It’s been bleak since I became a legal adult in 2007! What else is new?
trmetroidmaniac on
>British families will not see their income grow in the next five years while pensioners will be £1,500 better off, economic researchers have projected in a “bleak” analysis that cast a shadow over government plans to boost households’ budgets.
>Chancellor Reeves claimed at this year’s Spring Statement that Britons would be £500 better off each year in a remark that was later questioned by leading economists and opposition figures while the Labour Party itself said the value would only come to light in 2029.
BlacksmithLegal3695 on
The decade looks bleak for everyone except boomers…. truly the worst generation ever to live. Saw their parents die in poverty and now watching thier children and grandchildren live in poverty. But yet they still whine and cry about being hard done by. Looks like the baby boomers never stopped acting like babies…
Marcuse0 on
We have a fundamental problem with how pricing and inflation works. In the name of efficiency we have developed a society geared towards taking away the absolute maximum of money from regular individuals as possible, when wages increase, companies simply increase prices to compensate. When you try to control for that (such as with energy price cap) you encourage maximal pricing strategies which take cheaper options off the table because the government has “authorised” the figure specified by the cap.
The issue here is Britain is primarily a service led economy, which does require a high degree of discretionary consumer spending to generate taxation and to stimulate businesses by having people able to spend in a discretionary fashion in this place or that, driving down prices via competition.
Competition in most privatised utilities is a joke, they operate as cartels and never knowingly undercut their competitors.
This is due to how many essential utilities which cannot be done without have been shifted to private hands, and how ineffective regulation is at dealing with them. Without an effective public option, people see the money in their pockets go less far, and feel like they can’t spend because they might need it for the next big bill/mortgage/essentials hike. This kills businesses that rely on discretionary spend.
The solution here is to put money in people’s pockets. But what we’re seeing is a business culture which prizes harvesting as much from consumers as possible, borrowing more to pay bonuses, then trying to hike bills even further to pay for their borrowing. When the shit hits the fan the company is sold and the people who did this walk away with no liability.
FireFurFox on
Can confirm. And it’s only looking bleaker.
Man I’d just like enough money to go on holiday, you know?
Remote_Appeal_1133 on
I’m working on dipping out of the U.K. for a bit. I’ve probably got 10 years until my parents will be an age that they need me a bit more.
I can’t stand the thought of a bigger drop in living standards. The social contract is breaking down.
pajamakitten on
As opposed to how rosy it has been since 2008?
Joking aside, if this is going to look bleaker than post-2008 then buckle up because it is going to be hard, with further austerity likely.
JJRamone on
But God forbid we try taxing the rich in any real way.
No, better to just keep taxing the middle class more than anyone else, and spending all of that money on Boomer pensions and fighter jets.
Girru95 on
I’m sure some more “difficult decisions” will have to be made that result in working people having less and worse services while those at the top and corporations continue to do very nicely, thank you.
synth003 on
Who would’ve thought that allowing ourselves to be ruled over by corporations, millionaires and billionaires could go wrong?
panguy87 on
That’s not news to those of us who have felt it for the past 9 months
Klatterbyne on
Lets honest. It looks bleak for us. It looks fine for them.
We have to suffer, so that they can have wealth far in excess of what they need or deserve.
whatsyourflag on
I’ve been born in the wrong era been through wars causing economic decline. A global market crash (2008), Austerity and Covid destroy the job market, and now this. Ffs.
FuzzBuket on
It’s ok gang, managed decline is what inspires hope for the future and love for the country.
As the vultures rip the last sinews from our bones I took will be proud that Kier stuck to his own fiscal rules.
This is who we are now. Austerity after austerity, and every action the UK takes costs 15x more because we have to have 400 consultants sign off before we then pay outsourcers inflated prices to do anything.
(Please ignore the massive funneling of cash from your taxes to American arms firms)
EcstaticOrchid4825 on
Unless of course you’re one of the already well off in which case you’re probably much richer.
