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King Charles’s private fortune estimated at £1.8B
- hnarayanan 4y agoSelf made man
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoBezos, Musk and Gates each have 100X that. The WalMart family. The Koch Brothers. About the same as J.K. Rowling. Each are storytellers of a fashion I guess.
- sandspar 3y agoI assume that at their level, the actual number is less important than their level of agency. When they want to get something done, who is more likely to be able to make it happen?
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoOh Bill Gates for sure.
- bookofjoe 4y agoI did the math: if the monarchy were dissolved and its holdings evenly distributed amongst the UK's 66M people, each person would get about $25. Same with Trident, which costs about £1.5B/year.
- onion2k 4y agoI'd rather have a new Xbox game than a monarchy and some weapons of mass destruction. Let's do it.
- pjc50 4y agoThe invasion of Ukraine has basically reversed my position on the weapons of mass destruction as an unfortunately necessary insurance policy. In any case, that counts towards the 2% defence spending NATO membership target.
- Ekaros 4y agoAnd before that others. I think we really should be for proliferation. It would make for safer and more equal world. Many of the conflicts in past 80 years could have been avoided if everyone had nuclear weapons.
- onion2k 4y agoMany of the conflicts in past 80 years could have been avoided if everyone had nuclear weapons. Either that or the conflicts would have been the cause of nuclear armageddon...
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoWait, so the royal family's assets are worth only 1.6 billion USD? That doesn't pass the smell test.
- koliber 4y agoI think there is a distinction between his private fortune and the holdings of the royal family. > King Charles has no shortage of palaces, castles and residences to enjoy, but most of them are not technically his. Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace are, for example, owned by the sovereign in right of the crown
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- MarkCole 4y agoThe article is talking about his private fortune. The fortune of the royal family/the monarchy/the crown is of course much larger. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Estate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Estate
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoThe parent I was replying to was explicitly mentioning the wealth of the royal family, not just the king.
- _8j50 4y agoI utterly despise this mindset that you can just take rich people's money. I get getting rid of the monarchy but all that UK land the government pays them for and any other riches they have are theirs. You are no better than a common thief if you take what does not belong to you regardless of who the owner is or who you are. And that includes any government. People get to own stuff. If someone's riches cannot be proven as unlawfully obtained by the laws of the time when they were obtained, then taking that money against their will is pure and simple theft. The silliness behind these types of thinking is that they make it sound like there is a shortage of money. Money can be printed if that's all you want. If riches are being obtained wrongly the pass laws to fix that, don't tell me how nice it would be to steal from the rich, If I wanted to steal assume I would steal from you first. It insults me how people assume others will join on their merry band if robbin-hood-esque thieves.
- snapcaster 4y agoI sort of see your point, but this is a monarch, not some self starter entrepreneur. They made their wealth by literally "taking other people's money" through force or threat of force. Why simp for these people?
- _8j50 4y agoI don't care about them. I care about justice. Their use of force at the time was lawful and if it wasn't I don't care. They enslaved and murdered too and they can't be punished for it retroactively. Justice and equality under law for everyone, the rich and powerful as well as the poor and weak. Rule of law and civil order. Advocating for anything less makes you the criminal and law breaker. Whatever injustice you face you have deserved it already because you accepted injustice against others.
- snapcaster 4y ago"criminal" and "law breaker" are just terms used by the ruling class to describe behavior they believe they have the power to ban. You seem to be acting as if "law" is some independent natural phenomena as opposed to something created by and for the rulers
- keiferski 4y agoHonestly, seems fairly low considering how much tourist economic value the royalty generates for Britain, which is something like £23 billion pounds a year in (total) spending alone. If the monarchy and associated “living history” traditions ceased to exist, I’d imagine that the UK would get a significantly less amount of tourism. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_the_United_Kingdo...
- lozenge 4y agoI don't. Versaille gets plenty of visitors even though the French monarchy is no longer legal. Nobody steps off a plane expecting to see the Royal Family.
- sandspar 3y agoFrance hasn't spent the last 60 years building their tourist and media complex around living royals. Sure, France does fine with museums alone. Would England? Maybe. Maybe not.
- superhuzza 4y agoThe article you posted claims the ENTIRE tourist spend per year in the UK is around £23 billion GBP: "Official statistics for the final quarter of 2019 have yet to been published, although in 2018 a total of 37.9 million people visited the UK from overseas and cumulatively spent £22.8 billion" What percentage of that spending are the royal family actually responsible for? It's hard to disambiguate, but it's surely only a portion of it. How much less spending would there be if there was no more royal family? Again, hard to estimate. But several European countries have more tourism without royal families. So possibly less than one would expect.
- keiferski 4y agoI think the royalty is much more tied to the identity of the UK, especially when perceived from abroad and in popular culture. The global response to Lady Diana’s death, Downton Abbey, James Bond, just as a few examples. Most of the other European countries do not have a royal-associated brand.