This is true, but in addition to that, there is, in fact, a (relatively small) area in Eastern Central London called “the City”. The metaphorical usage comes from the fact that this is where, historically, the financial hub has been located (nowadays still to a large extent, but not exclusively); but Londoners know exactly what they mean when they say “the City”; it has unambiguously defined boundaries.
Moderator Note
We’re getting a bit off-topic here. Let’s focus on what actually happened and why even wealthy Britons were impoverished after WWII. Speculation about what could have happened and how things could have been worse is a perfectly fine topic, but that’s in IMHO or GD territory.
Feel free to spin off a related thread in the appropriate forum, but let’s keep this topic within FQ boundaries.
There’s a real Wall St., too, and I think there used to be a real wall across lower Manhattan.
My understanding is that Great Britain was deeply in debt to the United States at the end of the WW2.
Sure, but the City of London has local government functions that it performs. Certain things are done, in the City, by the City of London Corporation (its governing body) which, just slightly west (but still in very central London) would be done by the City of Westminster or slightly south by the Borough of Southwark.
“The highest rate of income tax peaked in the Second World War at 99.25%.”
Far as we can guess from the Wikipedia article, that means someone with an income of 10,000 pounds a year took home 75 pounds. Think that’s right? If not, what is right?
I think “marginal rate” is the key concept here. Crudely, you pay more on income above a certain level. Making up figures for purposes of illustration, the 99.25% would apply to income over 10,000 pounds, not the entire 10,000. You might pay nothing on the first 5,000, 50% on income between 5,001 and 10,000, and 99.25 on anything over 10,000. Again, made up numbers.
+1
…
And with suitably magical accounting, substantially nobody well off paid that rate. But it was on the books and that was enough to convince the proles that the elites were being squeezed too.
Such a cynic!
Absolutely right, of course, and it goes on today, even with the highest rate lower than it was in the 1950s.
After the war the coalition government headed by Churchill was dissolved and the country headed to an election. The Labour Party were swept into government. Lots of reasons why. They had a hard edged socialist policy. One was basically that nobody should reasonably have an income above a certain amount. The marginal rates were devised so that this was essentially so. The Attlee government was pretty remarkable, they instituted the National Health Scheme. But they became very unpopular, for one, they retained rationing for years after the end of the war. Bureaucratic government became onerous for many. Hence That Hideous Power. They lost power to the Conservatives at the next election and a now aging Churchill resumed the prime ministership.
It was a turbulent time. The huge social changes that started with WW1 were essentially complete. Much of the old economic order, and in particular, the massive economy of the serving class was gone. 30 years earlier a middle class family would have had servants, a butler, cook, two or three maids. No more.
The house my brother bought still has a bellpush by the bed, so you could have summoned the maid with your morning tea, and shaving water. There’s another in the lounge. Doesn’t work anymore, of course.
Recall the tax rate was lauded in song-
Let me tell you how it’s going to be, ♪
It’s one for you nineteen for me…♫ ‘
Cuz I’m the taxman, yeah! ♪
I remember looking this up decdes ago, and the marginal rate when Thatcher took over, according to data available before the internet, was 83%. Pretty close. But the key was that taxable benefits did not exist. I recall a newspaper article about this, and it mentioned that because tax rates in britain were so high, it was cheaper for a company to buy and automobile and provide a chauffeur (not taxable) than to give an executive or manage enough money to buy their own automobile. I presume the same applied to things like free housing and other benefits.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong. I thought at least the first books were set in the late 30s when he started writing the books not in the 50s when they were published. The children were in the country house with the wardrobe because they were evacuated from the city. I don’t know which book the quote in the OP came from. Could they have been talking about WWI? I believe the later books were set just post WWII. Maybe I’m way off. It’s been decades since I read them.
No, it’s definitely WWII. They were evacuated from London to escape “the Blitz”, There were bombings in London in WWI from airships, but no one called it “the Blitz”.
I said they were set in the late 30s. I know when WWII was. If he was impoverished by “the war” and its at the beginning of WWII he was most likely impoverished by WWI since something like that usually doesn’t happen in an instant. It depends on how it was worded like if he had been down on his luck for awhile.
Well, they weren’t. The Blitz started in 1940, and they were set after that.
The first published book (and first chronologically within the series timeline, other than one book) starts in 1940. (Specifically, the text says the children were evacuated because of German bombing of London, which started Spetember 1940.)
The rest of the series proceeds through the 1940s.
The one “prequel” book (The Magician’s Nephew) takes place in 1900.
My thought was that WWII meant the end of large parts of the British Empire. For instance, out East, where Hong Kong and Singapore were invaded and occupied by the Empire of Japan. Even India was threatened, and after WWII, India departed.
So if this Briton’s wealth depended on trade between HK, Singapore and GB, then that would have been cutoff soon after Dec 1941.
Bottom line: lotta ways for a pre-WW1 aristocrat to have been ground into penury by that war, the Depression, and the 1933-1939 prelude to WW2, plus the onset of hardcore European hostilities in 1939+
Current-era Americans tend to think of WW2 as Dec 1941 to Sep 1945. That’s 3 years & 10 months. It was a much bigger, longer, and more destructive show to the UK & Europeans.
IMO the bigger miracle would be to be a 1912 UK fatcat who was still a fatcat in 1946.