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Poor people ‘surviving not living’ as UK social contract collapses, says report
- slt2021 3y agothey voted for Brexit, they get exactly what they voted for. elections have consequences
- _visgean 3y agonot exactly everyone who is suffering from poverty voted for brexit.
- d--b 3y agoApparently, poor people mostly drove the brexit vote https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/31/people-who-felt-marginalised-drove-brexit-vote-study-finds https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/31/people-who-... Doesn't mean they deserve what is happening to them though...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dang 3y agoPlease don't start flamewars on HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Pingk 3y agoI can't speak to the poverty side, but anecdotally my colleagues and I work in a high-tech profession and our salaries are hardly competitive. I'm earning less than 33K as a cybersecurity engineer and I'm struggling to save up for a house, my student loan has increased from interest since graduating, and I'm the frugal one at work. UK wages have been stagnant for over a decade while the cost of living has increased so much. There are better paying companies I could move to, and I'm keeping an eye out, but as the article states - there are systemic problems in this country that the people in power are failing to tackle.
- balderdash 3y agoConsidering that 33k is exactly the median wage in the UK, and google says the average starting computer science salary in the UK is 44k, I’d hazard that there seems to be some relevant information missing from your story
- siquick 3y agoI had been considering moving back home after 10 years of living in Australia so started researching wages for Engineering roles and the salaries were so low, with the cost of living nowhere near balancing out against the low salaries. I’d expect a big boost in wages since they left Europe due to a loss of available employable market but it seems the opposite.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>I’d expect a big boost in wages since they left Europe due to a loss of available employable market but it seems the opposite. Salaries have spiked, immediately after brexit, but have stagnated because no new investments are gonna happen in a country that's separated from the EU single market, so all new big tech has decided to expand instead to Amsterdam, Dublin and Berlin.
- ilikerashers 3y agoLondon is still the best in the EU for tech salaries. They’re just flat and have been so for the last year. 33k is pretty low for cyber security but there is this: https://metro.co.uk/2023/03/30/hm-treasury-listed-head-of-cyber-security-job-with-measly-salary-18529270/amp/ https://metro.co.uk/2023/03/30/hm-treasury-listed-head-of-cy...
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>London is still the best in the EU for tech salaries. At the top end, yes, but there's also the long tail of very poor paying tech jobs relative to how expensive it is compared to continental Europe.
- mytailorisrich 3y agoThere is a breakdown of education and personal ambition. Once someone has been brought up to be 'feral' with no education and even a disdain for education, it tends to knock down families for generations.
- jimnotgym 3y agoMy kids assume they will never own their own home. They had their education trashed by covid. It is hard to be ambitious when you see success as impossible.
- polar8 3y agoNot with that attitude they won't!
- eastbound 3y agoShaming people for being losers is not a good way to enroll them again onto a path to success. It actually causes murders, if you count the incels that are shamed until they commit a mass murder to have their suffering heard. I’m an ambitious guy with lots of success and I work day and night. But I’d never reckon bravery in someone who’s working day and night, they have it easy, since they ecosystem is answering positively to more work from their side. So I just had to bring in the work. Oppositely, when the economy pulls of down by your bootstraps, it takes real courage to be ambitious.
- mytailorisrich 3y agoCovid revealed good schools and bad schools. But it also made plain parents who valued education and parents who didn't.
- coastermug 3y agoGenuinely interested here, who are you referring to as ‘feral’? I see a lot of very well educated non-feral people in the UK struggling to make good wages and a ‘proper’ standard of living. I think that’s what is meant by a broken social contract ?
- nine_zeros 3y agoI really don't understand. A drop in prices of housing alone will fix all the problems (as long as banks are backed by the central bank like they are in the US). Write laws that: - Prevent non-humans entities (trusts, shell-companies, foundations etc. from buying houses for the next 10 years) - Ban airbnb - Increase property taxes on vacant properties.
- FredPret 3y agoOr... you could try the supply and demand method. Increase supply (build more), keep demand steady (sane interest rates, sane immigration rates, speaking as an immigrant), and housing costs simply must fall. Yes, even if a single corporation buys every last house in the UK. Fight supply and demand at your peril.
