You can’t argue with Stevenson’s statements that living standards are falling and people are struggling to get by, nor can you doubt the sincerity of his beliefs. Undeniably, wealth is concentrated in the hands of the super-rich, and home ownership is becoming a pipe dream in many parts of the country.
Living standards are not falling, welath concentration is roughly as it has been these past few decades, house prices are moderating, not rising.
It’s not just Gazza’s plans, it’s his knowledge of reality that’s a problem.
Living standards are not falling
Que?
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s dosh. You’re not poor because someone else is rich.
Saw a clip of him yesterday where he said we had to tax the super rich or they would end up with all the money and the poor would have nothing. Literally said it was zero sum. How do you even argue with someone that stupid?
I once read an analogy of this.
Imagine a society where everyone survives by growing crops. Some bright chap comes up with a device or method which enables the farmers to double their yield, which he allows the farmers to use in return for 10% of their crop.
Because he can sell this to all the farmers, he ends up with an awful lot of produce.
People like Murphy and Stevenson will squawk on about how terribly unjust it is that one man can accumulate such wealth and create such an unequal society.
I came across a thought experiment along those lines. Imagine a society where the government provides everything that everyone needs and we all get exactly the same delivered to our door every week. This means that society is perfectly equal.
Assume in that delivery are carrots and broccoli.
Now, suppose I don’t like broccoli but like carrots and my neighbour likes broccoli but detests carrots it’s in our interests to swap. We are both richer for that swap and richer than everyone else who doesn’t swap which means and society is no longer equal.
I experienced something similar in real life. I returned from the Falklands war on HMS Fearless and as a Sgt was assigned to the Cooks’ Petty Officers’ mess. At sea everyone got the same alcohol ration a mixture of beer and spirits (I forget the proportion).
As it happened I didn’t drink spirts at the time but liked beer and one of the chefs didn’t like beer but drank spirits, so we swapped our allowance. Highly illegal but quite common. So we were both richer for that trade, but then nobody gave a damn about creating a perfect society so it didn’t really mater.
“Because he can sell this to all the farmers, he ends up with an awful lot of produce.”
And is no richer than the farmers are. Because all he’s got to sell is the same as what they’ve got to sell, and there’s a flooded market because yields have doubled overnight. The marginal price of an extra potato is virtually zero when demand stays the same but production doubles.
On thing I’ve learned in farming is that all productivity gains in the industry accrue to the consumer not the farmer. We made more money when we all drove MF35s and the average farm size was 30 acres. We are far far more productive now but considerably worse off.
There would be a reduction in imports so *some* benefit to farmers as well as consumers.
No, there’s more food imports now than there were 50 years ago.
If you all doubled production instead of being ordered to “set aside” land for environmental woo, there would be less food imported.
We were debating the impact of a new “green revolution” that doubled production. Reality is slightly different.
You’ve just neatly recapped why free market capitalism makes consumers to steenkin’ rich.
…and we’re all consumers but only some of us are producers, or as BiS accurately says, service providers adding value to resources.
Nope, that only works for products where there is international competition and a largely interchangeable (and not subject to IP) product.
A hairdresser on the other hand cuts no more hair than she has ever done, yet gets paid more each year, because its a service industry.
Basically manufacturers and primary producers get screwed by free market capitalism, while service providers get a free pass.
Competition between hairdressers is intense, and women are very picky…
It may be, but the fact remains that service industry output prices rise inexorably over time. Ask your plumber what he’s charging compared to 30 years ago. Where as farmers are getting the same for their produce that they were getting 20-30 years ago in nominal terms, let alone inflation adjusted. Our output prices would 2 or 3 times what they are if they’d kept up with inflation.
All this free market capitalism is fine and dandy, it should just apply to everyone, not just a few sectors of the economy.
Putting to one side whether you’d be prosecuted for anti-competitive behaviour, why don’t farmers go on strike?
I mean a real, proper strike. Not just a few tractors in Whitehall.
Is it because you’re trapped by the investment you’ve made in your land?
