If we want a society where no one is hungry etc

[Notcontent]

I see a lot of threads about poverty and what we need to solve it in the U.K. However, I think that the solution Is quite unpalatable to lots of people.

I am not an economist, but it’s something I am interested in. Speaking as someone who is not British (but living in the U.K.) I think there are two pain problems:

• very low wages for lots of low-skilled jobs - this means that the problem is not that food, for example, is expensive (food is actually really cheap in the U.K.) but that many people earn really low wages, which means that everything is expensive for them;

• ingrained poverty in terms of education and aspirations among large parts of society, leading to a vicious cycle of poverty - not sure what the solution to that is, but it’s not as simple as throwing money at it - but maybe money is the solution - e.g. financial incentives for people to get qualifications/skills rather than having leaving school and having four kids with no means to support them.

I think having higher wages is really key, but it would means that prices of things would go up - but that’s the position in Scandinavia for example - so everything is really expensive, but there is less poverty as even low skilled jobs attract higher wages.

One of the main problems, at the moment ( but Brexit might change this) is that imports are currently cheaper but our exports are a bit higher.
There was an issue years ago , when we were a mining country , that it was cheaper to import coal than to produce it.
Hence the mining strikes , even though we were actually running out of coal.

That is some of our problems.
We pay a minimum wage to produce /serve/manufacture yet foreign imports are cheaper .
New Zealand lamb is cheaper than Welsh lamb.
Australian wine is cheaper than British wine, Danish ham/pork is cheaper than British .

It will all change soon.