enough money in the economy to cover it all? It isn't because we've earned it from overseas trade (indeed, have we ever had a trade surplus? More exports than imports?) That's what the BoE Monetary Committee does. It not only controls interest rates, it decides how much new money is to be put into the economy. "

-- Sometimes I wonder if lend-lease (huge amount of money) and the 60+ yr payoff impacted or is still impacting the economy.

Just me, just a thought.

I thought it a perfectly reasonable question Daisy. Perhaps I can liken it to the legal textbooks I bought when studying. All long since thrown away despite their (to me) eye watering cost because they quickly become out of date. The knowledge of the generation of lawyers before me is similarly obsolete.

Barmeyoldbat

So. Norah what is a poor choice? Please give me an example

When our children were saving to buy first homes I'd have thought coffees out, nails, expensive clothing, vacations were poor choices. I can think of more if you like.

Barmeyoldbat

DaisyAnne, you are nasty, as far as I know you need know qualifications to come on GN,. Mr B is in the field of economics and my dad was an academic in that area, me I am just a simple soul who reads a great deal and can understand points are view., not that I have to justify myself to you. The simple concept is, you can’t just print endless streams of money when you need it, that would devalue it, you can borrow but have to pay back if you don’t then you lose your credit rating and when you need to borrow again interest is charged at a higher rate. Factors like Boris announcing he wasn’t going to pay the EU their divorce settlement would also have put us in a bad place. This is my simple understanding of it and one that I think is correct. So…… I will say no more about your nasty post because I will get banned.

I don't understand why asking if your information is up to date, is "nasty" so I have asked GNHQ to let me know if it is and if so, why.

You were quoting people's qualifications. I just picked up on their dates of learning - possibly some 50 or 60 years ago on a site like this. One thing that does change is the world's view of economics. It really did seem reasonable to ask. I didn't expect a personal attack from a simple question.

You have hope Maize, you have now added to my understanding, thank you for putting your post so nicely. I think somehow you and Monica are both on the same track but saying it differently.

The simple concept is, you can’t just print endless streams of money when you need it, that would devalue it, you can borrow but have to pay back if you don’t then you lose your credit rating and when you need to borrow again interest is charged at a higher rate.

But the simple concept is, as illustrated in the pieces from the BoE bulletin, that I posted earlier, that you can.

We don't borrow money from other countries, we sell bonds , in sterling, to anyone who will purchase them, and the bonds are bought because the purchasers know that they will be repaid. They know we will not default on the debt because we can issue our own currency. The purchasers are people or institutions looking for a safe investment and a guaranteed income from the interest. This has been happening for centuries.

The BoE has been quietly issuing money for decades to ensure that there is enough money in the economy (just as it says in the article). Why do you think that, despite population increases over the years, and increased prices and wages, there is still enough money in the economy to cover it all? It isn't because we've earned it from overseas trade (indeed, have we ever had a trade surplus? More exports than imports?) That's what the BoE Monetary Committee does. It not only controls interest rates, it decides how much new money is to be put into the economy.

Inflation is devaluation. That's why the BoE focusses on keeping it to a low level. That's why taxation exists, to mop up excess money in the economy so that inflation is kept under control. Except that inflation has more than one cause and our current bout is nothing to do with the 'too much money chasing too few goods' cause; it's because the cost of what we buy has, for various reasons, increased. No amount of interest rate increases are going to stop that.

I'm sorry that people don't even believe the Bank of England when it tells it like it is. What hope do I have...?

DaisyAnne, you are nasty, as far as I know you need know qualifications to come on GN,. Mr B is in the field of economics and my dad was an academic in that area, me I am just a simple soul who reads a great deal and can understand points are view., not that I have to justify myself to you. The simple concept is, you can’t just print endless streams of money when you need it, that would devalue it, you can borrow but have to pay back if you don’t then you lose your credit rating and when you need to borrow again interest is charged at a higher rate. Factors like Boris announcing he wasn’t going to pay the EU their divorce settlement would also have put us in a bad place. This is my simple understanding of it and one that I think is correct. So…… I will say no more about your nasty post because I will get banned.

Barmeyoldbat

Sorry Maisie had a look at your link, followed by a discussion with Mr B who referred to hhis book on the subject and has said basically Monica is right, as was my dad.