No, it’s because UK farmers are whining subsidy junkies…
“why don’t farmers go on strike?”
A) they need to eat too. Their output is all they have to make an income. Not only that there are costs that don’t go away if you stop selling your produce – animals need to be fed etc regardless. Dairy cattle have to be milked, even if you throw the milk away. So not only do you have no money coming in, you still have money going out.
B) if they did the food processors and retailers would just import everything they needed anyway.
C) if they did and started gaining traction you can bet your bottom dollar the State would use terrorism legislation to lock us all up.
D) There’s tens of thousands of us, ranging from massive agri-businesses like James Dyson to semi retired chaps doing a bit on the side to supplement their pensions. Getting all of those to agree would be like herding cats. Someone is always going to break ranks and rat the others out.
It’s called “Baumol’s Cost Disease”. There’s also no real way around it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect
The only way is to mechanise that services job.
Well its a bit of a problem then for an economy thats all services, which is what you keep telling us is the route to riches. Sod making stuff or digging it out of the ground, thats far to much like hard work. Just take in each other’s washing and we’ll all be millionaires!
Now ask TV repairmen how much they’re charging. Or how much local newspaper journalists are making. Or how many jobs there are in travel agents and insurance offices compared to the 80s. Or how rich the average shop manager is. Or how much novelists earn.
Lots of bits of the service sector got saturated with supply, were made more efficient, or we found a way to do without the people.
It applies just as much to the service sector as farming. That we haven’t got enough plumbers is mostly because women don’t want to do it and we haven’t figured out how to automate it.
Which is why your standard of living is indistinguishable from that of a 12th century serf.
Citation needed…
Or are you being sarcastic??
Or they could just produce the same amount but with less/fewer resources, so they can then use those resources to do something else. Instead of spending 90% of your time making enough food to keep evrybody alive, you now only spend 45% of your time keeping everybody alive, so you now have 11 times as much time to do something else, such as writing poetry, debating philosophy, or inventing healthcare.
…considerably worse off
Says our resident subsidy junkie?
Ho-ho.
But ToJ has a point. Take away the subsidies, let farmers sell for whatever price they can get and let’s see how much consumers are willing to pay …
You’d probably also have to block imports that don’t (or can’t prove they do) meet the standards imposed on UK production
Seems like a fair point.
Also make sure that farming can’t be nationalised if the SHTF. Because basically we all know thats what would happen if there was a serious food crisis. Farmers wouldn’t be allowed to name their price for food and make out like bandits, because the State would step in and take control of everything, like they did from 1939-45. So if farmers aren’t going to be allowed to benefit when there’s a shortage, for the benefit of the collective, then the collective should support farmers in the poor times as well. Fair’s fair.
I gather that Our Andy is considering a National Food Service.
This means at least two things.
First, I can no longer point out to my kids that, oddly, whilst we may have a national health service we do not have a national food service.
Second, you can wave goodbye to your notion of protecting farming from nationalisation.
In point of fact, I think pretty much everything now is mostly nationalised – but subtly, via regulation on top of taxation.
Why are we so reluctant to accept that we have voted ourselves into being a totalitarian, authoritarian shithole with added third-world bells and whistles?
Oh yeah. Because we* voted for it.
*I didn’t. One of my few (only) claims to greatness is that I spotted the Tories for Cunti dei tutto cunto** not later than about 2003.
**with apologies to Wop fellow travellers, estimable fellows all of them.
The “National Food Service” is a proposal from a University College London report called Prosperity 2030.
Weird how so many things are to happen in or by 2030.
The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals use 2030 as their target year.
I wonder how many people have read them?
Quite so. But ToJ would still be whining…
I don’t get a single penny of subsidy any more. Used to, they’ve been abolished now.
OK. Noted.
