Understanding disparity around us

masonic

zagfles said:

Warmbanks are a great money saving idea, and even if used by those who don't "need" them it's unlikely to do much harm - adds another 37 degree body! But you'd have to wonder about what it'd do to the spread of flu or COVID etc.

LOL, seems unpleasant enough to me without even considering the germ spreading potential!

zagfles

masonic said:

zagfles said:

Warmbanks are a great money saving idea, and even if used by those who don't "need" them it's unlikely to do much harm - adds another 37 degree body! But you'd have to wonder about what it'd do to the spread of flu or COVID etc.

LOL, seems unpleasant enough to me without even considering the germ spreading potential!

Indeed! And again, there's lots which could be done to educate people about saving money on heating, such as not leaving the heating on overnight (amazing how many people believe the old myth it's cheaper to keep a constant temperature than letting the house cool and they reheat it, Martin did an article explaining this). Turn the heating down a couple of degrees and wear a jumper. Don't heat unused rooms (but make sure they don't freeze) etc. And I'm sure other stuff which could even educate me!

I'm sure if a govt minister ever made suggestions like this they'd be pilloried in the media for being patronising, out of touch etc by those who think the only solution to anything is to throw money at it, but some people could be helped by this sort of thing. Not everyone is as clever or financially aware as MSE posters, a lot of people forget that. So better coming from the likes of Martin than the govt, they probably won't dare.

And just to pre-empt the strawmen, it doesn't mean people won't still struggle, it doesn't mean the govt should do nothing, it's just something that could be done in addition to anything else, and if it's stuff you knew already, it's wasted a few seconds of your time. And maybe another few minutes getting all irate about it and having a rant. But at least that'll have warmed you up

theoretica

One of the definitions I have seen for low income is being unable to participate in the society you are in.  So having enough basic food and nothing else can feel like being comfortably off in a country where that is all other people around you have, but not when surrounded by consumption - and adverts.  Inequality, rather than absolute levels.  And that can of course be tackled from both ends...

bostonerimus

zagfles said:

bostonerimus said:

I think I got the best of the UK when I was growing up there in the 1960s and 70s and going to college in the 1980s. I could walk to the local library, the local CofE nursery school was inexpensive and I learned responsibility by being a "milk monitor". The NHS seemed to work and a nurse was continually either jabbing my arm or giving me sugar cubes that tasted bitter. I learned maths in different bases by doing basic accounting and RE lessons convinced me that often adults talked a lot of obvious nonsense. My secondary school was a comprehensive with a good mix of pupils and good teachers who took us to the theatre and local museums, and when I went to college I had no money worries because tuition was paid and I got a grant. I left with a load of degrees and a positive bank balance, looked around at late 80s job opportunities and decided to move abroad.

I go back to my home town now and the library and nursery school are both closed. Kids don't seem to have the same aspirations that me and my friends had, and a lot of the well paid jobs in the chemical and steel industry are gone. When I was going to school and college there was a belief that a working class kid could succeed through education and I had heroes like Alan Bleasdale, Dennis Potter and Christopher Hitchens who were examples of working class intellectuals...Hitchens was maybe more middle class. But that seems to be far less the case now as wages and opportunities seem to be diverging across the social strata. 

I'll always be grateful to the UK that I grew up in for giving me the opportunities to develop myself and succeed; I wonder if I would be as successful growing up in today's Britain? The brightest spot for me is my grand niece and nephew who took the money I gave them for Christmas and spent it on a trip to Scotland to ride the Harry Potter train and tickets to see the RSC's production of "My Neighbour Totoro" at the Barbican. I hope they can use their education and brains to succeed.

Indeed - maybe we should return to the real terms spending levels on benefits etc as then. Spending far less certainly seemed to have produced better results. Maybe people were better motivated, or less materialistic?

The amounts spent today certainly don't seem to be producing services as available or abundant as they once were. That would seem to point at years of mismanagement. Maybe I'm looking at the past through rose tinted glasses, but the availability of opportunities and support for people who want to better themselves seems to have diminished and that is the opposite of the direction the UK needs to be going to compete globally. If the UK wants to have a high salary economy it needs to invest in it's intellectual capital and that can be found in all corners of the country. I could have been paying taxes in the UK for the last 35 years, but I didn't have the opportunities in the UK and so I left. The UK needs to reverse that, but I don't see that happening right now. The US has just passed the CHIPS act which makes $52 billion for semi-conductor manufacturing and research and another $200 billion for AI and quantum computing and the UK as just given GBP 12 million for a National Epitaxy Facility. It's a joke really. Many of the people I graduated with are in the US, like me, or are living in the EU...my college girlfriend has lived in France for 30 years and became a French citizen because of Brexit...and I would certainly encourage my grand niece and nephew to look beyond the UK when starting a career.

zagfles

theoretica said:

One of the definitions I have seen for low income is being unable to participate in the society you are in.  So having enough basic food and nothing else can feel like being comfortably off in a country where that is all other people around you have, but not when surrounded by consumption - and adverts.  Inequality, rather than absolute levels.  And that can of course be tackled from both ends...

