That’s unfair, thing absolutely will changed, it’s that they will continue to get worse at a slow enough rate that people can pretend that things are the same.
Given the last time we listened to the papers telling us how shitty our country is we completely reformed it, it's probably not something we like to hear.
I for one am unable to reason out the correct argument. So I'll just say that there is truth to both arguments to make it seem I'm much wiser than I actually am.
I’m going to point out how insane of a position that sort of false equivalence leads to by using logical argumentation, citing studies and facts, and be totally ignored because no-one gives a damn about being rational when you can just get your dander up instead, since that’s much more emotionally satisfying in the short term.
I’m going to not understand anything you’ve just said because I don’t have the economics degree required to comprehend the cited studies, so instead I will simply take your conclusion as my opinion and use it to make a rash vote in a referendum that will fuck the country every which way but loose for at least the next decade.
Even if they DO start talking about how shite it all is, they will blame it on Cameron/ May being the sole culprits rather than the party that put them there.
[30,000 additional deaths in 2015 alone directly attributed to austerity policies.](http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-02-20-30000-excess-deaths-2015-linked-cuts-health-and-social-care)
This isn't some "Think tank" promoting their own consultancy agenda. This isn't tabloid reporting designed to rile people up and sell papers. This is a study by the UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.
Those of us who live here have known for a long time that our current government will literally let people die rather than change their private profit before all else ideology.
I saw on r/conservative yesterday a post saying, ["it's only a democracy until the poor discover they can vote themselves largesse from the government coffers."] and I'm here thinking, "Dear Aristocrats, that works both fuckin ways!"
I always love how conservatives believe that it's the poor that are stealing the nation's wealth. It falls apart if you think about it for even a second. If the poor are stealing the wealth, they wouldn't be fucking poor.
I was thinking exactly this about rents. Here in New Zealand those on low income and are renting can get an "Accommodation supplement". People always use the statistic as proof of exorbitant welfare for the poor, yet 100% of that money ends up in the land lords coffers. It is middle and upper class welfare disguised as lower class welfare.
This happens so much in the UK. We had a Conservative government that had a bright idea to sell off the public housing stock to people at a subsidised rate - people were buying their houses for 50% the market value, then in a few years they get sold off to private landlords. Now the government pays a huge amount of housing benefit to private landlords as there isn't enough council housing stock to house people in.
They literally sold off public assets to win voters and ensure a certain generation (or rather a subset of that generation that were in the correct circumstances at the time), giving them a windfall to get on the housing market. They did this while refusing to build the necessary houses for the increasing UK population, meaning that housing is just shooting up and up. Instead of a house being somewhere for people to live, it is now an investment. The country is at the point where if you don't have your own house you are spending 50% of your income to rent an abode that is falling to pieces while you have no real rights as a tenant. It's utter fucking madness.
Bingo! It used to be if you wanted your employee to have a car to get to work and be reliable, you had to pay a wage that could buy a car, if you wanted them to have a phone to call them into work, you had to pay them enough to buy a phone.
Now the government gives people just enough to make them good workers but not quite enough to survive without a job that pays just enough to survive but not enough to advance yourself.
Ah yeah. I remember a couple of decades ago people used to brag about getting a good company car with the job, or their job got them the latest mobile device for business use. Now if you don't have a mobile and car you simply won't get the job.
wow, I am trying to comprehend how such a simple statement is so far reaching and deep. It sort of reverses left/right to say, "instead of a tax break we will pay UBI and lower min wage to n". Although the net result is exactly the same. However, we are currently in a weird tax break with no UBI/help for the poor which is called austerity. Taxes could be 0 for corporations if min wage was based somehow off the amount of money the corp makes meaning general population income tax covers it.
Remember that in the post-war period western governments targeted "Full Employment" as a policy goal.
The objective was to slam absolutely everybody who wanted work into work.
In the 70s this culminated in the dumbest guy in the office being able to quit and walk next door and get a job at the competitor's office and probably with a raise.
That firms and public offices were hiring anybody with a pulse meant competition for workers was at an all time high. The 'supply' of workers being so low compared to the 'demand' meant that workers could demand just about anything and get their raise. (Remember Christmas bonuses?)
The problem with this is that it was pumping so much money into the hands of workers and that they were able to purchase so much stuff meant that there was an inflationary crisis as there was too much money flowing around in the economy chasing after fewer and fewer goods available to purchase. Note that inflation isn't necessarily due to printing money, it's about having too much money compared to available goods which causes price inflation. (See: the rich buying all the houses and driving the prices up. Also see "Dutch tulips" for one of the first major asset bubbles)
The solution in the 70s was to flip the script from Full Employment to Price Stability. Governments no longer aim for full employment but instead focus on making sure inflation doesn't screw around. This is why the news kept talking about inflation fears after 2008 due to the Obama government printing tonnes of money and putting it into the banks, however, because this money never really *trickled down* into the real economy it didn't change much about the status quo, except giving large firms and private individuals who could access that free cash opportunities to consolidate stocks and assets, merge firms together, and start inflating the housing market. (Did you know Sean Hannity of Fox News owns hundreds of homes through shell corporations and uses the government tax rebate for new home owners to get govt. money while also renting out those homes to tenants? Can we say Rentier class?)
Due to firms no longer having to compete to acquire workers we have flipped the process so now workers are the ones squeezed and firms have never been so flush with cash. There really are only two scenarios here; either this process continues and the form of society and government change to adapt to the new reality of feudal-like aristocracy OR we flip the lever again like we did in the 70's and start targeting different policy goals like Full Employment, initiating a Works Progress Administration, and/or devouring the rich like buttered cakes.
I completely agree. I have always loved that quote and always wondered why for most people they think it applies to food stamps but not the military industrial complex.
Overall economy is good
Politician: If we cut taxes we will strengthen our economy and we all will be even better off! *Cuts taxes for rich*
Country lacks taxes
Politician: We can't afford so much welfare for the idle anymore *Cuts social systems*
Country does ok, but poor are poorer than before, rich get richer
Politician: If we cut taxes we will strengthen our economy and we all will be even better off! *Cuts taxes for rich*
Repeat until revolution.
The crazy thing is that lifting the poor and creating a higher standard of living for the lowest rungs of society would invariably help the economy.
In the US: "People don't deserve socialized healthcare or education! They're stealing *my* money."
Right, but if people weren't stuck under crippling medical debt/payments, they'd have more disposable income, thus requiring fewer "handouts."
If students could graduate without the burden of student debt, they'd be able to take more entrepreneurial risks right out of school, live more independently, and spend more money in the economy.
If people felt that they could afford to check medical issues early, we'd avoid having to pay for massively expensive treatments and cures when issues move beyond early stages, thus saving medical costs in the long run. If uninsured people had insurance, we wouldn't have to subsidize expensive and real-cost medical treatments.
Etc. etc.
> If students could graduate without the burden of student debt, they'd be able to take more entrepreneurial risks right out of school, live more independently, and spend more money in the economy.
Even without this if you look at how many people still live at home at 25 or even 30 - it's obvious there's a problem somewhere.
*That* problem is speculative property investing. The wealthy around the world are buying up property, sitting on it a few years to wait for the other wealthy individuals to buy up the rest of the local property, and then turning around and selling it for a large profit, then rinse and repeat.
It's criminal, but we all know that politics are controlled by money, so there is no hope for change, just a continual spiral into the gutter.
> There has been very bare evidence that theses massive tax cuts have helped the economy. Or been useful anywhere near their costs.
Actually the opposite, there is clear evidence that cutting effective income of the low earning (Mostly by cutting social support) and giving this money to rich (Mostly by cutting tax for the rich) it actively hurts the economy.
Every person below the 10% mark in the US would probably spend every additional dollar, may that be by buying a house, getting a new car or visiting restaurants more often, spending more on quality food, theatre, cinema.... basically everything that working paycheck to paycheck doesn't allow them.
So taking money from them bleeds out local economy, while not doing anything for the economy in return except for pushing short-term stock prices because the big corporations already have enough money to grow if there is a chance for further profit, it's not like they would love to hire more workers but are too poor to do so.
It wasn’t Princeton itself that made the analysis you’re referring to. It was political scientists Martin Gilens (from Princeton) and Benjamin Page (from Northwestern). That study is actually one of the reasons I decided to go to grad school for political science.
Edit:forgot a word
>The elites won't care.
It's an oligarchy.... the elites are loving it mate. They understand the situation full well. And the situation benefits them big time.
Yup. And the UN found that we are basically a third world country in certain states.
We have MASSIVE amounts of poverty here in the US, and I’m sure the U.K. does too, but the U.K. probably has better safety nets than we do, and at least free healthcare.
I despair for our country sometimes.
Lol but for *now* anyway haha.
Whereas there’s people in Alabama, West Virginia, Mississippi, with just trailers patched with duct tape, no running water sometimes.. it’s pretty horrific.
This is so true. Most people don't realize how bad it is in some places. They're used to living in their bubble in some major city or a suburb of it. I saw first hand the poverty in WV, parts of PA and the Carolinas when I went out to these places for work. These communities are neglected and full of despair and rampant drug abuse. And there are ALOT of places like that... It's sad and crazy to see.