- jjcon 3y agoGiven UK age demographics that is going to happen over the next few decades anyway, putting all efforts into increasing supply could lead to the opposite problem in the not too far future.
- betaby 3y agoUnlikely, all UN demographics predictions were/are wrong. Population is mostly grows everywhere unless that region a war zone. Being that growth driven by births, immigration, refugies or illegal move is irrelevant in context of supply/demand.
- jfim 3y ago> Population is mostly grows everywhere unless that region a war zone. Define everywhere. Japan and Greece have seen population declines in the last few years, for example.
- betaby 3y agoIt's more 'define the interval'. For Japan and Greece that's more a stagnation - population didn't grow or fell much in last 30 years. On a interval of 2-3 generation (20-60 years) most of countries show growth, not decline in population. Many times predicted population decline in Germany turns to be slow growth during last 30 years.
- haunter 3y agoAnd that’s western Europe. Now imagine what’s happening in the poorer EU countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania etc)
- maest 3y agoPoland's doing ok. So are Romania and Hungary. There is inflation, but there is also a lot of economic growth.
- paganel 3y agoAs a Romanian I can confirm that, all things considered, we are not doing that bad. Inflation hurts a lot of people, of course, but we’ve had way, way worse than this back in the ‘90s, so those of us who are older than 40 or so just sigh, maybe swear at the politicians and then hope that things won’t get worse. What’s really helping, for now at least, is that housing is still relatively affordable (with the exception of Cluj, a very IT-focused city). If that housing affordability were to disappear then, yeah, the optics would definitely change.
- PartiallyTyped 3y agoI don’t think Poland is doing ok. Inflation has screwing people over, and rents are absurdly high.
- seydor 3y agothey are cheaper to begin with. 10% inflation on expensive countries has more impact, considering that wages remain static everywhere
- retrac 3y agoThe "new" European economies are poorer but they're also more egalitarian. Lower average income, but more people near the average. That creates the odd situation where a young person born into poverty in, for example, Poland, or Estonia, may have better prospects than someone born today into poverty in the UK, or even France. More of a real chance at social advancement, ending up middle class and socially-economically secure. Quite a reversal from just a few decades ago.
- erulabs 3y agoI mean, listen to modern UK music for about 10 minutes and you’ll hear this. I like “nothing great about Britain”. “Top Boy” isn’t exactly about people thriving.
- sph 3y agoA recent discovery of mine are "Sleaford Mods", a genre I like to call austerity punk. When two people in their mid 50s complain about the cost of living, you know the system has completely and utterly failed us. I can only look with pity at the naive mass of people that still believe a better world is just an election away.
- Toenex 3y agoNever thought I would see the Sleaford Mods mentioned in a Hacker News thread. As a 50-something UK male I agree the world has gone a bit weird when the rallying cry for revolution is a well articulated by my peers as by the youth.
- defrost 3y agoThey work well with Amy Taylor's laid back easy going Aussie energy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5f1Bweak38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5f1Bweak38
- sph 3y agoThey are an acquired taste, but I learned to appreciate how modern and punk their music feels. Not aimed at authority, like the 80s punk movement, but angry at how mediocre, mundane and unfulfilling our daily lives have become in the past 30 years. It's about time punk started to turn on the rat race. https://youtu.be/WhOmCYmEkvU?si=sRS9ga0-LbhCvb3g https://youtu.be/WhOmCYmEkvU?si=sRS9ga0-LbhCvb3g
- JeremyNT 3y agoIt does seem like the frustrations are really bubbling through in art. I've been listening to a band called Yard Act whose lyrics are overtly political and also seem to capture the anger younger people are feeling. As an outsider looking in, one gets the sense that things are devolving and faith in British institutions is declining.
- gibsonf1 3y agoThe winning formula that seems to work without fail is more individual freedom/capitalism. (Not corporatism or crony capitalism or statism of course)
- MisterBastahrd 3y agoThere's no such thing as "crony" capitalism. It's just capitalism without hiding the nasty bits.
