Page 35 | Uk is in big trouble - what do you think will happen?

hippysun · 2025-08-13T09:03:34+00:00

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?

smugmugg · 14/08/2025 07:01

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.

No they won't because wage stagnation isn't magically going to improve & taxes will only get higher due to an ageing population plus changes to pensions.

CountryCob · 14/08/2025 07:01

strawberrybubblegum · 14/08/2025 06:57

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

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So the fact that I was lucky enough to qualify into a profession before the corporates stopped investing in that and started to use unqualified juniors as a business model is nonsense? Or the fact that on the lower rate and amount student loan I like a another professional mother I know was able to make final student loan payments before maternity leave in 30s freeing up future income isn't a factor? I work in the University sector now and young people are not offered the same opportunity and have more debt. It is a factor.

Wildwild · 14/08/2025 07:02

hippysun · 13/08/2025 10:14

I was born in the 80s so don’t know about the 70s. I guess I can’t see it getting better anytime soon. What do people predict? I see AI taking more and more jobs. It’s already happened at my company. My husbands business has also been affected (creative industry)

I predict it will be ok in the end. It’s just another time of change.

PeonyPatch · 14/08/2025 07:03

strawberrybubblegum · 14/08/2025 06:57

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

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Agree re SE. We live in SE, and I am poor because most of my salary goes on mortgage!

strawberrybubblegum · 14/08/2025 07:05

smugmugg · 14/08/2025 06:59

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.

Spending more on state services isn't investment, it's just consumption.

Look at how much Tony Blair pumped in - for no growth.

Even the Conservatives - despite all the rhetoric of starving state services - spent increasing amounts throughout their term.

State spending is consumption. We're not making enough to pay for it. We need to spend less.

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

smugmugg · 14/08/2025 07:06

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

COL is higher but salaries are higher than UK, rents generally cheaper & more of a safety net. They also have a sovereign wealth fund so it's a pointless comparison as we can't be Norway.

smugmugg · 14/08/2025 07:06

@strawberrybubblegum how do you reduce state spending with an ageing population?

strawberrybubblegum · 14/08/2025 07:07

smugmugg · 14/08/2025 07:01

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.

No they won't because wage stagnation isn't magically going to improve & taxes will only get higher due to an ageing population plus changes to pensions.

The data shows that it is happening.

smugmugg · 14/08/2025 07:07

In the 60s it was 1 pensioner to 5 workers, it's not 1:3 & not far off 1:2.

smugmugg · 14/08/2025 07:07

The numbers show that it is happening.

What numbers?

Wildwild · 14/08/2025 07:09

hippysun · 13/08/2025 13:03

I have admit I am getting frustrated with the

“yeah but it’s shit in France too”

“yeah but it was even worse in 1970”

well it wasn’t worse in 90s and in 2014 I could actually afford butter without worry. In 2008 my company was doing well and we had a bonus. In 2010 we could afford to go to centre parcs. I’m the 90s we travelled on holiday as a family as my parents had zero fear of redundancy.

this argument doesn’t stack up. I’m not comparing bomb threats in 1970s to not being able to afford bills in 2025.

this ain’t right at all. I’m comparing the fact that I’ve been paying £190 of student loan since I was 20 whereas my older sister pays none.

my relative who is a doctor is also financially behind.being a doctor in 1970 is nothing like it was now. If a bloody dr can’t afford a decent house then what hope is there for rest of us.

something has gone horribly wrong. I don’t need the daily mail to tell me. I can see it with my own eyes.

Sorry OP this made me chuckle. The 90s were comprised mostly of a horrendous recession. My parents had zilch money, interest rates were ludicrous and there was zero chance of us going on holiday, foreign or otherwise! I think you might be a bit rose tinted about the past

smugmugg · 14/08/2025 07:10

That makes life hard for people in the SE of all ages - even those who have paid off mortgages are trapped by stamp duty.

Absolute nonsense to say everyone in the SE with a paid off mortgage is trapped by stamp duty. And even if you would prefer to downsize but don't like the cost of stamp duty owning a large mortgage free home is not the same hardship.

smugmugg · 14/08/2025 07:11

@CountryCob it's pointless trying to debate with some posters.

ThatCyanCat · 14/08/2025 07:11

Wildwild · 14/08/2025 07:09

Sorry OP this made me chuckle. The 90s were comprised mostly of a horrendous recession. My parents had zilch money, interest rates were ludicrous and there was zero chance of us going on holiday, foreign or otherwise! I think you might be a bit rose tinted about the past

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There was a financial crisis in 2008 as well. I'm honestly glad that some people were doing well then but I definitely wasn't...

strawberrybubblegum · 14/08/2025 07:13

smugmugg · 14/08/2025 07:06

@strawberrybubblegum how do you reduce state spending with an ageing population?

You reduce working age benefits and reduce what's available to all on the NHS. Yes, it's going to make people's lives worse than they are now - but that's because we are borrowing unsustainably from the future now.

smugmugg · 14/08/2025 07:13

we also had MIRAS in the past, another thing that doesn't exist now.

smugmugg · 14/08/2025 07:15

You reduce working age benefits and reduce what's available to all on the NHS

So take away even more from workers to protect pensioners & make the whole population sicker. Great idea!