Thestickleman on
I mean the UK has been a mostly stagnet mess since 2008. Without a doubt we will be getting hit by more tax rises as well
Least brexit was a good idea that worked out well and we’re all better of for it 👍
InMyLiverpoolHome25 on
>British families will not see their income grow in the next five years while pensioners will be £1,500 better off
And here’s the core of the problem at British politics. They’re all fucking terrified of even inconveniencing a generation who’ve been handed absolutely everything and are sitting on £400k+ assets
Anima_of_a_Swordfish on
It’s been like this for 15-20 years now. Yet still, people in my age group and below have the least voter turnout out at every election. I can’t be mad when we are actively doing this to ourselves.
PR0114 on
We’re far too small minded about this. Things like building houses, immigration and the triple lock do matter and changing them would make some difference but this is a problem across the developed world and exists in countries without the same housing issues, immigration policy and pension policy that we have. This is about the stage of capitalism that we’re at, acknowledging that at the problem, then doing something nationally and internationally to create a fairer world and fairer system. It won’t be solved by each country tweaking their immigration policy or taking money away from disabled people.
MarcusBlueWolf on
Tax the rich. Nationalise essential utilities. Introduce rent caps. They have the majority to do it but they just don’t want to.
luckystar2591 on
Next election I’m voting for whoever says they’ll get rid of the triple lock.
I dislike this crop of Tories but I would hold my nose and vote for them if it was a manifesto pledge.
The one exception would be Reform, because I wouldn’t tank the NHS for anything.
But if anyone else comes to my doorstep, that’s what I’ll tell them. Because parties feel like this is a vote winner.
I’ll sell my soul over it, otherwise the retirement age is gonna shoot up, and I will be working when I’m 90.
DavidSwifty on
Its been bleak for the entirety of my adult life. I’m 32.
Its entirely a political choice for it to be this way too.
JLP99 on
I am so glad the hard decade of austerity finally helped us to sort out our finances and we return to funding and growing our country…oh wait.
TailoredArcade on
We thought we were going to have roaring 20’s. Seems we skipped that and went straight for the Great Depression
milkonyourmustache on
Because capitalism is unsustainable, it’s had its benefits but we’re at the end of the cycle. Greed has gotten out of control, government has been almost wholly corrupted and compromised to the point where the 2 main parties are barely distinguishable from each other as they both loyally serve the same corporations, wealthy donors, and special interest groups.
Only those who own capital, in larger and larger sums, matter. The rest exist to be exploited and bled dry by the owners of capital who for the most part simply had the first mover advantage and ran with it.
We’ve abandoned 3 generations for the sake of 1 and wonder what will eventually happen – a reckoning.
adreddit298 on
Looks? It’s already there.
We’ve (as in our family personally) had a significant decline in spending ability since 2010. My income hasn’t increased since 2016. Thankfully I was earning well for back then, but now, we’re definitely squeezed. After bills, and a small amount into savings, we have very little to play with for fun stuff.
Basically, everything has gone up except my income.
TheDawiWhisperer on
It’s ok, I’ve been living on hard mode since I started work in 2007
GayWolfey on
The number one thing that breaks my heart is knowing that my children need me and his mum to die for them to have any chance of a decent life (baring something out of the ordinary) and they can sell the house to get some money behind them. We have really fucked this society up
daiwilly on
I’m pretty sure this country is not worth defending for most poor people. The rich wish us to spend 5% of GDP on defence when in reality most people want a functioning society that is worth fighting for!
Internal-Hand-4705 on
Britain and the west in general is in managed decline. It won’t change, it will only get worse as our birth rate drops more and more.
ContributionIll5741 on
15 years of tories, and now tory-lite will tend to do that 😒
Pocketfulofgeek on
As opposed to the past two decades that have been shiny and fucking dandy?
cornishpirate32 on
government raking in tax upon tax upon tax, whilst they sit by and allow companies and essential services rip the piss
cynical_scotsman on
It’s been bleak my entire adult life. And I’m getting old as shit.
Unlucky-Jello-5660 on
>British families will not see their income grow in the next five years while pensioners will be £1,500 better off,
Well, so long as the old farts who put us into this mess are okay that’s fine.
welchyy on
Have they tried importing a gazillion more migrants to work for Deliveroo and as security guards?
