Wednesday 25 December 2013

Proof Britain's economy has gone down the toilet

How can anyone prove an economy has gone down the toilet without some kind of massive reduction in spending power, huge inflation and a vast crash in the standard of living? Well of course they can't, but as these are exactly what I am demonstrating then unfortunately it is 100% certain in the last 50 years Britain's economy has totally bombed, and is now maybe a quarter of the average standard of living than we had in the 60s. Here are just three reasons which between them are sufficient to prove whatever people tell you we are sunk and sinking even faster.

1) Housewives. Yes, back when I was at school most women stayed at home and looked after the family. Not because they were discriminated against, but because a house was so cheap a man could normally pay for it with one income, and the woman did not have to work if she did not want to. And like most lottery winners and aristocracy, they simply chose not to.

In the 70s people gradually started finding it harder and harder, for whatever complex economic reasons, to buy a house, and as a result women in partnerships started having to work, despite the fact if they had young children it costs almost as much to have them cared for by other people than the woman actually earned, but that small sliver of profit (unless they were a professional) was still just enough to own their own property. This trend has increased and house prices still reach record highs compared to average income, going from around three to double figures in some places. This is the largest item anyone will ever buy, and if that is more expensive then there will be less left for everything else, ie relative poverty.

2) University fees. Until Tony Blair not only could anyone go to university who was capable, they also got a universal grant, rising for low incomes. Now it costs around £9,000 a year and rising, loaned or not. Why can't we afford free degrees (no, not the girl band) for all?

3) Free car parking. In the 60s apart from a few city centres and car parks you could park anywhere legal for nothing. Now if there are two shops or more in one place you usually can't. This money goes towards council budgets. Before the 80s they could all manage without charging residents and visitors to park. Now they say they can't. That means they do not have enough money.

To be balanced, of course some things are cheaper. Not many though, and certainly not enough to cover the major slice of income for 25 years on average to buy a house (while rents of course increase proportionally so makes no difference what you do). The few beneficiaries include electrical goods (how often do you buy a TV?), simply as technology has improved over time from valves to simple chips which use far fewer resources. But I'm struggling to think of anything else. Meanwhile energy and water costs are phenomenal, car insurance up five times as house insurance, public transport fares the highest in the world, and hardly any public toilets. The few random areas which have gone down are hardly able to even tilt the balance with such a heavy burden of all round price rises. Supertax up to 97% was indeed abolished, but was always a political policy as after around 50% any higher income tax reduces the total take as people leave, work less or find ways to avoid paying.

You would need a team of economists to explain these phenomena, but a few simple known reasons are the rise in population without more space, making land proportionally more expensive as more people are competing for the same amount, spilling over into energy costs as more people need new infrastructure which has to be paid for, and then increases demand, doing the same thing. Since dropping the gold standard average incomes have barely risen compared to inflation here or in America, so the speculators have taken that out of the economy for themselves. But other than those two major factors, the bottom line is so weak it is like reading the vital signs of a fit healthy young person who is now almost dying of malnutrition. It is not about which parties created these disasters as each replacement made things even worse, but what to do to get it back to how it could be, and none of them in power now or before will ever do that based on their current record.

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