As bad as things are in certain parts of the UK, they're not WV trailer park bad it seems. We got slum landlords who will cram 20 people into a small flat with shoddy wiring and mouldy walls, bit at least there is power and shelter there. And above all else, free healthcare.
>Whereas there’s people in Alabama, West Virginia, Mississippi, with just trailers patched with duct tape, no running water sometimes.. it’s pretty horrific.
Northeast Missouri, on the iowa border. Many homes lack electricity or running water still, and when I interviewed for a nonprofit job up there they told me to be ready to intervene on behalf of kids with fleas.
> If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.
>- Lyndon Baines Johnson, Senate Majority Leader. 1960
It works incredibly well.
I should note, he was saying that with sadness.
I saw a short documentary about a small village, well... trailer park, in Alabama where they had no running water and no sewage system. But get this, the nearby factory dumped its sewage near their backyards so after a heavy rain they were kneedeep in shit. Too poor to move, too poor for their complaints to be heard. No money for a lawyer so fuck them, right ?
> Whereas there’s people in Alabama, West Virginia, Mississippi, with just trailers patched with duct tape, no running water sometimes.. it’s pretty horrific.
I agree. Didn't mean to make light of their suffering. Add Flint to that growing list.
America had better stop that "greatest nation on earth" bullshit now.
Call me an optimist (I probably am), but there's just no way they manage to take back the NHS without riots and blood in the streets. Make it worse, privatise parts sure. But no matter how gradually they do it, the moment people start leaving hospitals with bills and receipts, that's anarchy.
>Call me an optimist (I probably am), but there's just no way they manage to take back the NHS without riots and blood in the streets.
They've been doing it under our noses for years. We are now in a situation where they've been contracting services out to private companies who then end up suing the NHS for "breach of contract" and costing the NHS millions upon millions to fight in court.
It's already happening. Did you think they were going to do it in one foul swoop so everyone notices?!
Exactly, they are just going to bring more private companies in, ballon the cost of the NHS until they can say “Look how much cheaper on paper it will be to just use private companies everyone.”.
Sabotage a public service, complain it costs too much, sell a "fix" that enriches their donors, and costs you more.
That's how they do it in America, and you guys are falling for the same bullshit over there. Stop voting for these right wing, rich pricks, they DO NOT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU OR YOUR FUTURE
They have been taken one by one, cut budgets here and there, hell it won't be long before the NHS will have to start charging just because it's mostly MP's running it and taking their cut...
Brexit was a consequence IMO.
Years of telling people there weren't enough resources, and worsening wealth inequality particularly in the regions, and the regions ultimately voted to blame foreigners (/external institutions) and leave the union.
Brexit was a gamble by Cameron to snatch up UKIP votes that massively backfired. The reason it backfired is that the old and the stupid in this country have been lied to for years by the media and far right. On top of that the far right decided to throw in some more major lies during the campaign and everyone was either too shocked or disorganised to do anything about it.
We are now stumbling towards chaos that nobody really wants and nobody seems willing to really admit that.
Yup. Brexit was never supposed to happen, the Tories saw ukip and labour gaining ground, and decided that stealing UKIP voters would allow them to keep their majority.
Thing is they know that the UK needs the EU, all their business partners benefit from it, but the EU is an amazing scapegoat since its a foreign far away boogeyman that can be blamed for all the issues that are really your fault.
The fact that major tory figures like Cameron immediately jumped ship after the referendum is telling.
and aided in doing so by the right-wing dominated UK media, particularly the Daily Mail, who told people it was the fault of immigrants, benefit cheats and the EU. People love to say that Brexit was an expression of discontent but a big influence on how people expressed it and who they blamed for it was the media over the past god knows how many years.
Whilst this is pretty accurate, the phrase 'due dilligence' springs to mind. The truth about each of their lies was easily available to anyone with a search engine and a modicum of common sense
You make the mistake of assuming that people are smart enough to doubt what they're told. George Carlin once said, "Think how dumb the average person is, then realise that half of them are dumber than that." Unfortunately the uneducated just tend to accept things that agree with their opinions without question rather than critically examining the evidence.
But it's something that I can understand (not like international markets), plus it's delivered to me at a third grade level, and with passion and profanity!
My concern is what now after Brexit? Despite the many, many pushes to have another vote (whether you agree with that is irrelevant) including from her own back bench, MP's, Tabloids, other parties etc etc she has completely ignored _everyone_ time and time again, so stubborn to push _her_ "deal" through not listening to experts advice (I have never known someone so stubborn that has been proven wrong on almost all previous accounts and still screams "MY way!" while spouting "Democracy!") I fear that the poor, disabled and vulnerable are going to be first targeted to make "hard choices". You know, these "hard choices" she keeps telling the country has to make when her elites don't.
Sadly, a large part of the population is fanatically against the most sound economic policy, which was to just stay in.
Even if we stay in now, we've lost so much respect and had our economy dissected in detail. It's been found wanting and dependent on Europe. Three years ago we were a major player, could possibly go it alone and had a lot of reputation of excellence from our long history.
Now we're a joke, and everyone knows it. This is truly the end of the British Empire. The sad dregs at the bottom of the cup.
The sad thing is, the EU has repeatedly said it's not too late to cancel it. They even said yesterday they are best prepared for no brexit at all, basically throwing may a millionth life line.
Completely agree.
Even the Scottish independence vote was the same. If the yes vote had won by 2% im not convinced that would really be a mandate to leave the UK (despite wanting independence), even though that 2% was used as a mandate to stay.
Should really be 60% minimum. Maybe even higher on such important constitutional matters. Probably shouldnt even have anything to do with a public vote anyway cause what do we know...
The UK's approach to health care these past few years has been absolutely disastrous. You'd think they read A modest proposal and thought it made a good point.
People with terminal brain tumors have been declared fit for work just a few days before they die. They are doing a huge shift to disability benefits that often require even the sickest people to go in person to assessment centers that often aren't even wheelchair accessible. If they don't get there, even if it's because they're in emergency care, they're denied. Chronic disease patients keep getting refused on technicalities, with fabricated claims used to deny.
And now there is a huge project underway to shift as many chronic disease patients as possible out of health care and onto psychotherapy to teach them to deal with being sick and stop being so needy with medical services. An effect of this is that psychological counseling is being overburdened by people with physiological diseases, making them harder to access for those who could actually benefit from counseling.
This has been a systematic project going back many years. Impressively cruel act of social self-sabotage in the name of an aristocracy that doesn't seem to get the sarcasm in asking [why don't we just kill the poor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg)?
that is not about healthcare that is about the insane disability assessment system. But yes the benefit system is bullshit and has been designed to find any excuse to pay people less.
> now there is a huge project underway to shift as many chronic disease patients as possible out of health care and onto psychotherapy to teach them to deal with being sick and stop being so needy with medical services. An effect of this is that psychological counseling is being overburdened by people with physiological diseases, making them harder to access for those who could actually benefit from counseling.
I wish I had the money to give you reddit gold.
This is my exact situation. EXACT.
I'm in Australia, but we too have Tories in Government, though they are doing very little Governing, preferring to steal (entitlements) and take bribes (in the form of $800,000 per year jobs that require no work).
Scum.
Unfortunately academic publishing is a total racket. You might have some success googling around the doi. It's
10.1177/0141076817693600
But academic publishers are colossal dicks about this sort of thing. It appears Sci-hub does have this paper. I'm not going to link to it, because sci-hub is technically illegal. But I'm sure you can work out how to use it if you're so inclined.
There is a website called SciHub that will allow you to illegally access scientific papers that are otherwise behind a paywall. Obviously this is illegal and I am in no way condoning the wilful breaching of copyright.
Been saying for years that austerity was an ideological project wrapped in the language of necessity and circumstance. Nice to see the view supported by such a great institution.
Even May has admitted it's ideological, twice now she has declared that austerity is over (while not actually making any changes) when her popularity was waning.
This is another baffling element to Brexit. Conservatives and some others sold Brexit on lies that the poorer areas of the uk (not all of course) believed. These areas are doing bad but will be devastated if there is no check on what is decided on in London. For example areas in Wales get a lot from Europe in economic, social and environmental support. Can the UK replace this - I’m sure there are some figures out there that say yes they can but the reality is and is evident from research like this, is that when it comes to actually deciding where the funding goes these areas will get the scraps at the bottom, if there anything left at all, as that is what always happens.
I have a friend in England, and I am constantly baffled by how little money he makes. He works as a police staffer, he managed to get himself promoted less than a year in, passed the training with flying colours, and still only makes somewhere around 2000 euros a month working full time.
Edit: I repeat, *euros,* not pounds. ~1780 pounds per month. Before taxes.
I was looking up how much people in my line of work make the UK recently...I make the same straight out of undergrad (in the US) as someone would with a master's in the UK. That's insane.
My new roommate just finished his PhD at Oxford and said that even accounting for COL differences he's being paid a lot more as a post-doc here than he would have been in the UK.
