How gloriously rich – and generous – a society we are:
The UK’s least affluent households have almost £40 a month less spare cash than they did a year ago while the richest have gained a similar sum in the same period, according to figures exposing how inflation has hit the poorest the hardest.
It’s really only in the past half-century or so that the poorest in any society would have any spare cash at all.
Well, it’s pretty obvious that the richer households are nicking £40 a month off the less affluent households. Bastards.
A significant chunk of better-off households’ outgoings are mortgage payments, and we’re less than a year into higher interest rates. Wait ’til the cheap interest fixes start running out and redo the calculation. In the mean time rents for poorer households are already up: partly because of interest rates but far more because of government interference.
Somewhere or other some MP is banging on today about ‘unprecedented’ child poverty in the north of England.
Infant mortality in the under 5s (not necessarily a direct indicator of poverty but certainly an indicator of how well society is doing) was 326 per 1,000 in 1800 and 228 per 1,000 in 1900. In 2020 it was 0.4.
I can’t help thinking the poor of 1800 and 1900 would have a case to say they had it worse than the ‘unprecedented’ poverty being whined about today.
Gosh, this is good, isn’t it?
No, it’s shit. It’s like being shoved back into the quicksand and having some smug bastard point out that you used to be in it deeper before clawing your way out.
The government is making poor people poorer. Light a fucking cigar.
I suspect that the richest would be unlikely even to notice the extra £40 they are enjoying by grinding the faces of the destitute in misery.
“You find out who your friends are when you’re skint. One of mine asked me to be his dominatrix”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/23/heat-or-eat-diaries-skint-friends-money-worries
It’s only in para 4 she admits to having a cat. So not really ‘skint’ then?
My acquaintance in the lower echelons of society provided an interesting snapshot of what life on benefits is like a few weeks ago. His car conked out, and rather than try and see what the problem was and get it fixed, he just bought a new one, for £3.5k cash. Sold the old one to a scrappy for £300. He told me that since covid he’d managed to save up £5k out of his benefits (this is someone whose entire existence,including a recent heart op, and being air ambulanced to hospital when he fell down the stairs pissed out of his head and smashed his leg up, is paid for out of the taxpayers money), so spending some of that on a new car wasn’t a problem.
Great isn’t it???
“In 2020 it was 0.4“
Obviously because of the existence of the “envy of the world” NHS.
What other explanation could there possibly be?
That’s a meaningless figure. £40 less than what? If they previously had £40, that’s very significant, if they previously had £400, much less so, if they had less than £40 so they’re now in deficit, it’s disastrous.
The wording “least affluent households” seems to be intended to make us think it’s those who had very little spare, but why not say explicitly how much? Is that because it would undermine the appeal to emotions? And how many households is this? It could be as few as two. Again, why not be explicit?
“spare cash”. Given that cash only has value because of scarcity, in what sense is any of it spare?