Royal Families: useful somehow or just really stupid and gross?

[SeanF]

What’s in a name? Plenty of the world’s “Republics “ are absolute monarchies, or narrow oligarchies, in fact.

Countries with constitutional monarchies are generally pretty good places to live in.

[Heartofice]

11 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Nobody actually paid those rates, in the UK, unless they were very badly advised.

Income tax allowances were far higher, relative to incomes, than now, capital gains were untaxed, and all manner of expenses could be offset against income.

The whole point about income taxes is they are regressive, because it takes money directly out of the pockets of lower paid workers before they even have access to it. If you are in any way a higher income earner then you have the ability to funnel your money in a way that makes sure you don't get taxed to those levels on it, and once you do become a higher earner you put in a lot more effort to do so. 

I am interested in seeing how an actual wealth tax functions instead, because it is wealth that is far more important in these instances. 

[Jace, Extat]

2 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

The whole point about income taxes is they are regressive, because it takes money directly out of the pockets of lower paid workers before they even have access to it. If you are in any way a higher income earner then you have the ability to funnel your money in a way that makes sure you don't get taxed to those levels on it, and once you do become a higher earner you put in a lot more effort to do so. 

I am interested in seeing how an actual wealth tax functions instead, because it is wealth that is far more important in these instances. 

Now that's an interesting point of view. 

It never made sense to me that the tax burden for production/maintenance of the state should fall on the worker in a system that -at all but _all_ costs- empowers and subsidizes the employer and those who do not have to trade their time/lives in return for qualities of life that rapidly approach unlivable 

 

[Varysblackfyre321]

4 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Countries with constitutional monarchies are generally pretty good places to live in.

Are you arguing the presence of the monarch plays a role in this rather than a happy coincidence?

7 minutes ago, SeanF said:

What’s in a name? Plenty of the world’s “Republics “ are absolute monarchies, or narrow oligarchies, in fact.

Dictatorships are also bad.
what happens if a British king just says fuck it I’m a nazi and going to promote nazi things and not respect any democratic mandate?

[SeanF]

1 minute ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Are you arguing the presence of the monarch plays a role in this rather than a happy coincidence?

Dictatorships are also bad.
what happens if a British king just says fuck it I’m a nazi and going to promote nazi things and not respect any democratic mandate?

I think that a country’s overall constitutional system plays a part in that country’s success.  

A modern British King who tried to rule as a Nazi leader would get nowhere, because he would not be obeyed.

[Heartofice]

3 minutes ago, BBB Jacelyn said:

Now that's an interesting point of view. 

It never made sense to me that the tax burden for production/maintenance of the state should fall on the worker in a system that -at all but _all_ costs- empowers and subsidizes the employer and those who do not have to trade their time/lives in return for qualities of life that rapidly approach unlivable 

 

Yeah I think it is a generally pretty unfair system. Income taxes from workers are taken away by law before you even touch your money, but for large corporations taxes are part of a negotiation package. On top of that almost every action you take is taxed in some form so you are often double or triple taxed on every single pound you earn. 

I think income taxes are a bit of a nonsense, and anyone complaining that we should tax the rich more on their income has no understanding of what is going on. If we are going to tax the rich then you need to be smarter about it.

I know when I was contracting here in the UK with my own company I was gobsmacked about the difference it made to how much tax I was paying. It basically halved it, or more. The gov have cracked down a bit on this now, but it really opened my eyes that paying income tax is a mugs game. 

[Jace, Extat]

11 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Yeah I think it is a generally pretty unfair system. Income taxes from workers are taken away by law before you even touch your money, but for large corporations taxes are part of a negotiation package. On top of that almost every action you take is taxed in some form so you are often double or triple taxed on every single pound you earn. 

I think income taxes are a bit of a nonsense, and anyone complaining that we should tax the rich more on their income has no understanding of what is going on. If we are going to tax the rich then you need to be smarter about it.

I know when I was contracting here in the UK with my own company I was gobsmacked about the difference it made to how much tax I was paying. It basically halved it, or more. The gov have cracked down a bit on this now, but it really opened my eyes that paying income tax is a mugs game. 