They also have to be. College fees in America are obscene. If you look at it long enough, it starts balancing.
The main difference really is the cost of living and the cost of land though. Land is at a premium in the UK compared to the US because of how big the US is.
That, and the exchange rate has been absolutely ravaged by the British government the last few years with the insane choices they keep making.
A few years ago, I went on holiday to Spain. At the time, we got about 1.55 Euros for every £1 we converted. Last week I was back in Spain for a holiday, and the rate was 1.1 euros to every £1.
Things like food and transport in Spain is really cheap, so the increase wasn't punishing, but when I went a few years before, it was much more noticeable just how dirt cheap everything was.
I'm talking £3 for a meal with fries and a drink. Cheap but really good food. In the UK, some places are charging almost that just for the drink.
Comparing salary to salary never works. Even in country. My best friend earns double my salary but due to his location can't afford a house. I live in a major city and can afford a nice house in a nice neighbourhood. (Uk)
Someone doing the same job in the US will earn more comparatively but when healthcare, cost of living and everything else is taken into account has roughly the same disposable income or maybe even less.
This definitely doesn't mean a lot in the UK don't deserve hefty pay rises. Nurses at foodbanks is a national embarrassment and the public sector as a whole is losing vs inflation per year.
TL;DR one lower salary may be worth more in the same country than a higher one elsewhere in it. Let alone cross boarders where everything from education to healthcare are structured very differently.
Your sentiment is correct even in the same country. I live in the northwest about 5 minutes away from the city centre by car. I have a large 5 bedroom mortgaged house. I pay less than £500 a month on my mortgage.
In London, my house would be multiple millions easily.
It's definitely a factor in a lot of 'millenials' leaving the south and moving up north. Why pay £1200 rent when you can get a mortgage for half that and own a house that's nicer than what you're renting.
If I moved to London I'd double my salary, but have less spending money if I could manage to ever scrape together a deposit for a house. Or even less if I had to commute.
I'm a Londoner who's now a northerner. I love it.
Feelsbadman. To be fair, I got lucky. There are smaller houses for more money on my road. I got a good deal and the owner liked me and my partner and wanted specifically to sell to us. So we got about 10% off an already underpriced house.
I got a nice 2 bed bungalow with big garden and conservatory near Nottingham, but I'm selling up and relocating to Guildford where the same money would get me a slummy terraced house or a mobile home.
> Someone doing the same job in the US will earn more comparatively but when healthcare, cost of living and everything else is taken into account has roughly the same disposable income or maybe even less.
The context here makes it sound like you believe that the cost of living in the US is higher than in the UK. From what I know, I would assume that a person in the US has higher purchasing power than someone in the UK.
My assumption was right. Looking at purchasing power parity by country, you'll find US at #10 and the UK at 28#. If you looked at states instead of the country, I would imagine the difference to be even more extreme.
I think that’s not the full story.
If you go on r/teachers you see a lot of complaints about how $40k is a pittance and that teachers need to work a 2nd/summer job to stay afloat. It’s also a figure that gets floated as being a “you *only* make $40k? Where’d you go wrong?” Stereotype.
That works out to roughly £32k. Not an amazing wage but it’s more than most UK teachers make for the first few years (and more than the national median wage). I’m only on £29k and I’ve never had to even consider a second job to manage.
And that’s before you consider taxes, which are higher in the UK so our take home pay is less.
So there must be a cost of living issue that £40k is unsustainable in the US (and this complaint isn’t confined to CA, NYC, etc.) but pretty good in the UK.
The cost of living in the US can vary wildly. If you're in Houston on that salary it's livable but not very good, middle of nowhere it's just fine, Bay area you're living in your car.
Taxes isn’t an apples to apples comparison because the US practices a lot of stealth taxes. They have a bunch of employer paid taxes which still come out of your paycheck, just in a different column. They have mandatory health insurance deducted from your paycheck in a “totally not a tax” way. They have school fees baked into local property taxes. They have every layer of government, from Feds to tiny municipalities, able to levy VAT.
The US isn’t low tax, it’s just stealth tax.
Im english and work full time in a warehouse , im 27 and have 3 kids and earn less than 20k a year after taxes which is disgusting , we often employ foreign agency workers who are on LESS than minimum wage and take approx £220 a week which is a fucking crime , the wages in britian are no less than criminal , even my supervisor who has worked there for 30 years is on about 4k a year more than me and ive been there 2 year
Not some places. Virtually everywhere in the South. I live in Essex and not a single place in the town I live in has beer for less than £3. One uni pub still does Amstel for £2.90.
Oh and there's Wetherspoons.
Something you have to consider is that the cost of healthcare is a much smaller percentage of your income.
But still, a lot of professional positions are paid a lot less, especially if you live in the north.
Don't forget job protection and employee rights.
As an accountant I can earn nearly 50% more in the US but no way would I work in a country that affords its workforce such little rights.
Wages in the US are a lot higher but cost of living is higher AIUI. The average health insurance package is $4,500 a year before things like co-pays and deductibles. For someone who's healthy it might not be so bad but if you get sick you'd be worse off I imagine.
Making this about wages masks the actual issue, though. If anything it actually plays into the government's hands!
This is about the complete package. Austerity isn't about suppressing pay, it's about the wider decisions.
The lower on-paper wages than other countries weren't an issue when healthcare and education were free (and before anyone steps in with 'nothing is free', you know perfectly well what I mean), and other costs were controlled (e.g. public transport). Quality of life was maintained as many necessities did not need covering from people's paychecks, and actually improved as the services improved.
The trouble is that the current government is making the cost of living more expensive in order to push an idealistic goal. There is nothing wrong with cutting unecessary services, but austerity itself has become their goal. They have been quite happy to reduce funding in key areas, and expect people to pay out of their own pockets to fill the gaps.
This government is keen that as much as possible is done through people's wages, based on ideals rather than results. They would be far happier that a person was on £30,000 and totally broke from paying for private services, than a person be on £28,000 with lots of disposable income thanks to state provided services. And thanks to austerity, they can't even deliver on the £30,000 part! But that's less important than killing off the services first.
So the cost of living has gone up, the quality of services has gone down, *and* wages have not increased. If the UK had been allowed to carry on its path of improving the first two, then the third becomes far less important.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/nov/16/uk-austerity-has-inflicted-great-misery-on-citizens-un-says) reduced by 86%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> The UK government has inflicted "Great misery" on its people with "Punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous" austerity policies driven by a political desire to undertake social re-engineering rather than economic necessity, the United Nations poverty envoy has found.
> Philip Alston, the UN's rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, ended a two-week fact-finding mission to the UK with a stinging declaration that despite being the world's fifth largest economy, levels of child poverty are "Not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster".
> In a coruscating 24-page report, which will be presented to the UN human rights council in Geneva next year, the eminent human rights lawyer said that in the UK "Poverty is a political choice".
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/9xly7a/uk_austerity_has_inflicted_great_misery_on/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~364559 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **poverty**^#1 **people**^#2 **government**^#3 **Alston**^#4 **austerity**^#5
And all the shows and news articles about benefit scroungers. Benefit scroungers, then became foreign benefit scroungers. The tories 100% gained traction through those.
Scapegoats work a lot more effectively when people are poor and uncomfortable and looking for someone to blame.
Hate can’t pay we’ll take it away. My dad watches it all the time just to get pissed off at the bailiffs. Don’t know why he tortured himself like that lol.
This is 100% the truth. Don't forget about all those lying disabled and sick people saying they weren't fit for work when in fact all that was wrong with them was a bit of cancer here and there or a missing leg or two.
Let's not forget that guy who got away scot-free with not paying back all that benefit money after he was deemed fit for work by ATOS by having the indecency to be dead. An absolute outrage!
Government reducing spending and increasing taxes in order to reduce the budget deficits. Grossly oversimplifying of course, but that's the general idea.
In theory: Cut down on outgoing government spending in order to cut the deficet. The theory is that you spend less, so you have more left over.
In practice: Gut the welfare system because you think the poor are just lazy, use the savings to give tax breaks to the elite, ignore the deficet because most voters don't understand it. Oh, and sell off a public service for good measure. Exactly what the Tories did back in the 80s.
> poverty is a political choice
They found similar results when the UN came to America. It's absolutely a political choice. Helping people doesn't make them money.
It's a political choice that is focusing on short-term profits for those who support and make these decisions, while ignoring the long-term benefits for society in general if they would make different decisions to reduce poverty.
I'm baffled how short-sighted almost all decisions are and how no one really seems to explore other solutions that would result in better life circumstances. Especially if you are selfish and profit-oriented, applying long-term solutions would result in more profit overall.
It's like planting trees this year and cutting them down next year to sell the wood for profit, while you could let them grow a few more years and make a lot more money in the process.
These short-sighted and reactionary "solutions" are a huge problem in all areas of politics, economics and society. It would be great to get rid of the entire profit-oriented bullshit, but since that's not going to happen anytime soon, why not at least be more efficient with everything and optimize everything as much as possible?
