To detest the term 'squeezed middle'

[unicormb]

And how it's being used on here to forecast that the poor high earners will be worse off than anyone else over the next few years?

It's absolutely not true, for one. The worst off will be the worst off.

I grew up in poverty. My kids are middle class. I know the gulf that exists between the two, firsthand, and secondhand from working with kids in inner London for twelve years.

The squeezed middle will be ok. So can we stop pretending that people who earn over £50k a year are on the brink of destitution? It's really demeaning to those who survive on a lot less.

I think OPs point is that many people do not understand quite how bad things are for millions of people. There are people who are not going to be using heating at all this winter

This is what I have been saying at work. And people are struggling to get it.

Dp and I have struggled financially so much over the years. We’re both mid 20s with 1 dc and now we might come into the squeezed middle. A few years ago Dp lost his job, shortly after dc was born, and I had just graduated (no maternity leave). We had to use benefits for a few months- we got £1000 pm and our private rent alone was £605 pm (plus £80 cb but that was cancelled out by £80 council tax). It was extremely difficult. I now have a part time job and I’ve taken a pay cut to take a full time role elsewhere. We’ll both be earning roughly 20k each full time. We were so excited to start having more money coming in and maybe go on holiday for the first time in 7 years. Now the current situation has brought us back down again. I’m so disheartened, but I recognise I’m much luckier and well off than those not working or on lower salaries. I remember what it was like to go hungry while on benefits and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

With the greatest of respect I find that very hard to believe.
I presume they flagged that with the local authority have they,
phoned social services to let them know the situation ?

Our £55k income (£10k of which is student loan) doesn’t go that far when you consider that our, actually low market rate, rent is £1300 and the council tax £200. Nearly 50% of our income gone before we even pay a single utility bill or buy a morsel of food.

We are not poor, we don’t claim to be. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t difficult to juggle the income vs the outgoing. I have been on the bones of my arse, a single mum of two on benefits, no food and absolutely no money to buy food: before food banks were a thing. Both circumstances lead to worry, anxiety and insecurity, which will impact the mental health of a whole family.

As many say, it’s not a race to the bottom. Those on £0 income are not the enemies of those on £50k, and vice versa. The problem(s) lie far, far above this in the structural inequality this government has spent the last decade deliberately cultivating.

@Nothappyatwork exactly my point! There is no understanding of how bad things are .

How do you think they've come to my charity - they've tried everything . And we have also spoken to the LA. They know the situation.

This is not an isolated case I'm afraid .

Things are very very bad .

I draw a clear distinction between ‘born middles’ and ‘lower middles’ personally. Born middles are those who have always had mum and dad there to help them, often in ways they take so much for granted that they don’t even notice. I personally, right now, know so many 30 yr olds who are still living with their parents ‘to save a deposit’ and have no idea how much of a help that is.

Like other pp’s, I grew up in poverty. No one ever to help. I educated myself through the library service with no help and quite a few obstacles thrown in my way by parents who did not have a clue how to get on in the world, one of them barely even literate. The world changed, and I do not have the wealth that I should have for the work that I did - I am no better off than my parents were for unskilled work. Part of that is because my wages in my work were dragged down to match those in the lower classes who never bothered to try, because they were the poor poorest, while I had to watch benefits paid for by my taxes given to both the richer and the poorer.

This is a big country and life is far more complicated than the op makes it sound. Those of us in the squeezed lower middle, with no inheritances, have legitimate grievances. The real problem is the destruction of the working economy in favour of pre-existing capital and the increasing importance of inheritance.

I could list so many more examples but it would be too outing

This absolutely happens, there is a reason that kids who experience homelessness have far poorer health, financial, educational and social outcomes than those who haven’t been homeless (and it’s not because they have feckless parents despite what the daily Mail would have you believe).

Its shit for lots of people at the moment and the squeezed middle is real but the fact that

And btw, that kind of inequality - the inherited kind, following the destruction of economic ladders that could be worked up - didn’t just start in the last decade. Blair was a major turning point, with his elevation of buy-to-let landlords and deregulation. But there are older people who would point straight back to Thatcher.

It’s neoliberalism, and it’s a trend that has lasted decades.

“I think OPs point is that many people do not understand quite how bad things are for millions of people. There are people who are not going to be using heating at all this winter”

I think most people struggle to understand situations they haven’t explicitly been in, especially when they’re faced with their own problems. If you’re facing having to choose between heating your home and paying the mortgage, someone point out that ‘X has it worse!’ isn’t helpful in any way. It’s not going to make your own situation any better, it’s not going to make you feel better, and if anything if it’s likely to just piss you off. The fact that X at least qualifies for state help but you’re on your own up shit creek (even though you may just be £50 over the limit) is another factor that’s going to end up engendering resentment, especially when people are just sneering at you and telling you to swap your Audi for a Ford.