SushiRollFried on
Its actually crazy how cemented corruption and big corporations are in our society. That instead of focusing on balancing that out, the government has no choice but to attack the middle and lower class.
If this carries on, without a huge system wide reform. I fear population will fall and we’ll have a far bigger problem. There really needs to be a revolution, shame brits don’t have a backbone
Most-Cloud-9199 on
Where in London did your dad buy his house on a supermarket salary? When did this apparently happen?
J1mj0hns0n on
A decade looks bleak because 15 years of doing nothing have had an effect, so we’re playing catch up or lose out. But sure, I’m sure it’s starmers fault in some ploy that tzeetch himself only understands
LlaroLlethri on
Politicians will never allow there to be a “downturn” in the precious housing “market”. According to economists, when houses get more affordable, it creates a “wealth effect”, where home owners feel rich and spend more, which “stimulates growth”. Never mind all those people who then can’t afford to buy their first home. They don’t count for some reason.
What’s the end game of ever increasing house prices? They can’t rise forever relative to earnings. You can’t have an average house price of £1 billion if the average salary is £30k. They’ll have to plateaux eventually. At what point will they plateaux? The point where the average person is making their last mortgage payment on the day before they retire, having spent their whole life with no disposable income due to every last penny going toward their mortgage. But at least they got rich from the appreciation though, right? Maybe, but what about decades later when houses prices have been plateauxed for years? No one’s even getting rich now on the appreciation. And because no one has any disposable income, the high street is dead, the pubs are dead, the restaurants, the bars, the clubs, are all dead. Who benefits? Only the fucking bankers who provide the mortgages!
Remind me, what’s the point of economics again? I thought things were supposed to get cheaper over time, not more expensive.
KB369 on
It’s almost like the more we privatise, the worse things get.
Helios_AI on
Sooner or later everyone has to realise that society is no longer for the people, it is for the rich and the businesses.
It’s been this way for a while but it’s never been more obvious, and I think we’ve past the point of no return.
No government is going to protect you or act in your best interests, it’s too late.
Everything is just going to get worse until it just sort of ends.
ravencrowed on
This is a society built on government contracts where eye watering sums of money change hands for pisspoor results. There’s corruption all the way done and they’ll have you blame any demographic (migrants, old people, young people, disabled) except the political class.
FenderJay on
The headline is so misleading. It should say
Living standards warning: ‘the decadeS looks bleak’
Broccoli--Enthusiast on
same as last then?
so about those tax rises? you wankers think those will help?
Turbulent_Worth_2509 on
No. Shit. Sherlock … This next decade is going to be rough.
46 Comments
It’s been bleak since I became a legal adult in 2007! What else is new?
>British families will not see their income grow in the next five years while pensioners will be £1,500 better off, economic researchers have projected in a “bleak” analysis that cast a shadow over government plans to boost households’ budgets.
>Chancellor Reeves claimed at this year’s Spring Statement that Britons would be £500 better off each year in a remark that was later questioned by leading economists and opposition figures while the Labour Party itself said the value would only come to light in 2029.
The decade looks bleak for everyone except boomers…. truly the worst generation ever to live. Saw their parents die in poverty and now watching thier children and grandchildren live in poverty. But yet they still whine and cry about being hard done by. Looks like the baby boomers never stopped acting like babies…
We have a fundamental problem with how pricing and inflation works. In the name of efficiency we have developed a society geared towards taking away the absolute maximum of money from regular individuals as possible, when wages increase, companies simply increase prices to compensate. When you try to control for that (such as with energy price cap) you encourage maximal pricing strategies which take cheaper options off the table because the government has “authorised” the figure specified by the cap.
The issue here is Britain is primarily a service led economy, which does require a high degree of discretionary consumer spending to generate taxation and to stimulate businesses by having people able to spend in a discretionary fashion in this place or that, driving down prices via competition.
Competition in most privatised utilities is a joke, they operate as cartels and never knowingly undercut their competitors.