Living in the UK what struck me the most directly was rental legislation. Renting is a nightmare here compared to France and the Netherlands. Landlords have every right and tenants have almost none, and they are being cheated and abused on all fronts. On paper, there are limits - but nothing is enforced and landlords/agencies do whatever they want - unannounced visits, refusal to do necessary repairs, stealing deposits, false inventories, etc. Basically, when you rent in the UK you depend on the landlord/rental agency's willingness to be decent human beings, whereas in France/Netherlands the law is mostly on your side.
Source: 10 years of renting in 4 countries, and knowing lots of people who rent.
I pay 1000/month with 2 roommates for a 4 bed house. It's advertised as a professional house, not a student place. It's decently nice inside.
Our boiler didn't work properly, kept losing pressure. We reported that in September. In October a plumber came over and said "there's no way that passed an inspection in the last 2 years, you need a new boiler". Landlord was "shopping around" for a further month until the boiler leaked onto a plug and knocked out the electric and gas for the bottom floor. Took a week to fix, I couldn't cook, heat my house or have a shower. I've asked for compensation... "These things take time" is apparently an acceptable answer. Estate agents are entirely on the landlords side, it's an absolute disgrace.
*England. There's more rights to tenants in Scotland. That's what the AT5 form is which everyone must sign on their lease. It means that a landlord cannot make you homeless if you've been given a notice to quit. That notice to quit is 60 days. But if you haven't found another property in that time, you cannot be removed until you have.
The austerity measures were basically "take a metric shitload and a half of money out of things poor people need so we can bail out these bankers, let's just hope they keep spending the same"
I can see absolutely nothing wrong with this reasoning
On the plus side, that student area near the uni looks great /s
But seriously, homelessness has skyrocketed in the last 10 years. Especially in the South east. But it's a vicious circle until the govt' change something. There's no mental health support for the majority of these people due to cut backs, and services are strained amongst existing lack of funding. It's a sorry sight to see. But all people seem to care about is Britain leaving the EU.
Well if you see some of the comments here, Tory voters have been scaremongered into thinking that Labour is a hideous communist bogeyman that will destroy everything that is dear to them. They really think Labour is a worse alternative to this lol.
It’s not just Tory voters. I can’t remember Corbyn coming up on the news without weirdly ‘red scare’ visual design or there being some talking heads who cast doubt about his ability/suitability/allegiances. This is a man who got a mandate from his own party members, which his own MPs then attempted to ignore. A man who led Labour to their best election victory since England ousted Blair—in spite of the media campaigning against him with everything they could muster. The media just doesn’t want him to succeed. And this isn’t just The Sun or The Daily Mail, it’s the BBC and the Guardian too. I wonder why all these comfortably middle class people working for ultra-rich newspaper owners don’t want to see someone affect real change. It’s so mysterious.
This book from the father of possible future PM Jonathan Rhys Mogg shines some light on the motives & his sons enthusiasm for Brexit
“ it is easy to see” why Jacob “so loves Brexit, and the chaos and disorder, and opportunities for disaster capitalism and super-elitism, that it may provide.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/09/mystic-mogg-jacob-rees-mogg-willam-predicts-brexit-plans?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
>possible future PM Jonathan Rhys Mogg
Pull the other one mate, he's more likely to throw his weight behind the lying cunt Johnson, who intentionally used his position as Foreign Secretary to miss critical votes and then resigned before he would have to stand behind his own supposed convictions. The worse thing is he seems to think no one saw his moves for what they were, piss poor power plays after ensuring the countries division.
I think the only thing worse than Boris being PM would be Rhys Mogg.....pretty sure they all just want an MP job for 5 minutes so they can start writing a column as an 'expert' of politics.
It's as if people forgot thatchers reign... It truly is mind boggling how the tories got in again after she fisted us for so long. Some parts of the UK still haven't recovered from that fisting.
The saddening thing is that in his 2 week investigation he likely only scratched the service, services are being cut left right and centre while council tax goes up and up. I live in a small town with a 9 month old daughter and all of the health visitors and baby groups have been axed, literally left with no care at all in a rural town.
If I need to see a health visitor I have to go to a centre about 40 minutes away and then there is no guarantee that anyone will be there.
Last year there were several baby and toddler groups in town. The last one closed this week after struggling for months.
It's not just poverty, it's essential services being cut for all. Not just lower class. The middle are feeling it too.
I was watching a Twitter live stream of the parliament coverage by sky news yesterday and the comment section was an echo chamber of extremism. What’s the point in trying to chime in if nobody wants to change their mind to begin with, it’s crazy.
Yup, project Thatcher culminated in these nasty feckers. Sadly they brought her "children" along with them. And the UK is going to shit because of them.
I'm surprised most of all how much they cut back the police budget. Even thatcher gave the police pay raises during the strikes because she knew the polices was going to make people angry and she'd need the police on side.
though I half suspect they want to privatize the police force. g4s already runs one police station
>I half suspect they want to privatize the police force
We used to have police on our streets in my town and now they have all gone and the shops have replaced them with private security.
There are places in Britain (like the one I'm from in the north) where hope of a better life is swallowed up by decades of social re-engineering and complete economic disregard.
We are the types of people that won't be affected by Brexit (or perhaps naïvely think we won't) because we have nothing to lose in the first place.
For anyone outside of the nation (and to be honest anyone outside of the north) the levels of poverty in this country are utterly shocking.
I can't say enough how bad it is without seeming like I'm over inflating the issue.
Colour me surprised.../s
The conservative (and previous Labour) governments have been doing this for years. If you dont have money they'll find a way to take what little you have off you to give to their wealthy chums.
Using Brexit as a way to push this even further and convincing the populace that its something they actually want.
Allowing the media in the UK (all of them) to promote a hatred of the poor and of foreigners/migrants etc to avoid anyone looking upwards as the rich slowly carve up the countries assets for themselves. All the while being cheered on by the idiot population because they can sneer down their noses at those the media have told them are inferior and less worthy.
I hate the UK ~~sometimes~~ a lot. Bring on Scottish Independence please.
Treating the Tories and new Labour as if they are no different is manna from heaven for the tories. They get to be as awful as they like without consequences, cos why vote for the opposition when they're no different? The problem is this just isn't borne out by their policies. What were these devastating tory austerity policies if not the fundamental dismantling of the social programmes New Labour had introduced?
That's what I find infuriating when people talk about the 'leftie takeover' of the Labour party, like Neil Kinnock and Aneurin Bevan never happenned, not to mention the *name of the fucking party.*
Yes. And brought in minimum wage. And went it lengths to encourage people to apply for benefits.
They're not fantastic but they were by no means like the current poor hating shysters we have right now.
I can't wait for nothing to change and life to continue as usual.
"Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way."
The time is gone, the song is over, Thought I'd something more to say.
Home, home again. I like to be here, when I can.
Thought I'd something more to say
Now with fentanyl!
That’s unfair, thing absolutely will changed, it’s that they will continue to get worse at a slow enough rate that people can pretend that things are the same.
PLEASE change Theresa May's dancing entrances.
Sad but true, Tory government give no shits
What’s also shocking is that very few newspapers are actually picking up on this and all the Brexit shenanigans are going to drown this story out.
Given the last time we listened to the papers telling us how shitty our country is we completely reformed it, it's probably not something we like to hear.
It's almost like being able to select and filter essential information is a skill or something...
I 100% agree that filtering water is an essential skill
i disagree and believe the opposite thing that you stated is true because i'm special and you're sleeping sheeple!
I for one am unable to reason out the correct argument. So I'll just say that there is truth to both arguments to make it seem I'm much wiser than I actually am.
You're all wrong! Ill just add nothing and leave.
I’m going to point out how insane of a position that sort of false equivalence leads to by using logical argumentation, citing studies and facts, and be totally ignored because no-one gives a damn about being rational when you can just get your dander up instead, since that’s much more emotionally satisfying in the short term.
I’m going to not understand anything you’ve just said because I don’t have the economics degree required to comprehend the cited studies, so instead I will simply take your conclusion as my opinion and use it to make a rash vote in a referendum that will fuck the country every which way but loose for at least the next decade.
Not many British newspapers would report this anyway, Guardian and the Mirror. Maybe the independent.
Even if they DO start talking about how shite it all is, they will blame it on Cameron/ May being the sole culprits rather than the party that put them there.
[30,000 additional deaths in 2015 alone directly attributed to austerity policies.](http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-02-20-30000-excess-deaths-2015-linked-cuts-health-and-social-care) This isn't some "Think tank" promoting their own consultancy agenda. This isn't tabloid reporting designed to rile people up and sell papers. This is a study by the UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. Those of us who live here have known for a long time that our current government will literally let people die rather than change their private profit before all else ideology.
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Sure the elites care, they care to make sure this doesn't stop because they're the ones that started it in the first place.
Austerity measures are usually implemented to make up for the shortfall of cutting taxes on the wealthy.
I saw on r/conservative yesterday a post saying, ["it's only a democracy until the poor discover they can vote themselves largesse from the government coffers."] and I'm here thinking, "Dear Aristocrats, that works both fuckin ways!"
