Comments by "Roger Smith" (@rogersmith8339) on "Garys Economics" channel.

The care home situation is very much one of our own making. It was not long ago that they were the preserve of the wealthy as everyone else shared the care of their parents across the family. This is still the case in many cultures with extended family often sharing a home.
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@stephensmith799 I am bit of a fan of the Scandinavian way and it has worked exceptionally well for them for many years. There is however a weakness that is starting to show. Much of the success comes from the trusting nature of the people which in its own right is a huge strength and very admirable. The problem is that of late that trusting nature is being abused by people who come from places where they can trust no one. I feel very sorry for them, in particular the Danes.
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I wonder how many of our problems today are actually to do with the obsession with leaving money to our children? I was one of 5 kids from a pretty poor family. When dad died I inherited a share of his tools (not much!). When mum died we each inherited about £1500. All my siblings lead pretty comfortable lives through working hard in pretty ordinary jobs and only the youngest has yet to retire quite early.
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I was born into a working class family in the late 50s, dad did manual work and mum looked after my well spread out siblings. I have always considered myself working class partly due to that but also because I worked in blue collar engineering companies all my life. I am now very comfortably off because I was wise with my money. There are many people richer than me, always were and always will be.
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@inspirationalaries At least the coronation is returning a lot of money back into the economy via wages and thus taxes plus all the spending it will generate from people who have money.
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@annapachaclarke2392 People have tried the utopia experiment many times before and although it often works for a fair while it rarely lasts that long before it falls apart. Some of the Victorian philanthropists got fairly close albeit in a somewhat hierarchical manner. Personally I don't really know what the answer is. Out and out revolution has been tried and usually backfires. My best suggestion would be starting with the democratic process to make representation more representative. Even if you could go back and start everyone on a level playing field it would soon change. Some would become poorer and some much richer over night, not through any other reason that we are not and never will be equal.
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Spot on with those observations and as for heating, many of us from that generation grew up without any real heating a in the home other than a fire place. The telly was rented as they were hugely expensive and not that reliable. The whole attitude to food was very different too, no one would have thought of having ready cooked meals delivered to their door.
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@sososoprano1 Why did your son choose to do a degree with such limited career opportunities? Why indeed did he even choose to do a degree in the first place. My eldest stepson has virtually no academic qualifications yet runs his own successful engineering business employing two people. He got there by starting at the very bottom and working hard.
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@headab9027 There is a lot to be said for that. In times gone by many people would not have survived many of the conditions people do now and although they "survive" like my mother did for several years their quality of life is zero.
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@sososoprano1 Staying in academia often seems to be a way of hiding away from the real world and does not contribute a lot to society. If that suits you then OK but don't expect it to make you rich as seems to be what many people think it should. From observation it often ends up doing nothing nor achieving anything of worth other than to the person doing it which I see as rather selfish in a way.
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@jonp6798 What you say is great and I accept that the academic life suits some people. There is a big however. You hear too many younger people complaining that they can't get a job or that if they do the pay is low when their only qualification is in some highly specialised topic.
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@frankkelly207 Quite a few European countries are like that and always have been which is what we forget in the UK. We were sold the idea of property ownership by Maggie and while it does have many good points it also has more than a few bad ones like guaranteeing many people are in debt and therefore have to behave.
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@1unknowntrader About the best way to tax the rich without to much effect lower down is to tax luxury goods quite highly. The problem is how you define luxury goods (which sounds fairly easy) and where you set cut off price levels.
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@coopsnz1 To me, that sum makes it a luxury as there are far better cars for much less money. Besides, with the current poor quality of Mercs I would not touch one with a barge pole.
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@stephensmith799 Didn't Russia do that a while back? Then of course there is the American version, just imagine what the UK would be like if run on those lines.
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@stephensmith799 I have heard of the motorbike gangs but am not sure how bad they really are (would like to hear from a honest & reliable source). I suspect that even these are a product of the trusting nature to a degree. As for the migrants and trust, the issue appears to be that many seem to be abusing the trust. It is a bit like France (and to a lesser degree even the UK) where the French economy worked for many years because if you gave a Frenchman 10,000 Francs he would spend it in France on French goods. When you visit France regularly like I have over the years you can see that this is changing - the most notable being in the cars they drive.
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Could the solution making the middle ground people slightly better off as they form the largest group and tend to be the ones who spend their money on "ordinary things "?
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Making money from wealth is considered wrong by a few religions.
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Half of those claiming to be middle class are just jumped up working class people.
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@jonp6798 If he had done a degree in a useful subject or better still had an apprenticeship like myself, he would get a job much more easily and could then work up the so called ladder if indeed he was clever and hard working enough. I never wanted to climb that ladder although I ended up pretty well paid for the simple reason that I was one of the best and most experienced people in my type of job (that is UK wide, not just my companies).
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@sososoprano1 I was council house born & bred, hence not getting any in heritance to speak of.
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@Lee-bv6iv My job was just engineering, looking after little engines for three of the big manufacturers and a couple of the MRO shops.
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@sososoprano1 There is truth in what you say, but being reasonably comfortable and not having to worry too much about where your next meal is coming from and being able to afford a few nice things in life makes a big difference. I would not have chosen engineering as a career if I wanted to be rich as it is notoriously poorly paid and looked down on by many.
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@lee4171 As the great man said, when you're dead you're dead.
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@Nickle314 All that is very well, but totally irrelevant as it is just not there. If it was, we would have had higher taxes in every shape and form (assuming we were still in the EU). We all(?) got bought by offers of lower taxes in one form or another. I am not saying money was not syphoned off or wasted for all sorts of reasons but sadly that is going to be a fact of life regardless.
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@Nickle314 But is it not the so called right that have been spending our money left right & centre and thus creating those debts?
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@gartgreenside3657 Richness is rather subjective. There are many who are money rich but time poor (my little sister and her hubby are a bit like that). There is a classic view of people like myself that because I have a large sailing yacht (I dare not think of the cost of a comparable new one!) I must be rich, but the truth is that it is which keeps me poor (tiny old city car, tiny terraced house, shopping in Lidls and other cheap shops and charity shops). Wealthy is a much more definitive term and I would start to use it for people on over £100K P/A.
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