Britain's pubs can be busy, football grounds can be full, and airports can be crowded while millions of people are still struggling to pay for life's essentials.
The cost-of-living crisis has not disappeared simply because some people cannot see it.
Britain remains a wealthy country, but that wealth and the incomes it generates are very unevenly distributed. Some people can still afford football tickets, meals out and foreign holidays. Others are struggling with housing costs, energy bills, food and transport. Both things can be true at exactly the same time.
And when it comes to visibility, there is another issue to consider. Spending does not necessarily indicate financial security. People use savings, credit cards and debt to maintain their lifestyles when their incomes no longer cover their costs. A pint in a pub or a week abroad tells us very little about someone's underlying financial resilience.
Political economy asks us to look beyond these superficial signs of prosperity. Who isn't at the football match? Who cannot afford the pub? Who isn't travelling through the airport?
Those missing people matter.
The cost-of-living crisis is an inequality crisis. If we want to understand what is happening in Britain, we need to look at those who have become economically invisible, not just those we can still see spending.
This is the audio version:
The Debate Ammunition for this video is available here.
This is the transcript:
The cost-of-living crisis in the UK is real. It's just that some people are claiming not to see it. Those people are claiming, and they're telling me, that it is little more than a myth. They say that the start of the football season, and large crowds, and people in pubs, and busy airports are evidence that people have ample to spend and that there is no cost-of-living crisis.
That argument mistakes appearances for reality, and comfort is allowing some people to choose not to see this crisis, which is, at current estimate, affecting at least 14 million people or roughly one in five people in the UK, who are living in real poverty. The people who are denying the existence of this crisis are those who are not suffering it, and the point is, the visible people that they see are not the whole country.
Britain does remain a wealthy country overall. Let's be clear. That is true. I'm not saying otherwise, but the point is, wealth and income in the UK are distributed very unevenly. Millions are struggling while others are remaining totally financially secure, able to buy all those things from an expensive football ticket to a visit to the pub and trips abroad for their holidays. Both those realities can exist at the same time. That's a fact in the modern UK, but this crisis is real nonetheless. Let's not pretend otherwise.
This crisis is about the problem that many families and people in the UK have in paying for essentials. Housing, energy, food and transport have all become much more expensive over the last decade or so, and many incomes have simply failed to keep pace. Incomes might have risen, but costs have risen even more, and the pressure falls hardest on those with the least. That is why our cost-of-living crisis is real.
The comfortable may also be hiding their financial insecurity. People under pressure do not stop all their discretionary spending. That is what credit cards are for. They cut elsewhere, they use their savings, and then they take on debt. That's what happens when people are under pressure. They don't want to recognise the reality of the crisis they are personally facing, and so they descend into a personal financial crisis, which then spills over into a nationwide cost-of-living crisis.
A pint, or a holiday, proves very little about a person's financial resilience. People can pay for these things on credit, and the evidence is that resilience is steadily declining in the UK. Credit card defaults are rising. The defaults on paying for things like energy are increasing. There's over £5 billion of energy debt outstanding in the UK economy at present. And do remember that over 50% of people in the UK never travel abroad on holiday, so the appearance that airports are busy does not prove that everyone in the UK is doing well. It's just a myth.
And looking only at averages also conceals the truth. Millions can afford holidays while millions cannot pay essential bills. There is no contradiction between those two facts. Anecdotes from the perspective of the comfortable hide real distribution problems and deep inequality in the UK, but if you don't look beyond your own comfort zone and your own circle of friends, you can believe that those who claim they have a cost-of-living crisis are making everything up. But that need not be true.
Political economy looks through those anecdotes and those myths and asks who is being left behind in the real world, and it goes out of its way to look for them. That is the importance of political economy. It does not accept the superficial as evidence. It looks for the facts. And doing so, it recognises that choosing not to see is a part of the problem that wealth creates. It is a privilege of wealth to ignore the reality of some people in a society.
We know that this has always happened. There are maps of London in the 19th century that were prepared to show the proximity between those living in massive well-being and those who were living in deep poverty . They were often only a hundred yards or so apart. And yet those with wealth failed to recognise the issue then, just as they do now.