But sceptical…
Yep, England is the only nation in Europe not to subsidise food production according to one recent X analyst. England does massively subsidise landowners to do non food producing things with their land, so that DEFRA green stuff is what you’re gonna do if you own farmland now and want a handout for what nature would do anyway. Of course you’ll take the money for that
Nope, I don’t take the environmental payments either. Fed up to the back teeth of clipboard wielding types descending on me and telling what to do or how some field margin is 10cm too narrow or the bird food crop doesn’t have enough varieties in it, or any other pointless infraction of the myriad of rules that accompany such schemes . I don’t get a penny from the public purse now. So stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
And strangely enough despite doing none of the things I’m supposed to ‘for the environment’ according to all the degree holding twats that infest Defra, I’ve got a farm that stuffed with wildlife – hares, deer, hawks, barn owls, pheasants, partridge. But no foxes, we shoot as many of them as we can find. One might even consider there’s a link between those two sentences……….but what do I know, I’m just a peasant without a degree, so obviously I know nothing.
Do you have deer Jim? If so do you shoot them?
“Do you have deer Jim? If so do you shoot them?”
Yes we have loads of deer. Only roe and muntjac fortunately, they don’t really damage the crops too much. Rabbits do more damage in fact. Luckily we don’t have fallow deer here, they are as big as small cattle and can grow into massive herds and decimate crops. We don’t generally shoot them, only ones that are looking ill or injured (they do get hit on the roads and stagger off with broken legs etc). I’ve got a pheasant shoot on the farm, and the owner of that has an FAC so if I need one dispatching he will come out and deliver the coup de grace.
Roe and muntjac don’t damage crops significantly, but they wreak havoc on young trees, ringing them. Round here in the Chilterns, as soon as warrens get beyond a dozen individuals, some plague wipes them out. Like myxomatosis, but it’s not that.
You good man OJ
a: Everyone grows as much crop as they require, the harvest never fails, there is no use nor market for surplus crop; no one gains from the device, even the inventor has no use nor market for the crop.
b: There is a demand for more of the crop; whether that makes it a good deal for anybody depends on the numbers, how much is more worth? To whom?
Jim may choose to point out that the greatest beneficiaries of Jethro Tull were the landowners not the farmers. The urban households also benefited but it seems no-one thinks that worth mentioning.
the greatest beneficiaries of Jethro Tull
Sun streaking cold
An old man wandering lonely
Taking time the only way he knows
The sincerity of someone’s beliefs and whether they’re related to reality are on different axes.
I’ve always been annoyed that the plural of axis is axes. It just doesn’t look right, my fingers can’t type it properly. 😉
I suppose it depends what you think ‘living standards’ means.
Is there a single canonical definition?
If it’s something like the level of material wellbeing available to a person or population ie essentially, their command over goods and services, how much can they actually consume, and of what quality, and it does not include their ability to buy a home and support a family then I would say it is highly flawed.
Thirty or forty years ago a young soldier, a bobby, a factory worker, could afford to buy a home and stick a wife and two kids in it.
They would not be consuming as much pizza and watching as much telly – if the consumption of these = an improvement in ‘living standards’ – but the two biggest single areas of human happiness, after absolute basics like food and water and a few 19th/20th century luxuries like pain relief, viz a home and a family, were within reach in a way they no longer are for such categories of people.
I blame successive governments and various factors under their control, but I think it’s essentially undeniably a problem.
Thirty or forty years ago a young soldier, a bobby, a factory worker, could afford to buy a home and stick a wife and two kids in it.
A lot of that problem is driven by more women working full time and in careers, but you main point still stands.
Fifty years ago I was that soldier. Well, leaving the Army as a sergeant with a working wife and buying my first house (didn’t need a house when I was in). That house cost £12k. My salary as a sergeant had been £4k, and that was my starting pay from my new employer. So, three times salary for the mortgage. A sergeant now gets about £50k. That house would run about £360-420k So from twelve and a half times salary to seven or eight times.
House prices are subject to supply and demand in two ways. Demand for accommodation and demand for credit. However it occurs to me that house prices are not an indicator of standard of living, it needs to be rent. Because you can make a lot of monetary advantage speculating housing assets using borrowed money and it comes out in your standard of living in later years.
