To think the UK is in terminal decline

[ThisOchreBiscuit]

Jobs Civil service to cut thousands of jobs

Nothing positive is happening in this country. It’s just cuts, cuts and tax increases but these arent doing anything to scratch the surface.

The whole country is being propelled up by a massive Ponzi scheme: house prices and immigration. House prices make all home owners feel richer and immigration makes the GDP figures look better.

I suppose I shouldn’t complain as I am a child of immigrants. My parents came here in the 70s from India. They were virtually penniless but they have now been retired for 15 years, earning a state pension from 65 and still getting their final salary pension. They own their home in London and have thousands in savings. They were able to achieve this whilst working in low skilled factory jobs.

Now, professionals with university degrees would struggle to achieve their life style.

I think we are heading to a social mobility and quality of life that is closer to India and than the traditional western view, with wealth in the hands of a small number of landlords.

A has just purchased a completely nice family home near me for £500k and added a back and loft extension and turned it into a 6 bed HMO charging £800 per room.

They will make a 15% return on their £250k investment.

I agree. But most of the developed Western World is heading towards economic end game. That’s why politicians are universally crap these days - they’ve no clue how to fix it and know they won’t get voted in if they say the inevitable - the best we can do is managed decline. Very worrying times for our children I’m afraid. The future is in the East not the West.

We have too many people on the planet. Decline is inevitable for the vast majority of countries.

I agree but the pearl clutchers insist we must be kind -so immigrants come in other thousands, thousands of public service jobs must be kept (they will be retiring soon many of them into their ample pensions) , we must pay out benefits without scrutiny, provide cheap social housing etc we actually need a doge to sort things so we can start again with a more reasonable tax and benefit systems for a chronically in debt country. This won’t happen so yes we are stuffed.

The super rich have brought up all the worlds resources and are selling them back to us at twice as much.

Yeah, there's no getting away from this decline.

I agree. Also “wealth” isn’t real - money isn’t real. It’s all a construct of supply and demand. Pound notes in your pocket or numbers on a bank statement are just a representation of relative wealth compared to others, and can rise or fall according to exchange rates, inflation, underlying asset value, etc.

If one person gets wealthier another will lose wealth. So it’s impossible on a world wide scale for everyone to become richer. As we see today, westerners are getting poorer (but we don’t know it yet) due to the trillions of debt artificially making us think we’re wealthy. Easterners are growing their wealth at our expense - they’re the ones lending us the money to buy their goods and services to improve their economies and the wealth of their citizens.

The more people on the planet, the more our resources have to be spread. Double the people and you will halve average wealth, but it won’t be equal - some will be a lot richer some will be a lot poorer, mostly dependant upon your country/continent.

Cancel Amazon and shop locally or if you really can't find what you want, buy direct from a UK company website.
Try and repurpose packaging so less for council to collect. Take your litter home. Have firm boundaries for your DC so they don't cause trouble at school.
Go to your local theatre and support your towns football team instead of subscribing to sky and Netflix

I think the decline is a global issue.

We've just moved back to the UK from overseas after almost 5 years due to issues there with high tax, inflation and the declining economy and basically the government there making it increasingly impossible for us to continue running our business and raising our family comfortably.

The grass isn't always greener - we have it worse in some ways but miles better in many many others.

I read an article by matthew syed about this kind of thinking this morning, the tendency towards negativity bias - most people in the western world are enjoying lives better than other generation that has existed

I agree - the next generation of the middle class is being completely crushed. Property prices, difficulty of pension saving, cost of childcare, cost of education to secure a job, lack of social mobility etc.

I think frozen thresholds on tax are becoming the major issue - combined with student loans repayments it means you might be paying 40%+ rates from minimum wage, 50%+ from higher rate.

By all means get your tiny violins out, but I probably had an ‘upper middle class’ upbringing and despite individually earning more than my parents at the same age… my lifestyle looks very different!

It also leaves me quite conflicted about the social contract I’ve always believed I’m part of - I pay loads of tax, and get very little in return. I also don’t have the lifestyle I’d expect on my income, mainly because of the cost of housing / childcare.

There is a huge discrepancy in lifestyle in this country based on wealth - here in London you’re now looking at £3-4k a month in mortgage if you want to buy even a small house.

It’s not just the UK. It’s happening all over Europe as well. I worry constantly about what the future will be like for my children when they are older. A lot of people seem oblivious to whats happening, living in Lala land. Either that or they are in denial and think it won’t affect them.

