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Agree!
This is a good one to go with it
https://x.com/LizGlab/status/1946782627597590588/photo/1
The UK’s GDP is about £2.5 trillion (2.5 million million). Per capita, that is about £37,000.
That is actually quite close to median earnings, which means that about half of the people in work are earning less and about half are earning more. But many people also have economic gains each year which bear no relation to their labour.
For a household of two parents and two children, per capita that is about £150,000. Which emphasises the point that the per capita number includes children and pensioners and those who cannot work for a variety of reasons.
About 11 million people (about a sixth) are pensioners. The state pension is about £230 per week or about £12,000 per year.
Basic universal credit is about £400 per month. Under £5,000 per year.
At the minimum wage for a 40 hour week, the annual earnings are around £26,000.
And then an awful lot of productive activity is not measured by GDP. I did not charge my children or anyone else when I cooked dinner yesterday. When I made my wife a cup of tea. When I folded and put away the washing. When volunteered at a community event recently.
And (channelling RFK) even then GDP does not measure the important things – health and happiness, relationships with friends and family, the beauty of nature: not wit or courage, not wisdom or learning, not compassion or devotion.
Wealth may not make you happy, but it can make you more comfortable in your misery.
Thanks.
All I would note is GDP is £2.8 trillion.
I think the estimates vary a bit, but fine, £2.8 trillion, which would be about £40k per person.
Even if one or two people in a household have earnings of that level, there are many many people surviving on a lot less. And a long tail of people who are lucky to have several times that amount.
To pick a couple of examples, Starmer’s 2023/24 tax summary showed total income of about £152k. As I understand it, his wife works as an occupational therapist in the NHS, which could add something up to £50k more. For them and their two children, the total is not far off a per capita amount. (Un)comfortably middle class – enough to be comfortable (house, summer holidays, etc,) but probably not enough for private school fees.
As another example, Sunak’s 2022/23 tax summary showed income of £432k and gains of £1.8m. That is the per capita amount for about 56 people. Ignoring his wife (who is even more wealthy) that is about 14 times the per capita amount for a family of four like his. That is properly wealthy. Enough for several houses, and private schools, but perhaps not a yacht or private jet.
The obvious point to make is that if the true figure per capita is over £40,000 per year then very, very few households in the UK with three or four people in them have anything like that level of income because, of course, there is massively skewed income, and GDP includes very large amounts of income that is not recorded directly by households, plus 10% that is entirely .
The UK living beyond its means? The answer is yes for those politicians who have no real will to help those at the bottom of the heap or indeed higher. Two examples:-
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5801/cmselect/cmcomloc/173/17305.htm#:~:text=In%201975%2C%2080%20per%20cent%20of%20housing,the%20modern%20period%20into%20two%20separate%20models.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/09/25/steve-reed-football-tickets-water-company-bosses-labour/
Many thanks for that social housing data. I will be using it.
Richard
I cannot post links to make it easy for you, but check out the work of the late (as of 2015) Sir Alan Holmans who was the go-to guy for housing demand issues in the UK and his was a sad loss. He planted government right at the centre of the problem of housing supply (he demanded leadership) and even talked about how to modernise/redesign the existing stock to cope with demand, not just new units. His big thing was households within households, kids who would create their own families, gross flows out of existing families/households – that government could use census data to plan ahead for demand and he felt that this was ignored and understated. He was major intellectual in the housing field and boy do we need him now. He was based at Cambridge and did a lot of work with the Chartered Institute of Housing. He was thorough and rational.
Anyhow, I’ll leave it with you.
Might you mail me?
Thanks
Well well. I’ve just read this. I apologise if it’s been discussed before; it’s new to me, so perhaps someone can enlighten me as to how this is permitted?
https://labourhub.org.uk/2025/07/20/britains-quiet-billion-pound-subsidy-to-banks-and-shadow-banks/
“One of the largest transfers of public wealth in recent British history continues apace—almost entirely out of sight.
The Bank of England’s Asset Purchase Facility (APF), a holdover from the era of Quantitative Easing, is quietly funnelling tens of billions of pounds from the Treasury to commercial banks and ‘shadow’ financial institutions. These payouts are not tied to productive investment or economic risk-taking. They are, in essence, payments for doing nothing—for holding central bank reserves created by the Bank itself. And now, for buying government bonds at a discount while the state swallows the losses.
The scale is staggering. In the 2023–24 fiscal year, the Bank received £44.5bn from the Treasury to cover losses from the APF. In Reeves’s 2024–25 budget, the figure rises to £54bn. This is not loose change. It far exceeds the so-called “fiscal headroom” Labour has inherited and is money that could be used to tackle poverty, fund housing, or invest in public services. Instead, it’s being quietly redirected to the financial sector.”
I admit that I have covered this for a long time, including the details and some of the figures, but there’s no harm somebody else giving it a go as well, and the shocking truth of it remains just that i.e. shocking.
Thanks for putting that so tactfully, Richard……
Love it !
Excellent. It’s the kind of positive language we need
Contrast this with the latest jaundiced article by Paul Taylor on France in the Guardian today. France is proposing to cut two public holidays to ‘boost output’ and taxes apparently. It has nothing to do with the losing control of the currency and going into the Euro apparently.
Yes I will email you about some info on Alan Holmans.
Nobel Laureate William Vickrey made the same point in 15 Fatal Fallacies of Financial Fundamentalism
“Fallacy 5.
“A chronic trend towards inflation is a reflection of living beyond our means” (Alfred Kahn, quoted in Cornell ’93, summer issue).
Reality: The only time we could be said to have been really living beyond our means was in wartime, when capital was being destroyed and undermaintained. We have not lived even up to our means in peacetime since 1926, when it is now estimated that unemployment according to today’s definition went down to around 1.5%. This level has not been approached since, except at the height of World War II.”
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.95.3.1340
Thanks
People used to put Great at the start of that.