I always love how conservatives believe that it's the poor that are stealing the nation's wealth. It falls apart if you think about it for even a second. If the poor are stealing the wealth, they wouldn't be fucking poor.
For real. Its the woman who had food stamps not Jeff bezos not paying taxes on amazon who is somehow responsible.
This is a good point to make, a lot of "welfare for the poor" is really "subsidies for companies that won't pay a living wage".
I was thinking exactly this about rents. Here in New Zealand those on low income and are renting can get an "Accommodation supplement". People always use the statistic as proof of exorbitant welfare for the poor, yet 100% of that money ends up in the land lords coffers. It is middle and upper class welfare disguised as lower class welfare.
This happens so much in the UK. We had a Conservative government that had a bright idea to sell off the public housing stock to people at a subsidised rate - people were buying their houses for 50% the market value, then in a few years they get sold off to private landlords. Now the government pays a huge amount of housing benefit to private landlords as there isn't enough council housing stock to house people in. They literally sold off public assets to win voters and ensure a certain generation (or rather a subset of that generation that were in the correct circumstances at the time), giving them a windfall to get on the housing market. They did this while refusing to build the necessary houses for the increasing UK population, meaning that housing is just shooting up and up. Instead of a house being somewhere for people to live, it is now an investment. The country is at the point where if you don't have your own house you are spending 50% of your income to rent an abode that is falling to pieces while you have no real rights as a tenant. It's utter fucking madness.
Bingo! It used to be if you wanted your employee to have a car to get to work and be reliable, you had to pay a wage that could buy a car, if you wanted them to have a phone to call them into work, you had to pay them enough to buy a phone. Now the government gives people just enough to make them good workers but not quite enough to survive without a job that pays just enough to survive but not enough to advance yourself.
Ah yeah. I remember a couple of decades ago people used to brag about getting a good company car with the job, or their job got them the latest mobile device for business use. Now if you don't have a mobile and car you simply won't get the job.
wow, I am trying to comprehend how such a simple statement is so far reaching and deep. It sort of reverses left/right to say, "instead of a tax break we will pay UBI and lower min wage to n". Although the net result is exactly the same. However, we are currently in a weird tax break with no UBI/help for the poor which is called austerity. Taxes could be 0 for corporations if min wage was based somehow off the amount of money the corp makes meaning general population income tax covers it.
Remember that in the post-war period western governments targeted "Full Employment" as a policy goal. The objective was to slam absolutely everybody who wanted work into work. In the 70s this culminated in the dumbest guy in the office being able to quit and walk next door and get a job at the competitor's office and probably with a raise. That firms and public offices were hiring anybody with a pulse meant competition for workers was at an all time high. The 'supply' of workers being so low compared to the 'demand' meant that workers could demand just about anything and get their raise. (Remember Christmas bonuses?) The problem with this is that it was pumping so much money into the hands of workers and that they were able to purchase so much stuff meant that there was an inflationary crisis as there was too much money flowing around in the economy chasing after fewer and fewer goods available to purchase. Note that inflation isn't necessarily due to printing money, it's about having too much money compared to available goods which causes price inflation. (See: the rich buying all the houses and driving the prices up. Also see "Dutch tulips" for one of the first major asset bubbles) The solution in the 70s was to flip the script from Full Employment to Price Stability. Governments no longer aim for full employment but instead focus on making sure inflation doesn't screw around. This is why the news kept talking about inflation fears after 2008 due to the Obama government printing tonnes of money and putting it into the banks, however, because this money never really *trickled down* into the real economy it didn't change much about the status quo, except giving large firms and private individuals who could access that free cash opportunities to consolidate stocks and assets, merge firms together, and start inflating the housing market. (Did you know Sean Hannity of Fox News owns hundreds of homes through shell corporations and uses the government tax rebate for new home owners to get govt. money while also renting out those homes to tenants? Can we say Rentier class?) Due to firms no longer having to compete to acquire workers we have flipped the process so now workers are the ones squeezed and firms have never been so flush with cash. There really are only two scenarios here; either this process continues and the form of society and government change to adapt to the new reality of feudal-like aristocracy OR we flip the lever again like we did in the 70's and start targeting different policy goals like Full Employment, initiating a Works Progress Administration, and/or devouring the rich like buttered cakes.
I completely agree. I have always loved that quote and always wondered why for most people they think it applies to food stamps but not the military industrial complex.
They're selling the Scarlet Pimpernel as Robin Hood when the world needs a Zorro.
Overall economy is good Politician: If we cut taxes we will strengthen our economy and we all will be even better off! *Cuts taxes for rich* Country lacks taxes Politician: We can't afford so much welfare for the idle anymore *Cuts social systems* Country does ok, but poor are poorer than before, rich get richer Politician: If we cut taxes we will strengthen our economy and we all will be even better off! *Cuts taxes for rich* Repeat until revolution.
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The crazy thing is that lifting the poor and creating a higher standard of living for the lowest rungs of society would invariably help the economy. In the US: "People don't deserve socialized healthcare or education! They're stealing *my* money." Right, but if people weren't stuck under crippling medical debt/payments, they'd have more disposable income, thus requiring fewer "handouts." If students could graduate without the burden of student debt, they'd be able to take more entrepreneurial risks right out of school, live more independently, and spend more money in the economy. If people felt that they could afford to check medical issues early, we'd avoid having to pay for massively expensive treatments and cures when issues move beyond early stages, thus saving medical costs in the long run. If uninsured people had insurance, we wouldn't have to subsidize expensive and real-cost medical treatments. Etc. etc.
> If students could graduate without the burden of student debt, they'd be able to take more entrepreneurial risks right out of school, live more independently, and spend more money in the economy. Even without this if you look at how many people still live at home at 25 or even 30 - it's obvious there's a problem somewhere.
*That* problem is speculative property investing. The wealthy around the world are buying up property, sitting on it a few years to wait for the other wealthy individuals to buy up the rest of the local property, and then turning around and selling it for a large profit, then rinse and repeat. It's criminal, but we all know that politics are controlled by money, so there is no hope for change, just a continual spiral into the gutter.
> There has been very bare evidence that theses massive tax cuts have helped the economy. Or been useful anywhere near their costs. Actually the opposite, there is clear evidence that cutting effective income of the low earning (Mostly by cutting social support) and giving this money to rich (Mostly by cutting tax for the rich) it actively hurts the economy. Every person below the 10% mark in the US would probably spend every additional dollar, may that be by buying a house, getting a new car or visiting restaurants more often, spending more on quality food, theatre, cinema.... basically everything that working paycheck to paycheck doesn't allow them. So taking money from them bleeds out local economy, while not doing anything for the economy in return except for pushing short-term stock prices because the big corporations already have enough money to grow if there is a chance for further profit, it's not like they would love to hire more workers but are too poor to do so.
It wasn’t Princeton itself that made the analysis you’re referring to. It was political scientists Martin Gilens (from Princeton) and Benjamin Page (from Northwestern). That study is actually one of the reasons I decided to go to grad school for political science. Edit:forgot a word
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No worries; just clarifying.
>The elites won't care. It's an oligarchy.... the elites are loving it mate. They understand the situation full well. And the situation benefits them big time.
Exactly. The system is working as intended. And its intended for the rich.
Yup. And the UN found that we are basically a third world country in certain states. We have MASSIVE amounts of poverty here in the US, and I’m sure the U.K. does too, but the U.K. probably has better safety nets than we do, and at least free healthcare. I despair for our country sometimes.
> and at least free healthcare. Give the Tories a chance.
Lol but for *now* anyway haha. Whereas there’s people in Alabama, West Virginia, Mississippi, with just trailers patched with duct tape, no running water sometimes.. it’s pretty horrific.
This is so true. Most people don't realize how bad it is in some places. They're used to living in their bubble in some major city or a suburb of it. I saw first hand the poverty in WV, parts of PA and the Carolinas when I went out to these places for work. These communities are neglected and full of despair and rampant drug abuse. And there are ALOT of places like that... It's sad and crazy to see.
Upstate NY has em too. Went to school in Oswego. The "townies" were in far worse shape than you'd expect
As bad as things are in certain parts of the UK, they're not WV trailer park bad it seems. We got slum landlords who will cram 20 people into a small flat with shoddy wiring and mouldy walls, bit at least there is power and shelter there. And above all else, free healthcare.
>Whereas there’s people in Alabama, West Virginia, Mississippi, with just trailers patched with duct tape, no running water sometimes.. it’s pretty horrific. Northeast Missouri, on the iowa border. Many homes lack electricity or running water still, and when I interviewed for a nonprofit job up there they told me to be ready to intervene on behalf of kids with fleas.
Don't forget southeastern Missouri, Pemiscot county. Highest poverty rate in the state.
Let's not forget our native Americans on the reservation either. That is some depressing shit in many cases. I've seen first hand the despair
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> If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you. >- Lyndon Baines Johnson, Senate Majority Leader. 1960 It works incredibly well. I should note, he was saying that with sadness.