- gibsonf1 3y agoThe freest countries are the most prosperous - this is the evidence: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/freest-countries https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/freest-co... Note that Hong Kong used to be at the top of this list prior to 1997 when China started taking away their freedom.
- nathan_compton 3y agoNote that this index is freest but not the most capitalist, which you seem to be conflating.
- gibsonf1 3y agoI use the definition: "Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned." So no conflation.
- nathan_compton 3y agoWeird definition of capitalism. Tons of systems respect property rights and individual freedoms. And, in fact, none of these states operate under the condition where all property is privately owned. Where they fall on those measures doesn't correlate with the weal of the people either, at least not the way you are implying.
- fancyfredbot 3y ago"poverty cannot be tackled by raising incomes alone, and highlights housing and childcare costs, the additional costs of disability, and energy and travel costs as areas to be addressed" I'm not sure how to interpret this since clearly raising income does allow people to pay these costs. If the report is saying the government needs to intervene in the housing, energy and childcare markets, then that would be a breath of fresh air.
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoour costs for these things are insane, $2000 monthly.v netherlands is richer than UK but their childcare costs half as much. In germany it's free. Same story for housing, I have friends around europe and people with twice as much floor space pay much less rent
- karaterobot 3y ago> netherlands is richer than UK but their childcare costs half as much. In germany it's free. Is this private childcare setting its own rates in a market, or some public childcare service paid for with increased taxes, or some hybrid (i.e. private with supplemental government funding, or private with mandated limits on pricing)?
- brnt 3y ago1500-2000 EUR per kid is usual in Amsterdam as well. There's a wage dependent subsidy though. Kita's aren't free, though much cheaper.
- drak0n1c 3y agoWhat that statement means is that measures to facilitate supply side volume are also necessary, giving the demand side money is not the only option. If it is too cost-prohibitive and risky for incumbent firms and potential new competitors to supply an increasing volume of services or goods then buyer subsidies will only inflate prices further.
- ngcazz 3y agoI think that's safe to assume, since income is contingent on employment and occupation at any given point - keep those services affordable to reduce the risk of citizens losing access to them
- throwawaysleep 3y ago[flagged]
- notacoward 3y agoWhat about the people who voted against Brexit but still have to suffer the consequences? There are millions, and millions more who couldn't even vote e.g. because they were too young at the time. "You voted for this so suffer" seems like a remarkably cruel response.
- gambiting 3y agoAnd don't forget people who live here who literally couldn't vote at the time and also have to suffer the consequences.
- eastbound 3y ago[flagged]
- javcasas 3y agoThe EU negotiates as a block because that's how blocs are strong: by not having a part that can be "negotiated" (bullied) into concessing. UK decided to be outside the bloc, and now it has to negotiate with the bloc, like everyone else.
- gizajob 3y agoNot sure what the need is for downvoting this opinion.
- allendoerfer 3y agoHe is talking about a 5 eye state and nuclear power, which left an economic union, losing the benefits of said union and calls it bullying as if nation states were toddlers.
- 3y ago
- xwdv 3y agoThis is the danger of living somewhere with low salaries but justifying it by low cost of living and robust government welfare. Once the rug is pulled and cost of living goes up or the government sucks you’re screwed. If you had a high salary you could just pay your way out of this mess yourself.
- dTal 3y agoIf you're making a comparison with the US, there is the severe flaw that not everyone in the US has a high salary either, which means they're extra doubly screwed, and then all the high-salaried people still have to live in a country riddled with the social problems that causes. Then they go on the internet and complain about homeless people in San Francisco.
- xwdv 3y agoYes but there are very few places in this world where you can be a very high salary worker and not be surrounded by people getting crushed in poverty.
