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I had a child I couldn't afford private education for them.
Wouldn't the cost of your kitchen alone basically pay for a kid to go through private secondary school?
Everything is relative and huge respect for making a success of a difficult sounding background. You have clearly had to work super hard to get to where you are, and that's of course different to having it all handed to you for nothing. But if your income is off the scale, you are rich, regardless of anything else. Enjoy it!
I still wouldn't send my kids to private school.
lemonade-
That's a bit nit-picking. Most of the cost of the kitchen stemmed from essential building works for the electrics, plumbing, boiler, etc. Given that I choose not to have children, and this is the first and only home I've ever owned, doing work to a decent standard isn't something I'm going to feel guilty about. Fuck it, I earned it!
But even if I had done that job cheaper, I still doubt that I could've afforded private school. Because it's not just the fees (which I could have stretched to) but there's the associated lifestyle that goes with it (which I cannot stretch to) lest your child be a bullied bottom of the class outcast, i.e. "haha, we're going skiing and screw you", etc.
Not that I would put anyone through it either.
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Wouldn't the cost of your kitchen alone basically pay for a kid to go through private secondary school?
Maybe for a year or two?
The problem with PE is that you have to keep paying the fees...for like twelve years (ok, a bit less if you just do secondary). And if you stop paying the fees, and send lemonade jnr to a state school you kinda drop in an instant all the advantage you might have gained from paying them in the first place up to that point.
You really have to be certain that you can make it all the way through. If you aren't certain it's a massive risk.
Velocio
Howard
I'm rich in some ways, not in others.
I'll freely admit my salary makes me rich... in fact I filled in this https://ifs.org.uk/tools_and_resources/where_do_you_fit_in to try and determine what my top n% is, and it said: "you have a higher income than around 99% of the population" and "In conclusion, Your income is so high that you lie beyond the far right hand side of the chart" - this is based on me being a sole income household compared to it actually comparing to multi-income households. I earn a lot.
But... salary != wealth.
I come from no money, no inheritance, no family gifts, a much harder slog to earn every penny of a deposit for a mortgage, etc. I work with a colleague who is in his early 20s and has a higher disposable income than I do because his grandparents gifted him a house (one of their 2nd/3rd rentals) on his 21st birthday... an inheritance tax avoidance I guess... and so I in my late 40s have less disposable income than him in his early 20s.
I am definitely rich. But there is also a very large inter-generational middle-class that is far richer in other ways. My colleague wouldn't count himself as rich, he doesn't... but definitely he is, in fact almost everyone I know is rich as these are not the circles I move in I guess, this is what my peers earn, etc. I still remember shivering in an underpass sleeping rough, but it's irrelevant really... I've achieved social mobility as politicians call it, and moved from street to flat to home, from work to career. Judged solely on my last payslip I am off the scale, but it's a poor thing to judge anyone by... if I had a child I couldn't afford private education for them.
I'd love to see more people become rich in my lifetime... i.e. higher salaries for others, less tax on that salary.
So how to fund the country? I'd also love to see more of the asset value of wealth be redistributed... i.e. land tax that erodes large estates and holdings, increased capital gains tax on assets, etc.
Income is the one way to help change people's lives... tax everything else (inc private schools).