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.

No, it doesn’t look like you get it. It’s not sustainable, we have more over 65s than under 15s. Who do you think will pay for tomorrow’s pensioners?

Only because the term "welfare" has deliberately been used to replace the term "benefits", particularly since 2010, so social security can be portrayed as a negative thing, a handout rather than an entitlement.

Anyway strictly speaking it's your NI contributions that are meant to provide your entitlement to a pension, not income tax.

If the social contract is void, as in we aren’t getting pensions, then the government needs to stop taking so much money off us, so we can pay more into private pensions.

Healthcare costs though as does education etc

Whether a salary is adequate or not pretty much depends on where you live though, and property prices in that area. Since you're using the word 'folk', I'm guessing that's not in or around London for you. I know it sounds ridiculous, but 80k really doesn't go far in those areas.

National insurance on 50k is 3k ish a year. How much pension do people think that pays for since you could be claiming for 20 years

Yes, it is insurance not a tax.
And something everyone should seek to protect people to have.
There was a time when it didn’t exist. Like the NHS there is a reason it came into being.

Can't say I feel sorry for the people who send their children to school unwashed in dirty clothes and without breakfast. It doesn't cost that much to buy soap and a packet of cereal and milk. I was poor for a while and I bought a vegetarian cookbook and cooked veggie to save money for me and my kid.

The uk is sadly turning into a welfare state

A corporate welfare state.

50% welfare bill = pensioners
10% = working age sick and disabled
10% = working age not working (parents, carers, other)
30% = working age in low paid jobs

The majority of working age benefits claimants are on benefits despite working because they are not paid enough to live on.

This is just one way the government subsidise business. The other is through direct grants.

A good example is Ineos - A private company majority owned by 'Sir' Jim Ratcliffe. Despite being a so called knight of the realm and regularly going on TV to blast 'benefit scroungers',

Sir Jim Ratcliffe who has an estimate wealth of between £12 and £17 billion moved to Monaco in 2020, saving an estimated £4 billion in UK tax as long as he spends at least 183 days a year there. For context that is around 2.5% of the working age benefits bill.

In 2022 Ineos as a group of companies made over 2 billion in pre and post tax profits. In 2023 they made over 300 million. They have made some losses in 2024 and 2025 but this is dwarfed by the profits of the previous years.

Remember it is a private company, not publicly listed, so a large proportion of the post tax profit would have gone directly to Ratcliffe and due to his Monaco residency he would not have paid tax on it!

Despite that the government gave Ineos a £125 million support package to support the future of the Grangemouth plant - £50 million of which was a grant. £75 million a government backed low interest loan.

Let that sink in.... £50 million of tax payers money given to a private company which has made billions in profit over the past few years and whose billionaire, knight of the realm owner, intentionally moved to Monaco to avoid paying £4 billion in UK tax.

It is just one example of many where money is siphoned off to the rich. Michelle Mone, Jeremy Hunt's landlord mate, the billions in Covid loans wiped out, the lack of fines for water companies who continue to pollute our waters while still paying out dividends to their share holders ...bail out after bail out after bail out for the rich, none of whom willingly pay their own dues.

And yet Jim Ratcliffe, Reform, the Tories, the Daily Mail (which is also owned by a tax dodging billionaire who benefits from a title), the Express (owned by investment funds) and the Telegraph (formally owned by the billionaire Barclay brothers who were also tax dodging Monaco 'residents' who defaulted on over £1 billion in loans owed to Lloyds) all seem determined to make people think that it is the welfare bill and immigrants that are the problem.

If you seriously think that this country's problems will be solved by reducing or stopping the couple of hundred quid a week that Fred gets because he has depression and can't work or the £400 a week the Jones family get as a UC top up because dad works a minimum wage job and mom can only work part time because they can't afford more child care then you are absolutely deluded!

Your medal is in the post.

People struggle for all kinds of reasons. Food banks have to provide food that doesn't need heating up because not everyone can afford the electric for an oven - or has an oven. I don't think people understand just how deep in poverty a lot of families are.

It's social insurance - society is pooling risk.

But it's effectively a tax in practice - it all goes in the one pot. The money we pay in now pays pensioners now. We don't use 'our' money when we retire, as if we have individual savings accounts with the government. We don't!