Political economy is the discipline that looks at that social gradient, that difference, and tries to make it visible. The point is we need to make it visible because at the moment there is a collective denial that we do have a problem in the UK. The absence of evidence that people are living in hardship because those people are, by and large, hidden away from view because they can't afford to do anything else is mistaken for evidence that they do not exist. That denial does itself make this crisis harder to tackle.
And I stress, looking away is itself a political choice. Political economy demands that we look.
We must ask who is absent from the football crowd.
We must ask, who cannot afford to go to the pub, or to go on holiday?
The gaps that are then revealed show the reality that headlines often ignore.
This is where serious political analysis begins.
The politics of care means seeing everyone. Good politics, the politics of care, speaks for those who are made invisible by their poverty. Real evidence lies beyond the superficial appearance. The cost-of-living crisis is fundamentally an inequality crisis. We must judge society by those who are excluded and not by those who are still spending. When we do that, we begin to understand the scale of the action that we need to take to make sure that everybody in this country can have the chance to thrive.
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Thanks again to all for a disturbingly relevant article, the content and style of which is seriously missing from the mainstream media, not least the B B C.
Why does a powerful communication and information organisation, which is presented as a public service entity, not present regular, reasonably comprehensive, sets of data on the actual functionings of the U K?
As well as information on the stock market, it could, so easily present regular information, good news, bad news and in between news, on wealth distribution, current Palma ratios. length of healthy life expectancy, child poverty etc., etc.
The attatched article on child poverty from “Action for Chilren” indicates how easily such could be done, if there were a policy to do so.
https://www.actionforchildren.org.uk/support-us/make-a-donation/appeals/donate/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=BAU-Brand&utm_content=pure&utm_campaigncode=C4372&utm_appealcode=X26XXOPDX&&utm_packagecode=26NDFRDFG&gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=15713378151&gbraid=0AAAAADjN8cwOA5KLki3IzINxw0hhqX6gH&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIpJaTj8OklgMVK5GDBx25zBboEAAYASAAEgLSivD_BwE
Might it be that organisations, such as the B B C, and too many political parties, have what might be labelled “Ghost Policies” which are unstated policies concerning what they will avoid or evade doing?
As with so many of your questions, the answer is yes.
Timely and superb post.
The good news is that Reforms Social Security proposal is about to be published and boy that looks like a work of sadistic cruelty. Cause thats really going to make the cost of living better.
Do you know when?
I was being sarcastic.
Based on what I have been reading, it’s abhorrent.
Do you know when?
Tomorrow, apparently. But Robert Jenrick has already come up with a phrase to encapsulate their whole attitude to a politics of care, that I can’t get out of my mind this morning – “suicidal empathy”. I fear too many people will fall for it.
Thanks.
And that sounds horribly like Robert Jenrick.
I think the plan is due to be published tomorrow.
Thanks
‘Suicidal Empathy’ is also the title of a recent book by Gad Saad, might be referencing that too, the right would probably summarise it as others taking advantage of one’s tolerance.
There will be a blog on this, probably in the morning.
Apologies Richard, I misunderstood your comment. 🙁 Maybe it’s my undiagnosed ADHD!
Look forward to your blog post tomorrow.
🙂
Gad Saad is definitely one of those people you have to ask “what are their priors.” A pseudo intellectual twisting knowledge to fit agendas. I’m not surprised Reform have referenced him, Musk already has. The Far right are all one big club. Same talking points. I would say it’s suicidal to cut yourself off from and put yourself at odds with the world. Empires don’t fall, their enemies rise to meet them. Suicidal empathy and ideas like it are the death rattle of an old order, not a call to a new one.
I will be commenting on this in the morning.
The rich comfort themselves but telling themselves that they’re clever, they worked hard and that they’re worth it.
The poor, of course, are poor because they’re lazy and feckless.
The fact that so much inequality is baked in at birth is a truth that cannot be admitted.
Agreed
I really don’t judge the state of the economy by football matches, race meetings and airport waiting rooms.
It’s infrastructure.
What I see everyday in the city where I work and the town where I live is neglect and under investment in the public realm – the state of the roads, traffic lights, pavements and parks, the state of our rural bus services as well. It’s embarrassing actually this public squalor we endure.
Some of those idiots in the Treasury need to get out more, including the Emma Reynolds, in post since July (Chief Secretary of the Treasury). And the First Lord of the Treasury is apparently our PM. So, who is in charge of this zoo Andy?
