To be absolutely sick of hearing about the cost of living crisis

[Katypp]

I surely can't be the only person sick to death of hearing about the cost of living crisis?
I am tired of reporters interviewing middle-class (usually) mothers inside paid activities such as soft play and hearing them moan about how they are struggling to make ends meet.
Have we completely lost the ability to cut our cloth according to our means or does 'struggling' now mean carrying on spending as usual then complaining when there's no money left?
There have never been as many massive new cars on the road, towns are full of hairdressers, nail bars, brow bars, tanning salons, soft play, play cafes, coffee shops, ice cream parlours, dog groomers, most of which didn't exist 25 years ago and are probably the recipients of the money of the families who say they can't keep up with spiralling costs.
Yes, some families will have been hard up before prices started to go up and will have nothing else to cut back on. They have my sympathy.
But i am utterly fed up of hearing how hard households ars being hit by the cost of living crisis when all that's needed is a few minor cutbacks which they don't want to make.

Soft play did exist 25 years ago and certainly not what I would call a luxury. It usually only cost a couple of pounds. In fact all those things existed 25 years ago. Were you living under a rock?
I never said my kids didn't go, they just didn't go as often as parents seem to do nowadays. It was a treat. My kids had to be well behaved for some time to earn the treat. We also never ate there and I always brought our own drinks.

I now read how some mums take their kids weekly as something of a norm. I remember feeling proud as a single working mum to be able to afford taking my kids to soft play. I never considered that I was hard done by if I couldn't take them as often as they asked.

The small businesses mentioned in the OP are precarious, often unqualified individuals making money out of thin air, literally people’s nails, hair, tanned skin and vanity over pets. I’d put gyms in that category, too.
The same could be said of the many charity shops on the high street, using volunteers for staff and making money from donations. Vape shops and Turkish barbers are notorious for money laundering.
So many franchises like Greggs or Gail’s creaming off profits and paying low wages while local bakeries are closing.

None of which are great examples of strong economic growth or job stability.

I haven’t answered the unreasonableness, so no idea what the ‘scores’ are 🙂.

Long ago I gave up listening to & watching things that upset or enraged me. I simply can’t afford the time & energy allowing my brain continuously stray off thinking about what can be deeply upsetting sometimes. The off button is my life saver!

It can be an ADD thing to (supposedly) ‘over’ empathise (actually it really is the way i feel so calling it over empathising is too critical?).

I think you are partly wrong and partly right.

You are wrong about the number of people who are seriously struggling - it isn't just a case of 'cutting back', the number of people living in relative poverty is increasing massively, as is the number of people living in absolute poverty and society needs to step the fuck up and sort it out.

However, you are right about the amount that it is focussed on in the media and who it focusses on but you need to understand why. The focus on the 'middle classes' who you are right about being in the 'need to cut back but not struggling' group serves three purposes:

For the people in the middle class group:

1. Its a coded message - you are struggling, isn't it unfair that you are having to cut back on the fun things in your life. Look how hard done to you are.....it is the immigrants and benefit users to blame....tell the government you want something done about it.

The focus on the middle class is to convince them that they are suffering and causing them to look inwardly rather than eliciting empathy and making them realise that they may have to cut back, but there are others who have it much much worse.

For people in the struggling group:

2. It keeps the issue in the media generally - for the people who are genuinely struggling, particularly those on benefits, it reminds them constantly how bad things are. The focus of the ire from the middle classes on them as the cause of their own discomfort is designed to trigger resentment and divide people. The ridiculousness of the middle class struggle examples when you can't afford even the smallest pleasure forges suspicion and resentment of those who have more and causes them to push blame downwards to those who have even less and of course immigrants

Generally and for people who, for whatever reason don't feel too affected by things:

3. It serves to shift the focus from the reality of the people who are really struggling - makes people think that the COL crisis is not that bad because yes, things have got more expensive but you are not struggling and it can't be that bad if the best example the media can find is Petunia down the road has had to switch her manicures from monthly to bi-monthly and downgrade her shopping from Waitrose to Sainsbury's.

If the media focussed on the people who were really struggling, it would garner public scrutiny about why and would elicit sympathy.

People would come together and demand real change and god forbid force those in power to actually do something about which would of course mean that the super wealthy billionaires wouldn't be able to keep increasing their wealth.

Think about who benefits from people being so down on their arses, disillusioned and simply trying to exist that they have no energy or resources to do anything but make it from one day to the next.

Think about who benefits when those who are having to cut back but remain relatively comfortable are being directed to focus on how bad their own situation is rather than the worse situation of those who have less. Who benefits from those in that middle group being led to believe that buying convenience and luxuries is key to their quality of life and if they can't do those things it is the fault of 'benefits scroungers and immigrants'.

Who would lose out if people stopped falling for the continued rampant consumerism that tells us that to be happy we need the next big thing or if people realised that it isn't those with less that are to blame and they stopped punching down?

It's all a manipulation and game to make the rich richer - unless there is a major cultural shift soon, we will be past the point of being able to make change without some serious consequences.

Speak for yourself. I could afford more luxuries in my 20s than in my 50s. I also bought a house in my late 20s and had a car
You bought a house on your own in your late 20s. Did you rent alone and had a nice car in your early 20s? What happened with your career if you are struggling in your 50s? Unless you have become disabled of course.

I think this is due to increased inequality to be fair. Loads of people in their 20s get £££ gifted from the bank of mum and dad these days. Thousands for a house deposit, money for university, driving lessons, car gifted, holidays, inheritance from grandparents etc etc.

For people who don’t have access to bank of mum and dad, it must feel really tough.

Sure previous generations may have had less, but most people aren’t comparing themselves to previous generations, they are comparing themselves to their peers. This would be like you comparing your lifestyle in your 20s to the Victorians.

