Mumsnet Talk

Most people I speak to assume this period of stagflation will soon come to an end and we will then resume 'normal life' when our salaries catch up with inflation. The only possible scenario as far as i can see is that we will all become increasingly poor as fuel costs rise (therefore heating, petrol, food in shops and everything else we take for granted today) will rise.

I am not looking to blame any one political party (they all bastards). I am just wondering if there is a magical solution to our current problems or if, as dh wants, we should buy a small-holding and become self-sufficient.

Is anyone confident that there is a way out of this?

It's not going to be only a few years. It'll be decades.

There are not enough resources on the planet for 7 billion people to consume them at the rate the West does. Food, metals, oil, water are all going to be under pressure. Global unrest will follow.

Not confident all KissMy no magic solution I'm afraid. I'm still in debt from my divorce & the way I'm going will still be for years despite working my socks off with everything going up in costs.

However I'm heavily into bartering at the moment & I can see us coming back to this, you with your smallholding, trading fresh produce for other services/products.

We may not be any better off financially but we may be able to be a bit less stressed & healthier downsizing to a simpler lifestyle.

Sounds fun eh?

yes i agree. anyone i have heard talking has been saying things like "the way things are at the minute" or "untill things pick up" i feel very horrible for thinking it but i very much believe that what we are all going through now will be permanent. i think alot of people dont realise this isn't an evil curse that will lift after a couple of years. this is life now.

I've been getting poorer for the last 2 years, as I haven't had a pay rise - even though the cost of living is going up all the time. No pay rise this year either - but I'm focussing on feeling grateful that I still have a job.
Am hoping that capitalism will do its usual cyclical movement & good times will come again - although not sure when that will be!

Gawd, I thought someone was going to come and tell me it'll all be alright!!

Dh thinks it is essential that dcs learn to be self-sufficent. Hence selliing up and buying a small-holding somewhere. I can see his point but I am happy being a townie! There are no viable alternatives to oil are there? Successive governments have failed to invest in other energy sources (in the pockets of the oil barons I expect). I can see the total collapse of society as we know it - rioting and looting in city centres, few jobs, unaffordable food in shops which we wont be able to drive to anyway.

I think my generation have always known peace-time, easy credit, fair employment conditions, an expectation of a university education etc. Things are going to be so different for our children. We have been able to take so much for granted and I thinkas a society we will have to make seismic changes to the way we do things.

I do not think there is a way out. The standards that have come to be thought of as the norm are actually unaffordable.

The realisation that this means that the expected standard of living has to change is slow in coming. But you cannot reinflate a bubble. Railing against the basic fact that this many things can no longer be afforded isn't going to change anything.

The best we can hope for is clever juggling, in the hope of minimising the pain. I do not see any way to avoid that pain, though.

PostBB, yes it is all cyclical but I think we have a long way to go down before we start climbing bavk up. If you look at other societies/economies, they are constantly changing (Greece, East Germany, Bosnia,Yugoslavia are all recent examples that spring to mind). We are not immune here to those sorts of changes. Perhaps we have had our time as a leading economy and now we have to move over and let someone else take our place (Brasil? India?).

Maybe we should leave while we can?

"I think my generation have always known peace-time, easy credit, fair employment conditions, an expectation of a university education etc. Things are going to be so different for our children. We have been able to take so much for granted and I thinkas a society we will have to make seismic changes to the way we do things."

this exactly.

until a couple of years ago there was no doubt in my mind that even as a single parent, my children would be able to go to university if they chose to. i also firmly believed i would at some point in the next ten years be (and was working towards) buying a home for us. my savings have been entirely swallowed in the past 3 years on getting by. i cant save now. there is nothing extra and i can't see a point at which this will change. i can't promise my children a university education. i hate that.

A few years ago, I was worried about the bubble bursting as the past few years' growth seemed unsustainable to me, and lots of people around me said this time it was unlikely to happen and that the economy would continue to prosper!
Well the bubble did burst, didn't it? Very suddenly! So I think the same cycle is likely to continue and the economy will improve, no matter how doubtful that seems right now! But bear in mind that things may actually get even worse before they get better

I always expected my dcs to go to uni too. Ds goes to an indie school and we are questionning the wisdom of this (dh thinks paying for an education given the state of the country is a waste of money and that the money would be better spent helping ds set up a 2nd hand car business in the future). Where will the opportunities for our children be when they grow up?

VitC, I dont think the bubble has burst yet. I think it is only just starting...

Sorry, VitC, posted too early. How do you think the economy will improve? Given all the factors (ie we are a bankrupt country, we manufacture nothing, we are super-reliant on other peoples oil).

