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.

GDP as a measue takes no account of wealth inequality within the nation.
USA is one of the most unequal countries on earth, with both obscene wealth and absolute poverty. Absolute poverty (as opposed to relative poverty) is about not having enough food, shelter, etc.
The poorest in the USA live like they are in a 'third world' country, with no healthcare and no welfare state or safety net.

I can't comment on their propensity to riot, but I note that they have guns.

I remember riots in the past - but the difference is social media -so idiots can be connected with other idiots and march, riot ,raid supermarkets.
Perhaps we should arm the police (like nearly every other country) in preparation

I saved up to take early retirement (65) because retail work was getting tough on my body. So I saved up two years' spending to cover me until my state pension (all the pension I will get, I have no private pensions) kicks in.

Boy did I choose the wrong time to go! I'm managing, but only just and it's only because I have a self employed side hustle which is earning quite well that I don't have to just go right back to work.

Equally it would be nice if they reported on the profits that the supermarkets are making.

Gas has also gone up, but last year British Gas made 163m profit off the back of people who live in misery because they can't afford to heat their homes and struggle to pay their bills. Maybe make less profits and raise the standard of living for everyone.

I no longer bake or use my gas oven as often as I did, because it has become too expensive for me.

Worst case scenario - there will be a few riots and then people will get on with their lives. It’s not the three day week with power cuts.

i don’t know anyone particularly well off but most people I know are still running cars, going on holiday and living their lives the same. If you look on Amazon at their expensive MacBooks, the numbers they are selling are ridiculous (at around £1k-£1.8k). People are still loading up their cars with a ton of shopping.

The right wing very much want society to break down and for riots to happen.

This is despite the fact that they are the prime cause of the increase in the cost of living, the lack of affordable housing and investment into basic infrastructure and services.

Does Google not work on your phone? What she said was…..

” I think we have been through a period when too many people have been given to understand that when they have a problem it is government’s job to cope with it. ‘I have a problem, I’ll get a grant. I’m homeless, the government must house me.’ They are casting their problems on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no governments can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours. People have got their entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There is no such thing as an entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation.”
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We are all individuals and we should look first to support and help ourselves, our families and our neighbours. The state can’t solve everything for us. Probably an unpopular opinion these days but I agree with the sentiment.

We went to the seaside today. Arcades were packed, loads of people eating fish and chips, ice creams etc. definitely didn’t feel like a cost of living crisis. It’ll be a long time before society “breaks down”.

I think there won’t be.

There will be riots, if it’s sunny, World Cup, just takes one news incident that doesn’t even really have to be true for things to kick off.

But it won’t be the squeezed middles running amok no matter how high the bills go it’s not worth a potential criminal record for either me, H or the teens, we all have plans that need clean immigration records. And we aren’t the only ones who have decent jobs that required no criminal records.

To answer this you have to define what you mean by 'breaks down'.

By many measures, society is already breaking down compared to 50 years ago. Blatant organised shoplifting. Sexual assaults commonplace and totally unpoliced. Utter disrespect for any form of authority. Appalling behaviour from car drivers. Appalling behaviour from children in schools (I mean the deliberately rude and disobedient ones, not those with SEND), and on and on.

Perhaps a lot of this is to do with living like overcrowded rat in a cage? Beyond a certain level of population density human behaviour degrades? I don't know.

By many other measures, we are possibly decades or even centuries away from break down, if by that you mean the permanent collapse of the electricity grid, the gas grid, the broadband grid, and the water grid.
Or in the slightly shorter term we could measure electric 'brown-outs' and the introduction of food rationing and petrol rationing.

My belief is that Western civilisation is entering its terminal decline, but it will take about 400-500 years and will happen so slowly that we don't even notice.
We are already about 50-100 years into the process.

Everyone is reporting seeing people spending money, due to the stigma surrounding poverty not many people see the struggle that many people face. I work in an organisation where part of our offer is a food bank. We are only able to offer this one day a week but the demand is huge. We have queues and run out of food weekly. We literally cannot keep up with demand. We offer bags with 3 meals in them. I often hear people saying they stretch the food for 3-4 days.

My understanding of food banks is that they are not asking for means testing to obtain the support.

Could this be just a phase in our history where by the users just accept the fact that the service is there and to be used so any other disposable income can be spent in other ways.
I’m in no doubt that there are genuine people that really need support but could there be others that see this as an opportunity to soften the blow of some hardship?

when people talk about there own observations of ‘its business as usual round here - restaurants/pubs heaving’ could it just be that people have shifted priorities and are not paying their mounting debts and not having savings/pension contributions?

There seems to be a propensity these days to ‘Live for the moment’ and not take sensible Financial decisions for the future

Do you mean the 3rd rach??? NOT RACHEL FROM ACCOUNTS, a different rach) Yah, ist good?

The people with a propensity for/fondness of leather, pointy helmets and liebensraum...?

I have a bad feeling they may get quite a few votes

50 years ago it was worse - 3 day week, all the strikes and power cuts.

Look back 50 years from then, it’s worse than 50 years ago, and so it continues.

I’ve just spent the weekend in a west wales popular town. The place was packed with people, all spending in naice shops, pubs were packed, people drinking and eating out, boat trips etc. Didn’t look like a cost of living crisis there!

That's interesting. Managing

I find myself morphing into my mother. Doing things " while the oven is on"

Is there no welfare in the USA?. Hopefully there's some Americans on here who can clarify.

The people I find the loudest online about the COL are the ones earning six figures and complaining that they have to ‘downgrade’.

No of course you are. But I think if you'd ever studied history (even recent history) you'd realise how good (despite the col crisis) we have it in the developed western world.. .and how many years of extreme poverty, wars and disease outbreaks it has taken for societies in the past to break down. People have and are putting up with 1000x worse without societal collapse. The society you live in now is built on the back of hundred of years of people living in poverty and surviving wars and famine, and it's turned out very well for us.

It's just not likely society will break down over a weekly shop or your petrol costing a bit more... Especially given you've likely either been able to afford to drive, get public transport or walk (and not be afraid of being killed or attacked) to get your weekly food shop. And you got to the shop and it was full of food. There's no shortages. Your weekly wage allows you to eat. In not that distant a past in other countries some people's wages were less that the cost of public transport they needed to get to their jobs. And their society didn't collapse.

I understand to you and people struggling it is of course a big deal and it's a shame it's happening.. But in the grand scheme of things it's just not bad enough to cause what you're suggesting.

Exactly this.

The General Strike started 100 years ago today. 4th May 1926. I have not come across a mention of it anywhere.

Nah, the one who is bought and paid for by a Thai businessman and thinks Putin is a great guy.