Indeed, that is a definition used by some, and of course terms like "low" are always relative. Also the "society you are in" doesn't mean the country, it means the people around you, who you see and interact with. So for instance if you live on a street where everyone has £70k Land Rovers and £1k phones and go down the expensive golf club you might feel poor if you only have a £200 phone and a £20k car and socialise at the working men's club. Whereas if you lived on other streets you might feel rich having a £20k car.

But for most people there are other more powerful blockers to "participation in society", for instance having the confidence to go out, meet new people, join clubs, find a partner etc. Life is full of inequalities, some people are better looking than others, some are better at sports, at making friends, some are cleverer, more confident, funnier, some have better health etc. Only the most materialistic will think money is the most important inequality.  How many people would trade money for better health, better looks etc.

I generally enjoyed myself more when I was younger and poorer. 

zagfles

bostonerimus said:

zagfles said:

bostonerimus said:

I think I got the best of the UK when I was growing up there in the 1960s and 70s and going to college in the 1980s. I could walk to the local library, the local CofE nursery school was inexpensive and I learned responsibility by being a "milk monitor". The NHS seemed to work and a nurse was continually either jabbing my arm or giving me sugar cubes that tasted bitter. I learned maths in different bases by doing basic accounting and RE lessons convinced me that often adults talked a lot of obvious nonsense. My secondary school was a comprehensive with a good mix of pupils and good teachers who took us to the theatre and local museums, and when I went to college I had no money worries because tuition was paid and I got a grant. I left with a load of degrees and a positive bank balance, looked around at late 80s job opportunities and decided to move abroad.

I go back to my home town now and the library and nursery school are both closed. Kids don't seem to have the same aspirations that me and my friends had, and a lot of the well paid jobs in the chemical and steel industry are gone. When I was going to school and college there was a belief that a working class kid could succeed through education and I had heroes like Alan Bleasdale, Dennis Potter and Christopher Hitchens who were examples of working class intellectuals...Hitchens was maybe more middle class. But that seems to be far less the case now as wages and opportunities seem to be diverging across the social strata. 

I'll always be grateful to the UK that I grew up in for giving me the opportunities to develop myself and succeed; I wonder if I would be as successful growing up in today's Britain? The brightest spot for me is my grand niece and nephew who took the money I gave them for Christmas and spent it on a trip to Scotland to ride the Harry Potter train and tickets to see the RSC's production of "My Neighbour Totoro" at the Barbican. I hope they can use their education and brains to succeed.

Indeed - maybe we should return to the real terms spending levels on benefits etc as then. Spending far less certainly seemed to have produced better results. Maybe people were better motivated, or less materialistic?

The amounts spent today certainly don't seem to be producing services as available or abundant as they once were. That would seem to point at years of mismanagement. Maybe I'm looking at the past through rose tinted glasses, but the availability of opportunities and support for people who want to better themselves seems to have diminished and that is the opposite of the direction the UK needs to be going to compete globally. If the UK wants to have a high salary economy it needs to invest in it's intellectual capital and that can be found in all corners of the country. I could have been paying taxes in the UK for the last 35 years, but I didn't have the opportunities in the UK and so I left. The UK needs to reverse that, but I don't see that happening right now. The US has just passed the CHIPS act which makes $52 billion for semi-conductor manufacturing and research and another $200 billion for AI and quantum computing and the UK as just given GBP 12 million for a National Epitaxy Facility. It's a joke really. Many of the people I graduated with are in the US, like me, or are living in the EU...my college girlfriend has lived in France for 30 years and became a French citizen because of Brexit...and I would certainly encourage my grand niece and nephew to look beyond the UK when starting a career.

Yes, there's been massive wastage, in the 70's maybe only 5% or so went to uni, now it's about 40%, but there's also been an expansion of "mickey mouse" type courses that do little to help students' careers prospects, and due to the way uni is funded, they get the biggest subsidy (because the loans are less likely to be repaid).

There's also been the massive expansion in the welfare state, particularly means tested benefits, which has resulted in disincentives to work, just look at the number of economically inactive working age adults in the UK and the number of vacancies all over the country which employers struggle to fill, especially after Brexit when it's harder to employ foreigners to do all the work the British don't want to like fruit picking and cleaning etc.

