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Originally Posted by LeatherTrumpet
What good do they do?
And if you are going to say tourism then quantify it against what they cost and what we would gain from property and land sale?
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Well the standard answer is "tourism" but there's absolutely no evidence that it's much more than an urban myth. Literally no wide scale studies have been done into the potential effect of it on tourism. Royal attractions are estimated to generate only something like 0.5 billion / year in tourism (of something like 15 billion total) and while there MIGHT be some drop in how attractive those are once it's not an active monarchy... there's absolutely no evidence that it would be significant, and it obviously would never drop to zero. "Royal attractions" are still very popular in countries with dead historical monarchies and also you have to factor in being able to totally open up those attractions to the public. There would probably be a measurable SURGE in tourism for at least a decade. But again it's all supposition; no one has actually attempted to measure this in any detail... hence, it being stated as "fact" that the Royals do wonders for tourism is just completely made up
. Potentially wishful thinking with zero evidence base.
As for being supposed to gush over how much they do for charity... I'm sorry but it would be absolutely bloody abhorrent if they WEREN'T using their completely unearned position of wealth and privilege to help others. They know this very well, and while I'm sure they do naturally get some personal "good feels" from it, it'd take a lot to convince me that it isn't mostly just a huge PR exercise because they know that this good image is part of what keeps them around when most of the world has long moved past the concept of genetic succession.