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This is really good by @oeufling and engages with @AdkinsProf thesis that wealth, rather than income from work, is the key factor determining your chance of securing a moderate middle class lifestyle > https://twitter.com/Autonomy_UK/status/1386594314642501635
In focus groups when we asked people about wealth last year, it was clear that many still believed in the meritocractic connection between "hard work" and "wealth accumulation". https://www.taxjustice.uk/uploads/1/0/0/3/100363766/talking_tax_-_how_to_win_support_for_taxing_wealth.pdf
But it is no longer possible to work your way to wealth security. As @resfoundation have pointed out, a household on the median income £29k ish, would need to save EVERY PENNY FOR 96 YEARS, to reach to the top 10% wealthy cohort in the UK. https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/who-owns-all-the-pie/
It seems to be an economic fact that you need wealth (usually housing assets) as well as income in order to access the good life. And this asset poor / asset rich distinction is becoming a clear class dividing line. Yet the myth of social mobility and merit remains powerful.
The emergence of "generation rent" may imply a constituency who are politically conscious of this inequality. It's also true that much of the wealth held, for example by pensioners, will transfer down through inheritance. But that may also simply reinforce existing inequalities.
Meanwhile the Nationwide House Price Index is out on Friday. After nearly a year of stamp duty cuts (the housing marke is too big to fail) the property market is booming.
It always confused me that families who have literally no wealth, nonetheless still hate inheritance tax. And I think part of the reason for this probably has something to do with the way the "asset economy" has changed the way families conceive of themselves.
The way inheritance works in UK, means a couple with assets up to £750k will pay no inheritance tax at all. Seems fair, yet inheritance tax was hated. It wasn't that families in Blyth felt they'd be hit by the tax, it was more a principled disgust at the very idea of it.