Most economists agree that we will not see an end to this in our lifetime . The country is essentially over stretched in every way and a culture of debt has made expectations so high in comparison to teh reality

The whole show was kept going artificially vitc by over lending silly low interest rates and pumping the economy full of newly printed cash which all the time is weakening the £ and our standing around the world. When even a .5% increase in interest rates would see 1000s kicked out of their homes you know we are in trouble. Things should have been allowed to properly recede in 2005 but Blair and co kept incentivising debt and so here we are.

How do I think the economy will improve? Well I don't think we've hit rock bottom yet but once we do, changes will have to come about in the way money is distributed within our societies!

I think that process is starting with people challenging and standing up to overt abuses of the system (MPs' expenses, bankers' bonuses even when making a loss etc.)

What is the best way to insulate ourselves from the worst then? Dh is seriously predicting the collapse of society at some point (not sure when!). He thinks we will revert back to the basics - keeping warm and fed (MAslows hierachy of needs anyone ??). He thinks teaching the dcs to be self-sufficent is the best thing we can do for them. Until recently I have dismissed his fears but since reading more around the subject I am beginning to think he is right.

VitC, posts crossed. I am so disillussioned with the system. the more I read the more corrupt it seems. I am horrified at some of the things I have read recently and I am becoming hugely untrusting of the BBC, media, civil service, police, banks, politicians etc. Our country is so massively corrupt, short of a revolution, how can we change things? Our right to protest is becoming slowly eroded.

Vit c I agree we have seen nothing yet. I have an online 'friend' who I corresponded with on a finance site when i was first renovating houses. He used to write for the money section of the telegraph. he gave me a lot of good advice over the years re buying and selling and when etc. He is now retired but still sends me the odd email and he advised me last year to get out of property and realise the £ and do something else. literally within weeks of him telling me this I noticed a few buy to let people i know also selling. I think there are big changes afoot and a collapse of society as we know it is not unthinkable at all.

To some extent, I agree with your husband, but I do think the pendulum will eventually swing back into the black, just as suddenly as it swang into the red!

In the meantime, I think it's pretty reasonable to be prudent with money and consider alternative courses of action - not necessarily self-sufficiency, but exploring other routes into employment than uni, definitely. And possibly down-sizing to a smaller house, a second-hand car etc. Getting off the bandwagon of consumerism, which is what caused this mess.

And then, hopefully, lessons will have been learned and once the economy stabilises, people won't immediately start wanting "more, more more" again, although, sadly, a part of me thinks that's just human nature and it will inevitably restart the cycle

Getting off the bandwagon of consumerism yes yes yes!

You know, I really do wonder if the new-agers were right about this!

I remember reading on one of those new-agey, spiritualist sites around 5 or 6 years ago, that December 2012 would be the start of a major shift in society and the end of capitalism, and that over the next few years (i.e. now!), we would witness the lead-up to this, with many countries' economies and currencies failing (even major ones!).

The more I see and hear, the more I wonder if they were really onto something although I'm too scared to go back and see what they're predicting next!

The problem with getting off the bandwagon of consumerism is that it means people buy fewer things, and so the people that make those things lose their jobs, and have no money. Many many people rely on non-essential goods and services to make a living and buy what we deem to be essential goods and services. The logical end point of an end to consumerism (admittedly taken to extremes) is a subsistence economy.

Basically, it's like vaccination programmes. Opting out is fine so long as not everyone does it

I don't think thing swill ever go back to how they were before this crisis. And to echo posters up thread, i don't think we've even started to bottom out yet.

I think our children will get used to not having the opportunities afforded to the previous generation.

University education, owning your own home, having a holiday, travelling whilst young.And worse perhaps having a family will just be out of financial reach for our children.

Noddy i agree about the consumerism, your right, but the idea future generations won't be able to have an education/holiday depresses me.

I have to go out now, but will come back later, as have more to say about employment etc

We're definitely not going back to the 1996-2007 boom. That was just the dragon waking up, and now the dragon's doing it's own thing, because not only can they make more of their own stuff, but China's boom is less and less reliant on foreign demand and more and more reliant on domestic demand (i.e. China people get richer, and want to buy a fridge, which they buy from another Chinese person). Eventually, Chinese labour will get too expensive and the manufacturing will shift to surrounding countries who will also experience a boom.

Tangled up with all this is the realisation that we don't really have enough resources on the planet for everyone to have a car/fridge/ TV etc

In 1979, Thatcher expected to oversee the orderly decline of Britain. Then the City of London became prominent and everyone laughed it off. I think we may just have got a stay of execution rather than a reprieve.