How much worse can the cost of living get before society breaks down?

[TheGardenRose]

I'm genuinely getting worried. Weekly shop now £72. It was around £40-50 not so long ago.

If you remember the 70’s you have a different take, things are a lot better than then now, younger generations don’t realise just how tough life was. Shop shops as a percentage of your income are still far lower and housing, always cited as being so much higher, was really expensive for lower income households, you shared with other families in the past. Life is better even now

Unlikely to happen - those areas tend to be more expensive. So the government would just be spending loads more money than they need to, loads of taxpayer money, to put them up in even nicer hotels.

The premise of the idea is also a threat - basically threatening people to vote for them or else they’ll put asylum seekers on your doorstep. Hardly good politics.

I think the expenditure on food is only going in one direction as our farming production decreases and food imports steadily climb upwards. The introduction of more instability around the world will further increase the cost of food imports. The repeat of the 1930’s food rationing will quite possibly be something to expect for future generations and then the up tick in food production in the UK will commence due to panic from government. History does tend to repeat itself.

@LongDarkTeatime

but as many of us do not have elections it isn’t representative. I’m not sure apart from Scotland and wales where there are elections even.

I'd almost vote Reform to see how they get on trying to do this!

It gave me a genuine laugh when I heard.

Society has broken down more or less, the panic sweep when lockdown was announced was embarrassing as a nation.

And lots of riots happen, particularly in the summer, but really they need a firm racist undertone to really get going!

The British don’t riot over the elite hoarding wealth. They riot over what the right-wing media decide to wind them up about.

Ditto!

I don't actually like Reform or Farage, and I don't think I will vote for them, but the policy is perfect, and my view of them has gone up exponentially.

Builders just earn a lot of money, and they have the skills to use that money to flip houses and buy rentals. I know that people like to carry on like they are operating in the black economy but their rates are through the roof as we have such a withered trade skills pool. And that will get worse as the current older batch hit retirement.

It probably won't happen and there's clearly a gimmicky aspect to it - but I love the idea of giving people what they vote for, and think it's actually very clever politics

Where do you live where there are no public services? In my area the schools are functioning well, there was an incident in my village yesterday and the police responded quickly, recently my partner needed an ambulance and it arrived within half an hour. Necessary hospital treatment and scans have been provided quickly when required, of course there are areas of concern, but I don’t think it’s that bleak!

It’s just giving people what they vote for, isn’t it? If you want open borders you can have the asylum seekers in your town/village. If you’re voting for that policy but you would like it elsewhere that’s very NIMBY.

That is probably the most misquoted statement attributed to Margaret Thatcher. The rest of the sentence is never included!

This is true. The obsession with America’s downfall in this country is concerning. So many people killed here everyday by criminals and you only see threats here highlighting when there is a shooting in the US.
Some very hard choices need to be made including welfare cuts, tax incentives for middle class and high earners to reboot the economy and criminal deportations. As well as stop giving money to lost causes. Pointless wars and countries where corruption runs high.

It is for all the Welsh and Scottish populations, and those living along the borders to get their services from, or work in, the devolved nations.

Except people don’t vote just based on one policy. Maybe they disagree with open borders but align with everything else. And either way, it’s not about what they voted for but how taxpayer money is then put to use. Doubling the cost of detention centres for the country to make a point doesn’t help anyone.

And I don’t agree with open borders… I also don’t agree with reform. Currently I feel I have no political home at all.

Many people are mortgage free or have small mortgages so whilst higher food & utilities costs are frustrating they still have the spare cash -

What planet do you live on?

Cant be long.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/articles/researchoutputssubnationaldwellingstockbytenureestimatesengland2012to2015/2020

This model estimates that in 2020, across all local authorities in England, there were 23.2 million households living in 24.7 million dwellings.
Of those 24.7 million dwellings, just under two-thirds (64%) were estimated to be owner-occupied in 2020. For most of this analysis, this is broken down further, giving the following four tenures:

• 8.8 million (36%) were owned outright
• 6.8 million (28%) were owned with a mortgage or a loan
• 4.8 million (19%) were privately rented
• 4.2 million (17%) were in social rent, mainly rented from housing associations and local authorities

We get thought it.

35% of homeowners own their property outright and that's before you get to the number of active mortgages that are winding down.

C.35% of people own their own home out right. It’s fair to assume that another 20% have small mortgages so that’s half the population.

Like PP’s we live in an affluent area, with a high household income, so it doesn’t feel like a crisis to us (yet) and we’ve been able to make adjustments to our lifestyle to mitigate rising prices. I still have a cleaner but if things got tight I’d need to let her go - it would save me £350 a month but cost her the same amount - she rents a small flat that costs 1.5 times our mortgage payment so I’m loathed to do that.

my experience is not to detract from those who are struggling - it’s just a fact that people’s circumstances across the UK, and uneven locally, are different.

I think it's difficult to say because the changing shape of the population (increasing numbers of elderly people relative to young people) means that we are in uncharted waters.

Honestly I think the question is more ‘how much worse can the pressures on the worker get before society breaks down?’

The freeze on tax thresholds, the rising welfare budget, and the increasing pressures on the squeezed middle are getting worse and worse. The money spent on welfare already exceeds the money coming in from income tax.

Back in the seventies the whole country was far less reliant on electricity & imports so although things did get tough we could still keep warm even if just with one coal fire or like us with storage heaters that warmed up before the power went off in the evening, I had a small baby at the time. Also the country was more self reliant in food.
Now I think what will really cause problems are oil & electricity shortages as virtually everyone seems to rely on it far more. If fuel rationing comes in, people can’t top up their electric cars, use the internet or all the things electrically powered in homes, then the problems might start.

Only Reform voters are wedded to one policy thinking. Other voters agree with some policies and not others.

I hope they also just privatise the NHS in their constituencies as well. And only remove their own constituencies from the ECHR.

I look forward to my constituency rejoining the EU as well.