Lighteningstrikes · 14/08/2025 07:15

@hippysun
Everything you say is true.

Another example is HS2. Billions spent and people needlessly leaving their homes or farmland.

New building regs still shit for sustainability. Germany and other European countries are decades ahead of us.

Migrants in hotels when our homeless are on the streets. (I am not racist, but this post will probably be taken down because I’m being politically incorrect for speaking the truth).

Sadly, the list goes on and on.

rainingsnoring · 14/08/2025 07:16

strawberrybubblegum · 14/08/2025 06:57

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

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Show quote history

I'm afraid it's not 'a trope'. There is so much evidence of the generational imbalance beyond the SE.
Have you actually looked at the graph you posted to try to support your argument?

strawberrybubblegum · 14/08/2025 07:16

I want us to take advantage of medical advances as much as anyone, but we're spending twice as much on health as a proportion of GDP than a generation ago.

MuffinsAreJustCakesAtBreakfast · 14/08/2025 07:17

PaddlingSwan · 13/08/2025 10:18

Having spent a fair amount of time "playing" with AI yesterday and this morning - different bots as well - there are some things that it just cannot do.
There will always be a need for an experienced human to check the results.
It is a bit like using a calculator to do maths, you need to have a rough idea of the answers.
This morning I asked Meta (which is akin to Chat GPT's younger, slightly more dense sibling) to recommend me somewhere to go for lunch today.
I gave it an exact location and a budget. The answers it came up with were ludicrous, including:

Places not open at lunchtime.
Places than no longer exist.
Places well outside the budget.
Places located 100s of km away.

If you challenge it or point out the errors, it goes all smarmy - which is annoying in itself.
I also asked it to suggest some coastal locations on an island I know and stipulated that the accommodation must have a sea view. One of its suggestions was about as inland as you can get.
I rest my case.

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Agree BUT I think this AI Industrial Revolution will get worse before it gets better.

Company bosses will be delighted that it appears on the face of it to be accurate, and use that to go ahead with job cuts. They Look great to their boards and shareholders, take their fat payouts and fuck off.

It will take a while for it to come out in the wash that the AI they replaced the people with isn't quite up to the job, but meanwhile large scale damage is already done. (To staff, their customer experience, their product and maybe their reputation )

Rinse and repeat at company after company with each leader saying their way of doing this is different and they're not making the same mistake as so-and-so company did. The savings proposed are delicious and directors and shareholders will not be able to resist.

smugmugg · 14/08/2025 07:18

because we have more older people which means more ill health & a pandemic which has increased ill health. It's not rocket science

strawberrybubblegum · 14/08/2025 07:19

rainingsnoring · 14/08/2025 07:16

I'm afraid it's not 'a trope'. There is so much evidence of the generational imbalance beyond the SE.
Have you actually looked at the graph you posted to try to support your argument?

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Yes, I have. I've also done the calculations on how much an average house cost (total cost of buying, including interest, rather than headline) compared to average salary at different times.

Have you? Do tell me - but do include data, not just impression or anecdote.

strawberrybubblegum · 14/08/2025 07:20

smugmugg · 14/08/2025 07:18

because we have more older people which means more ill health & a pandemic which has increased ill health. It's not rocket science

It's actually mainly because medical science has advanced so much. We get much more valuable - and expensive - medical care from the NHS than a generation ago.

EasternStandard · 14/08/2025 07:21

strawberrybubblegum · 14/08/2025 05:35

Some are. But many are just choosing not to work - or work less than they could -because they'd rather not and because our tax and benefit system actually incentivises them not to.

In Norway for example, they have a concept that what you get back from the state depends on what you've put in. If you are working then lose your job, you can get unemployment benefit of up to 62% of your previous income for up to 2 years - providing a true safety net for everyone.

They do also provide subsistence level help - the equivalent of our working age benefits - but read this to see how differently they talk about it with emphasis on how it should be temporary. Completely different to the UK, with our expectation and frankly encouragement of generational worklessness https://www.nav.no/okonomisk-sosialhjelp/en

State pension in Norway and many other EU countries also depends on how much you've contributed in tax over your lifetime. How on earth is it fair that everyone in the UK gets the same state pension/pension credit whether they've contributed £hundreds of thousands in tax over their lives or whether all they've done is take? And our direction of travel is to means-test even that?!

It is a cultural difference, regarding a sense of responsibility. But it's not just intrinsic - although that's real - it's that those values are part of the fabric of their tax and benefit system. In sensible countries, that's set up to encourage people to work and contribute and then support contributors properly when their life circumstances - either unemployment or having children - temporarily require it. It's fundamentally different to the value system of our Welfare state which makes a virtue of redistribution for it's own sake.

UK progressives have a compulsion to just give away other people's money without thought or judgement. They think that makes them good people. They're wrong. Our society is much worse for everyone as a result of that childish compulsion.

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This temporary factor seems to be relevant in other countries. That it’s temporary will change behaviour.