Well, in that case, no one would accuse the Queen of being the Under-17s.
Reserve team, perhaps.
I considered that, but decided that “Under-17s” was funnier.
And a more appropriate comparison to Biden, too. 
Wikipedia tells me that she exercised some significant discretion in the selection of Prime Ministers in the late 50s and early 60s.
Re: the cost issue, according to this news story (Daily Telegraph), the Royal family cost us the equivalent of 62p per taxpayer last year - that’s just under a dollar. Even if we all wanted to get rid of them, would it really be worth the hassle for the sake of an annual Mars bar? If it ain’t broke, and all that…
That also needs to be offset against the tourist revenue brought into the country by having the royals as a draw.
I understood that many people feel the White House is too small for its purpose - the staff areas are cramped and stuffy, particularly in the West Wing, and when they made the TV show they had to expand the set dimensions to allow cameras etc to operate effectively.
Why must there be a point to the monarchy? Our system of government evolved over millennia, and wasn’t explicitly designed. As it stands, the system seems to work pretty well. Why mess with something that isn’t broken?
I meant to mention that in my post - that it’s huge and opulent and imposing even though it’s smaller than you expect and everyone says it’s cramped.
In any event, it’s still much bigger than the PM’s offices.
The UK PM also has access to Chequers, which looks quite nice.
That’s the cost.
They cost about £37M per year, which in expenditure terms is peanuts; almost negligible. There are a thousand other expenditures of many times that value which could be argued as wastage.
Now we need to find some kind of stats on how much money the economy gains from their presence. In addition it would be worth looking at how much money they raise for charities.
They get paid from the civil list, but the taxpayer gets the profit from the various estates, etc. I’ve no idea how much that is, but I imagine it’s a hell of a lot of money.
So - they cost a teeny £37M, and generate money in a whole load of different ways, but my Google search didn’t turn up any figures for that.
Half a billion pounds, apparently.
And that’s just the tourism aspect! Add in the royal estates, charities, etc. I’d say they seem to be pretty good value for money! That’s quite the return on investment!
And that’s not even starting on the non-financial ambassadorial benefits, which probably can’t be quantified.
I’m coming out strongly on the “Keep Them” side of the debate.
Well, the government would still have the royal estates even if there were no royals, and there would still be lots of charities. I don’t think you can credit them for things like that.
I’m also on the keep them side, at least now that HM has to pay taxes like everyone else.
You don’t think the charity work they do has any value?
Well, to the charities, yes. To Britain? Maybe, but I doubt it. I mean, the money would still be there; it would just be going somewhere else.
Charity work alleviates the state burden, though. So it means the taxpayer isn’t paying more.
Plus there’s the moral value, of course.
Sure he is. He’s just doing it via charities instead of the government.
That’s true; although a charity is optional where a tax is not.
Anyway, we can argue forever whether their charity work has value to the country; doesn’t sound like we’ll agree. I can’t help but see charity work as a net positive - otherwise there’s no point doing it.
But there’s a problem: even assuming political will to do so, what do you replace them with?
I posted the following in one of the threads about Prince William marrying, where someone made a similar suggestion that the monarchy be abolished on Her Majesty’s death:
I wrote that from the perspective of Commonwealth realms like Canada and Australia, which have written constitutions, albeit with large portions of conventions tucked in. I would think it would technically be even more difficult to replace the Crown in the UK Constitution, since it is so amorphous.