To be absolutely sick of hearing about the cost of living crisis

The cof living crisis doesn’t immediately affect me-apart from an occasional “shit-that’s expensive”. But that doesn’t mean I don’t understand and worry about the huge effect it has on other people in particular, and the economy in general. Maybe read a bit more, OP?

cars on the road, towns are full of hairdressers, nail bars, brow bars, tanning salons, soft play, play cafes, coffee shops, ice cream parlours

Ice cream parlours?

Which were booming in the early 1900s! In Glasgow alone there were 89 ice cream shops in the city, 3 yrs later in 1905 there were estimated to be 336 ice cream shops.

And then we had another boom in the 70s & 80s.

Who visited these places I wonder since everyone was licking bin lids for scraps to get by….

Same here. I agree 100%. The spending habits of those supposedly hard done by leave me very bewildered.

I can't get my head around the choices people think is normal spending that to me fall under the category of luxuries.

The same people who will tell that I'm lucky because I can afford bigger expensive items I've saved for for months.

I agree it's a bit tedious and annoying to hear about comfortably-off people having to cut down on holidays or manicures or eating out.

But it is a totally genuine crisis for millions who are struggling to feed their families, clothe their kids, heat their homes or even have homes at all and have absolutely no cloth to cut in the first place.

Exactly. And you are perfectly entitled to complain about the COL “crisis” in my opinion. People who work hard , people who can’t work, people who have worked and now retired. We are all feeling it and have the right to complain. You don’t have to be starving to feel angry that your money is running through your fingers with nothing more to show for it.

A few decades ago we weren't a service economy.

I was born a few years before the introduction of the minimum wage and my mum was a hairdresser. She basically earned fuck all, couldn’t afford a car so we had to walk 4 miles to her workplace and back and she told me we lived off beans on toast most of the time. Thank fuck for measures like the min wage but it still doesn’t pay enough!

My gran used to say, when angry, "You're a Whore's Melt." Whore was pronounced Hu-Er.

I understood what she meant by Melt, even though it was never defined for me.

Makes me laugh when I see a candle company called Melt!

There's a lot of people who even with a wage rise haven't seen enough of a rise to cover the increases, so they're still worse off. But they got a rise, so they should be grateful, right?

Things costing more isn't necessarily the issue. It's wages not increasing in line. Inflation's always been a thing but mostly, historically, wages have kept up with it. Not the case now.

The new cars could be company cars like my DH’s. He has a 60k merc so it looks like we’re wealthy as a result but it’s a company car… We are classed as high earners but we have 5 DC so we’re just not, we have little savings because they constantly get eaten into when something in the house breaks. It’s a bit shit to be educated to PhD level and still feel like everything is a struggle. Obviously before anyone jumps me, we chose to have 5 so it’s on us and it is very much on us. We’re not eligible for a scrap from the government so everything we have is 100% from our pocket.

I was thinking just the other day of all the things - so common and more or less taken for granted - and often seen as ‘necessities’ now - that hardly existed, or that there were far fewer of, a few decades ago.

Nail bars*, eat-in places and takeaways just about everywhere you look, takeaway coffees, gyms, food delivery services such as Just Eat - I dare say there are more.

*There was often a manicure service at a hair salon if you wanted it, but that was typically just for natural nails. Most of us did our own.

You just don’t think that many people are struggling?

Exactly, the idea that women didn’t spend on beauty or get their hair done in the past or that fish & chips takeaway wasn’t a thing is bullshit.

The exact opposite of a melt in this case if my understanding of the term is correct.

Another point. Revlon introduced nail polish in the 1920s. The reasoning behind it was because the standard of living was so bad that this was an affordable treat, to help women feel that life wasn’t that bad. I’d say having a hair cut once every few months or having your nails done now and then is the equivalent

I said, pretend you've got no money
She just laughed and said, you're so funny
I said, yeah
But I can't see anyone else smiling in here

Yer man Jarvis had a point there tbh. All I know is that my last payrise was wiped out several times over by increases in just about everything I pay for.