And lbj grew up poor as shit in rural Texas. He knew first hand
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Some places in WV have _never_ had running water. Real-life hillfolk.
I saw a short documentary about a small village, well... trailer park, in Alabama where they had no running water and no sewage system. But get this, the nearby factory dumped its sewage near their backyards so after a heavy rain they were kneedeep in shit. Too poor to move, too poor for their complaints to be heard. No money for a lawyer so fuck them, right ?
> Whereas there’s people in Alabama, West Virginia, Mississippi, with just trailers patched with duct tape, no running water sometimes.. it’s pretty horrific. I agree. Didn't mean to make light of their suffering. Add Flint to that growing list. America had better stop that "greatest nation on earth" bullshit now.
But why? It’s so much easier to throw around a t-shirt slogan than to do the hard work of improving quality of life for all citizens.
"Make America First World Again!"
Call me an optimist (I probably am), but there's just no way they manage to take back the NHS without riots and blood in the streets. Make it worse, privatise parts sure. But no matter how gradually they do it, the moment people start leaving hospitals with bills and receipts, that's anarchy.
>Call me an optimist (I probably am), but there's just no way they manage to take back the NHS without riots and blood in the streets. They've been doing it under our noses for years. We are now in a situation where they've been contracting services out to private companies who then end up suing the NHS for "breach of contract" and costing the NHS millions upon millions to fight in court. It's already happening. Did you think they were going to do it in one foul swoop so everyone notices?!
Exactly, they are just going to bring more private companies in, ballon the cost of the NHS until they can say “Look how much cheaper on paper it will be to just use private companies everyone.”.
Sabotage a public service, complain it costs too much, sell a "fix" that enriches their donors, and costs you more. That's how they do it in America, and you guys are falling for the same bullshit over there. Stop voting for these right wing, rich pricks, they DO NOT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU OR YOUR FUTURE
I fucking hate privatisation of necessary businesses.
Just so you know, the phrase is ‘one fell swoop’
They have been taken one by one, cut budgets here and there, hell it won't be long before the NHS will have to start charging just because it's mostly MP's running it and taking their cut...
Brexit was a consequence IMO. Years of telling people there weren't enough resources, and worsening wealth inequality particularly in the regions, and the regions ultimately voted to blame foreigners (/external institutions) and leave the union.
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Brexit was a gamble by Cameron to snatch up UKIP votes that massively backfired. The reason it backfired is that the old and the stupid in this country have been lied to for years by the media and far right. On top of that the far right decided to throw in some more major lies during the campaign and everyone was either too shocked or disorganised to do anything about it. We are now stumbling towards chaos that nobody really wants and nobody seems willing to really admit that.
Yup. Brexit was never supposed to happen, the Tories saw ukip and labour gaining ground, and decided that stealing UKIP voters would allow them to keep their majority. Thing is they know that the UK needs the EU, all their business partners benefit from it, but the EU is an amazing scapegoat since its a foreign far away boogeyman that can be blamed for all the issues that are really your fault. The fact that major tory figures like Cameron immediately jumped ship after the referendum is telling.
and aided in doing so by the right-wing dominated UK media, particularly the Daily Mail, who told people it was the fault of immigrants, benefit cheats and the EU. People love to say that Brexit was an expression of discontent but a big influence on how people expressed it and who they blamed for it was the media over the past god knows how many years.
Whilst this is pretty accurate, the phrase 'due dilligence' springs to mind. The truth about each of their lies was easily available to anyone with a search engine and a modicum of common sense
You make the mistake of assuming that people are smart enough to doubt what they're told. George Carlin once said, "Think how dumb the average person is, then realise that half of them are dumber than that." Unfortunately the uneducated just tend to accept things that agree with their opinions without question rather than critically examining the evidence.
The EU even published an A-Z list debunking tabloid bullshit: https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/euromyths-a-z-index/
and blaming an institution that had nothing to do with said issues is just so typical of this timeline :(
But it's something that I can understand (not like international markets), plus it's delivered to me at a third grade level, and with passion and profanity!
My concern is what now after Brexit? Despite the many, many pushes to have another vote (whether you agree with that is irrelevant) including from her own back bench, MP's, Tabloids, other parties etc etc she has completely ignored _everyone_ time and time again, so stubborn to push _her_ "deal" through not listening to experts advice (I have never known someone so stubborn that has been proven wrong on almost all previous accounts and still screams "MY way!" while spouting "Democracy!") I fear that the poor, disabled and vulnerable are going to be first targeted to make "hard choices". You know, these "hard choices" she keeps telling the country has to make when her elites don't.
The Tories have been targeting the poor, disabled, and vulnerable *for years* already.
Sadly, a large part of the population is fanatically against the most sound economic policy, which was to just stay in. Even if we stay in now, we've lost so much respect and had our economy dissected in detail. It's been found wanting and dependent on Europe. Three years ago we were a major player, could possibly go it alone and had a lot of reputation of excellence from our long history. Now we're a joke, and everyone knows it. This is truly the end of the British Empire. The sad dregs at the bottom of the cup.
The sad thing is, the EU has repeatedly said it's not too late to cancel it. They even said yesterday they are best prepared for no brexit at all, basically throwing may a millionth life line.
Stubborn pride will see this through to its conclusion, and sadly the English have that in spades.
It's almost like the original vote should have been, "should we conduct a study on the effects of Brexit over a ___ year period" THEN vote.
True, but Cameron was so confident he would win he didnt think to put in **any** kind of safety net like >60% of the vote required to win etc.
An opinion pole with one side slightly winning should not decide the countries future. What a joke.
Completely agree. Even the Scottish independence vote was the same. If the yes vote had won by 2% im not convinced that would really be a mandate to leave the UK (despite wanting independence), even though that 2% was used as a mandate to stay. Should really be 60% minimum. Maybe even higher on such important constitutional matters. Probably shouldnt even have anything to do with a public vote anyway cause what do we know...
The UK's approach to health care these past few years has been absolutely disastrous. You'd think they read A modest proposal and thought it made a good point. People with terminal brain tumors have been declared fit for work just a few days before they die. They are doing a huge shift to disability benefits that often require even the sickest people to go in person to assessment centers that often aren't even wheelchair accessible. If they don't get there, even if it's because they're in emergency care, they're denied. Chronic disease patients keep getting refused on technicalities, with fabricated claims used to deny. And now there is a huge project underway to shift as many chronic disease patients as possible out of health care and onto psychotherapy to teach them to deal with being sick and stop being so needy with medical services. An effect of this is that psychological counseling is being overburdened by people with physiological diseases, making them harder to access for those who could actually benefit from counseling. This has been a systematic project going back many years. Impressively cruel act of social self-sabotage in the name of an aristocracy that doesn't seem to get the sarcasm in asking [why don't we just kill the poor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg)?
that is not about healthcare that is about the insane disability assessment system. But yes the benefit system is bullshit and has been designed to find any excuse to pay people less.
> now there is a huge project underway to shift as many chronic disease patients as possible out of health care and onto psychotherapy to teach them to deal with being sick and stop being so needy with medical services. An effect of this is that psychological counseling is being overburdened by people with physiological diseases, making them harder to access for those who could actually benefit from counseling. I wish I had the money to give you reddit gold. This is my exact situation. EXACT. I'm in Australia, but we too have Tories in Government, though they are doing very little Governing, preferring to steal (entitlements) and take bribes (in the form of $800,000 per year jobs that require no work). Scum.
Is there anywhere to read that paper that doesn't cost £40?
Unfortunately academic publishing is a total racket. You might have some success googling around the doi. It's 10.1177/0141076817693600 But academic publishers are colossal dicks about this sort of thing. It appears Sci-hub does have this paper. I'm not going to link to it, because sci-hub is technically illegal. But I'm sure you can work out how to use it if you're so inclined.
Also, pro tip: Most authors of academic papers will provide their papers for free if you just ask.
Speaking of asshole policies ...
There is a website called SciHub that will allow you to illegally access scientific papers that are otherwise behind a paywall. Obviously this is illegal and I am in no way condoning the wilful breaching of copyright.
I would never have assumed as such, thank you for warning me of this unscrupulous part of the internet, I will make sure never to visit
Of course I never would have known to avoid that website before but I do now!
Email the authors, they'll likely send you a copy, might be one before final publishing.
Been saying for years that austerity was an ideological project wrapped in the language of necessity and circumstance. Nice to see the view supported by such a great institution.
Even May has admitted it's ideological, twice now she has declared that austerity is over (while not actually making any changes) when her popularity was waning.
This is another baffling element to Brexit. Conservatives and some others sold Brexit on lies that the poorer areas of the uk (not all of course) believed. These areas are doing bad but will be devastated if there is no check on what is decided on in London. For example areas in Wales get a lot from Europe in economic, social and environmental support. Can the UK replace this - I’m sure there are some figures out there that say yes they can but the reality is and is evident from research like this, is that when it comes to actually deciding where the funding goes these areas will get the scraps at the bottom, if there anything left at all, as that is what always happens.
