Saturday's video on the risks of a crash, based on warnings from the Bank of England, has now had more than 250,000 views.
The related poll has had 29,000 votes, the opinion being spread as follows:
People are not optimistic.
I don't blame them.
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I heard this quoted at our meeting yesterday.
Hope is a discipline, despair a luxury.
Robert Macfarland A writer on travel and nature.
Something to think about.
I was wondering if the government of the UK is artificially bolstering optimism and should be called out for it.
The government claims they are making the poor workers better off by raising the minimum wage from 12.21 to 12.71 an hour ( 4.1 % ).
The Martin Lewis site suggests a current full time minimum wage earner on 35hrs/week will see pre-tax income go from £22222 to £23132 (a rise of 4.1%) – this is higher than current inflation.
My tax calculator, excluding employers NIs says the after tax goes from £19519.39 to £20,174.64 (a 3.4% rise) while the government tax take from income and employers NIs goes from £2702.61 to £2957.36 (a 9.4% rise for Rachel Reeves).
Headline inflation is 3.6% right now, so the government gets richer and the worker gets poorer. Thanks Rachel. And anyone saying that the working poor in the legal employment market are getting richer is gaslighting you.
You are playing with micro figures.
As someone who was just starting his career during the 2008 financial crash and lived through two years of insecure employment as a result, the prospect of another crash, this time with children, fills me with despair. I missed out on the wage growth that was happening before the crash, and have lived my entire professional life in a mismanaged economy where incorrect decisions after incorrect decisions have denied me the growth that was forecast before the crash, and that other parts of the world have enjoyed. Add the resurgence of right-wing populism, the risk of climate collapse, and the complete institutional amnesia about the conditions that brought us previous prosperity, and I have little room for hope. The fact that this crash will likely be brought about by the same things that caused the last one, that we have allowed it to happen again, coupled with the complete lack of morality of the tech industry and financial sectors, fills me with rage. The only thing that keeps me going is my own personal bubble, my immediate surroundings, friends, and family. That, and the prospect that history shows us that things often get really bad before they get better. You have to go through it to get to the other side.
We will get to the other side.
I just can’t prmoise when.
The UK govt & establishment will live by neoliberal principles regardless of any contrary evidence. It is a faith thing and not amenable to debate.
As long as the US continues to control or influence the UK with words, money & military support no change is likely.
The UK as a vassal state needs to break away from the US. Currently unthinkable for the establishment. We are stuck. Constantly supporting a faith that is fundamentally not in the interests of the many & probably adopting imported republican party ideas as we go.
Trump’s policies on trade & foreign policy if they survive him just might drive the UK away. Then perhaps the UK establishment would be open to change but even then I doubt it. So strong is the faith in neoliberalism.
Only the British people collectively via the ballot box, or a major external life thrratening event will cause the faith in neoliberalism to be consigned to history. I hope for the former.