Page 5 | Are we heading into a major recession?

bodychanges · 2025-02-12T13:16:59+00:00

Things are already tough in my industry - I’m a contractor and this past year is my worst in over two decades - but should I be expecting things to get worse not better? and I sound stupid, but what are the main economic indicators?

EasternStandard · 12/02/2025 16:51

@wipeywipe I think Reeves might be following your approach

So we'll keep seeing losses in jobs as no one in Labour will get the impact of their policies

whatawonderfultime · 12/02/2025 16:52

wipeywipe · 12/02/2025 16:49

You'd have British people at home still claiming benefits.

Are you excluding state pension & pension credit from that?

I don't know any pensioners who work in minimum wage farmland or warehouse jobs, maybe you do?

wipeywipe · 12/02/2025 16:52

@whatawonderfultime is that a yes then

wipeywipe · 12/02/2025 16:54

@EasternStandard if that's your take away from my posts then I wish you luck too 😁

whatawonderfultime · 12/02/2025 16:54

wipeywipe · 12/02/2025 16:52

@whatawonderfultime is that a yes then

No, pensions are a benefit. But I have no idea what point you're trying to make, if you want to explain.

EasternStandard · 12/02/2025 16:57

wipeywipe · 12/02/2025 16:54

@EasternStandard if that's your take away from my posts then I wish you luck too 😁

I don't think emojis will do much

For what you're saying or Labour

EilonwyWithRedGoldHair · 12/02/2025 16:57

I don't think there's much any party can do now to improve things. With Trump elected we can kiss goodbye to any progress on climate change, so unless somebody comes up with some excellent technical solution asap we're buggered on that front, then you have soil depletion... food is not going to get cheaper, pressures around immigration will grow and I suspect a much more radical swing to the right than we've already seen will happen - but they won't actually be able to deliver on their promises, removing all the immigrants won't fix the societal problems.

Kitte321 · 12/02/2025 16:59

neverthelastone · 12/02/2025 15:24

Exactly.

The demographics of this country are weighted disproportionately towards a bigger (retired) older generation, who are taking a disproportionate share of the state budget due to over-generous pensions, public service costs (healthcare, social care, transport etc.), and who also own the majority of housing assets (including second homes and buy to lets).

There simply aren’t enough younger workers to generate enough money to maintain all these three things. That’s why previous governments turned to migration (which was actually a sensible choice when it was EU migration, as the benefits were worth more to us then the costs, and young EU workers were high-skilled and also went back to their home countries afterwards - something that Brexiteers never understood).

How do we support a disproportionate demographic of older people with fewer workers in the pyramid underneath, while trying to generate sensible economic growth?

Some suggestions:

rejoin the EU. Incentivise EU migration and investment whilst disincentivising migration from outside the EU;
heavy taxes on buy to let and landlords;
abandon the triple lock and force older generations to release some of their assets to pay for care/healthcare;
a short, sharp house price crash (otherwise we’ll only get a long, strangling one), which enables a readjustment of wages to asset prices as quickly as possible;
public borrowing specifically to incentivise green investment, high-tech industry, science R&D and education (especially higher education). Replace tuition fees with a HEFCE-style public grant for universities.

That’s a start. Anyone else want to join in?

Show quote history

Rewrite the tax system to remove ‘cliff edges’ which stagnate productivity.
fully fund childcare to allow women to return to the workplace. This would be net positive in terms of cost when you factor in tax take, pension accumulation and avoiding a reliance on benefits.

TinklySnail · 12/02/2025 17:10

whatawonderfultime · 12/02/2025 16:47

They can't get enough British citizens to work since that ended, which is why they burn huge amounts of perfectly good crops because they don't have the workers to harvest them. Now they try to entice people from abroad with higher wages than they were paying EU workers originally and can't even make it happen then because of too much red tape.

You could ban all immigrants from working in the UK, you wouldn't have British people filling the jobs. You'd have British people at home still claiming benefits.

And in terms of balance I am that way myself. I had a 50 year old lodger from abroad who got up at 4am every day to walk to a local warehouse for a well-known British high street retailer to see if they had any work for her that day (zero hours contract with work allocated on a day-by-day basis). No way in hell would most people do that.

Edited

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It’s about tailoring jobs and giving more flexibility to employees.
A lot of people can and would work
if there was more support and understanding.
Some people with disabilities could probably work a couple of hours a day but finding a care job that would support this is near on impossible.

wipeywipe · 12/02/2025 17:12

suspect a much more radical swing to the right than we've already seen will happen - but they won't actually be able to deliver on their promises, removing all the immigrants won't fix the societal problems.

Agree

TinklySnail · 12/02/2025 17:12

whatawonderfultime · 12/02/2025 16:52

I don't know any pensioners who work in minimum wage farmland or warehouse jobs, maybe you do?

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My dad was a warehouse worker until he retired at 72.

wipeywipe · 12/02/2025 17:14

@neverthelastone I missed that good post.

