Cost of Living Up 5% (or actually a lot more? )
- Thread starter wulbert
- Start date
Frizzy
Liberal anarchist
Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Since 2010 my income (disability benefits and pension) has dropped by a third, single room tax, housing benefit cap, benefits frozen.
If it weren’t for my disability benefits I couldn’t survive long term, god knows how single parent families survive
Since 2010 my income (disability benefits and pension) has dropped by a third, single room tax, housing benefit cap, benefits frozen.
If it weren’t for my disability benefits I couldn’t survive long term, god knows how single parent families survive
ks.234
Half way to Infinity
If you pay the pasta makers more, won’t they spend more and revive the economy?
Apart from the fact that tax does not fund spending on the NHS, or anything else, most of any extra money will be swallowed up before it gets anywhere near Care. Consultants and private NHS providers will get the bulk.
That is quite shocking. No modern society should treat people like that.
Mystic Mac
cauliflower ears not golden ears....
The bedroom tax is indefensible. It is a good reason to despise anyone who votes Conservative. If someone is willing to vote for a party that willingly punishes people for being poor, then they deserve to be despised.
misterdog
Not the canine kind
Maybe but this thread is about the cost of living going up.
Most businesses lost a fortune during Covid and need to reclaim some of those losses.
We live in a capitalistic world, that's how it 'works'.
misterdog
Not the canine kind
That is how much it costs though, whether funded publicly or privately.
What is the average cost of a care home in the UK?
Residential care costs an average of £29,250 per year for a care home, or £39,300 per year if nursing is required. However, the cost of private care homes with more comfortable amenities often exceeds £1500/week, which equates to more than £75000 per year.
You can look after your own elderly relatives (as I do) though strangely many don't.
Blair/Brown looked into the social care costs, but could find no way to fund it that would be acceptable to the public. So they kicked the can down the road, and here we are.
Fan you show your working on that one please? I understand (basics of at least) Keynesian economic s, but I also work in manufacturing and I know how much of an item's cost is the wages bill. Also, in a largely service based economy, paying everybody more doesn't increase your effective spending. If you double my wage but the cost of hiring any service also doubles, there's no net gain.
russel
./_dazed_and_confused
Indirectly, it pushes people to be more efficient and automate. One of the reasons the industrial revolution started in the U.K. was because wages were high compared to the rest of Europe so R&D high.
ks.234
Half way to Infinity
I am painfully well aware of the cost of Care in this country
Bob McC
Living the life of Riley
If only!
We were paying £1200 a week, £62400 a year for my mother in law who died 5 years ago and a relative is looking at £8000 a month, £96000 a year now.
Both with dementia.
OK, I can see that, I know from experience of contract manufacture in China that cheap wages = low innovation because there's no need for automation when you can just chuck it on a table and employ people. However we have been a high wage, high skill economy for 20 years now, the evidence for which is houses full of plastic tat, consumer electronics and clothing sales doubling between 2000 and 2014 (reported on radio 4 today, forgive me if the dates and multiple s are slightly out) so I'd like to know why if what you say is the case the UK has low productivity and low levels of automation. We've had 20 years, after all.
I'm not questioning what you say in terms of economic theory, however there must at least be significant confounding factors because in practice high wages = R&D spend = innovation has not held up in the last 20-25 years. Rather, high wages has driven heavy consumption of disposable luxury goods and high house prices.
Wilson
SCTV half wit
Same in Canada. Blaming Brexit is a waste of energy...
russel
./_dazed_and_confused
As Mark Blyth said above wage rises are just increased borrowing, not real wage increases, the U.K. economy has been dominated by the finance industry which is extractive and wants “profits now” which is why investment in plant, training and R&D is lower than our competitors, allied to the fact that U.K. managers are generally crap compared to our competitors as and it’s a losing combination. China and the U.K. had about the same number of robots per head in manufacturing in 2016, China has now twice as many, the U.K. is just below the world average.
So that's the point, wage rises per se do not a cake bake. Transform low wage into high skill / high wage, sure, but this is a bit more complex than simply changing the number on the payslip.
Bananahead
pfm Member
Point missed. It's not just energy. Has the price of rice gone up? It hasn't here on the mainland (that I have noticed).
Champagne has gone up a bit but a T-Bone is still at 99chf a kilo.
ks.234
Half way to Infinity
The cost of living going up is only a problem if peoples wages do not increase to match the increase in prices. So real terms decrease in wages is very much part of the problem.
Yes, we live in a capitalistic world, but the capitalist market economy is inherently unstable because of uncertainty, the private sector either spends too much or too little causing, for example, house price inflation or depression so that there is a shortage of purchasing power.
It is the governments job to fill the gap with its own spending. It can either add or subtract from the spending power of the private sector and in that way stabilise the economy at more or less full employment.
The problem is that we have an economic ideology that on the one hand is politically opposed to government spending on public goods and on the other has deliberately increased unemployment and underemployment for a generation or more.
The only way for the capitalist economy to continue in the absence of government spending is with private debt, and increased private debt will increase economic instability. Which is where we are now.
http://speri.dept.shef.ac.uk/2021/07/07/understanding-britains-private-debt-epidemic/
SteveG
pfm Member
I don't think it has in the UK either. The article quotes it going up from 45p for kilo to £1 per 500g. However on checking Tesco the current lowest price for 1kg of rice is 45p, as it also is at Aldi.
Now I've only checked the prices of pasta and rice so far, but in both cases that article is bollocks, as in both cases there is no issue at all in finding pasta or rice at what was quoted as last years prices (i.e. there has been zero inflation on those items).
I still think the article has a point in that inflation will hit the lowest income folks hardest, I just wished they'd used example price rises that were true to illustrate their point instead of just assuming their middle class readership wouldn't be aware and would assume the price rises quoted were correct.
Just checked another one as well - tinned spaghetti. Still 13p a tin at Aldi although it is 35p at Tesco.
Big Tabs
looking backwards, going forwards
It is worth pointing out that Jack Monroe is ‘they’ ‘them’ - non-binary.
I made the mistake of saying ‘He’ when arguing with The Wife that the Guardian article was full of inaccuracies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Monroe
I made the mistake of saying ‘He’ when arguing with The Wife that the Guardian article was full of inaccuracies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Monroe
ks.234
Half way to Infinity
But we’re not a high wage economy, real wages have generally fallen since 2008.
At the same same household debt has risen (https://www.uk-debtservice.co.uk/news/uk-debt-statistics-2021/) which suggests that increased sales of clothing, electronics and plastic tat is driven by debt rather than high wages.