“So from twelve and a half times salary to seven or eight times.”
Lost my thread there. What I mean is wage inflation 12.5 times, house inflation thirty times. Mortgage three times salary in 1977, eight times salary in 2026
If mortgages had stayed clamped to that three times salary house prices should by necessity have gone up largely in line with wage inflation. This however fails because as time goes on the regulatory and customer expectation pressure make the houses more expensive to build.
Yes, but wasn’t the easing of credit (initially in the mid 70s), and the readiness of banks and building societies to push more and more money on potential borrowers a greater cause of driving up house prices?
My first mortgage application in 1969 was governed by the 2.5/3 times salary coupled with a very rigorous inspection of my personal finances. I had to personally supply these details, on pain of refusal if they were found to be other than accurate. But, some 5 or 6 years later and in possession of the old American Express plastic, I remember my letterbox constantly rattling with offers of credit lying on the doormat.
Now?
…but interest rates are around 1/3…
House prices are a reflection of the amount of money available to buy houses.
Jus’ saying.
And the number of houses.
No. It is purely the amount of money available. Scarcity may result in higher prices. But those higher prices have to be paid or there are no transactions.
Reduce the amount of money available to buy houses & the price of houses will fall.
‘Purely’, eh? So if there was one house on the market across the UK, and 100,000 desperate buyers, no-one would bid up the price?
Yep, it does.
Trivially obvious. There is an upper bound, which would be reached by the person at the top of the 100,000 buyers. But there is a lot of wriggle room below that.
Academically true, of everything.
If they burned all the money in the UK tomorrow, stopped the supply, and forbade lending, house prices would crash to zero (and obviously not sell).
Equally, house prices, like everything else, have risen with monetary inflation.
But I doubt that if a million new houses could be built every year for the next ten years the average price of a house would remain unchanged.
Dunno about that. As Thomas Sowell points out, increasing affluence, and changes society and family structure mean that a lot more single people want to leave home and live by themselves, or temporarily with others. This increases overall demand for housing, and changes the type of housing demanded. An obvious consequence is increased prices because demand rises faster than supply.
Also, if you nearly double the number of workers by bringing most working-age women into the workforce, you’re going to nearly double the number of salaries chasing mortgages.
I may be missing something, but you seem to be agreeing with me?
If ‘a lot more single people want to leave home and live by themselves’ … then ‘an obvious consequence is increased prices because demand rises faster than supply’, is what I’m saying, basically (I didn’t mention single person households, I just said there were not enough houses)..
That is, I’m saying that there are two factors (at least) in rising house prices, and that one of them is that there are not enough houses.
True. As I said at the start, many governments over many years have done many things to fuck up housing, and one of them was to bring in The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 which made it illegal to discriminate on grounds of sex or marital status in the provision of goods, facilities and services, including mortgage lending, so that the lenders could no longer discount a woman’s income in a joint application.
The SDA also meant that Building Societies could no longer refuse to grant mortgages to bachelors *just because they were bachelors*; that added to the demand for mortgages.
I can’t see anything you’ve said there that falsifies my statement.
True of everything, no?
Indeed!
Not always speculation, just luck. I bought a tiny flat in 1985, I thought I’d move on in three years or so. Seven years later I was still there, other flats were being repossessed. I hung on, just. After thirty years I sold and retire to the country. A fair sized house for one person, with outbuildings and a garden — ‘it comes out in your standard of living in later years’.
Food price inflation is where things seem to be the worst. I paid £4 for a small bit of smoked haddock yesterday. It was a treat. I shouldnt have to think like that.
I can live without booze, so I am not affected by £5 a pint, but I am annoyed about £10 for fish n chips.
£10? Lucky if its less than £12.50 round here.
The price of food but fish in particular is one of Mrs BiND’s biggest gripes at the moment. As it’s one of our main sources of protein it does have quite an effect on our budget.
Sardines – happily we like sardines. And, it seems to me, smoked salmon is much cheaper than it was when I was young when it was a luxury food.