The level of vitriol towards ‘the middle’ in the OP is not going to inspire sympathy for those worse off. It’s just going to make a sizable number of people think ‘well fuck you then, you don’t care about me? Then why should I care about you?’, and turn them against those that OP thinks she’s speaking for.

Some of the people in the situations I see aren't receiving any benefit .

OP sounds like one of those resentful people who call themselves ‘left behind’ and vote for increasingly right wing governments to spite the middle classes (who are the net contributing tax payers), not realising it just makes their own situation worse. The very definition of cutting your nose to spite your face.

Rather than sniping at the squeezed middle who’ve often done everything they were advised to do to increase the probability of having a successful life i.e working hard at school, stability before kids, maybe people like OP should look at why they were in poverty even before this cost of living crisis hit.

If you are British born, speak English as a first language and have no SEN then you have to look at what lifestyle decisions you made to be so poor rather than pull down others who’ve done everything ‘right’ to reduce the chance of being poor and who are now legitimately concerned about what the future holds.

I’m sat here with a social worker who tells me that if you make SS aware of the situation on Monday morning it’ll be fixed by lunchtime.

But they’re eating once a day, right? They’ve got an actual roof over the floor they’re sleeping on?

then what’s the problem? What are the rich people complaining about? They’re better off than a lot of people in Burundi.

^that’s the problem with OP’s race to the bottom reasoning. If anyone that isn’t in abject poverty has no legitimate reason to complain, then really the UK as a whole should just shut up on the basis that shit could be worse.

Rather than sniping at the squeezed middle who’ve often done everything they were advised to do to increase the probability of having a successful life i.e working hard at school, stability before kids, maybe people like OP should look at why they were in poverty even before this cost of living crisis hit

How do you define poverty?

What income after housing costs do you think puts a family with children into poverty?

I completely agree.

however I do not believe it is going to be as bad as people think I look at the pandemic everybody literally was expecting the world to end. A package was put together to prevent disaster and it will be again just give them time

@QBee2022

And you aren't at risk of losing that income through redundancy either.

We of the older generation were told that if we studied and qualified as engineers or teachers we would be secure and comfortable. Many did qualify not just at Uni but training course during our careers. It has not been rewarded by security. Redundancy can affect all levels.
They are just above the levels for help, which is quite reasonably prioritised for the poorest.

We did everything asked of us and it has not made much of a difference. We have to plan and budget closely, it is a long way from being relaxed and comfortable. The feeling of disappointment is huge, almost despair.
At one stage Tony Blair and Labour seemed to understand. But then went totally bonkers.
All 3 Parties seem to be composing their manifestos from slogans on T shirts.

Through my school i have met families who have gone into emergency accommodation and the parents have given the children the only bed and they have slept on the floor and social services havent sorted in by Monday lunch time. Social services are so inundated they havent picked up the message by monday lunch time.

Yanbu OP

Some people are just clueless to the reality of actual poverty and that's been reflected by some replies on here too.

Yes things are hard but anyone working for £50k bemoaning university costs or whatever needs to give their head a wobble if they think they are worse off than a single adult on UC getting less than £400 a month.

Bless your naivety.

Yes this is common, housing departments will provide emergency accommodation where they havent they're not able and not required to ensure that its near the children's schooling

However it is temporary (although that length of time is difficult to predict, it might be a year or so, perhaps more depending where it is)

However once that family is housed, if it will be in social housing then they will at least be secure with a secure tenancy and low rent, meaning they're much better off than a similar family in private rental

Of course the council may well find them a private let, there may be a rent deposit scheme and if they dont take that private rent then they might be deemed as making themselves homeless. But housing departments dont have a lot of housing stock (poster doesnt say where that is) left.

Legally they would not be allowed to house a family where all members of the family do not have a bed. There is legally documented legislation as to who can share a room, admittedly the kitchen is a room but still.

A bit of putting your hand up to help yourself in these scenarios or charities pushing back family on these people‘s behalf would go along way.

Social services work with primarily children whose parents need support to parent them safely. Its fairly offensive to assume that a homeless family automatically have a social worker.

unless there are concerns about the parenting a child receives, a child wont have a social worker even if the family are made homeless

Waves to brianixon as another in the same boat.

Hostility and animosity towards the ladders that enable people to work up doesn’t actually help those at the bottom. Because it removes all the possibilities of improvement.

The real animosity needs to be focused more on the systems that promote inheritance, and, also, the artificial creation of vast figures out of the electronic ether with no reality behind them which then inflates the economy everywhere.

Being homeless is deemed a concern and quite rightly so. Depending on how those circumstances have come about those children most definitely need a social worker ASAP because what I’m waiting for the next comment to be will be that people don’t know their legal housing rights, the social worker does so they need somebody to advocate on their behalf to push back against the local authority, they shouldn’t have to of course.