Recession 100% official now

Lucylocket01

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Just because I said I was getting something from M&S, it doesnt mean I do my full shop there! Your omitting the fact it was either me buying the meal for a tenner or indeed was buying one single thing! And anyway, this is hardly about me!

No its not about you, but my point is that the ppl in the 70's I was comparing to wouldnt og spent a tenner on a meal ..
Please have a read of the thread I mentioned and you will the standard of living is nothing like back then. It makes very interesting reading.
I think I'll agree to differ on this one. I cant see us coming around to the other ones way of thinking.:D

Lucylocket01

THIS IS AN EXAMPLE FROM THE THREAD I MENTIONED. LIFE DOESNT COMPARE IN MY OPINION.

My dad bought his first house in 70/71. Some time in 71/72 his work site was closed down and he had to travel further to get to work. His calculations had assumed he could cycle, but he had to take his car. This was the electronics in Cambridge and the firm never really recovered as it was taken over again about 10 years later and he lost his job entirely.

From the 70s I remember:
- potato shortage, price of chips rocketed so we could no longer afford them. Mum started making us parsnip chips at home.
- 3-day week
- petrol shortages/ration books were about to be issued
- sugar shortage/price shot up, we gave that up
- butter shortage/price shot up, we had marg instead and never went back to butter
- regular power cuts, the newspaper published a chart so you could look up which 6-hour slot you'd get each day. It varied each day so you might have no electricity on Monday morning, Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday evening, Thursday night, Friday morning, Saturday afternoon ... etc
- with no electricity, it was soup and toast made on an open fire for tea.
- long queus for petrol
- long food queues
- rows of empty shelves in food shops

- lots of fights/strikes on the news and in the papers. But we didn't have much TV back then. Just three channels, some of which closed down during the day and most closed down at 11pm, so it wasn't like now with programme after programme of it. For newspapers we just had the local Evening News and the Sunday People, so limited exposure to the media/news. Remember, there was no Internet so nobody sharing views/opinions/experiences and certainly no way to look up stats/figures etc.

- some houses on one estate in Corby were just £1,000. A price that even at the time seemed unbelievably low.

We had no money really. Times were hard. There were no benefits like today. A family just got Child Benefit for the first 2 kids. There was a married man's tax allowance (gave them 1.5x the single person's tax free allowance I think). But that was your lot. What you made, you lived on.

Many people still had coal fires and no bathroom. Outside loos were common. No central heating, no fitted carpets, no double glazing. The winters were cold (ice on the inside of the windows). But that was just the way people lived.

Bomb scares at school, I remember those.
Also, living with the threat of nuclear war.

Graham_Devon

Lucylocket01 wrote: »

No its not about you, but my point is that the ppl in the 70's I was comparing to wouldnt og spent a tenner on a meal ..
Please have a read of the thread I mentioned and you will the standard of living is nothing like back then. It makes very interesting reading.
I think I'll agree to differ on this one. I cant see us coming around to the other ones way of thinking.:D

I already agree the standard of living was different back then.

But what I am saying is that you can't compare that to now because...

1. Were not even half way through this recession, let alone at the end of it to look back and say which one was worse.

2. Because you are speaking not about the standard of living, but the standard of mass produced technology.

3. Because you are not taking into account the welfare system.

4. Your not looking at the figures. Your just looking at one thread.

I've already read the thread, and it too, although educational compared a whole point in time with hindsight, with today. There is no point in doing that as we haven't got the hindsight and don't know whats going to happen in this recession yet. We can compare once we have the two things to compare.

It's like people are saying Obama is so much better than Bush, how do we know yet? Were comparing a whole term against an election speech.

treliac

Generali, What's going on in Australia's economy now and where do you see it going in the future?

Can you say in what ways they have run their economy differently or similarly to ours? And how do individuals manage their personal finances by comparison?

Hope you don't mind the questions, but the comparison interests me.

Thanks.

kennyboy66_2

Generali wrote: »

Perfectly true and 0% growth is way below trend anyhow (which I believe is normally considered to be about 2-2.5%).

It's hard to see what's going to turn this around in the near future. Increased demand from Japan possibly if savings rates fall as there is no yield anywhere? Big falls in the pound cutting living standards but making the UK an even better place for manufacturing?

It will just take time.

3 more quarters of contraction, followed by 5 or 6 where growth is somewhere between +0.5 and 0 with an odd quarter when the economny shrinks again.

Unemployment above 2 million until 2014 - possibly longer.

Mandark

mustrum_ridcully wrote: »

Are we really richer: average household debt is £7,650 (exc. mortgages)?

Back in the 70's if you couldn't afford something you'd not have it and save. Now it's just bung it on a credit or store card.

Can't remember who said it but booming house prices and easy credit has given the UK the illusion of wealth.

It's true that we have more debt than our parents/ grandparents did in the 70s but our standard of living has gone up considerably. What people are not taking into account but we must all be aware of these days, is that the global economy is structured far more around debt than it was. And debt is not a bad thing as long as it is manageable. I'll have a mortgage for a lot longer than my parents and have had far more debt - unimaginable amounts to them - in my lifetime but my standard of living is far higher than theirs ever was and I have the financial power to do far more in relative terms.

Of course, some people will be really struggling as many people were in the 70s but that will be a minority. That's what Lucylocket and myself are arguing.

StevieJ

Lucylocket01 wrote: »

No its not about you, but my point is that the ppl in the 70's I was comparing to wouldnt og spent a tenner on a meal ..
Please have a read of the thread I mentioned and you will the standard of living is nothing like back then. It makes very interesting reading.
I think I'll agree to differ on this one. I cant see us coming around to the other ones way of thinking.:D

I must say discussions of the 70's and 80's are very interesting, if you lived in those times you realise how historical context can be distorted even though it is not that long ago. It makes you wonder about our historical views of for example The Middle Ages and other more distant periods of history:D

Generali

kennyboy66 wrote: »

It will just take time.

3 more quarters of contraction, followed by 5 or 6 where growth is somewhere between +0.5 and 0 with an odd quarter when the economny shrinks again.

Unemployment above 2 million until 2014 - possibly longer.

Probably not a bad call, IMO. Maybe a little longer in recession I reckon. Risks on the downside if protectionism rears its ugly head.

StevieJ

Generali wrote: »

Perfectly true and 0% growth is way below trend anyhow (which I believe is normally considered to be about 2-2.5%).

It's hard to see what's going to turn this around in the near future. Increased demand from Japan possibly if savings rates fall as there is no yield anywhere? Big falls in the pound cutting living standards but making the UK an even better place for manufacturing?

It will be turned around as always when the newspapers decide it should (only joking).

Any

Dithering_Dad wrote: »

But, isn't that the case for everyone?

No, the problem is that it isn't the case for everyone.
All those people who run up their credit cards by their pure irresponsible spending found themselves paying double percentage or found it difficult to get new 0% deals thanks to the bank collapse - and now even though they still have the same job paying the same money they cannot afford to keep up with the repayments...