This is due to how many essential utilities which cannot be done without have been shifted to private hands, and how ineffective regulation is at dealing with them. Without an effective public option, people see the money in their pockets go less far, and feel like they can’t spend because they might need it for the next big bill/mortgage/essentials hike. This kills businesses that rely on discretionary spend.
The solution here is to put money in people’s pockets. But what we’re seeing is a business culture which prizes harvesting as much from consumers as possible, borrowing more to pay bonuses, then trying to hike bills even further to pay for their borrowing. When the shit hits the fan the company is sold and the people who did this walk away with no liability.
Can confirm. And it’s only looking bleaker.
Man I’d just like enough money to go on holiday, you know?
I’m working on dipping out of the U.K. for a bit. I’ve probably got 10 years until my parents will be an age that they need me a bit more.
I can’t stand the thought of a bigger drop in living standards. The social contract is breaking down.
As opposed to how rosy it has been since 2008?
Joking aside, if this is going to look bleaker than post-2008 then buckle up because it is going to be hard, with further austerity likely.
But God forbid we try taxing the rich in any real way.
No, better to just keep taxing the middle class more than anyone else, and spending all of that money on Boomer pensions and fighter jets.
I’m sure some more “difficult decisions” will have to be made that result in working people having less and worse services while those at the top and corporations continue to do very nicely, thank you.
Who would’ve thought that allowing ourselves to be ruled over by corporations, millionaires and billionaires could go wrong?
That’s not news to those of us who have felt it for the past 9 months
Lets honest. It looks bleak for us. It looks fine for them.
We have to suffer, so that they can have wealth far in excess of what they need or deserve.
I’ve been born in the wrong era been through wars causing economic decline. A global market crash (2008), Austerity and Covid destroy the job market, and now this. Ffs.
It’s ok gang, managed decline is what inspires hope for the future and love for the country.
As the vultures rip the last sinews from our bones I took will be proud that Kier stuck to his own fiscal rules.
This is who we are now. Austerity after austerity, and every action the UK takes costs 15x more because we have to have 400 consultants sign off before we then pay outsourcers inflated prices to do anything.
(Please ignore the massive funneling of cash from your taxes to American arms firms)
Unless of course you’re one of the already well off in which case you’re probably much richer.
I mean the UK has been a mostly stagnet mess since 2008. Without a doubt we will be getting hit by more tax rises as well
Least brexit was a good idea that worked out well and we’re all better of for it 👍
>British families will not see their income grow in the next five years while pensioners will be £1,500 better off
And here’s the core of the problem at British politics. They’re all fucking terrified of even inconveniencing a generation who’ve been handed absolutely everything and are sitting on £400k+ assets
It’s been like this for 15-20 years now. Yet still, people in my age group and below have the least voter turnout out at every election. I can’t be mad when we are actively doing this to ourselves.
We’re far too small minded about this. Things like building houses, immigration and the triple lock do matter and changing them would make some difference but this is a problem across the developed world and exists in countries without the same housing issues, immigration policy and pension policy that we have. This is about the stage of capitalism that we’re at, acknowledging that at the problem, then doing something nationally and internationally to create a fairer world and fairer system. It won’t be solved by each country tweaking their immigration policy or taking money away from disabled people.
Tax the rich. Nationalise essential utilities. Introduce rent caps. They have the majority to do it but they just don’t want to.
Next election I’m voting for whoever says they’ll get rid of the triple lock.
I dislike this crop of Tories but I would hold my nose and vote for them if it was a manifesto pledge.
The one exception would be Reform, because I wouldn’t tank the NHS for anything.
But if anyone else comes to my doorstep, that’s what I’ll tell them. Because parties feel like this is a vote winner.
I’ll sell my soul over it, otherwise the retirement age is gonna shoot up, and I will be working when I’m 90.
Its been bleak for the entirety of my adult life. I’m 32.
Its entirely a political choice for it to be this way too.
I am so glad the hard decade of austerity finally helped us to sort out our finances and we return to funding and growing our country…oh wait.
We thought we were going to have roaring 20’s. Seems we skipped that and went straight for the Great Depression
Because capitalism is unsustainable, it’s had its benefits but we’re at the end of the cycle. Greed has gotten out of control, government has been almost wholly corrupted and compromised to the point where the 2 main parties are barely distinguishable from each other as they both loyally serve the same corporations, wealthy donors, and special interest groups.
