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Comment by Loughla | Hacker News Reader

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You can probably guess - older demographics lean towards supporting the monarchy, younger demographics skew towards not being fans. There's a loose consensus that the royal family is a net positive for the countries finances, but I believe that involves some creative accounting where all tourism to royal-adjacent properties and the surrounding areas is attributed entirely to those properties still being owned by a living monarch rather than the state, and also implicitly assumes that they are entitled to keep benefiting from the vast wealth and estates they have inherited from those who took them by force. There's no politically neutral answer to how much they cost, you'll get vastly different answers depending on where your lens is calibrated on the royalist-guillotine scale.

I’m only one voice but being in my mid-30s (so younger demographic I’d hope?) I don’t have a problem with the royals; I’m no royalist but nor do I seek their demise. I think most of my friends would fall into a similar category too.

> I believe that involves some creative accounting where all tourism to royal-adjacent properties and the surrounding areas is attributed entirely to those properties still being owned by a living monarch rather than the state

That argument is a tricky one (as you point out). The French palaces have a fair few visitors and there are no living royals to block access. The family don’t need to be in the castle.

It’s ludicrous as they are also my royal family - and I’m in New Zealand.

Well I (an American) agree with your sentiment, it appears that the British royalty don't actually rely on tax money, but instead they keep 25% of the money that the royaly estate /makes/ and the other 75% goes to the British treasury.

But I might be wrong. https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-57559653

The Crown Estate is where the sovereign grant comes from, and it's weird. It's "owned" by the current monarch, but only in their role as head of state (the Crown). Realistically it belongs to the country and to the public, and were we to abolish monarchy, would not become the private property of the Windsor family.

So while they don't rely on tax money (outside of the huge amount of tax money spent on their police protection, transport in military aircraft, etc. etc.), they do rely on money which rightfully belongs to the people of the nation.

> were we to abolish monarchy, would not become the private property of the Windsor family.

Today, I expect that's what would happen. But I bet the Windsor family could have kept a lot if they had given up monarchy a while back. Which puts the "rightfully belongs to the people" claim in question, if you believe a king can ever legitimately own anything.

Also an American and I like the British (and also Japanese) royals. Benevolent monarchs are a cornerstone of serenity and sanity.

And yes, I realize the irony as an American. I think on average Americans like the British royal family more than Britons do?

> Benevolent monarchs…

The British royal family has veto power over parliament. They use this power to rewrite laws. Lots of this is well documented, but poorly publicised.

Pity they didn't stop Brexit, which would have been an actual good use of their veto power.

> Benevolent monarchs are a cornerstone of serenity and sanity.

So they are great until they aren’t, and then there is no mechanism to remove them.

Dictatorships are also good if you get a great leader.

> The view that the monarchy is ‘very important’ has reached the lowest percentage since data collection began in 1983.

https://natcen.ac.uk/news/public-support-monarchy-falls-reco...

Anecdotally it's 50% "France had the right idea" and 50% "God save the king" with very few people in between.

Sibling comment confirms

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39858847

My experience is the opposite. Most people don’t really care, but if pushed they’d be “well of course I don’t think the royal family should have a constitutional role, but I wouldn’t kill them, and I don’t trust politicians to put a better system in place…”

I fall in the middle of the camps -- pretty sure we still get a good RoI on our marketing spend on the royals, unconvinced the family wouldn't actually be wealthier if they'd abandoned the throne and taken all their stuff with them instead of it "belonging to the country", feel rather sorry for those who get the most tabloid attention.

More money goes to corrupt politicians than to the royals. It's less than 100M per year with 67M people.

I don't like supporting the royals but it's a small portion of taxes.

That equation misses the value of their assets and the revenue they make for themselves.

> Pissed that my taxes were subsidizing their bullshit

Accurate

Step 1: Stop wasting money subsidising their bullshit.

Step 2: Take a slice of advice from the revolutionary French.

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