- 23B1 3y agoHad a handful of UK-based employees join our company in a merger; I was shocked at how underpaid experienced professionals were compared to our (U.S.) wages – and I was incensed when our investors balked at a (nominal) raise for them. I have a hard time separating agendas from reality these days, but I'd love to get someone who is smart on the UK's to understand how that country got there, especially considering my (probably wrong) impression that things like healthcare, a major expense here in the U.S., seem to be taken care of. I understand wages are stagnant, but... why?
- DanBC 3y agoRead "Britania Unchained" (available at various shadow libraries). Then, when you've read it, realise that it was written by Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore and Liz Truss. It's garbage front to back. We elect fucking idiots who are in thrall to a tiny clique of rabidly anti tax arseholes who would rather set their granny on fire than pay any tax at all. And then we wonder why the country is on fire.
- Silhouette 3y agoObligatory notes for non-UK readers: We didn't in fact elect the Truss administration in any meaningful sense. Nor did we elect the current Sunak administration in any meaningful sense. In fact historically close to half of our Prime Ministers have landed the job without first leading their party to victory in a general election. Our system of government places the vast majority of the real power at national level. That power is normally wielded by a Prime Minister who is only indirectly elected by commanding majority support among the directly elected MPs in the House of Commons. That means the PM and the government they in turn appoint can change without any general election taking place. In theory MPs are supposed to hold the government to account on our behalf. Unfortunately those MPs are themselves elected via a First Past The Post voting system that is infamously unreasonable on almost any mathematical basis that should matter. It frequently results in a large majority of MPs for a single party that did not win anything like a majority in a general election while simultaneously reducing smaller parties that still won a significant minority of the popular vote to parliamentary irrelevance. As ever with these political problems the feedback loops consistently prevent anything being significantly improved. At any given time the one of our two largest parties that almost always has a majority of MPs and runs the government as a result would have to surrender its dominance in order to effect meaningful change in our democratic structures and turkeys rarely vote for Christmas. So we end up with a situation not so different to the US, where there are effectively only two parties that matter and the real decisions are often made before the main election when the parties select their preferred candidates internally. And each party ends up being a "broad church" with a lot of internal disagreement and inconsistency because breaking up into smaller parties that more faithfully represent the true opinions of their members would guarantee losses in every election forever if the other guys didn't do the same thing.
- ak_111 3y agoProbably the UK central banker has the worst job in the world right now. I can’t think of any other place where people’s sense of net worth is as tied up with their house price as it is in the UK, while at the same time the increase in house price that people have been conditioned to believe is the norm over the last decades is wholly unsustainable given the stagnant wages. Take a look at house price to wage ratio over the last two decades. Something has to give eventually either a mighty correction in the housing market that will shock many that were lead to believe it is the only safe investment, or an uprising of those who have no chance of getting on the ladder. I would love to be proven wrong by a sudden influx of broad-based well-paying jobs, but I just don’t see how and where they will come from.
- wk_end 3y ago> I can’t think of any other place where people’s sense of net worth is as tied up with their house price as it is in the UK [...] Without diminishing the scale of the crisis in the UK: Canada checking in here.
- oceanplexian 3y agoI can’t follow these kinds of comparisons, because housing isn’t a function of wages. The only thing that affects housing prices is the supply of houses. Does the UK have a large supply of houses? Does London have a lot of spare land where they can build new houses? Is the population of the UK increasing or decreasing? These are the only question you need to ask to predict what will happen to real estate values.
- 88913527 3y agoFinancing seems to have a large impact on prices, as does zoning, and supply. But the ability to borrow money and use leverage is paramount.
- scotty79 3y ago> The only thing that affects housing prices is the supply of houses. And supply of capital in search of investment vessel. Wage workers are just taken along for the ride. Most properties in UK are bought and traded for investment purposes. Home ownership of UK is one of the lowest in EU.
- raydiatian 3y agoDidn’t think I’d see “social contract collapse” in 2023 but here we are. Anyway, cute the flames, let’s eat the fucking rich already
- asdadsdad 3y agocan the media please give the UK a break please? it's exhausting. go cover the us, france, whatever.
- klyrs 3y agoThe media is covering all of those places and more.
- asdadsdad 3y agois the uk really burning like all the bad news are reporting?
