UK Politics
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!ukpolitics@lemm.ee appears to have vanished! We can still see cached content from this link, but goodbye I guess! :'(
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There is a difference between working income and investment income.
Investment income is directly attributable to the investment and the past actions that have wealth in the first place.
Working income is not, you might ask who's paying you and where they got that money. But you have worked and added value in a way that generates income tied to your work.
Most people do not have generational wealth. Their money is traceable to their work. In some cases their parents work. Occasionally a grandparents work.
It's possible that your work is extracting value you shouldn't be entitled to extract, but it's usually well removed from the real problem.
The royal family's investments go well back well beyond any of them did any work.
You're right that the further back you go, the more likely it is you'll find an atrocity. This is quite common with talk about reparations for slavery and racism in the US and UK.
For the duchy of Cornwall as an example we're talking about untaxed wealth since 1337. On land stolen from Cornish people. After the earldom was essentially taken by force in 1068.
By the current owner's 25x great grandfather on his mother's side and 31x great grandfather through the direct royal line. (Prince William)
A subjugated population living in surfdom. As voting rights were tied to property they didn't get a vote until 1918.
The Representation of the People Act extended the vote to all men over 21 and most women over 30
Then 1928 women got the equal right to vote. All men and women over 21.
The royal estates are the 3rd largest land owners in the UK. Behind only the forestry commission and the ministry of defence. About 3% of the land is owned by royal or those descended from nobility.
Then there's the large amount of land in the hands of the church and private schools which has been to directly influence the rich few. There's the enormous wealth gained from selling land on for mineral and resource extraction.
But sure after almost a century of something resembling democracy you're going to pretend someone earning a paycheck is the same as someone benefitting from a near millennia of wealth extraction under the threat of force.
And that's just talking about land in the UK. The amount of assets they've gained from empire is another thing to talk about.
Fair point.