Uk is in big trouble - what do you think will happen?

[hippysun]

Thames water on brink of collapse. All those CEOs getting fat bonuses. Water shortages and rising bills.

the cost of living is off the chart. Every bill has gone up. Pop in to Tesco for toothpaste, butter and chicken and it costs an insane amount for just a few items.

the government are crap and taxing the hell out of us.

my salary is stuck. I feel constantly poor now. 10 years ago when I earned significantly less, I felt ok money wise. Chatted today to a colleague about science graduate son who is stuck doing a minimum wage job as there are no jobs here. I’ve noticed this myself in my town. The council have a few, other companies outsourced to India years ago, the pharma company moved out years ago and the land will soon be a new housing estate.

the nhs is a total mess.

housing costs make me want to weep! No chance of moving. Feel bad for my kids. They just keep building expensive houses here all packed into poorly designed estates. Tiny gardens. But no infrastructure. The promised schools get cancelled and drs surgeries and hospitals are rammed with patients. My mortgage of course is up.

in my industry… everyone is obsessed with AI and I’m sad to say it has taken some jobs already. There is a huge push towards AI.

there seems to be underlying tension here re migrants. People getting increasingly annoyed.

this country feels like a right mess. Making rich people richer and poor people even poorer. The middle earners are getting squeezed. I hate it.

i don’t remember it being this bad ever before.

why is it so terrible? And what do you think will happen?

Completely agree that consumer culture and expectations is off the scale now. So maybe the living standards we are used to are a blip? I’m old English to remind the 70s and it wasn’t like this. I was at secondary school in the 80s at a nice Grammar school, people didn’t go on holiday abroad to the extent they do now. My parents were teachers and we were quite skint, big house because housing was cheap but “stuff” was expensive. A VCR machine was a months wages for my head of department dad. Yoghurts were so expensive we made our own. We didn’t eat out or have take aways or new clothes. I just remember the three day week and electricity being off quite a bit. Maybe we will go back to those levels of living.

I think the concept of 'relative poverty' becomes a spiral. We end up with national lifestyle creep beyond the country's means.

How is it that a standard of living which was completely normal for working professionals a generation ago is considered so unacceptable now that working age benefits - paid for by other taxpayers - must top everyone up to have holidays abroad and beauty treatments.

UK productivity growth simply doesn't support it.

Maybe we will go back to those levels of living.

If nobody eats out or buys things we will be in worse shit economically.

Travel abroad wasn't as cheap in the 70s nor was technology so advanced & thus cheaper.

Absolutely. That’s the problem of having a service based rather than a manufacturing economy. We need people to be able to buy the services/good or the house of cards falls. It’s like multi level marketing on a grand scale.

so the countries who have focused on having a manufacturing based economy such as China will do better. Technology is cheap because it’s mass produced in countries like china by workers in terrible conditions who can’t afford the lifestyle we have.

@strawberrybubblegum Norways benefits are more generous than the UK though & people pay higher taxes, culturally people don't want that here.

Absolutely. That’s the problem of having a service based rather than a manufacturing economy. We need people to be able to buy the services/good or the house of cards falls. It’s like multi level marketing on a grand scale.

I also thought younger generations had less disposable income than previous ones at their age due to higher housing costs.

They have also suffered more from wage stagnation plus benefits are less generous

"Someone born in 1956 will pay (on average) about £940,000 in taxes over their lifetime but receive state benefits of around £1.2m. Someone born in 1996 will get less than half that from the state – and barely more than someone born in 1931, a decade before the term “welfare state” was first popularised. "

It is well accepted that wages in real terms are lower and housing costs are higher meaning that more recent generations are worse off. The old young people are spending too much on advacados nonsense is discredited. Check out today's growth figures. Labour are tanking the economy and their tax on employment combined with backing down on the Welfare Bill is incompetent. The farm tax will be terrible for the countryside. Struggling to see who to vote for I voted Lib Dem. Labour are ridiculous

No!! We worked so hard as a young couple to finally get on the housing ladder, that would absolutely destroy us :(

Also, graduate job training has been in decline for the last 15 years, people do not invest in young people and they do not have the opportunity previous generations did to be trained in a profession which can support them. Student debt is at a level unimaginable for previous generations, many will never pay it off.

Then they can't have the state services they want.

Norway taxes lower and mid earners more than the UK, but the UK taxes people earning above £70k more than Norway does.

But relying on just a few people to fund everyone else doesn't go as far as everyone contributing as they do in Norway.

This is absolutely not going to happen. The housing crisis market will not adjust to allow people to own. Large corporate build to rent blocks of flats are what is coming.

In fact huge units are beginning of these right now. People have been calling house price crashes out since the millennium. Wishful thinking.

I wonder what cost of living and housing is like in Norway.

They have more disposable income because they can't afford housing.

Get in the pod and eat the bugs

Actually many are struggling with large mortgages trying to plan responsibly for the future

@BlueJuniper94 where does one find this free housing?

Just hop on the waiting list for social housing. There's scores and scores being built where I am.

And just like that everyone’s problems are solved 🙄

Norway taxes lower and mid earners more than the UK, but the UK taxes people earning above £70k more than Norway does.

And why can't we tax lower & middle incomes earners more? housing costs! Which is the one benefit that the UK does spend more on than most European Countries because no one has quite fucked up housing like we have.

Then they can't have the state services they want.

Of course but imagine linking pension to what you pay in here? look at the outrage overs means testing winter fuel.

Just hop on the waiting list for social housing. There's scores and scores being built where I am.

And in the interim? Since when was social housing free though?

Our productivity growth is low and our consumption growth as a country is too high. That's a problem, since We're borrowing from the future.

But the generational imbalance is just a trope- outside the SE anyway. The main difference from a generation ago is that housing in the SE is now so much higher than everywhere else in the country. That makes life hard for people in the SE of all ages - even those who have paid off mortgages are trapped by stamp duty.

If you look at incomes and monthly cost of paying a mortgage (ie taking interest rates into account as well as headline price), buying a house outside the SE is no harder than a generation ago. And that certainly reflects what I see in younger friends and relatives, who buy houses with very ordinary jobs (both graduate and non-graduate)

People build up wealth through their lives - that's why younger people look at older people and think it's not fair. But it's just normal, and has always been this way. The current youngsters will be even wealthier when they reach that age.

You can see it very clearly in this graph of median household wealth. The pattern for each generation is the same - and slightly higher for each subsequent generation. m

@BlueJuniper94 are you sure that is social housing and not build to rent?

t is well accepted that wages in real terms are lower and housing costs are higher meaning that more recent generations are worse off. The old young people are spending too much on advacados nonsense is discredited. Check out today's growth figures.

I'm like a broken record but growth has been shit since the crash which we never recovered from. Low interest rates inflated assets & added to wage stagnation. Austerity meant little investment in workers or services. The chickens have come home to roost now.