8 ms·

I’ll be the first to admit I know little about economics, but I despair at the state of things. It feels like half the electorate live in a fantasy land. Over

I’ll be the first to admit I know little about economics, but I despair at the state of things. It feels like half the electorate live in a fantasy land. Over two million people using food banks—many in work—and yet all the chap I see on my morning dog walk wants to talk about is “all the people on the dole who live in big houses and drive brand new cars” (Jobseekers Allowance is £77/week, for reference). Meanwhile our household income is far above the national median, and we still need to scrimp and save far more than our parents and grandparents did to work towards a deposit on a house. I truly feel for the low wage earners in this country, even though a significant portion of them continue to vote for these monsters. We seem to be totally without compassion as a nation right now.

rapind 4y ago
It may seem magical, but conservatives have worked really hard to convince peasants that tax breaks for the wealthy is in their best interest.
bluehatbrit 4y ago
You've brilliantly expressed exactly how I feel as well. It's so depressing, everyone seems to have their heads burried in the sand or focusing on what other people seem to be getting. It's driving me insane.
- bergenty 4y ago
  You’re getting Americanized. Congratulations?
Aloha 4y ago
I'm an American and I can talk about the same things, nearly word for word (Jobseekers allowance notwithstanding) and feel exactly the same way. Something is wrong with the economy, not just in the UK, but in America and probably a bunch of other countries. Where is the prosperity, if its there, why is it not more widely shared? is it a single cause, or is the cause manifold? I have some ideas as to the answers to these questions (and its not capitalism is bad), but I too am just an engineer, not an economist. The unrest that propels populism is real. It's clear the status quo isnt working for the majority.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  The system is rigged against middle class on down because the government is bought and paid for by the 0.1% so that it's trickle up economics.
- notch656a 4y ago
  Forced sharing of prosperity (in form of transfer payments / taxes) is at a much higher non-wartime rate (% gdp) vs say 100 years ago (in the US). If you want to use our parents (and before) proportion of transfer of prosperity, we should lower it significantly.
  - arcticbull 4y ago
    Forced sharing is a silly way of referring to taxes which are fees assessed for collective services. Nobody builds anything alone and is a benefactor of all sorts of common goods, services and infrastructure. To say otherwise is to prefer the bootstraps narrative to reality. Top marginal tax rate in the mid 1900s was 70-90% and the estate tax was actually assessed without exempting the first $14M or whatever it is. It’s all a social construct and we collectively set the rules.
    - notch656a 4y ago
      - arcticbull 4y ago
        Forced sharing isn’t an accepted term or even one that is worth using in discourse. Transfer payments benefit society which in turn benefits the best off too. They benefit from them.
      - Aloha 4y ago
        This only seems to account for direct social spending, not indirect - which much of the cold war was, that large peacetime military, its transfer payments from the government to rural america. Also, when I say shared prosperity, I dont mean transfer payments, nor do I mean forced sharing, I mean why are so few benefits of our greater productivity seen by the majority (bottom 2/3rds), why has the standard of living fallen in real terms for the bottom 50% of the country? why do we feel poorer?
lhnz 4y ago
