George Osbourne

[davek]

Household income stats for Britain

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/publications/re-reference-tables.html?edition=tcm:77-51628

1980 was £13,947
2006/7 was £25,831

I'm sure you're aware of how difficult it is to get data on growth for richest/poorest but as you wish to prove the point I will beholden you with finding that out and assume there is no uneven distribution until you prove otherwise, innocent until proven guilty and all that

It's not that difficult to be honest mate. You just have to go to places like the Institute for Fiscal Studies who specialise in that type of breakdown. There's a decent appraisal of one of their studies here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7193904.stm#graph As you can see, wealth creation in the UK has been shadowed by growing levels of inequality. It doesn't totally cancel out your belief that people are richer, but it does show the relativity of that statement.

 

[The Esk]

One final thing, you say 'modern day UK' a wealthier place. Lets not confuse the UK government with the UK population. The UK population is considerably better off now than it's ever been. Look on the url below. It shows GDP per capita (in real terms)

http://www.google.co.uk/publicdata/...m=country:GBR&dl=en&hl=en&q=uk+gdp+per+capita

It's almost 4 times what it was in the 70's and 80's!! So we're 4 times richer than we were then. Think about that.

Sorry for the economics lesson but GDP is not a measure of wealth, nor standard of living - although it is commonly seen as one. It is purely a measure of the sum of consumption, investment, government spending and net exports.

GDP does not take into account the cost of living, and perhaps most pertinently does not take into account the level of indebtedness.

But don't take my word for it, the creator of GDP Simon Kuznets said in 1934 "The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income"