It's not so easy

It being Sainsbury's day today meant that it was also a Guardian day. Where there is a piece about how there are more than 500,000 people living in London who are each worth more than $30m. It also claims that about one third of London's children, say 800,000 of them, are living in poverty. Suggesting to me that if 500,000 rich people were to stump up $1m each, which they could clearly well afford, that would be, after legal and other expenses, say $500,000 for each of the children in poverty. Which ought to sort things out.

In no particular order...

Is there something wrong with my arithmetic? $500,000 million or $500 billion is maybe a fifth of what the UK makes in a year. Which seems rather a lot. Is this just the difference between wealth and income? Are there really half a million of these people? Who are they? Where do they live? Has the decimal point slipped?

Assuming that the arithmetic is OK, I start to wonder how you would identify the children. How do you explain to the families just above the poverty line that they don't collect, while the pretty similar families next door do collect?

Then how can you be sure that the money will be spent properly? Not blown away on horses, booze or worse. Perhaps, as a precautionary measure, the money should be put into trust funds and doled out at so much a year. 

Why not just freeload on all that computing machinery they have built to run Universal Credit. Why not just chuck the $500 billion into the kitty for London and let the machinery do what it is designed to do? That is to say, give money to people who, for one reason or another, need a bit of money, need a bit of help.

What about just doubling Child Benefit for all residents of London instead? Thinking here of what used, at least, to be a universal benefit involving a minimum of pack drill. Which wives could get paid out at the Post Office, away from the eyes and paws of improvident husbands.

But I'm not sure that any of this would fly. All money going into government just goes into one large kitty which is then doled out by the Treasury. Machinery not designed for passing money straight through to special groups of people. Designed to be fair and reasonable, with all people being equal at the Treasury bar. Even, for the moment at least, people from Scotland.

Maybe there are some London flavoured charities which could attend to distribution? Maybe the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has a London office?

All of which leads me to Option 1. We pay the people at the Treasury to be good at doling out the money. Why not just jack up the taxes, get some more money in and start to pay some more money out? Hopefully some of those children in poverty in London would get a slice of the cake.

With Option 2 being to get some of the clever policy people at the centre of government, people like Mr. Cummings, to work up a proper scheme to apply the $500 billion to the children in poverty in London.

PS: maybe I will get around to checking the claim that one third of London children are indeed in poverty. It sounds like a very high proportion; a disgrace if true. And the claim that half a million people in London are far too rich. A different sort of disgrace.

Reference 1: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/. 

Reference 2: https://www.knightfrank.com/wealthreport. Possibly the source of the half million rich people. But I clearly don't have the right sort of handshake to get me past all the glossy photographs.