Some of the playground bollox on this thread demeans its posters, but this is wisdom. Wanting a more equal society and wanting to improve the lot of the average citizen seem utterly sensible tenets to me.

We have a more equal society than at any time in the past.
The fact that 1% of the population are super rich is not the problem. In fact wealth drags all people upward.
Some people are more interested in being jealous of those who have more than them than seeing the reality.
Yes it's appalling that some people live in poverty in 21st Century Britain but if it was easy to fix then any government would fix it immediately. The meaning of poverty has changed. Now it means that you can't afford a flat screen TV. 100 years ago it meant you shared a room with 10 other people and had nothing decent to eat half the week.

Edited by Hrolf The Ganger (04 Oct 2016 8.57pm)

This is from what I linked above

Interpretation Child Low Income & Material Deprivation – respondents are asked whether they have access to a list of 21 goods and services. If they can’t afford a given item, this is scored in the material deprivation measure, with items more commonly owned in the population given a higher weighted score. A child is considered to be in low income and material deprivation if they live in a family that has a total score of 25 or more out of 100 and an equivalised household income BHC below 70% of median. More details are available in the HBAI Quality and Methodology Information Report.

Main Findings The percentage of children in relative low income BHC increased by 2 percentage points to 19% (not statistically significant) in 2014/15. The percentages of children in absolute low income and in combined low income and material deprivation, however, remained unchanged at 17% and 13% respectively. This is most likely due to families with children benefiting less from increases in full-time work than childless families, as well as the 1% uprating of some benefits.

Children are at higher risk of living in both relative and absolute low income than the overall UK population. This result holds over the past 20 years and is true on both a Before and After Housing Costs basis.

This is from the independent based on HM Revenue and Customs figures
[Link]

Ha, seriously?! Wealth drags all people upward sounds like 'trickle down economics' which has been super successful right? I feel so much better knowing that 1% are so much richer, and apparently dragging me up with them. Thanks, the 1%!

I take your point that poverty in 2016 is very different from poverty in 1916 or 1816. But anyone who thinks that there is not real poverty in this country (someone who cannot get enough to eat, regularly, and faces hard choices about whether to turn on the heating or pay the rent in the winter) is delusional. It isn't just 'don't have a plasma screen TV' "poverty".