Overheard on the commentary from the races this afternoon that a Stable Lad has won £1 million on a 5 way accumulator. Good for him. Bet the bookies are feeling seriously sick. But it got me thinking how far that amount of money wouldn't go.
Obviously, how much one needs to maintain a comfortable/secure lifestyle depends on the age at which one acquires such wealth but the younger you are, the more you'll need.
Thinking about how far £1 million would go, if you did the sensible thing and invested the capital and simply lived off the interest, you really wouldn't be living the lifestyle that most of us imagine to be that of a millionaire. I've no idea how much interest that amount of money would generate, but I doubt it would be a substantial sum in the current economic climate, and I don't know that you'd be looking at an income of more than say £50,000 pa, if that. And that's quite a sobering thought, really.
Ok, so as incomes go it's about twice the national average in the UK, but it's not astronomical; it's not way, way beyond the imaginations (and earnings) of a substantial proportion of the population. And that's presuming, of course, that you didn't use any of the capital to say, buy a house - just a pretty average family home. £50k a year would, of course, give you a fairly comfortable life. It would allow you to offer a certain amount of financial help to family and friends, but only in a fairly modest way. Likewise, it would enable you to support more charities and good causes than you might otherwise do, but again nothing that would really make a big difference. The amount of money any one person would need to win on the Lottery, or whatever. is really quite substantial if they have dreams of making a big difference to more lives than just their own. And that saddens me tremendously. Because it's a very frail hope that an awful lot of people hold on to.
It also takes my breath away inasmuch as it brings home just how very wealthy the wealthy must be. And I'm not really talking about the affluent middle classes with big houses who can afford private schools for their children or fund them through Uni. I'm talking about the people who can afford to buy the £several million plus country homes advertised in the local paper here each week. Or the houses and apartments in London where they then dig down below basement level to install a swimming pool, underground garage and a cinema room - at the very least. I can't begin to imagine the levels of wealth they possess. And it's wrong. Certainly when 17% of all UK households of working age are in receipt of Working Tax Credit to supplement their income (and 30% of those are STILL classified as being low income with WTC) something is very wrong. Note: That's people IN WORK who receive benefit to 'top up' their earnings in order to be able to live, not simply people in receipt of benefit.
I'm sick of hearing about how the feckless and work shy are draining this country of its resources whilst those with a work ethic support the weight of the world on their shoulders. Yes, ok, so maybe the public school fee payers do work hard to earn their money. But the inference in that well-worn and oft trotted out statement is that everyone else who doesn't earn as much, by definition, doesn't work as hard. And that's utter bollocks. And it really, really pisses me off that they fail to see the inherent, underlying inequality. Or, rather, they ignore it or make fatuous statements to support their positions of privilege. (Yes, I'm having a rant!!)
And then we go to the other end of the scale where the (soon to be ex) wife of Silvio Berlusconi has been awarded around £29 million a year in their divorce. Not as a one off payment, but per year. It's an obscene amount of money. It's reported that the adjudicating judge ruled against her having any claim on his property portfolio so ... what the hell must that man be worth??? Of course there are those who would argue that she deserves every penny/euro for putting up with him for as long as she has. Well, maybe she does. But what ever possessed her, or the soon-to-be-new Mrs Berlusconi to marry such a repugnant, immoral little scroat in the first place? Oh yeah ...
Which leads me to the question ... just how vile, twisted, perverted, ruthless, morally bankrupt an individual does one have to be before your money ceases to attract people to you? An unanswerable question I'd guess.
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