Bagehot Pinch The Rich

摘要

A lot of energy is expended by British think-tanks and sociologists on identifying the poor. Less attention is paid to classifying the rich. Public policy has haphazardly offered some pointers, by setting thresholds above which Britons are considered undeserving of state support, vulnerable to inheritance tax and so on; but hitherto these signals have not added up to a clear definition of richness. Most well-off people instinctively resist the idea that they are rolling in it: the rich are always different, elsewhere, someone else. So perhaps it is helpful of Alistair Darling, the chancellor of the exchequer, to have offered a clear typology of wealth in his emergency budget on November 24th.