Rewrite the tax system to remove ‘cliff edges’ which stagnate productivity.

Absolutely @Kitte321 & childcare should be fully funded.

wipeywipe · 12/02/2025 17:14

@neverthelastone I missed that good post.

Rewrite the tax system to remove ‘cliff edges’ which stagnate productivity.

Absolutely @Kitte321 & childcare should be fully funded.

SleepDeprivedButAlive · 12/02/2025 17:15

I remember the last recession & I feel times are feeling harder than back then even though we're not officially in a recession. Things feel pretty bleak.

Papyrophile · 12/02/2025 17:16

My DM worked in MH care, part time, until she was 78. Bad divorce, only the state pension to get by on.

TinklySnail · 12/02/2025 17:31

EilonwyWithRedGoldHair · 12/02/2025 16:57

I don't think there's much any party can do now to improve things. With Trump elected we can kiss goodbye to any progress on climate change, so unless somebody comes up with some excellent technical solution asap we're buggered on that front, then you have soil depletion... food is not going to get cheaper, pressures around immigration will grow and I suspect a much more radical swing to the right than we've already seen will happen - but they won't actually be able to deliver on their promises, removing all the immigrants won't fix the societal problems.

To be honest, whilst net zero is a noble goal and something we should be working towards, I don’t think the speed of change is helping. We are just not a big enough nation to make a massive difference and times are tough.
Removing immigration would of course have a detrimental effect as we always need workers if we have a shortage. No different to any other country.
What we need is employment to be far more flexible to accommodate disabled people.
We don’t need unskilled immigrant workers if employers are willing to change how they operate to accommodate the unemployed and inactive.
It won’t happen again though because employers don’t care for anything except profit. Can’t blame them, but it doesn’t help create jobs for people who can’t work a normal day.

whatawonderfultime · 12/02/2025 17:53

TinklySnail · 12/02/2025 17:12

My dad was a warehouse worker until he retired at 72.

Show quote history

great, do you have any idea where the OP was going with asking the question about pensioners in the first place? because they haven't replied to me.

wipeywipe · 12/02/2025 17:55

@whatawonderfultime our economic isn't in the shitter because more people are claiming unemployment or disability benefits.

wipeywipe · 12/02/2025 17:56

economy.

wipeywipe · 12/02/2025 18:00

www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-63129705.amps

LostittoBostik · 12/02/2025 18:03

Ablondiebutagoody · 12/02/2025 14:11

Yep. Low productivity, sky high net zero energy prices, sky high taxes to fund the unproductive parts of the economy, low consumer spending, over regulation......
A recession is nailed on.

On a GDP per capita basis, things are even worse.

What are the unproductive parts of the economy? Do you just mean (eg) people on sick leave? Or subsidising renewal of manufacturing areas in decline?

LostittoBostik · 12/02/2025 18:04

neverthelastone · 12/02/2025 14:56

The whole economy is still blighted by having allowed the housing bubble to inflate well beyond sustainable fundamentals — ever since 2001, but particularly after 2010. There was a chance to allow it to continue to deflate after the financial crash; but instead the Coalition/Tory governments not only restarted the housing boom and pumped cash into keeping house prices high, but inflated them even further.

Now we’re entering a period where the collective salaries of younger workers won’t realistically be able to support current prices going forward, and there’s the triple whammy of extra pressure on the NHS, Brexit and an unstable world economy with stubbornly high energy prices at the same time. We’re likely looking at a decade or more of slow, painful unwinding, where the tax take is high but still isn’t enough to pay for crumbling services neglected during austerity; everyone gets squeezed and squeezed even more to no visible effect; Brexit strangles any economic growth at birth; and our living standards get lower and lower and lower while public services collapse.

The effect of the Tories’ misguided austerity policies, pumping money into housing assets (and encouraging even more landlordism), and the worst of all, Brexit, will take a long time to correct and we’re in for a lot more pain yet. These have been some of the stupidest, counterproductively short-termist, asset-stripping policies of the whole last century. I’m not a huge fan of Starmer so far, but the current direness of the situation is all squarely of the Tories’ making.

Edited

Correct - but also Labour were fully complicit in the housing situation from early 2000s onwards

whatawonderfultime · 12/02/2025 18:05

wipeywipe · 12/02/2025 17:55

@whatawonderfultime our economic isn't in the shitter because more people are claiming unemployment or disability benefits.

I agree, it's in the shitter because we killed off freedom of movement.

My point was, in case you missed it, that stopping freedom of movement didn't mean British people would then be able to work in those jobs. It just meant no one would do them. Because no one wanted to do them, which is why we needed migrants to work them in the first place.

wipeywipe · 12/02/2025 18:07

Brexit was the final nail in the coffin but we had plenty of issues before then.

EasternStandard · 12/02/2025 18:11

wipeywipe · 12/02/2025 18:07

Brexit was the final nail in the coffin but we had plenty of issues before then.

Labour's budget is the final nail in the coffin

That's why the CBI released figures saying just that, did you read those?