A central issue is that we have an ageing population and slowing growth. Old people have a tight grip on who runs the country, and tend to get what they want (e.g. high house prices, triple pension lock, fewer immigrants, etc). Unless we can attract highly-skilled workers by offering higher salaries than other countries we're doomed to be servicing pensioners with fewer and fewer workers. And this will happen while our taxes are slowly increased to deal with their health needs while other public services are slowly reduced. Any government that is in power should be working out how to build a political coalition that doesn't involve letting the old eat the young. Young people shouldn't be spending all of their money on rent and need to be able to build wealth and support families. Edit: To be clear, encouraging immigration wouldn't lower house prices -- but without immigration we will have difficulty supporting the no-longer-working ageing population. Increasing immigration is one option; the other option is to trying to make it easier for the young to have children by making houses cheaper and providing completely free childcare for everybody, but these are much more difficult to achieve, as they have a much slower pay-off and would require taking money away from pensioners (which will get you voted out).
- shouldtack 4y ago
  How is encouraging immigration going to benefit either the affordability of house prices, or your salary?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
MichaelZuo 4y ago
The world is way more competitive nowadays so it makes sense that everyone has to work harder to meet previous standards for scarce goods. Noticeably this doesn't apply to non-scarce goods such as information products.
yurtly 4y ago
The Tories have been systematically destroying Britain's welfare programmes since they got into power. This was all planned, when David Cameron effused about "Big Society" back in 2010, he meant his government was going to cut state-funded services to the bone, so charities like food banks would have to step in. Usually run within churches (or other religious organisations) by people who actually care about others, unlike all these Tory vultures who only want to feather their own nests and enrich each other. The worst is how they are treating disabled people, it's very common now for the government assessors to claim there's nothing wrong with you, and mark your disability score as zero, only to have this overturned in court later on, after months of stress and poverty. The unofficial government approach seems to be, let them die. It's disgraceful and appalling how these Tory scum are treating the most vulnerable in society. I can only hope with recent events they've fucked their electability for a very long time. A general election can't come soon enough.
- mmarq 4y ago
  > The Tories have been systematically destroying Britain's welfare programmes since they got into power. The current variety of Tory has been destroying the country, and not just welfare programmes, since 2010. Look at productivity growth or at how people talk about Britain abroad.
- tengwar2 4y ago
  To a limited extent, the churches sometimes receive a bit of government funding for these activities (food banks, help for the homeless, etc.). It certainly doesn't cover costs but it can make the difference between being able to do something and not being able. However that is drying up. In my town, we used to run overnight accommodation and two meals a day for the homeless for 3-4 months in winter until COVID stopped that in March 2020. We had a grant via the local council but from central funds to cover the employment of the administrator (a very necessary cost!). We can't restart because the policy is now against it and that funding has gone. I don't want to frame this as "Tories Bad!" - in fact there are some arguments for stopping it, but on balance I think that it is still needed. Another issue is that church people tend not to be rich, and are dying off from old age with few people replacing them. We have to pick what we can still do with increasingly limited funds and people. Btw, while I am liberal/left, many of the people working at the coal face are conservatives. I think one has to distinguish between Tory MPs and Tory voters, some of whom are socially liberal (though they would be offended to be described as such).

