Das Vermögen der 157 Milliardäre Großbritanniens entspricht jetzt 22 % des BIP des Landes
https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2026/may/15/wealth-britain-billionaires-gdp-rich-list-inequality
Von Tyler119
Das Vermögen der 157 Milliardäre Großbritanniens entspricht jetzt 22 % des BIP des Landes
https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2026/may/15/wealth-britain-billionaires-gdp-rich-list-inequality
Von Tyler119
34 Kommentare
How much of their wealth is outside of the UK?
I am not saying that these billionaires don’t have an excessive amount of wealth, just that this stat seems to be comparing two different numbers, global wealth valuation and national economic value.
There’s **one** person in the US who’s wealth is 25% of the UK’s GDP……
Just loving seeing comments of people jumping to defend this.
The people claiming to have „the broadest backs“ (which is likely bullshit) don’t seem to whine at rampant capitalism like this. 🤔
And I think people going „we need a wealth tax“ should more be going „we need a better system“ because I think these megarich are contributing to „Britain is Broken“ with their dysfunctional, excessive for-profits. There should be more countering to corporations who take more control and further hold people in general back.
I think personal wealth should be capped at £10m and I’ve not really heard a convincing argument against it.
Unlimited workers = lower wages = more profit
The government and business owners are conspiring together.
Silly comparison. If you insist on making it, it should be „157 billionaires‘ wealth equivalent to 11 weeks of UK GDP“ but that makes it look a lot less scary so 22% it is.
15% of the Sunday Times Rich List entrants from two years ago have left the country so the Guardian should be happy about the direction of travel.
If a foreign national leaves the country they are removed from the list, whereas a British national is counted even when they have moved their tax domicile abroad (e.g. Dyson and Branson).
If the Guardian recalculated this figure based on those who are actually resident in the country the headline number would fall dramatically and would be much closer to the 14.1% of GDP global average.
This is comparing 2 very different numbers. You’d be forgiven for thinking that they are 22% of the countries GDP.
Some incredibly disingenuous statistics here.
> When the Sunday Times first published its rich list in 1989, 15 billionaires held a total of £27bn – about 4p in every pound of GDP at the time. Today, the Equality Trust calculates that 157 billionaires hold just under £670bn – more than 22p in every pound.
Doesn’t state how many people held between £400m-£1bn in that time which would be the equivalent of £1bn-£2.5bn today. What are the stats after you only count people with a net worth over £2.5bn today?
> “Workers have endured the longest pay squeeze in living memory,” said Sahni-Nicholas. “But the richest 50 families now hold more wealth than the poorest 34 million of us combined.”
A newborn baby has more wealth than the poorest 5 million of the population combined because they are in net debt.
Also no comparison of how the wealth of the general population has increased in this time – net worth and GDP are two very different things.
In reality the wealth held by the top 1% is the [same it was in 1998.](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/wealth-share-richest-1-percent?tab=line&country=~GBR&mapSelect=~GBR)
More importantly, should anything unfortunate happen to them, their kidneys could save over 300 lives
Lack of TAX, proper salaries, benefits and pensions by companies to satisfy shareholders has brought us here
This is a stupid comparison, wealth and GDP are completely different things and can’t be compared.
UK tax was apparently 36% of GDP last year.
So if we took all of these guys‘ wealth, it’d run the country for less than 8 months.
I’m glad we don’t go after them with tax increases so the economy can flourish for the rest of us.
Not to say the rich aren’t getting richer, but wealth cannot be compared to GDP. They are completely different things. This means nothing.
Can’t have a wealth tax because apparently the billionaires will „leave“. They should tax the banks specifically on interest received from the credit lines they offer the super rich, nothing will ever change otherwise.
So much wealth they can afford to buy their own island and host private parties for all of their rich, elite friends.
