And well done to you. Similar for me. Got to love rentier "capitalism". At least I know I am part of the problem.

I do not get this argument which puts the notion that anyone trying to make a decent living get blasted by derogatory or snide comments. Typically this is mostly received by the middle class or those who have managed to move up from working class to the middle class. It is as though one should not improve.

The fact is that the rich and upper class have always lived off investments and assets. They get to set the policies and despite the different political classes, they are in fact all the same, just preaching the proverbial to get chance to have a go and set policies which will favour them and ensure that they they still get invited to the country house events and have a tipple at the gentleman's club.

No one really cared when the empire was around and couple that with the industrial revolution, the lay and middle classes, managed to earn a bob-or two and everyone had a roof over their heads and food on the table. The money, in that the value was stable, neat and not shrouded by academic concepts so much, and growth was actual physical productivity with overseas empire markets to serve.

However post empire the rich started moving back into the UK and focused on means of shrouding their actual wealth from the lay and any central authority, so up popped offshore centers and professional services offerings which only serviced the wealthy. As for the country it needed to be seen to be growing (if only for to keep the lay at a distance) and the rich needed to get richer, so the concepts of Inflation, debt fueled growth and other conceptual mechanisms were pushed move heavily.

So whereas in my youth I needed to work during holidays and save up for that new bike over two years, today I can get that new bike and pay for it over two years. The difference is that in my youth the bike was £100 and mine, but today I pay £140 over two years and the bike is still not mine. Worse is that with a mortgage, you buy a house aged 25 for £200k and agree to pay £1m over 25 years and 25 years later you sell the house and you get back £1m. It gets worse if you listened to your bank.broker and renewed for a further 25 years every 3 years and at age 50 you paid £600k in interest and still have £400k (extended to refurbish and take a few holidays) liability.

The wealthy figured this out and, in the background pushed it subtly whilst pushing the blame away from them and onto such academic concepts and towards anyone who managed to see and overcome thiese types of traps.

What many progressive people figured out was to move through the income cycle at pace and enjoy life. The state, media and push wants everyone to be conditioned to simply aspire AND stay within the first element of the income cycle - being an employee. Even then that should be limited to certain roles for certain people.

What is apparent in the UK is that whilst home ownership is changing hands, land ownership, not so much. In fact not all the land is accounted for in the fancy centralised IT system to track and chase for taxes, for the builders of empire learned from overseas territories and experience that if a land is not registered but merely occupied and away from the authorities and, in turn rented out to the lay without any documentation then no tax can be claimed on it for it does not exist. As for the tenants, well they are usually the most vulnerable and have little say in matters.

This is where the middle class and those who have managed to move up the ladder come into play. They have generally navigated the conceptual traps, bypassed the social conditioning but have had to buy assets on the main markets as they do not have the wealth or connections to access the offshore services and ideas. Thus they are at the front end of the barrage of garbage thrown at them.

I see people in the UK who are struggling but make it a priority spend on their credit cards, to pay for holiday abroad and buy the latest gizmo for their kids at Xmas and throw a party at the local playcentre for birthdays. Teenagers first priority seems to be buying the latest fashion (despite living in a council estate), playing it big, finding ways to get on the social, and waiting for the cheque to have a blasting weekend and shouting that anyone who works and pays tax is a mug. Then two days later moan that life is unfair and the great Churchill not only won the war but promised that everyone in the great country of the UK has a safety net.

Yet a "progressive" immigrant coming over prioritises things such as extra support for their kids education, couple of extra hours doing a second job, having parties with family and friends at home, looking after their elderly family members. All with the overall aim of moving up the social ladder and moving through the income cycle - ESBI.

The empire was built upon the foundations of a private entity, funded by public subsidies, erected by cheap slave labour (at fraction of cost of subsidies), looted by further private entities and buccaneering entrepreneurs, profited by shareholders and all enshrined by Royal seal and statute. Participants of all this by the way were the elite and upper classes mainly. However a few did manage to navigate and move up the social class as well as rank and file, most notably Pitt the younger becoming PM.

This then led to the empire enforcing policies upon captured lands to forcibly purchase goods which had been produced here in the UK with further public subsidies, again collected by private entities to supposedly make it easier to manage. All the time the production costs were low, the margins with a guaranteed market were high. This ensured employment in the UK to manufacture products with secured/enforced sales and thus the wheel kept spinning. To cap it all off any central authority had little to no knowledge of what was happening overseas or what monies were actually being generated and traded. So you had a system of Private enterprise at public cost and risk.

Then the empire started retracting and secure markets no longer available. As a result production fade away. The war helped maintain some productivity and togetherness but afterwards was a complete change. Whilst the elites came back and found ways to hide their wealth and maintain relations with their ilk, the average UK citizen was leaned on hard to support the rebuilding and functioning of governments. The message seems to be that for a nation and government to function and provide for its citizens, there needs to be taxes, which the average person pays, whilst private enterprise get access to subsidies to support the effective management of it all. In all of this the one who loses out is the one in the middle - the lay do the far left gets handouts, the elite have nothing to declare but the middle class have all their dirty laundry at the disposal of the elites and get it thrown back at them by the lay.

They system is still valid and fully functioning today, just look at the Covid deals, look at the HS2 deals, look at the NHS contract deals, look at the bank deals. As for the tax payer, well they get the warn feeling of doing their bit all while being shafted at both ends.

Deleted

I would like to see the Inheritance Tax residence nil rate band become available to everyone rather than children, grandchildren or other direct descendants. By doing so the headline rate of IHT doesn't need to increase but it does level the playing field for people who for whatever reason are unable to create children and hence grandchildren or direct descendants..

It seems unfair to me - interested to hear why it isn't.