Or is still a case of the tail wagging the dog?
Is it not appalling that in a country which are told is the finest in the world that all our public infrastructure and services are worse than the 1960s?
I am shocked to see the same decline every year when I visit family in England from my home in Scotland. We may not get everything right here but we keep on trying. Politics of care is feasible here but not so sure it will ever take hold in England due to overwhelming number of vested interests & Dark money
We should be like Norway in terms of wealth!
Part of the reason for invisible poverty is that people becoming poorer feel ashamed, I think. At least that was my experience, late 70s, as a stay at home mother of 3 small children. I went from going along with the ritual moaning of my group of friends about “being broke”, to actually wondering how to cope with less money, maxed-out credit cards, and rising prices. And I was ashamed — I avoided their company, I stopped entertaining even with home-made beer, I felt unworthy. This was only a few months; then the Crombie award for teachers in polys, further education, came along, and relieved us. The effects of an indefinite extension of that state would have been serious.
There was an article on the BBC last week where they interviewed business owners in Skegness. It reported their observations but appeared to willfully draw no conclusions. The business owners were reporting that people were still visiting in large numbers, but not spending. They were day trippers, leaving at 4pm, not staying in b&b’s and hotels anymore. It was an observable change in behaviour that indicates a deeper issue.
Come to think of it – whats the virtue of saving 50bn anyway? Where is it going to be saved? Saved for who? For what purpose? Money moves and makes things happen.
I won’t forget a convo at work I overheard about hiring for an average position, the two managers very high up pay grade, they could not understand why people were not Turing up to interview. I told them it’s the job centre, they force them to attend so it’s wasting everyone’s time. They looked at me like I was insane, I said it’s policy and they were like that’s pointless. they were so far removed from the level of reality for most people. They were on about £40,000+ pay grades and they literally did not know whats it’s like on the sharp end they hadn’t lost there job for decades. I think this is a huge problem. It’s all relative to your sphere. If your rich you have rich peoples problems and see poor are a burden and are told by propaganda they are scroungers. You then Have the middle trying to keep up the veneer of normalcy heaven forbid your out done by you neighbour or have housebareisment, kind of fake it till you make it ( or appear rich enough) and then you have the increasing lower tier , if your poor you’ve been propagandised to accept the normalcy of not being able to/ having to choose between basic clothing or food, all the odds stacked against you. That’s why football fans won’t see poverty its out of sight out of mind. Try going into Marks and Spencer, then go to bargain madness. That’s what I mean. Everyone keeps in lane and crossing the carriageway is frowned upon. One day soon I hope there’s a pile up and everyone has to use the hard shoulder.
Around 2/3 have small enough cash assets that they’d struggle with a major downturn in income. A proportion of them have enough assets, but they’re locked up in pensions and property.
The insecurity is also partly about job security, housing security, etc.
The government could do more like the Renters Rights Act and recent improved workers rights to improve general security beyond finances.
Aside from that, it could mandate that mortgage lenders allow an interest-only period (possibly with a payment holiday at the start) to match up repayments with benefits to cover mortgage payments. Nobody should lose their house just because benefits pay interest only and a lender won’t switch to interest only for a while.
Similarly, some have a reasonable pension pot but need to get to pension age first. There could similarly be a means to tap part of a pension pot if unemployed. That might encourage more pension saving, too, if people feel it helps give them more security before pension age, too.
This would not cost the government, it might even save it a certain amount, it just needs to think outside the box.
What about Council Tax Arrears?
And of course the moaning’s from the hospitality industry, second only to farmers.
Oh and given the increasing numbers of young people living with their parents into their 30’s with no chance of ever being able to buy a house many will have a reasonable disposable income which they will be disposing.
It’s worth listening to Tucker Carlson’s latest interview discussing the oligarchy’s determined bid to ‘decrease the surplus population ‘. I.e. to reduce age expectancy and thus pensions, and flood towns and cities with drugs to do away with those who aren’t useful, encourage euthanasia, desperation and suicide, and spread man made viruses to control the masses.
They even spoke about using war, including nukes. No wonder Peter Theil has bought a huge mansion for himself in South America.
Food for thought.
I remain deeply sceptical about anything Tucker Carlson has to say.
Excellent video, watched & hyped.
Thank you