[alienthrowaway]

You did not dispute the point I was making: that wealth was plundered. If the crown jewels do not (directly) benefit UK citizens, that doesn't mean other plundered wealth doesn't benefit the average citizen. For that, you can dig into the infrastructure, bequests, scholarships, to mention a few examples that were funded by plundering and exploiting colonies.

[randomopining]

Ok, so can you show that directly plundered/stolen wealth actually helped much?

Setting up trading posts and controlling the beginnings of truly international trade over 200-300 years ago... I would think that would set a country up well moving forward, and somebody eventually had to do it. British were one of the first.