- gizajob 3y agoYes. Parts of the south and isolated pockets are prosperous, the rest has been run into the ground. No jobs, no real wages where you're not back on £-0 at the end of the month so just working to work (if you're lucky), public services cut and cut to the bone. It goes on and on. The council of Birmingham (biggest in the UK) just went bankrupt today. Liverpool is also totally gutted with poverty and no real employment or investment, and has had its council put on special measures for the past couple of years due to widespread corruption. Place is a bit of a shit show. It's just London and minor areas now, barely even a country. Only hope is to become even more of a financial rogue state and channel more of the world's dirty money.
- asdadsdad 3y agoHow does it compare to "similar" economies in the continent, like France?
- gizajob 3y ago1) I wouldn't really know because I haven't visited enough of them. 2) I'm not sure really any of them could be considered as "similar" enough to properly compare, even though they all now run on neoliberalism and free-market economies. 2a) if you compare it to Australia which really is similar in terms of mindset as a former colony, the UK is a sh*tshow. But Australia has endless mineral wealth to dig out of the ground and a large amount of primary economy like farming, which the UK doesn't have. It's more egalitarian, better wages, better opportunity, better chance to do what you want and be successful, all based on a British foundation. The UK has just crumbled outside of London and the south. People had money and kept it, those that didn't, still don't and it's hard to get it.
- BearhatBeer 3y agoI always chuckle a bit when I hear the term social contract. It's not legally enforcable, isn't codified, people can't choose to partake in it, and has always been intentionally vague. Almost like a trick to convince the masses that they're owed something by the "leaders."
- theonemind 3y agoThat's a perspective from leveraging one limited mode of thought, albeit a prevalent one in the modern Western world. I think throughout most of human history, most humans would've had the ability to deal with both the implied and imprecise or ambiguous. I view mode of thought that disregards them as rather the more limited and incorrect one, as they ultimately form the basis of the notion of codified and explicit, via mechanisms such as implicit beliefs like "we can make a cooperative explicit system and abide by it", and so forth. A lot of the UK's legal system itself rests on convention, tradition, and precedent, and isn't written, and moreso going back in time as evidence of this. Enforcement has historically sometimes taken the form of kings' heads on pikes, when the explicit law is that the king does what he wants and suffers no consequences. The implied contract of just rule takes precedence.
- BearhatBeer 3y agoI think you've misunderstood - the social contract is a fiction, that's why it's purposely undefined in my opinion. It's just something we're told exists so we can feel like the fox watching the henhouse is a good arrangement. I prefer not to believe in very many things simply because belief's the end of the logical process.
- theonemind 3y agoFair enough!
- dTal 3y ago> I prefer not to believe in very many things simply because belief's the end of the logical process. I think it's worth acknowledging that belief in some types of things makes them real - "self fulfilling", if you will. The social contract is one such thing, Santa Claus is another. As such, belief isn't limited to being just a mental reflection of truth - it can also be a statement of intent about what you want the world to be. When I say "I believe in you", I am not simply stating my assessment of your capabilities, I am trying to help you. It is an action. Likewise when I say "I believe in the rule of law", or "I believe causing pain is wrong" - I am trying to make them true. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/66591-all-right-said-susan-i-m-not-stupid-you-re-saying-humans https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/66591-all-right-said-susan-...
- Cypher 3y agoI started to fast to cut down on food cost. I think the last time I went to the shops, I had spend £10 on stuff that I was used to paying a little over £3 for. It's crazy times.
- j00pY 3y agoI completely agree. A bag of pretty standard food and supplies can cost £50.