What were MOnica and your dad right about?

Barmeyoldbat

Sorry Maisie had a look at your link, followed by a discussion with Mr B who referred to hhis book on the subject and has said basically Monica is right, as was my dad.

How old is your learning and your book. Have you worked academically in the economics field in recent years? Economy is a concept and concepts change. Have yours or those you are consulting?

Germanshepherdsmum

‘People like you’ Daisy? What a nasty thing to say.

Why is it nasty? The benefits system is universal and designed to take the decision out of the hands of the ordinary public, especially those who used their judgement, not the person's need, to make them. It was to do away with the concept of the deserving and the underserving poor. There was an example of such judgemental views in the posts to which I replied. If anything is nasty, it's the sense of superiority which makes people think they can make such judgements.

We turned to a system that unjudgementally works out the eligibility, not whether we like people or thought them to be behaving appropriately. There was a reason for that. It seems there is a need to be alert for those reasons returning.

Sorry Maisie had a look at your link, followed by a discussion with Mr B who referred to hhis book on the subject and has said basically Monica is right, as was my dad.

maddyone

GrannyGravy13

How do you propose to redistribute the wealthy folks earned income?

Confiscate a percentage of their bank balance and hold a lottery for the poorest in society to see who gets a bit?

There are people in the UK who earn outrageous sums of money. I read about someone who earns six million pounds a year recently, and he gets a bonus too. Nobody can actually earn that amount of money, it’s obscene. At least he’ll pay at least half of it in tax.

If we’re talking obscene levels of pay, what about Premier League footballers?

‘People like you’ Daisy? What a nasty thing to say.

M0nica

Maizie All government new money is backed by government bonds on which interest is paid and will be until they are redeemed at sometime in the future they are repaid. However, it has to be done carefully and with planning and doing so effects our currency exchange rate, especially with the dollar.

If just printing money willy nilly could get us out of trouble then we would have the answer to all the worlds ills. There would be no poverty in Africa, each country would just wind up its printing plant and start running off currency notes. No more DEC appeals, like the current one to help flood devastated Pakistan. Imran Khan would just have air freighted in a couple of tonnes of security paper and would be printing the money needed to pay for the aid he needed.

At one point we were on the Gold Standard, we could not print more notes than we had gold stashed in the bank.. When we came off the Gold Standard, all new notes had to be backed by Government stocks.

As said before, you get owt for nowt. Every new note that runs off the presses has to be backed by something.

Since everyone is flapping their academic qualifications around. My first degree was in economics and I worked as a business economist through nearly all my working life.

I think this is a good and true explanation from Monica and is what I was taught.
Printing money willy nilly does not end well.

So. Norah what is a poor choice? Please give me an example

Norah

GrannyGravy13

I am all for a safety net for those who are unable to work for whatever reason. I think that is what all societies should provide.

Just fed up with the continuous threads, berating the rich and blaming them for all the worlds ills.

Yes. Unable, truly unable to work, for any reason - there should be a safety net.

Peoples choices matter as well. I'm not inclined to support our children's poor choices. We tell them to choose wisely.

The whole point of taking the decisions about benefits out of the hands of people like you was 1) Everyone paid into it and 2) People like you don't get to decide who is deserving and who is underserving.

Dinahmo

Norah Some of the wealthy people that you quoted have a lot of expertise at their disposal to help them hold onto their assets. The following is a link to an article written following the death of the 6th Duke of Westminster back in 2016. Most of the Grosvenor family assets are held in a number of trusts.
The personal assets of the 6th duke (£600 million) were inherited by his wife and so exempt from taxation although her children will have to pay tax when they inherit, unless yet another trust is formed. If that happened there would be tax to pay but not as much as would be payable under the normal IHT rules

www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/07/duke-of-westminster-offshore-firms-wealth-paradise-papers

I believe he gives generously.

If all his assets were taxed how does that help anyone else? Specifically how do poor people benefit from his assets being taxed at higher rate?

Duke of Westminster donates £12.5m to NHS coronavirus fighthttps://www.theguardian.com › money › apr › duke-of-...

www.ox.ac.uk/news/2022-02-02-positive-impact-funding-research-mental-health