We'll be getting whatever future generations can afford to pay. However - society educated those future generations, and supported them when they were children and growing up.

So it works, even though it's via the tax and spend system rather than the private market. It's contracting between the generations, to protect against predictable periods of need. The system exists because the private sector is very bad at that.

The dogs get better food than the dc

Something wrong there.

I agree - I wasn't advocating for it as an approach - just pointing out that it would be the only way of realistically reducing the welfare bill.

But then I don't fall for the right wing, neo-liberal propaganda about the welfare bill being the reason this country is on its arse!

Precisely - and the reason we never recovered is prolonged austerity.

Most of the developed nations impacted by the crash moved away from austerity after about 2 years - we've had 16 years of it.

Labour might be tinkering round the edges with reducing it, but it is no where near enough!

FFS - that's the point!

The government definition of poverty has remained broadly stable - 60% of median income after housing costs. Despite the wealth increasing in this country, the percentage of children in poverty has remained stable at 30%.

BUT - that is not the whole picture - you have to consider what is deemed, by society at large as a basic standard of living. This changes over time as society changes.

You aren't looking at the individual things - if you looked at 'things' the definition of 'not in poverty' would become running water and an indoor toilet. You look at standards.

Those basic standards of living are decided through detailed research involving members of the public and is built on consensus, not by experts, academics or politicians.

It's also not about feeling sorry for anyone and its not about individuals.

It doesn't matter whether June thinks that the young 'uns don't know how good they've got it because she never got to go on holiday when she was a kid if, when June was a kid, the socially agreed level of a minimum standard of living was a winter coat!

It isn't supposed to be a race to the bottom

I have no cloth left to cut.

@DaffodilLill and @TheKittenswithMittens

My Dad used to remind us that during the 1930s, kids suffered from Rickets....
Indeed and my parents had classmates in school with no shoes!

Do you both also tell your children that they must clear their plates because there are children starving in Africa and refuse to use central heating or double glaze your houses because when your parents were children they had to live with ice on the inside of the windows in winter?

@coulditbeme2323

I am a big believer in personal responsibility, but thats another thread.

Does that include the billionaires who are the biggest beneficiaries of government 'welfare' or just people who work to live and are doing their best to get through each day, keep a roof over their children's heads and maybe have a small treat occasionally?

It includes everybody.

I totally agree OP. My dc are in there 20s. We had one battered car, rarely did expensive days out or ate out( both were treats), holidays were camping, watching every penny and shopping at Lidletc.

It’s normal to be broke with young children. The expectations are insane now. Takeaways, coffee, endless tech, new multiple cars, holidays, hauls, endless Renos etc - and none of it necessary.

They have completely mismanaged the economy, that’s all.

It isn't supposed to be a race to the bottom
No it isn't but neither should people feel so hard done by as they are, hence the title of of thread.

The issue is not COL, it is that people have a better standard of life compared to their parents in terms of luxuries.

Their parents got on with their lives, so should people of this generation, without thinking they have it so much worse.

Their parents got on with their lives, so should people of this generation, without thinking they have it so much worse.

What about the Miners strike and the Poll tax riots? No adults involved in those? 😆

Free bus travel is only useful if you are on a bus route. Useless if you live rurally.

On one hand we've got the threads moaning how their parents had a much easier life, then the others who say that of course basics should now include nice cars, new furniture, regular outings, holidays abroad.

You can't have it both ways. Either you accept a bit so luxurious life of the time, save and buy, or you enjoy a more exciting lifestyle but accept it will take longer to get on the housing market.

My husband is from a developing country and laughs when he hears people complaining about the cost of living and inflation in the UK.

Where he's from there is extreme, real poverty like people from here can't even imagine.

There is also a lot of consumerism in the UK - subscriptions, expensive experiences, Deliveroo etc that weren't around 25 years ago. People have become accustomed to these things and spend a lot on them

This is not just about families with young children. I see a lot of single people at work. Nobody's going to employ them for a variety of reasons. They're surviving on less and less every year and they don't do very well on it. Nobody does on £98 a week, especially if they're topping up their rent with it like most private sector tenants have to. For comparison, JSA in 2010 was £65.45 weekly and rents were generally fully covered by housing benefit then..