I see there are a few posts inevitably drifting into "benefits" territory. Which is understandable given the constant pointing of fingers down but not up.

Given that the economy is based on circulation of money, regardless of source, it's a zero sum game. Those with the least often put every penny back into the economy, and remain without material assets of any significance. It is often griped that tax payers are funding profligate benefit lifestyles, yet we all pay tax on pretty much everything, and it's multiple times as the cost of taxes imposed on manufacture and distribution are factored into the end cost to the consumer. Everybody who pays a bill, or a mortgage, or for a widget with VAT on it is paying tax into the pot. People bang on about net contributors versus takers, yet the system is not that simple by any means.

We have got to get away from the divisiveness and moral judgements around the distribution and circulation of money and really examine how it is being skewed, and why the deterioration in standards of living and the knock on effects isn't being properly addressed. The minute we start giving Fred on PIP side eye whether he's working or not we shift focus and then blame, and generally, Fred really isn't the problem.

I agree OP and if I just say I have genuine sympathy for those really struggling and living very basic lives and working FT or retired on only state pension or very low private pensions - where my sympathy goes out the window is with those people I know posting on social media negatively about current state of affairs in country whilst I also see their posts on their 4th holiday of year in Lanzarote or Cyprus etc . Also those posting such stuff and whose kids are at 3 plus paid activities a week etc -you aren’t struggling, you are making lifestyle choices that make the rest of your life tighter than you would like.

Some people have cut back everything they can and still struggle.

esp tho with high rent or mortgage costs or childcare

Why do you think a family with five children was chosen for interview over a family with two?

It did, Wacky Warehouse! Went to so many birthday parties there. They tended to always be attached to pubs, I don’t remember them outside of this.

Edited it.

I think Manchester airport is representative of Society

People can clearly afford holidays

What about Manchester itself??

Bloody packed

Bridgwater hall last night . Packed.

My parents bought their first home in their 20s & it was a house not a flat in London on one salary. I definitely couldn’t do that at 25 with my boyfriend despite us both working & my dc won’t be able to do either
There is no denying that housing is different, but how much did your working parent earn?

I earned £17,000 exactly in central London in a graduate job at 26 years old in 1996. No way could I have afforded a house in London, especially at the rate it was then!

Exactly.
For those really hard up they probably shout least about it too.
‘Poor mouths’ are never attractive.

So why exclude housing from the equation.

Cant remember earnings, decent job but they were both immigrants with little. Hence why they bought in Hackney, which was very different in the 80s….

House was 30/40k and only needed a tiny deposit.

Those houses are 1.7m plus now

Agree
One of the issues is the golden years of low interest rates, cheap consumer credit and the H2B loans inflating the housing market was the direct result of quantative easing by the Tories post 2008/9 crash

Essentially they kicked the can down the road, then Brexit,Ukraine war, natural disasters,Trump etc nailed it down further and interest rates/ prices / utilities rose plus AI took a significant amount of jobs.
These golden years of lovely things was built on a credit fairytale that has now become a nightmare for many
Yes the CoL is high but persistent debt is a spiral and things have tightened massively in the last couple of years.
Some are struggling due to genuine poverty but many are paying the price of their own unwise choices.

I mean we're talking quite a way pre WW2 here so I'm not sure I see the relevance.

Manchester isn’t a great case study, it’s financially booming as cities go with a lot of wealth and prosperity, mixed in with pockets of deprivation of course. Just go to Piccadilly gardens or Wythenshawe if you want evidence of poverty in MCR but Bridgewater Hall attracts people with money to spend on that sort of thing from all over the country.

Since austerity we have become really comfortable with ever declining standards of life, like the frog in the boiling pot. We also have a strange mentality in the UK of enjoying the struggle against adversity and playing competitive poverty that has always been a part of our psyche. But our standards, and our expectations, are now so low that I'm worried to see where they drop to next.

You are wrong about the number of people who are seriously struggling - it isn't just a case of 'cutting back', the number of people living in relative poverty is increasing massively, as is the number of people living in absolute poverty and society needs to step the fuck up and sort it out

Yes, but that doesn't mean much in reality when relative low income refers to people living in households with
income below 60% of the median in that year and absolute low refers to people living in households with income below 60% of the median income in a base year, ie.including inflation.

60%??? Of course that means the numbers have increased. What next, 80% and then anyone who isn't super rich can call themselves poor?

Hmmmm Yes and no OP.

Yes I agree that some people who moan about COL really shouldn't but also some very basic things have sky rocketed.

I do think however that people have changed generally and have become why shouldn't I have x instantly or I want y therefore I will have it rather then actually seeing if they can afford it or if they even need it.
Part of the reason COL hurts so much is because many people are also paying debts because we have become a consumer driven society where its easy to click a button on a website and "pay later".

It needs to be renamed the low pay crisis. It’s rightly a low pay crisis rather than a cost of living crisis. We haven’t kept up and other countries earn a lot more than us, they are involved in producing the goods we buy. We can’t be insulated from that. E.g. supermarkets, we already have amongst the lowest prices for food anywhere, it can’t be solved by price capping.

House was 30/40k and only needed a tiny deposit

In the 80s. Well in the late 90s, the 2 bed flat we lived in near Lewisham was sold for £130k. You needed a salary of £50k at least to afford it.

It's typical of the youngster generation to glorify how easy it was for the previous generations.

Energy being so expensive is the outcome of policy choices.

Housing being so scarce and expensive is the outcome of policy choices.

Pubs and restaurants closing everywhere is the outcome of policy choices.

Public transport being scarce and unreliable is the outcome of policy choices.

Assuming that these things are just acts of nature is bananas.

Everyone from middle class and below are heading towards the good ole serfdom days.

I think everyone has a right to complain about that.