True for the older generations but the younger generations know they’re staring into the abys. Having to pay student loans, workplace pensions because there probably won’t be a state pension for all, highly unlikely to ever be able to afford to buy their own home, in some areas unable to even rent their own home. The older generations have benefitted from low interest and healthy economic growth. The younger generations will only benefit if they are lucky enough to inherit and in most cases that will be long after they need it, often when they’re retired themselves due to increased life expectancy. There really isn’t much for today’s youngsters to be positive about. The era of growth and prosperity is over. Whether intentional or not the older generations have benefitted from factors beyond their own making and pulled up the drawbridge behind them. Not sure why todays young have to struggle for a few decades to try to have any kind of pleasant life only for some to massively inherit when they’re 50, 60 or 70, when they don’t need the money anymore, their own children will have flown the nest, if they could afford to have them! Inter generational wealth is a massive problem as the next generation can’t access it when they need it!

People are in denial about how much of the decline is self inflicted. A tragedy of the commons

our health service could be run better for much less if people took better care of their own health-10% of diabetes care alone whixh is 2/3 self inflected through weight

education would be in better place if childen were brought up to respect eduction and accept that things can be hard and they just have to do stuff they don’t want to.

rising food prices are related to climate change and conflict which the refusal of the poppulation to buy in season , to virtually give up flying , to walk more , to pay more for ethically produced goods all exacerbate

every time you save money and buy foreign made goods form Amazon you put your money out of the country and not much comes back as taxes

everytine you search out the cheapest hairdressers ,takeaway , supermarket without thinking about anything else you drive businesses to drive down prices and to do that they have to drive down wages, whixh then increases the tax burden as those workers claim UC to get to a basic living standard. And with so many on minimal wages there is less cash in society to buy stuff whixh propogates the spiral

All true, but lots of people still have personal responsibility and are aware and act on all the points you raise but are pretty helpless as they can’t influence choices and actions made by others, which brings us back to hopeless politicians who don’t have the balls to make the drastic changes needed.

Until the exploding world population issue is tackled the whole world is in decline. It's the elepant in the room. Meanwhile it's all focus on climate change and bring in daft rules that loads of countries will ignore anyway.

which brings us back to hopeless politicians who don’t have the balls to make the drastic changes needed.

And when they do they get their collective arses handed to them.

I see a very mixed picture. In some ways we are far more comfortable than we have ever been before, we have so much technology and knowledge at our finger tips. We have so much choice and entertainment. We have free health care (a total luxury compared to most places in the world) free roads, free education, free social care and a benefits system that is amongst the best in the world. Free museums and culture. Beautiful countryside.

So from this point we are very wealthy. Maybe many have become complacent about this inherent wealth.

What I do see is a massive shift in personal responsibility and respect. Scruffy, dirty people in grubby clothes that are virtually pyjamas. Littering on a masse scale. Disrespect and rudeness. And this breeds hopelessness. Taking pride in where you live, support local businesses, pick up litter, be courteous. None of these things cost anything. Everyone wants someone else to do it, they think the state can pay for everything. Some of this will be mental health related, but mostly it’s just poor behaviour and low standards.

Until we see society shifting to look after what we have, take pride in themselves and their homes and areas - this decline will continue and get worse.

Littering should be a £10,000 fine and community service if it becomes repeated behaviour.
We are too relaxed, and need to sharpen up, start insisting on minimum standards in society.

If you want to solve the population issue fast enough to avoid climate disaster you are talking billions of people who need to die within the next couple of years

for the uk to be self sufficient we would need about half the population to die today

try to be a little practical

This. Also, absolutely the UK is going through a bad patch, but I wouldn’t view it as some form of ‘terminal decline’, no.

Staring jnto the abyss? Bit ott

Terminal decline my arse

Lol 😆 £10,000 fine.

The older generations felt they were staring into the abyss also - the ruins of WW2 - rationing of food continued into the ‘50s . The Cuban middle crisis, and the daft nuclear preparations ( hide under a table ) during the ‘80s

we look forward with fear and back with rosy tints as a species

As a country we’ve made some stupid decisions. We elected a clown (Johnson) and got Brexit, which is going to make the country decline from what it was. We might elect Farage next if we are that stupid. But the decline isn’t terminal, one day a new generation will come along and realise how misguided we were and do better. I don’t think the cost of living crisis is a sign of terminal decline. It’s a sign of having pushed the Earth’s resources too far. People with degrees struggling financially? Not terminal decline but just a consequence of the fact that very large numbers of people have degrees. Raising educational levels should have some positives as well as negatives. Massively increases inequality is a huge factor in driving the cost of living crisis but not much is being done to tackle it. The status quo is maintained by people with vested interests and we don’t have leaders with the drive and ability to address it effectively.

I try not to watch the news as it mostly upsets me. I have felt cuts for years as I entered the world of sen years ago..in that time its got much, much worse with cuts. I'm also a governor at a sen School and I can see firsthand the cuts in services there.

My adult son thinks we are headed into mass civil unrest as decline becomes very noticable in the next tens years. I normally roll my eyes but I'm beginning to belive him.

Our culture will have to change with multi generational living as in Asia. I have been focusing on that since I had my kast child. Can they all stay living at home into adulthood?