This is comparing accumulation of wealth of individuals over many years to an annual GDP figure of a country
It’s analogous to comparing miles to miles per hour. Sensible seeming to anyone who doesn’t understand those units but can speak English – a complete nonsense to anyone who’s been in a car before
Yes and every one of these billionaires are inviting social chaos, rebellion and future extremism if they are not careful
Is that shocking? Hear me out here but our GDP is something like 4 trillion right? So we spend/move around 4 trillion a year
They’re saying these 157 billionaires are worth around 25% of that, or around 1 trillion. So 1 trillion divided by 157 billionaires is something like 6.3 billion per billionaire
So, am I wrong or does this not kind of show we’ve got kind of low end billionaires compared to places like America? I’m sure at least one is probably making up like 100 billion of that or something, but I do feel like this headline basically uses weird measures of completely different things to make a shock headline
Like what does GDP have to do with wealth? GDP is a yearly activity. Wealth is a lifetime accumulation. I guess the idea is the guardian wants these billionaires taxed, but let’s assume you went super aggressive and taxed their entire net worth away. You’ve essentially funded the government for 3 months. Just 3
Now that’s better than nothing, and it’s definitely crazy to think that some billionaires probably have more in their portfolio than we put into our military each year, but again I think it kind of speaks to the fact we’re really looking at wealth vs yearly spending
Why do they always search for taxes at the bottom of society?
This is where they could get all out!
The correct term would be parasites. Organism that take resources from another organism and provide nothing in return.
No, but if we tax poorer people more instead of these folk then it evens out somehow and is fair something something
How much is that in liquid wealth? A company worth £300m doesn’t mean they can withdraw £300m in cash from the bank, does it? There needs to be a way to close a loophole where individuals can borrow money against their “wealth” and pay zero tax on that realised wealth. Using wealth to secure loans should incur a tax. Normal people get taxed a hundred times for the same thing, billionaires need some more tax traps too.
Comparing net worth to GDP is useless. Surely it would make more sense to compare it to a country’s total wealth rather than output.
and just 8 years ago we had our first 100 billion+ or centi-billionare in jeff bezos
Surely comparing their wealth to that of the UKs net wealth would be more useful?
GDP is ~£3tr while the UKs wealth sits at ~£13 trillion so 5% of that is billionaire wealth?
Or another way to represent it £3trillion * 0.22 = £660bn (almost the number of the devil!) divide this by UKs pop ~ 70million = £9428 per household, I wouldn’t say no to this, but it’s not a truly lifechanging sum.
I’m not usually a defender of the super rich, but I think people forget that wealth compared to a single years measure of a countries economic output just misrepresents things.
Wealth and GDP are not comparable? It’s yearly income vs total wealth
I’m no economist but isn’t wealth a total and GDP an annual thing? Isnt that like comparing the equity of my house with my salary?
Taxing them fairly would help the nation and at the same time they would still be billionaires.
Where are all the rich patriots?
I mean the problem is that innovation is disproportionately driven by those who do have the most desirable skills.
The best cancer researcher in the world would probably make bank wherever he worked but why would he give up assured career earnings if the potential benefit isn’t there?
It’s a supply/demand issue at the end of the day. The people with the most valuable skills will always end up being rewarded by the system they live in. The question then is how to align their incentive structure as best with societal benefit.
For what it’s worth, I think it makes far more sense to just build better welfare and taxation structures than to impose a fixed cap. A fixed cap messes around too much with incentives.
In any case, I believe the next crash will largely affect the redistribution people are hoping for. Capitalism is not some inherent evil either. Singapore, the Scandinavian countries, and ANZAC today all seem like some of the best places to be born in history. But they all have wider tax bases which I think is the first step.
If everyone pays more for the services they want, then everyone, including billionaires, will feel obliged to contribute. The UK wants American-style taxes but European services. That was always going to lead to some people feeling like they are contributing disproportionately more than others.
What happened to people with generational wealth building libraries, hospitals. Universities? Not one of theses modern 1% have a philanthropic bone in their body
Controversially, it’s not as bad as headlines desperately want you to believe.
There are two measures of inequality; the income GINI and wealth GINI.
The countries that tend to top all the good indices – ease of doing business (which means jobs, prosperity), happiness, education, health, upwards mobility, – all have **low** income GINIs and **high** wealth GINIs. They are the social democracies of the Scandinavian states.
If you provide an effective social safety net which forces equality of opportunity, then your society will flourish regardless of whether or not you have very, very wealthy people. Wealth is not zero sum, a mistake those on the left often make when trying to talk about economics (a subject they view with suspicion rather than understanding). A billionaire is not taking money from a poor person. There are enough seats at the table. And Scandi countries *insist* there must be enough seats.