rapind 4y ago

It may seem magical, but conservatives have worked really hard to convince peasants that tax breaks for the wealthy is in their best interest.

bluehatbrit 4y ago

You've brilliantly expressed exactly how I feel as well. It's so depressing, everyone seems to have their heads burried in the sand or focusing on what other people seem to be getting. It's driving me insane.

bergenty 4y ago
You’re getting Americanized. Congratulations?

Aloha 4y ago

I'm an American and I can talk about the same things, nearly word for word (Jobseekers allowance notwithstanding) and feel exactly the same way. Something is wrong with the economy, not just in the UK, but in America and probably a bunch of other countries. Where is the prosperity, if its there, why is it not more widely shared? is it a single cause, or is the cause manifold? I have some ideas as to the answers to these questions (and its not capitalism is bad), but I too am just an engineer, not an economist. The unrest that propels populism is real. It's clear the status quo isnt working for the majority.

stjohnswarts 4y ago
The system is rigged against middle class on down because the government is bought and paid for by the 0.1% so that it's trickle up economics.
notch656a 4y ago
Forced sharing of prosperity (in form of transfer payments / taxes) is at a much higher non-wartime rate (% gdp) vs say 100 years ago (in the US). If you want to use our parents (and before) proportion of transfer of prosperity, we should lower it significantly.
- arcticbull 4y ago
  Forced sharing is a silly way of referring to taxes which are fees assessed for collective services. Nobody builds anything alone and is a benefactor of all sorts of common goods, services and infrastructure. To say otherwise is to prefer the bootstraps narrative to reality. Top marginal tax rate in the mid 1900s was 70-90% and the estate tax was actually assessed without exempting the first $14M or whatever it is. It’s all a social construct and we collectively set the rules.
  - notch656a 4y ago
    - arcticbull 4y ago
      Forced sharing isn’t an accepted term or even one that is worth using in discourse. Transfer payments benefit society which in turn benefits the best off too. They benefit from them.
    - Aloha 4y ago
      This only seems to account for direct social spending, not indirect - which much of the cold war was, that large peacetime military, its transfer payments from the government to rural america. Also, when I say shared prosperity, I dont mean transfer payments, nor do I mean forced sharing, I mean why are so few benefits of our greater productivity seen by the majority (bottom 2/3rds), why has the standard of living fallen in real terms for the bottom 50% of the country? why do we feel poorer?

lhnz 4y ago

A central issue is that we have an ageing population and slowing growth. Old people have a tight grip on who runs the country, and tend to get what they want (e.g. high house prices, triple pension lock, fewer immigrants, etc). Unless we can attract highly-skilled workers by offering higher salaries than other countries we're doomed to be servicing pensioners with fewer and fewer workers. And this will happen while our taxes are slowly increased to deal with their health needs while other public services are slowly reduced. Any government that is in power should be working out how to build a political coalition that doesn't involve letting the old eat the young. Young people shouldn't be spending all of their money on rent and need to be able to build wealth and support families. Edit: To be clear, encouraging immigration wouldn't lower house prices -- but without immigration we will have difficulty supporting the no-longer-working ageing population. Increasing immigration is one option; the other option is to trying to make it easier for the young to have children by making houses cheaper and providing completely free childcare for everybody, but these are much more difficult to achieve, as they have a much slower pay-off and would require taking money away from pensioners (which will get you voted out).

shouldtack 4y ago
How is encouraging immigration going to benefit either the affordability of house prices, or your salary?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

MichaelZuo 4y ago

The world is way more competitive nowadays so it makes sense that everyone has to work harder to meet previous standards for scarce goods. Noticeably this doesn't apply to non-scarce goods such as information products.

yurtly 4y ago

The Tories have been systematically destroying Britain's welfare programmes since they got into power. This was all planned, when David Cameron effused about "Big Society" back in 2010, he meant his government was going to cut state-funded services to the bone, so charities like food banks would have to step in. Usually run within churches (or other religious organisations) by people who actually care about others, unlike all these Tory vultures who only want to feather their own nests and enrich each other. The worst is how they are treating disabled people, it's very common now for the government assessors to claim there's nothing wrong with you, and mark your disability score as zero, only to have this overturned in court later on, after months of stress and poverty. The unofficial government approach seems to be, let them die. It's disgraceful and appalling how these Tory scum are treating the most vulnerable in society. I can only hope with recent events they've fucked their electability for a very long time. A general election can't come soon enough.

mmarq 4y ago
> The Tories have been systematically destroying Britain's welfare programmes since they got into power. The current variety of Tory has been destroying the country, and not just welfare programmes, since 2010. Look at productivity growth or at how people talk about Britain abroad.
tengwar2 4y ago
To a limited extent, the churches sometimes receive a bit of government funding for these activities (food banks, help for the homeless, etc.). It certainly doesn't cover costs but it can make the difference between being able to do something and not being able. However that is drying up. In my town, we used to run overnight accommodation and two meals a day for the homeless for 3-4 months in winter until COVID stopped that in March 2020. We had a grant via the local council but from central funds to cover the employment of the administrator (a very necessary cost!). We can't restart because the policy is now against it and that funding has gone. I don't want to frame this as "Tories Bad!" - in fact there are some arguments for stopping it, but on balance I think that it is still needed. Another issue is that church people tend not to be rich, and are dying off from old age with few people replacing them. We have to pick what we can still do with increasingly limited funds and people. Btw, while I am liberal/left, many of the people working at the coal face are conservatives. I think one has to distinguish between Tory MPs and Tory voters, some of whom are socially liberal (though they would be offended to be described as such).