- aylmao 3y agoThere's a lot to be said about this— I want to bring up the conversation around exports. I'm no expert, but I was having a look at these. The primary export of the UK are services, making almost half (~48%) of their total [1]. I can't help but compare this with France at ~34% [2], and Germany at ~19% [3]. As the rest of the world rises, how defensible is this sector for the UK? Germany exports a lot of industrial machinery, pharmaceutical products and vehicles, which means factories, a complex supply chain, brand recognition, patents, etc. Overall, things that are hard to move or replicate abroad. - 28% of the UKs exports are Information Communications Technology. It has IMO a weirdly broad definition (including "marketing, manufacturing, assembling, servicing, installing, maintaining and/or repairing systems, software, equipment, machines, devices and apparatus" [4]), but it sounds to me like it's in large part knowledge-based, digital work. What prevents an industry that doesn't involve machinery, factories, and supply chains from moving to India, for example? Net (exports minus imports), the UK accounted for 24.3% of ICT worldwide in 2003, and India for 3.3%. Now India is 16.3% net and the UK 13% [6]. - 13% of the UKs exports are Insurance and Finance. In 2003 the UK, net, was %40.7 worldwide. now it's 28%, mostly to the gain of the USA [7]. The UK has been running a trade deficit of about ~1.5% of GDP every year since 1998 [5][8], without the USA's capacity to print USD. I'm no expert. I just wonder if the UK is betting too much of its economy on industries where it'll have a hard time remaining as competitive as it currently is. [1]: https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore?country=81&queryLevel=location&product=undefined&year=2021&productClass=HS&target=Product&partner=undefined&startYear=undefined https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore?country=81&queryLevel=... [2]: https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore?country=77&queryLevel=location&product=undefined&year=2021&productClass=HS&target=Product&partner=undefined&startYear=undefined https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore?country=77&queryLevel=... [3]: https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore?country=61&queryLevel=location&product=undefined&year=2021&productClass=HS&target=Product&partner=undefined&startYear=undefined https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore?country=61&queryLevel=... [4]: https://www.michalsons.com/blog/what-is-ict/2525#:~:text=%E2%80%9CICT%E2%80%9D%20means%20Information%20and%20Communication,%3B%20SAITIS%202000%3A%203)%E2%80%9D https://www.michalsons.com/blog/what-is-ict/2525#:~:text=%E2... [5]: https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/stack?country=undefined&year=2021&queryLevel=undefined&startYear=1995&productClass=HS&product=4004&target=Product&partner=undefined https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/stack?country=undefine... [5]: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/trade-balance-deficit https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/tra... [6]: https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/stack?country=undefined&year=2021&queryLevel=undefined&startYear=1995&productClass=HS&tradeFlow=Net&product=403&target=Product&partner=undefined https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/stack?country=undefine... [7]: https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/stack?country=undefined&year=2021&queryLevel=undefined&startYear=1995&productClass=HS&tradeFlow=Net&product=404&target=Product&partner=undefined https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/stack?country=undefine... [8]: Interestingly, France seems to also have a long-standing trade deficit (since ~2006). Germany has had a surplus since ~1993.
- happytiger 3y agoIf I lived in the UK, I would do everything in my power to leave RN. Writing is on the wall.
- euno 3y agoGenuine question, not being provocative: I'm curious where you'd choose to go. I'm not exactly optimistic about the UK's long-term, but I'm struggling to think of anywhere in the west that doesn't have similar trends.
- onetimeuse92304 3y agoIt is not going to be better. At least not anytime soon and not without significant mindset shift. People are not getting more intelligent, but the jobs evolve to require more and more intelligent and versatile people to be productive. For example, in the past you could spend a lot of time training to do a job, which you then performed for the rest of your life. This lets less intelligent people be productive in jobs they normally would not be able to do (intelligence defined as ability to handle novel problems). This is no longer an option. Another problem is that companies become better at detecting who is and who is not productive. There is still a lot of possibility of improvement and this should be scary to people, because in my understanding most people in most organisations are unproductive. Given that we can't stop the progress, I think it is important to start thinking how to deal with masses of people that will never be able to find place in the new market. In the past, they would be used as peasants and slaves to do marginally profitable jobs but this is no longer available except for special cases (like cab or delivery drivers) that are going to be vanishing soon. For some reason people call this socialism and put a negative stigma on it. I like to think it is a necessary for the future of our civilisation.
- anon1199022 3y ago[flagged]