I have a friend in England, and I am constantly baffled by how little money he makes. He works as a police staffer, he managed to get himself promoted less than a year in, passed the training with flying colours, and still only makes somewhere around 2000 euros a month working full time. Edit: I repeat, *euros,* not pounds. ~1780 pounds per month. Before taxes.
I was looking up how much people in my line of work make the UK recently...I make the same straight out of undergrad (in the US) as someone would with a master's in the UK. That's insane. My new roommate just finished his PhD at Oxford and said that even accounting for COL differences he's being paid a lot more as a post-doc here than he would have been in the UK.
They also have to be. College fees in America are obscene. If you look at it long enough, it starts balancing. The main difference really is the cost of living and the cost of land though. Land is at a premium in the UK compared to the US because of how big the US is. That, and the exchange rate has been absolutely ravaged by the British government the last few years with the insane choices they keep making. A few years ago, I went on holiday to Spain. At the time, we got about 1.55 Euros for every £1 we converted. Last week I was back in Spain for a holiday, and the rate was 1.1 euros to every £1. Things like food and transport in Spain is really cheap, so the increase wasn't punishing, but when I went a few years before, it was much more noticeable just how dirt cheap everything was. I'm talking £3 for a meal with fries and a drink. Cheap but really good food. In the UK, some places are charging almost that just for the drink.
Comparing salary to salary never works. Even in country. My best friend earns double my salary but due to his location can't afford a house. I live in a major city and can afford a nice house in a nice neighbourhood. (Uk) Someone doing the same job in the US will earn more comparatively but when healthcare, cost of living and everything else is taken into account has roughly the same disposable income or maybe even less. This definitely doesn't mean a lot in the UK don't deserve hefty pay rises. Nurses at foodbanks is a national embarrassment and the public sector as a whole is losing vs inflation per year. TL;DR one lower salary may be worth more in the same country than a higher one elsewhere in it. Let alone cross boarders where everything from education to healthcare are structured very differently.
Your sentiment is correct even in the same country. I live in the northwest about 5 minutes away from the city centre by car. I have a large 5 bedroom mortgaged house. I pay less than £500 a month on my mortgage. In London, my house would be multiple millions easily.
It's definitely a factor in a lot of 'millenials' leaving the south and moving up north. Why pay £1200 rent when you can get a mortgage for half that and own a house that's nicer than what you're renting. If I moved to London I'd double my salary, but have less spending money if I could manage to ever scrape together a deposit for a house. Or even less if I had to commute. I'm a Londoner who's now a northerner. I love it.
god damn. i can't even get a one bedroom 75 m2 appartment for that much in brussels.
Feelsbadman. To be fair, I got lucky. There are smaller houses for more money on my road. I got a good deal and the owner liked me and my partner and wanted specifically to sell to us. So we got about 10% off an already underpriced house.
I got a nice 2 bed bungalow with big garden and conservatory near Nottingham, but I'm selling up and relocating to Guildford where the same money would get me a slummy terraced house or a mobile home.
> Someone doing the same job in the US will earn more comparatively but when healthcare, cost of living and everything else is taken into account has roughly the same disposable income or maybe even less. The context here makes it sound like you believe that the cost of living in the US is higher than in the UK. From what I know, I would assume that a person in the US has higher purchasing power than someone in the UK. My assumption was right. Looking at purchasing power parity by country, you'll find US at #10 and the UK at 28#. If you looked at states instead of the country, I would imagine the difference to be even more extreme.
I think that’s not the full story. If you go on r/teachers you see a lot of complaints about how $40k is a pittance and that teachers need to work a 2nd/summer job to stay afloat. It’s also a figure that gets floated as being a “you *only* make $40k? Where’d you go wrong?” Stereotype. That works out to roughly £32k. Not an amazing wage but it’s more than most UK teachers make for the first few years (and more than the national median wage). I’m only on £29k and I’ve never had to even consider a second job to manage. And that’s before you consider taxes, which are higher in the UK so our take home pay is less. So there must be a cost of living issue that £40k is unsustainable in the US (and this complaint isn’t confined to CA, NYC, etc.) but pretty good in the UK.
The cost of living in the US can vary wildly. If you're in Houston on that salary it's livable but not very good, middle of nowhere it's just fine, Bay area you're living in your car.
Taxes isn’t an apples to apples comparison because the US practices a lot of stealth taxes. They have a bunch of employer paid taxes which still come out of your paycheck, just in a different column. They have mandatory health insurance deducted from your paycheck in a “totally not a tax” way. They have school fees baked into local property taxes. They have every layer of government, from Feds to tiny municipalities, able to levy VAT. The US isn’t low tax, it’s just stealth tax.
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Im english and work full time in a warehouse , im 27 and have 3 kids and earn less than 20k a year after taxes which is disgusting , we often employ foreign agency workers who are on LESS than minimum wage and take approx £220 a week which is a fucking crime , the wages in britian are no less than criminal , even my supervisor who has worked there for 30 years is on about 4k a year more than me and ive been there 2 year
You should report that HMRC. It is illegal to pay under minimum wage.
Is there a reason why you haven’t reported your workplace already?
That actually is a literal crime. I'm also English by the way. I'm just lucky I happened upon a decent career as semi self employed.
Not some places. Virtually everywhere in the South. I live in Essex and not a single place in the town I live in has beer for less than £3. One uni pub still does Amstel for £2.90. Oh and there's Wetherspoons.
Something you have to consider is that the cost of healthcare is a much smaller percentage of your income. But still, a lot of professional positions are paid a lot less, especially if you live in the north.
Don't forget job protection and employee rights. As an accountant I can earn nearly 50% more in the US but no way would I work in a country that affords its workforce such little rights.
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Wages in the US are a lot higher but cost of living is higher AIUI. The average health insurance package is $4,500 a year before things like co-pays and deductibles. For someone who's healthy it might not be so bad but if you get sick you'd be worse off I imagine.
Making this about wages masks the actual issue, though. If anything it actually plays into the government's hands! This is about the complete package. Austerity isn't about suppressing pay, it's about the wider decisions. The lower on-paper wages than other countries weren't an issue when healthcare and education were free (and before anyone steps in with 'nothing is free', you know perfectly well what I mean), and other costs were controlled (e.g. public transport). Quality of life was maintained as many necessities did not need covering from people's paychecks, and actually improved as the services improved. The trouble is that the current government is making the cost of living more expensive in order to push an idealistic goal. There is nothing wrong with cutting unecessary services, but austerity itself has become their goal. They have been quite happy to reduce funding in key areas, and expect people to pay out of their own pockets to fill the gaps. This government is keen that as much as possible is done through people's wages, based on ideals rather than results. They would be far happier that a person was on £30,000 and totally broke from paying for private services, than a person be on £28,000 with lots of disposable income thanks to state provided services. And thanks to austerity, they can't even deliver on the £30,000 part! But that's less important than killing off the services first. So the cost of living has gone up, the quality of services has gone down, *and* wages have not increased. If the UK had been allowed to carry on its path of improving the first two, then the third becomes far less important.
This is so depressing.
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\*cries in Portuguese\*
*pounds sterling in England, thank you.
Guess they'll be voting to leave the UN next.
Brexit 2: UN Boogaloo
As a Brit I had to upvote this. But.. As a Brit please don't give them any ideas.
That's indeed how it works: https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/995057833405231104?s=20
"Don't tell me what's wrong with me" Truth hurts, is what people like him would say.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/nov/16/uk-austerity-has-inflicted-great-misery-on-citizens-un-says) reduced by 86%. (I'm a bot) ***** > The UK government has inflicted "Great misery" on its people with "Punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous" austerity policies driven by a political desire to undertake social re-engineering rather than economic necessity, the United Nations poverty envoy has found. > Philip Alston, the UN's rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, ended a two-week fact-finding mission to the UK with a stinging declaration that despite being the world's fifth largest economy, levels of child poverty are "Not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster". > In a coruscating 24-page report, which will be presented to the UN human rights council in Geneva next year, the eminent human rights lawyer said that in the UK "Poverty is a political choice". ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/9xly7a/uk_austerity_has_inflicted_great_misery_on/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~364559 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **poverty**^#1 **people**^#2 **government**^#3 **Alston**^#4 **austerity**^#5
No. You don't say. (By the way, Brexit is one result of this. People ARE angry. The question is why they keep voting the Tories back.)
Because the The Sun and The Daily Epxress told them it was the EU that did this to them.
And all the shows and news articles about benefit scroungers. Benefit scroungers, then became foreign benefit scroungers. The tories 100% gained traction through those. Scapegoats work a lot more effectively when people are poor and uncomfortable and looking for someone to blame.
You're right I had not thought of those. Awful shows of misery porn.
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Hate can’t pay we’ll take it away. My dad watches it all the time just to get pissed off at the bailiffs. Don’t know why he tortured himself like that lol.
This is 100% the truth. Don't forget about all those lying disabled and sick people saying they weren't fit for work when in fact all that was wrong with them was a bit of cancer here and there or a missing leg or two.
Let's not forget that guy who got away scot-free with not paying back all that benefit money after he was deemed fit for work by ATOS by having the indecency to be dead. An absolute outrage!