And to say nothing of subscription fees like license plates, insurance (health, car, house, or otherwise) dues, and any number of a billion hyper-marketed addictive pits for you to throw your ever-dwindling paycheck into that the government could work to make sure aren't taking advantage of its citizens without dimishing those citizens' rights to do as they please. 

But that sounds hard and nobody ever went broke taking a kickba--

I MEAN CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION

 

 

 

 

[A wilding]

7 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Not really directed at you, but the concept of the “rich” being forced to sell their homes.

Do you realize that during WW 2 the top tax rate in the UK was 99.25%? After the war it was lowered to 90%, during the 40s, 50s and 60s. The top rate on investment income in the 70s was 98%. There’s a reason why rock stars and movie stars and corporate millionaires fled the country.

A bit late, but I would like to comment on the history behind all this.

To put those tax rates in context: by about the middle of WW2 the UK was basically bankrupt, with a desperate need for whatever money it could scrounge up from wherever it could be obtained. Then, after WW2, money was also needed to fund the promised welfare state - the NHS and so forth. Why should the very rich have been allowed to preserve and increase their inherited wealth though all this, with the literal consequence of the rest of the country starving and dying young of preventable diseases?

Incidentally, the UK before WW2 was still a massively unequal society totally dominated by the wealthy upper classes. For example, all those big houses were run by small armies of servants who worked very long hours and were paid a pittance. This, by the way, is the reason why those UK upper classes tried so hard to avoid WW2, in some cases to the extent of actually supporting Hitler. They knew that any war would overturn the UK social order and end their cosy existence. (You get some echo of this dilemma at the beginning of Lord of the Rings.) It is also the reason why so many people became communists in the 1930s.

Of course, once prosperity returned in the 1960s it was another matter.

By the way there exists a very large and well funded UK charity, the National Trust, that exists to preserve as many of those big houses as possible. In some cases they have negotiated deals with the owners to allow those owners to continue living in them. Feel free to donate! (Actually the National Trust is schizophrenic, it also owns a large amount of wild country in the UK for the purposes of preserving it unchanged. I support that cause, but can't support the National Trust when they are also about the big houses.)

 

 

[Jace, Extat]

Gaul and Brittany, both. Though the Gauls were on the whole always both more virulently anti-fascist and pro-Communist according to anything and everything I've read going back (at least as far as pro-Communist, because 20th century self-described fascism wasn't a thing yet because a major communist state didn't exist yet and fascism (the scary German kind, not the stupid and embarrassing Italian kind) is just a fuckboi lance corporal's notion of a trollololololz at real socialism) to 1917

 

Sometimes it pays to be the Empire in slightly-faster decline? Now that's a thought that unsettles

[Varysblackfyre321]

1 hour ago, A wilding said:

Of course, once prosperity returned in the 1960s it was another matter.

And now millennials in the Uk  are getting more left-wing as they age—

[DMC]

9 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

If one values democracy, equality, equability, or even prefers to think people should get what they get through merit, I don’t think one can reasonably see a hereditary monarchy as something that should be preserved.

Supporting a hereditary monarchy as a ceremonial head of state and supporting democracy are hardly mutually exclusive.  There's no inherent conceptual contradiction between the two.

[Spockydog]

13 minutes ago, DMC said:

Supporting a hereditary monarchy as a ceremonial head of state and supporting democracy are hardly mutually exclusive.  There's no inherent conceptual contradiction between the two.

Yeah, but the British Royal Family is far from ceremonial.

The monarch is supposed to have zero involvement in drafting legislation.

But, as The Guardian has been showing us for the past few years, that is simply not the case.

Over the years, Queenie demanded exemption from a bunch of new laws. Mainly around the environment and anti-discrimination.

Under the longstanding but ill-defined doctrine of sovereign immunity, criminal and civil proceedings are not brought against the monarch as head of state. But an investigation by the Guardian, drawing on official documents and analysis of legislation, reveals the extent to which laws have been written or amended to specify immunity for her conduct as a private citizen, along with her privately owned assets and estates – and even a privately owned business.