Only those who own capital, in larger and larger sums, matter. The rest exist to be exploited and bled dry by the owners of capital who for the most part simply had the first mover advantage and ran with it.
We’ve abandoned 3 generations for the sake of 1 and wonder what will eventually happen – a reckoning.
Looks? It’s already there.
We’ve (as in our family personally) had a significant decline in spending ability since 2010. My income hasn’t increased since 2016. Thankfully I was earning well for back then, but now, we’re definitely squeezed. After bills, and a small amount into savings, we have very little to play with for fun stuff.
Basically, everything has gone up except my income.
It’s ok, I’ve been living on hard mode since I started work in 2007
The number one thing that breaks my heart is knowing that my children need me and his mum to die for them to have any chance of a decent life (baring something out of the ordinary) and they can sell the house to get some money behind them. We have really fucked this society up
I’m pretty sure this country is not worth defending for most poor people. The rich wish us to spend 5% of GDP on defence when in reality most people want a functioning society that is worth fighting for!
Britain and the west in general is in managed decline. It won’t change, it will only get worse as our birth rate drops more and more.
15 years of tories, and now tory-lite will tend to do that 😒
As opposed to the past two decades that have been shiny and fucking dandy?
government raking in tax upon tax upon tax, whilst they sit by and allow companies and essential services rip the piss
It’s been bleak my entire adult life. And I’m getting old as shit.
>British families will not see their income grow in the next five years while pensioners will be £1,500 better off,
Well, so long as the old farts who put us into this mess are okay that’s fine.
Have they tried importing a gazillion more migrants to work for Deliveroo and as security guards?
Its actually crazy how cemented corruption and big corporations are in our society. That instead of focusing on balancing that out, the government has no choice but to attack the middle and lower class.
If this carries on, without a huge system wide reform. I fear population will fall and we’ll have a far bigger problem. There really needs to be a revolution, shame brits don’t have a backbone
Where in London did your dad buy his house on a supermarket salary? When did this apparently happen?
A decade looks bleak because 15 years of doing nothing have had an effect, so we’re playing catch up or lose out. But sure, I’m sure it’s starmers fault in some ploy that tzeetch himself only understands
Politicians will never allow there to be a “downturn” in the precious housing “market”. According to economists, when houses get more affordable, it creates a “wealth effect”, where home owners feel rich and spend more, which “stimulates growth”. Never mind all those people who then can’t afford to buy their first home. They don’t count for some reason.
What’s the end game of ever increasing house prices? They can’t rise forever relative to earnings. You can’t have an average house price of £1 billion if the average salary is £30k. They’ll have to plateaux eventually. At what point will they plateaux? The point where the average person is making their last mortgage payment on the day before they retire, having spent their whole life with no disposable income due to every last penny going toward their mortgage. But at least they got rich from the appreciation though, right? Maybe, but what about decades later when houses prices have been plateauxed for years? No one’s even getting rich now on the appreciation. And because no one has any disposable income, the high street is dead, the pubs are dead, the restaurants, the bars, the clubs, are all dead. Who benefits? Only the fucking bankers who provide the mortgages!
Remind me, what’s the point of economics again? I thought things were supposed to get cheaper over time, not more expensive.
It’s almost like the more we privatise, the worse things get.
Sooner or later everyone has to realise that society is no longer for the people, it is for the rich and the businesses.
It’s been this way for a while but it’s never been more obvious, and I think we’ve past the point of no return.
No government is going to protect you or act in your best interests, it’s too late.
Everything is just going to get worse until it just sort of ends.
This is a society built on government contracts where eye watering sums of money change hands for pisspoor results. There’s corruption all the way done and they’ll have you blame any demographic (migrants, old people, young people, disabled) except the political class.
The headline is so misleading. It should say
Living standards warning: ‘the decadeS looks bleak’
same as last then?
so about those tax rises? you wankers think those will help?
No. Shit. Sherlock … This next decade is going to be rough.