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Margaret Thatcher - "They'd rather have the poor poorer."

Excelsior100000 HN recommenders · 2016–2023
285K views · other · evergreen · Uploaded 2013-04-08

A short clip of Margaret Thatcher in Parliament in 1990 arguing that economic reforms benefited everyone even as the rich-poor gap widened. She says her opponents would rather the poor be poorer if it meant the rich were less rich.

Commenters link it as a shorthand for an argument about inequality, absolute versus relative prosperity, quoting her line in threads about taxes and wealth.

Labor, work & inequalityPolitics & history (other)

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4 comments from Hacker News

@cft2016 · in “Why is San Francisco trying to strangle its golden goose?”

As Margaret Thatcher said:"Socialists would rather have the poor poorer provided the rich were less rich" [VIDEO]

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@cryptonector2019 · in “The Golden Age of Hollywood Tax Avoidance”

[VIDEO] EDIT: I would make my comment more substantial, but Margaret Thatcher made my comment better than I could.

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@CrazyPyroLinux2022 · in “Ask HN: How do you get side gigs?”

I'm reminded of Margaret Thatcher's response to this: "He'd rather the poor were poorer, as long as the rich were less rich."[1] Every ethical dollar earned is a byproduct of value creation. Maybe you meant something more like "as long as he's not ripping off his customers," but otherwise that's an odd thing to say in response to someone who makes good money but is still looking for side jobs. [1] [VIDEO]

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@utopcell2023 · in “Only the richest ancient Athenians paid taxes”

My argument was that in absolute terms, the 1% already pays ~100x more than the median tax payer, which seems pretty close to stating that the median tax payer reaps the benefits of modern civilization essentially for free. Regarding inequality, this can't be the metric for taxation policy. Would you rather the 1% pay all taxes but inequality be 100x worse ? Are you optimizing for a better standard of living for the median, or for imposing the psychotherapeutic sentiment of "if I can't make that much money, nobody should" ? Capitalism has been around for a long time. The argument of "whatever they’re paying, it’s not enough [..]" has already been played out. In the 70s UK, investment income was taxed at a rate of 98% (after an inflation-adjusted income of 221k). It didn't work. Thatcher had famously summarized the inequality argument here: [1]. [1] [VIDEO]

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