This is why there are little to no black people working at Buckingham Palace.

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Yeah, but the British Royal Family is far from ceremonial.

The monarch is supposed to have zero involvement in drafting legislation.

But, as The Guardian has been showing us for the past few years, that is simply not the case.

Over the years, Queenie demanded exemption from a bunch of new laws. Mainly around the environment and anti-discrimination.

This is why there are little to no black people working at Buckingham Palace.

To be clear, I'm not saying there aren't many valid arguments to oppose a hereditary monarchy as a ceremonial head of state - let alone the British version in particular.  Just pushing back on the notion that supporting such is necessarily contradictory to supporting democracy, etc.

[Cas Stark]

4 hours ago, SeanF said:

No poll has ever shown 60/40 in favour of abolition.

That's what I thought, but was tired of finding links, LOL.  I don't think it's every gone below 60% support, unless you are looking at just 18-24 age range, which could spell trouble for the monarchy, or not.  Historically, people get more conservative and more partial to their traditions as they age.  The same age group that was ready to go republican in the 90s are now the RFsupport group.

[Spockydog]

13 minutes ago, DMC said:

To be clear, I'm not saying there aren't many valid arguments to oppose a hereditary monarchy as a ceremonial head of state - let alone the British version in particular.  Just pushing back on the notion that supporting such is necessarily contradictory to supporting democracy, etc.

I have to disagree on this.

The British Royal family as a concept is completely incompatible with the notion of modern democracy.

Having said that, and as has been repeatedly demonstrated since 2016, ours is not a modern democracy.

But this is supposedly going to change when Starmer gets in. He has promised the first step towards becoming a republic by abolishing the House of Lords in his first parliament, though everybody knows the value of a Starmer promise is worth precisely jack shit.

 

 

[kiko]

4 hours ago, SeanF said:

What’s in a name? Plenty of the world’s “Republics “ are absolute monarchies, or narrow oligarchies, in fact.

Countries with constitutional monarchies are generally pretty good places to live in.

Try to say something mildly critical about the Thai king in Thailand. This guy is permanently breaking laws of several countries just by living where he lives, but every Thai pointing that out would end up in jail. 

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Spockydog said:

The British Royal family as a concept is completely incompatible with the notion of modern democracy.

There are plenty of reasons to support a ceremonial head of state even for the most ardent democrat.  Subsequently, how that ceremonial head of state is chosen really doesn't matter, both theoretically - and indeed empirically.  Elected ceremonial heads of state can pose as many issues for a "democracy" as unelected ceremonial heads of state.

Again, you're hung up on the British Royals.  That is not my argument.

[Heartofice]

I don't think there is any real contradiction between the Monarchy and Democracy, certainly not in the UK. Even the cases Spocky cites, it's just so the Queen and co can get more free stuff. That a big old shrug from me, it's a very different matter to the RF having any active role in designing and deciding on our laws. 

The rage over the Royal family I think is purely motivated by envy. The problem there is that any problems in your life are not being caused by the Royal family. If the Royal family are abolished tomorrow, your life will not improve one iota, you will not be any richer, you will not be any better off. I'm sure for some people they don't care, they just don't like the Royals and want them to piss off.

Personally, I'm pretty content with having a Monarchy, I think the soft cultural power it adds the country is a positive, I think it is a generally binding element that you would lose if you ditched them. That doesn't mean we shouldn't trim it, cut loose a few of the hangers on, but even Charlie recognises that. 

[kiko]

3 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

If the Royal family are abolished tomorrow, your life will not improve one iota, you will not be any richer, you will not be any better off.

I'm not so sure about that. There are a lot of  things based on feudal or aristocractic history. The obvious example is the trust system. There could be another bonfire of regulations but this time with the goal of kicking out all the remnants from the monarchy.

[Winterfell is Burning]

Monarchy is based on the idea that some people deserve power and status just because of who their parents are, which is of course incompatible with democracy and equality before the law. There's no reason for them to exist,.at least in modern Western democracies