To be fair, he didn't pay for the crown jewels himself, so its not like he had the money to buy them -- rather, they were stolen.

So fucking sad.

It's still so weird to me to think about how we have more advanced technology and more trade across the planet, yet it seems like our quality of life is being lowered. Ultimately, the reason the 1950s felt different wasn't because the technology was better, it's because the economic guardrails were different. The system we have now isn't broken; it's functioning exactly as it was redesigned to function over the last 40 years: capturing the immense wealth generated by modern efficiency and funneling it straight to the top.

Fuck the royals so hard. I fucking can’t stand them. They preach “HELP THE POOR” while sitting pretty on stolen funds. They get paid millions, if not billions, to sit around and do jack fucking shit all day. Fuck them.

I'm not British, but it really is bizarre seeing this old geezer actually dressed up in this stuff. It'd almost be comical if it wasn't for the fact that he's dead fucking serious.

Wild that they still dress up like that. Read the fucking room.

But selling the crown would drive the price of crowns down so low (supply and demand, you know) and you'd never actually get 8 billion. Best you'd get is... maybe one roundabout and a nice tree.

Let them eat beans on toast

Imagine having a king and thinking you are a democracy 🤣

He actually said the phrase "ensure a fair deal for working people". Who thought it was a good idea to put that in the speech knowing he was going to be fully dressed in the spoils of exploitation? You'd think they'd at least temper it with the comparative term "fairer" if the more sensitive wardrobe option was truly off the table.

It's sad because I don't see anything dramatically improving in the UK any time soon. It feels as though the people at the top are consistently able to manipulate public opinion against their own best interests.

The crown jewels are state-owned and might as well be part of the UK's gold reserves worth 30 billion. Given the historical, cultural, and symbolic value, I'd say they should dip into the gold reserves first to solve homelessness and fund the NHS.

You can certainly have a debate about where some of those rocks came from and their ongoing possession by the UK tho!

Wanker.

It's cool, the fucker flies around the world on an aeroplane whilst demanding we save the environment.

He's also one of the single largest tax Dodgers in the UK, so when he talks about "the working man" he's talking specifically about the very people he steals from.

I think those robes, the crown, the Sceptre, they were all the Crown's stuff - aka the Firm, the organization that is the English monarchy - and not his. They existed before him, they will exist after him, and his wearing them lays little claim of ownership past "work clothes" than a pilot can claim to own the plane he's flying.

Yes, it's a bad look. The guy at the bank denying loans wears a fancy suit. The lawyers in America fighting to deny healthcare wear amazing suits.

Olyoud have him sell the crown he doesn't effectively own to throw money at a problem. Never go to the Louvre, or they'll toss you out for yelling about how they should sell the art to pay for the French homeless.

In all this you forget: if the pilot sells his plane, if the Louvre sells some pricy paintings, if the Crown's representative sells the work clothes he's issued, who's buying it? That guy, those people buying them, they've truly amassed a personal fortune to be able to buy something like that.

THOSE are your villains. Taxation is how we get them to pay their share from here on in, like we did in the '40s through the '70s. And I think the max tax rate above 1mil gross takings every year should be a 101% tax rate: you're paying everything you took and just a little bit more. Maybe take less. Maybe launch fewer rockets and buy a few less elections and pay to fix hunger and healthcare and all that instead.

To be fair, the crown's only "worth" is as a collectable.

It's not equivalent to, say, 750,000,000 kg of Nutella. E.g £5 billion of Nutella, You can't just sell it and distribute the Nutella, it has to be manufactured for £billions worth of work.

The crown has no utility. Its gems don't do anything productive, relative to their value. It can't pay engineers and farmers and such wages to make Nutella, because what are they gonna do with 1/100,000th of a crown?

Practically, if the UK govt sold all royal stuff, what would happen is some ultra-rich would buy it, and... sit on it, at the expense of other collectables they'd have bought instead. That doesn't improve much.