Chicken livers are an astonishing bargain though I grant that’s not much use to fish-eaters.
I dare say fish is supply-constrained due to regulation. Whether that regulation is justified I can’t even guess.
Fish supply (in the UK) is reduced by the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy which resulted in a lot of fish from British Territorial Waters being eaten in Spain.
John77, when we joined the EEC fishermen were allocated quotas. Many of those fisherman promptly sold their quota to French or Spanish fishermen,took the money and run but left their children to lament the loss of the UK fishing industry.
That is part, but only part, of the reason. A second part is the price difference which makes it more profitable for Spanish fishermen to travel all the way back to Spain instead of landing their catch in Lowestoft or Plymouth.
John, with respect, explain the second part for me please.
A fishing vessel has the option of sailing back to its home port or landing its catch and refuelling at the nearest port providing port-owned facilities. Port-owned facilities are a lot cheaper to run (get used every day instead of standing idle a large part of the time) so makes sense for any boat going out for more than an overnight trip. Going all the way back to Spain is hundreds of miles, takes a day (or more from the North Sea). Given that these are Spanish, not Sicilian, fishermen I have to suppose there is a major price differential to justify wasting days travelling to and fro.
And yet I doubt most Spaniards have more ready income than even the most latterday improverished Briton.
Fuck it. No one knows the answer. Free trade and no subsidies it’ll have to be and if I starve the I starve.
Home made chicken liver patty is a favourite in our house and I like sardines.
Salmon has gone from a luxury food to being available to the masses and is quickly becoming a luxury food. Lidl offer the best bargain and we got some good deals in Lidl Scotland.
Patty or paté? If the latter, I’m with you. If the former I’m unsure.
Ouch, you’re right – paté. That was a senior moment and a half.
The main thing with salmon is that it went from wild to farmed. This drastically reduced the price. There’s talk of farming cod
Chicken livers are an astonishing bargain
Go traditional (and also slightly Venetian): add stewed onions, mash, proper (fatty) bacon and, if you feel up to it, a sauce made from any juices in the pan.
It’s a feast.
But then you may have known all of that already.
Or lambs liver works just as well, and is almost as cheap (pigs liver is a step too far for me). I can’t understand why calves liver is >10x the price, although it is nicer as a treat.
one can eat too many chicken livers.
Try buying fresh fish in Netherlands. You need a 2nd mortgage. I bought 2 whole mackerel for the smoker to make a paté. Best part of €13.
Don’t even think about buying fresh cod, monkfish or tuna. Shame really because flame grilled tuna is delicious.
Remarkable. Why?
Or you find the right fishmonger without all the whistles and bells at the market, and pay far less.
Note that mackerel is under a catch restriction because they’ve been overfished to hell, *and* it’s spawning season, so no fishing at all to begin with, so yes.. their price shot up in the past months.
What you *can* get “fresh” comes out of freezer stocks currently.
Monkfish has never been cheap, and not all that popular in Clogland, sooo limited supply most of which gets snapped up by fancy restaurants.
Tuna… most of it that isn’t snapped up by the canning industry gets bought up by the Japanese.
Cod, catch restrictions still, although the population *is* on the rebound, and again, most gets bought up by Industry.
Supply versus demand… *very* little fresh fish ends up at market for individual buyers. And most of those buyers want perfectly cleaned fish, which costs personnel..
I buy my fishies in bulk at the right fishmonger at the saturday market and I get *much* more agreeable prices. Because I just buy the fish, and gut, clean, and portion them myself.
Live with a Jap, you’re going to buy decent fish, whatever the cost. Economies happen elsewhere.
The Grimsby bloke with his fish van we’ve been buying from weekly for the past 27 years (by far the best value for money around our way, and the wife has trained him up in sushi requirements) has some quite robust opinions about what EEC/EU fishing policy did to his dad, a trawler-man.
