Forbes is an American business magazine, and it's cost of living extremely well index is an annual survey of price trends for things popular at the very, very top end of the income distribution. The riveting thing about the CLEWI isn't the headline attached, because that tends to be the same every year. The headline news is usually that very expensive things have gone up at a rate higher than the rate of inflation ? often by as much as double. Common sense leads us not to be surprised at that, since people who don't care what stuff costs will logically not mind too much if the cost of that stuff goes up. What's gripping about the index ? a basket of 40 goods and services targeting the super-rich ? is the detail of what's on it.
In fact, that's always true for these indices. The fun is in the specifics. The UK Office for National Statistics publishes my favourite one. This measures inflation using a basket of goods in common use ? a category that is constantly shifting, and at the moment includes mobile phone downloads, sparkling wine and long-sleeved cotton shirts. There is, in a wonky way, something moving about the close attention the resident stattos give to detailing the realities of ordinary lives; it's like a novel about British domestic life in 2012. Oven-ready joints of meat, for example, burst on to the index last year with this explanatory note: "Replaces pork shoulder joint reflecting a longer-term movement to prepared food and replacing an item which was sometimes difficult to collect since joints are sometimes only available towards the end of the week and on weekends.
The super-rich index is made up of items that are, let's say, different. A Russian sable coat at $240,000, a facelift for $18,500, a thoroughbred yearling racehorse at $319,340, a Sikorsky helicopter at $14.8m, an arrangement of flowers changed weekly for six rooms at $98,100 or a year's tuition at Harvard at $56,652. It is, in a dark way, hilarious that a Harvard education counts as a luxury good. If all that starts getting too much, you can always decompress with a week at the Golden Door Spa in California, $6,750, or 45 minutes with an Upper East side shrink for $325.
To be in the 1%, in income terms, you have to earn ? or, as the Socialist Worker has it, "earn" ? ?150,000 a year. That's a lot, to most people's way of thinking ? but not to the way of thinking of the rich. I've asked quite a few people in the world of money, the kind of people who know properly seriously rich people, what counts are being properly, seriously rich. The consensus figure is that you need $100m.
As for what this has got to do with London, the answer is, perhaps too much. The capital of the UK has one of the world's largest concentrations of the super-rich, and the reason for that is that we have chosen to have them here, as a matter of deliberate government policy. The relevant policy is the notorious provision in relation to "domicile", as a definition of an individual's tax status. Every other civilised country in the world taxes its inhabitants on their income and capital: the basic rule is that if you live in a place, you pay its taxes. But it's different in the UK. Here, if you come from overseas, and can prove strong links with overseas, and can prove that you are going to return to overseas, and can therefore establish a "domicile" overseas that is different from your "residency" in the UK ? well, in that case, you are treated entirely differently for tax purposes. You pay tax on your income in the UK, like the rest of us; and you can remit capital to the UK; but your overseas income, as long as you keep it overseas, is out of the reach of the Inland Revenue.
What this policy amounts to, in practice, is that the UK has a gigantic sign hanging over it saying, "Rich People! Come and Live Here! You Won't Have to Pay Any Tax!".
Read more here:
In fact, that's always true for these indices. The fun is in the specifics. The UK Office for National Statistics publishes my favourite one. This measures inflation using a basket of goods in common use ? a category that is constantly shifting, and at the moment includes mobile phone downloads, sparkling wine and long-sleeved cotton shirts. There is, in a wonky way, something moving about the close attention the resident stattos give to detailing the realities of ordinary lives; it's like a novel about British domestic life in 2012. Oven-ready joints of meat, for example, burst on to the index last year with this explanatory note: "Replaces pork shoulder joint reflecting a longer-term movement to prepared food and replacing an item which was sometimes difficult to collect since joints are sometimes only available towards the end of the week and on weekends.
The super-rich index is made up of items that are, let's say, different. A Russian sable coat at $240,000, a facelift for $18,500, a thoroughbred yearling racehorse at $319,340, a Sikorsky helicopter at $14.8m, an arrangement of flowers changed weekly for six rooms at $98,100 or a year's tuition at Harvard at $56,652. It is, in a dark way, hilarious that a Harvard education counts as a luxury good. If all that starts getting too much, you can always decompress with a week at the Golden Door Spa in California, $6,750, or 45 minutes with an Upper East side shrink for $325.
To be in the 1%, in income terms, you have to earn ? or, as the Socialist Worker has it, "earn" ? ?150,000 a year. That's a lot, to most people's way of thinking ? but not to the way of thinking of the rich. I've asked quite a few people in the world of money, the kind of people who know properly seriously rich people, what counts are being properly, seriously rich. The consensus figure is that you need $100m.
As for what this has got to do with London, the answer is, perhaps too much. The capital of the UK has one of the world's largest concentrations of the super-rich, and the reason for that is that we have chosen to have them here, as a matter of deliberate government policy. The relevant policy is the notorious provision in relation to "domicile", as a definition of an individual's tax status. Every other civilised country in the world taxes its inhabitants on their income and capital: the basic rule is that if you live in a place, you pay its taxes. But it's different in the UK. Here, if you come from overseas, and can prove strong links with overseas, and can prove that you are going to return to overseas, and can therefore establish a "domicile" overseas that is different from your "residency" in the UK ? well, in that case, you are treated entirely differently for tax purposes. You pay tax on your income in the UK, like the rest of us; and you can remit capital to the UK; but your overseas income, as long as you keep it overseas, is out of the reach of the Inland Revenue.
What this policy amounts to, in practice, is that the UK has a gigantic sign hanging over it saying, "Rich People! Come and Live Here! You Won't Have to Pay Any Tax!".
Read more here:
Code:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/feb/24/why-super-rich-love-uk?INTCMP=SRCH