Another reason Prince Andrew is a disgrace | Hacker News Reader

Another reason Prince Andrew is a disgrace

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46 pointswlj13 comments

As an American, I simply do not understand why England let alone Europe suffers from the scourge of royalty in the 21st century. Just expropriate everything those motherfuckers have and be done with it.

Tourism. We have no manufacturing and soon the finance industry will all leave due to brexit. The rest of us will be Harry Potter, Whisky and Palace tour guides.

Tourists would continue to flock to Buckingham Palace even if the residents had been taken round the back and put up against the wall.

In fact I'm willing to bet rich Americans would be willing to pay a fortune to stay there.

As a "Republican" Australian I firmly believe we have no use for the Royals. It is embarrassing that the Queen is our head of state, the highest authority. We lost our chance at a referendum for becoming a republic in 1999, I hope we get the chance again.

Our Governer General is appointed by the monarch as her representative. That person is, among other things, Commander-in-Chief our military! In the past the GG has dismissed a sitting Prime Minister (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitution...). That is some crazy shit.

The biggest obstruction to becoming a republic is the apathy of the average Australian, and the argument that becoming a republic would be prohibitively expensive for little benefit. There is no appetite to be rid of the monarchy, people are mostly satisfied with the status quo.

I've tried this argument before but it seems to upset people. If the queen of another country is on your money, you are not fully independent.

It’s a good tourist attraction, to be entirely fair, it’s just that the extended royal family quickly descends into situations like these. You could also make the argument that profits from royal-owned land – which is handed over to Parliament in return for a fixed salary – saves each UK citizen over £2 in taxes per year [1].

[1] https://youtu.be/bhyYgnhhKFw

> royal-owned land

It was never their land to begin with though was it?

All monarchies are a scourge on citizens and should be dismantled and stripped of all assets.

The US has their own aristocracy, they just don’t have titles: the Rockefellers, the Mellons, etc.

Shall we expropriate them too?

Not really comparable. While there are wealthy people in the US who simply inherited their wealth from the lucky chance of being born to the right family, it's not like the government actually pays them a salary. Queen Elizabeth gets over 80 million pounds a year from UK taxpayers.

> While there are wealthy people in the US who simply inherited their wealth from the lucky chance of being born to the right family, it's not like the government actually pays them a salary. Queen Elizabeth gets over 80 million pounds a year from UK taxpayers.

Legally speaking it's not so much that the taxpayers pay her for existing, as much as they pay her for the right to land that she owns. The queen also funds a significant proportion of parliament. The only way to get rid of the monarchy is to also get rid of private property, otherwise you're taking land that has been given for the public use gratis, and putting it into private hands, since that's who legally owns them.

And if you think we should deal with the monarchy first, and not the big corporations and Russian oligarchs that not only own huge swathes of land, but have contributed significant amounts of funding to the Tory party, then I don't know what to say.

As a Canadian, I think it is time to be rid of the monarchy and become a republic.

Europe is doing fine. This one is strictly on the UK.

I feel like you can discover the sneaky bits of a contract by searching for and skimming sections with the $ and % characters.

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