In other countries benefits are more universal or contributory, which means they don't tend to act as a disincentive to work as much. Poverty measures and targets actually make this worse, because they measure the difference between the median (NOT the mean, which most people think of as the "average") and the bottom, which encourages policies to reduce the gap between the median and the bottom. If you reduce the gap, you reduce the incentive to improve your situation because working more doesn't make you that much better off. The marginal withdrawal rates (tax/NI/benefit withdrawal) on eg a family with 2 kids is way over 50% probably up to around £35k income.

JohnWinder

final thought is this simply the bitter ending of 'capitalism didn't win, it just failed last'?

Every system is perfectly organised to produce the outcome is does. Apologies to Deming.

In most societies individuals have produced more than their survival requires, and that surplus supported the very young, old, and others otherwise incapable of production. A, perhaps the defining feature of every economic system is: who determines how the surplus of production will be distributed? Once, it was the slave owners not the slaves. Later the land owners, not the serfs. Today, here, it is the owners of capital.

ian1246

Myself, Wife & 14month old Baby are in a very fortunate position in that we switched energy providers from Avro energy (since gone bust) to Octopus Energy (who by complete coincidence ended up taking over Avro's energy customer base) in August 2021 after moving house - and for some reason I decided to switch to a 2 year fix. This means that our energy bills are locked in until August 2023.

That said, I m extremely worried about the rising cost of living. As someone who is the main bread winner, (Wife only works part time, earns just £12k a year) I m fortunate enough to work in the public sector in a job where I literally can't be made redundant (as in, its not allowed in law) so have total job security (unless I royally mess up and get sacked!), but also have for the past 7 years suffered real-term pay cuts due to my pay not matching inflation - and this years pay award is just £1900 (4.6%)

The result is we're in a mixed position - we can weather the incoming storm, but it could be rough, since our current energy bills (we have a fairly old house which we brought, which requires some work) are £138 a month... which will rise to around £360 if current predictions are accurate, with the extra £220ish effectively wiping out 2/5's of our disposable income - disposable income which we were relying on to fund various house improvements/ essential maintenance. 

We're very fortunate in that we have 12months advance notice due to our energy bills being fixed, before we're hit by the majority of the cost of living crisis (our energy bills). We could do what a lot of our peers seem to be doing - sticking our head in the sands, continuing as normal and essentially praying for divine (HMS Treasury) intervention to weather the coming storm....

.... or we could choose to act on the information coming in and either cut our bills/expenditure, or come up with a way to off-set the rising costs of living.

In our case, we've chosen for a combination of the 2 - we've switched bank accounts to maximise cash back on daily living costs, trimmed what living expenses we can whilst still living comfortably with some non-essential expenses (i.e. Sky) - and crucially - looked at our outgoings to identify potential ways to reduce them further in the future. Its worth noting we've always been quite financially sensible, ensuring we lived within our means and avoided taking out non-essential debt.

One outcome of that is we've recently spent £875 to get Cavity Installation installed to try and maximise energy efficiency, whilst we've also decided rather than spending around £10k next August replacing our balcony/flat roof/decking on our house (one of the "improvement" projects we've been saving for), we'll instead use that £10k to pay off my Student Loan (our only debt other than our mortgage) 4 or 5 years earlier than it otherwise would be, with the result that the monthly £200+ which comes out of my payslip each month on that will cease, boosting my income by £200 a month... which will go a long way to offsetting the energy bill hike (especially when coupled with future pay rises).

I think the majority of people out there, if they actually sit down and assess their position, can probably find a way to weather the storm in an acceptable manner to them (living standards etc...), the big question will be... will they actually do that? I personally don't think many people will until its too late.

Lastonestanding

zagfles said:

There's also been the massive expansion in the welfare state, particularly means tested benefits, which has resulted in disincentives to work, just look at the number of economically inactive working age adults in the UK and the number of vacancies all over the country which employers struggle to fill

When the government gives the figures on money spent on benefits, pension spending is included in that. With more old people living longer, that figure is for benefit spending is misleading.
If you study the figures for increasing of the economically inactive, the increase is down to more people that have learning difficulties, mental health issues and depression.

Having said that, I do agree, benefits are too high 

bostonerimus

I think years of New Labour and Conservative governments have destroyed public services, workers rights and many well paying jobs in the UK. I don't see anything in UK politics that will in anyway redistribute wealth or level up and I will encourage my grand niece and nephew to look beyond the UK for rewarding careers.