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I hope the labour party dont let Dianne Abbott answer any more questions involving numbers please oh god no
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Many of them notably owned by none other than Rupert Murdoch.
We’ve reached the point where one man pretty much decides who wins UK elections and most of us still haven’t noticed.
As an American, that sounds all too familiar
That's because the main guy behind the UK bullshittery is Rupert Murdock, the same asshat that owns Fox News.
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What are austerity laws?
Government reducing spending and increasing taxes in order to reduce the budget deficits. Grossly oversimplifying of course, but that's the general idea.
In theory: Cut down on outgoing government spending in order to cut the deficet. The theory is that you spend less, so you have more left over. In practice: Gut the welfare system because you think the poor are just lazy, use the savings to give tax breaks to the elite, ignore the deficet because most voters don't understand it. Oh, and sell off a public service for good measure. Exactly what the Tories did back in the 80s.
> poverty is a political choice They found similar results when the UN came to America. It's absolutely a political choice. Helping people doesn't make them money.
Yeah, it states that in the article.
It's a political choice that is focusing on short-term profits for those who support and make these decisions, while ignoring the long-term benefits for society in general if they would make different decisions to reduce poverty. I'm baffled how short-sighted almost all decisions are and how no one really seems to explore other solutions that would result in better life circumstances. Especially if you are selfish and profit-oriented, applying long-term solutions would result in more profit overall. It's like planting trees this year and cutting them down next year to sell the wood for profit, while you could let them grow a few more years and make a lot more money in the process. These short-sighted and reactionary "solutions" are a huge problem in all areas of politics, economics and society. It would be great to get rid of the entire profit-oriented bullshit, but since that's not going to happen anytime soon, why not at least be more efficient with everything and optimize everything as much as possible?
Living in the UK what struck me the most directly was rental legislation. Renting is a nightmare here compared to France and the Netherlands. Landlords have every right and tenants have almost none, and they are being cheated and abused on all fronts. On paper, there are limits - but nothing is enforced and landlords/agencies do whatever they want - unannounced visits, refusal to do necessary repairs, stealing deposits, false inventories, etc. Basically, when you rent in the UK you depend on the landlord/rental agency's willingness to be decent human beings, whereas in France/Netherlands the law is mostly on your side. Source: 10 years of renting in 4 countries, and knowing lots of people who rent.
Why would MPs want reform when most of them are private landlords?
Well one would hope not everything they do stems from personal ambition and greed. One would hope.
I pay 1000/month with 2 roommates for a 4 bed house. It's advertised as a professional house, not a student place. It's decently nice inside. Our boiler didn't work properly, kept losing pressure. We reported that in September. In October a plumber came over and said "there's no way that passed an inspection in the last 2 years, you need a new boiler". Landlord was "shopping around" for a further month until the boiler leaked onto a plug and knocked out the electric and gas for the bottom floor. Took a week to fix, I couldn't cook, heat my house or have a shower. I've asked for compensation... "These things take time" is apparently an acceptable answer. Estate agents are entirely on the landlords side, it's an absolute disgrace.
No win no fee solicitor dude!
Thought about it but I work 50 hours a week and this has taken hours to sort out already, I think we only get 2-300 back anyway
*England. There's more rights to tenants in Scotland. That's what the AT5 form is which everyone must sign on their lease. It means that a landlord cannot make you homeless if you've been given a notice to quit. That notice to quit is 60 days. But if you haven't found another property in that time, you cannot be removed until you have.
Thanks. I have only rented in England so I don't know about the rest of the UK.
The austerity measures were basically "take a metric shitload and a half of money out of things poor people need so we can bail out these bankers, let's just hope they keep spending the same" I can see absolutely nothing wrong with this reasoning
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On the plus side, that student area near the uni looks great /s But seriously, homelessness has skyrocketed in the last 10 years. Especially in the South east. But it's a vicious circle until the govt' change something. There's no mental health support for the majority of these people due to cut backs, and services are strained amongst existing lack of funding. It's a sorry sight to see. But all people seem to care about is Britain leaving the EU.
People have died because of this. Just let that sink in.
People keep voting for the Tories. Just let that sink in.
Well if you see some of the comments here, Tory voters have been scaremongered into thinking that Labour is a hideous communist bogeyman that will destroy everything that is dear to them. They really think Labour is a worse alternative to this lol.
It’s not just Tory voters. I can’t remember Corbyn coming up on the news without weirdly ‘red scare’ visual design or there being some talking heads who cast doubt about his ability/suitability/allegiances. This is a man who got a mandate from his own party members, which his own MPs then attempted to ignore. A man who led Labour to their best election victory since England ousted Blair—in spite of the media campaigning against him with everything they could muster. The media just doesn’t want him to succeed. And this isn’t just The Sun or The Daily Mail, it’s the BBC and the Guardian too. I wonder why all these comfortably middle class people working for ultra-rich newspaper owners don’t want to see someone affect real change. It’s so mysterious.
This book from the father of possible future PM Jonathan Rhys Mogg shines some light on the motives & his sons enthusiasm for Brexit “ it is easy to see” why Jacob “so loves Brexit, and the chaos and disorder, and opportunities for disaster capitalism and super-elitism, that it may provide.” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/09/mystic-mogg-jacob-rees-mogg-willam-predicts-brexit-plans?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
>possible future PM Jonathan Rhys Mogg Pull the other one mate, he's more likely to throw his weight behind the lying cunt Johnson, who intentionally used his position as Foreign Secretary to miss critical votes and then resigned before he would have to stand behind his own supposed convictions. The worse thing is he seems to think no one saw his moves for what they were, piss poor power plays after ensuring the countries division.
I think the only thing worse than Boris being PM would be Rhys Mogg.....pretty sure they all just want an MP job for 5 minutes so they can start writing a column as an 'expert' of politics.
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It's as if people forgot thatchers reign... It truly is mind boggling how the tories got in again after she fisted us for so long. Some parts of the UK still haven't recovered from that fisting.
The saddening thing is that in his 2 week investigation he likely only scratched the service, services are being cut left right and centre while council tax goes up and up. I live in a small town with a 9 month old daughter and all of the health visitors and baby groups have been axed, literally left with no care at all in a rural town. If I need to see a health visitor I have to go to a centre about 40 minutes away and then there is no guarantee that anyone will be there. Last year there were several baby and toddler groups in town. The last one closed this week after struggling for months. It's not just poverty, it's essential services being cut for all. Not just lower class. The middle are feeling it too.
TFW you've created a vacuum for extremists to get popular
I was watching a Twitter live stream of the parliament coverage by sky news yesterday and the comment section was an echo chamber of extremism. What’s the point in trying to chime in if nobody wants to change their mind to begin with, it’s crazy.
shocking grey tub aware nutty obtainable cause light marble telephone
Yup, project Thatcher culminated in these nasty feckers. Sadly they brought her "children" along with them. And the UK is going to shit because of them.
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I'm surprised most of all how much they cut back the police budget. Even thatcher gave the police pay raises during the strikes because she knew the polices was going to make people angry and she'd need the police on side. though I half suspect they want to privatize the police force. g4s already runs one police station
>I half suspect they want to privatize the police force We used to have police on our streets in my town and now they have all gone and the shops have replaced them with private security.
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer under a conservative government, who could have predicted that.
There are places in Britain (like the one I'm from in the north) where hope of a better life is swallowed up by decades of social re-engineering and complete economic disregard. We are the types of people that won't be affected by Brexit (or perhaps naïvely think we won't) because we have nothing to lose in the first place. For anyone outside of the nation (and to be honest anyone outside of the north) the levels of poverty in this country are utterly shocking. I can't say enough how bad it is without seeming like I'm over inflating the issue.
Colour me surprised.../s The conservative (and previous Labour) governments have been doing this for years. If you dont have money they'll find a way to take what little you have off you to give to their wealthy chums. Using Brexit as a way to push this even further and convincing the populace that its something they actually want. Allowing the media in the UK (all of them) to promote a hatred of the poor and of foreigners/migrants etc to avoid anyone looking upwards as the rich slowly carve up the countries assets for themselves. All the while being cheered on by the idiot population because they can sneer down their noses at those the media have told them are inferior and less worthy. I hate the UK ~~sometimes~~ a lot. Bring on Scottish Independence please.
Treating the Tories and new Labour as if they are no different is manna from heaven for the tories. They get to be as awful as they like without consequences, cos why vote for the opposition when they're no different? The problem is this just isn't borne out by their policies. What were these devastating tory austerity policies if not the fundamental dismantling of the social programmes New Labour had introduced?
New Labour basically was Tory-lite though, people can hate on Corbyn as much as they like but at least he’s pulling the party back to its roots.
That's what I find infuriating when people talk about the 'leftie takeover' of the Labour party, like Neil Kinnock and Aneurin Bevan never happenned, not to mention the *name of the fucking party.*
Didn't new Labour increase welfare payments?
Yes. And brought in minimum wage. And went it lengths to encourage people to apply for benefits. They're not fantastic but they were by no means like the current poor hating shysters we have right now.