Honestly I think economics and the cost of living have become a form of insanity all of its own. I keep an eye on these things as I am an unproductive obsolete economic unit with zero meaningful dispisable income and I just boggle at it all.

I actually think it's as much psychological warfare as anything else. It is ludicrous that people on any kind of full time wage need state top ups to be able to have a roof over their heads and keep being able to afford to work with little hope of progression as costs go up and up.

What happens when we reach the point where so many people cannot afford anything other than the basics that other businesses based on leisure or "nice but not essential" things cease to exist? When AI and automation takes enough traditionally middle class / professional jobs and people can't afford to employ the "trades" that are automatically recommended as the solution to said issue, regardless of capability or skill?

They say capitalism and necessity are the mothers of invention, and while useful innovation is a good thing, the former is often morally questionable as it advocates profit at all and any cost.

How many flavours of Oreo do we need? How many TikTok driven crazes? (See dumplings for a real rollercoaster of WTFuckery)

Everything seems utterly out of control.

I can understand where the OP is coming from to some degree. I think though it does need to be discussed and contexts examined as so many people who have "done all the right things" and are starting to struggle are allowed to have the feeling they have been sold a pup. Those of us who are at the bottom of the pile and "used to it" have traditionally been painted as lacking resilience or lazy or whatever, in the face of blatant structural inequality that has increased dramatically in the last decade, really ramping up since the pandemic. Now that those who have demonstrably played the game yet haven't won the prizes they were offered are complaining, there's possibly a chance of change. As long as the rhetoric of punching down on "poor people" can be dialled down, and people start really examining the idiocy of so much of modern life.

(Pins naive Neo Luddite bleeding heart badge to lapel and tries to fend of gnawing sense of futility)

Yep! I was a live in volunteer in the 90s, I got about £53 a week for expenses. With that I bought clothes, food, cigarettes and went out 2-3 times a week. Mind you I often had a £5 bottle of vodka in my handbag...

And relatively, we can be annoyed that our standards of living we worked really hard for are not sustainable, right?

The cost of living is getting higher and higher.
children to thrive need to meet socially, have different experiences and have access to good healthy food. They need parents who can spend time with them and be present in the moment.
Having no money after bills, constant worry that you will not be able to pay a bill if something extra pops up like a burst tyre and having to buy cheeper food as meat and fresh veg is so expensive means the basics for a child to grow up physically and emotionally healthy aren’t there. Then the cycle gets bigger. The children grow into adults who have a higher chance of having medical issues, obesity, to have fewer qualifications and earning potential.
so it does matter that a parent can’t go to a soft play and be present in the moment with their child.

Shall we go back to that? What level of dropped standards of living are we supposed to accept as a society before we say “right, this is actually a problem now”

My parents also have “stories” of the terrible hardships they faced. But, they lived in relative comfort compared to someone in the developing world who had to walk 4 miles a day to find clean water……

Yes, a good point. By media talking about it as some sort of fact for everyone ( it isn’t ) it does I think encourage people to say everyone is struggling. When not everyone is.

Are “nail bars and tanning salons” the new “sky dish and flat screen TVs”?

I find it funny that every single example OP has used to berate “people” spending money are places largely frequented by women. The “massive cars” are obviously the “school run SUVs” It smacks of the old “Welfare Queen” dog whistle politics.

No mention of pubs, golf courses and football stadiums still being absolutely rammed to the rafter?

It isn't that people are spending however much on a soft play area, it's the fact that a couple working full time with kids can't afford a decent house. That's not just this COL crisis, that's a generational thing and very real. I'm surprised younger people aren't more cross about it tbh (probably too busy working and looking after children) and totally get that they would want to talk about that. Whilst my parents never ate out or spent much on clothes or cars, they were able to buy a decent houses in a lovely area whilst still young on one salary.

Hmmmm, does it not grieve you to be less well off than you were before?

Im pretty sure I have seen this poster lamenting her own drop in income on here before 🤔