If you’re ever down this way there is (was?) a very good wet fish shop at Lulworth Cove, fresh catch from local fishermen. The problem is by the time you’ve added car parking costs it goes from eye watering expensive to outrageously expensive.
We’re being made poorer. It’s quite deliberate.
A friend bought a house in 97 and sold in 2023. In 97 the price was £88K – in 23 it was £556K so compared to the 90s housing is more expensive.
Of course the solution is more housing or less people or both – not taxing the rich more.
about double a decade. I bought in 93 and sold in 2003 for exactly double. Seems a thing.
The cost of moving house is a lot more than in the past. The stamp duty for me moving from my current house to a similar one in the 90s would have been £700-800, how it is £17k.
Being able to move is good.
My move last September including stamp duty, removals, fees and so on came to £20k. The house difference was a modest £17k in comparison.
How much of that was tax? I hate the idea of moving so for me stamp duty is a magic bullet that stops my wife from thinking about it.
Government stamp duty policy: women worst affected!
I must be getting superficial in my old age. I think the bugger looks to be a mere thug.
Foetal alcohol syndrome, I was thinking.
Not that I’m much of a looker myself though.
What on earth is the point of moaning about house prices if you don’t say where the house is?
House prices rise in step no matter where they are. When prices are stalling they stall in outer areas first. When prices are rising fast those areas catch up. If those areas catch up its a sign of the market topping out. But over a long perid it balances out. I compare my first house, in the Cambridge fens ( yes, near Ely) with te same house on Zoopla now.to get the longest timescale.
That’s not entirely true. The difference between London and the rest of the UK widened in the late 90s from about 2x to around 3x. And currently, London is rising less quickly than the rest of the UK (roughly speaking, below inflation in London).
Since 2018, London has risen 15%. Wales has risen 43%.
“Average House Price 1968–2025 London v South West”
We looked at Wales. And chose Lincs, pretty much the cheapest decent place. However the recent trends include covid and work form home, so you’d expect a shift. If it doesn’t balance long-term, pick a longer term and it will.
But now you’re going to be surrounded by solar panels.
The reason everything costs more is government. Either directly via taxes on business activity, or indirectly via regulation. And also the 2rd order effect of making running a business such a shitstorm of stress and hassle unrelated to the actual business at hand that loads of people either just don’t bother starting one, which reduces competition via new business formation, or close up existing businesses because they are fed up with the grief.
We have spent 50 years or more heaping ever more costs onto business and now we are reaping the ‘rewards’ of that. Until someone comes in and just repeals vast swathes of taxes and regulations, or maybe exempts all business under a certain size from them, we are doomed to continue on the slow inexorable decline we are seeing now. Until something drastic happens and whole economy collapses in a heap.
Very true.
We often talk about the tax burden as an indicator of government imposition, but we should also focus on the burden of regulation – which is now vast.
It’s gone from being BS 5750, or whatever, 30 years ago – basic consumer protection* – to DEI policies, anti-bribery policies, AML policies, corporate governance policies, environmental impact policies, anti+-‘modern slavery’ policies, unconscious bias training, and so on.
Difficult to meaningfully quantify, but converted into pounds, shillings and pence the cost must be huuuuuuge.
*I don’t particularly approve even of that, but it was benign by comparison with the current regulatory burden.
I was recently talking to a bright A-level student who wanted to interview me about work for a project he was doing at school and he asked me, because he’d undoubtedly been primed to ask me, whether I thought business was sufficiently regulated.
Interestingly, despite what he’d obviously been primed to expect as the correct answer, when I told him that in my view it was massively over-regulated, that most of that has happened in the last 30-35 years, and that I’ve seen it in real time enveloping business, he was open to what I said. I don’t know if he agreed with it, but it obviously gave him food for thought, particularly, I think, when I pointed out that we’d got by pretty well without things like DEI policies, and that, in other words, it is possible to live without them.
That was a good morning’s work.
I was wondering if it was the original or the (in fairness also good) ‘other’ Jim but he nails it as so often. Regulation is a huge cost and despite the protestations of the likes of Murphy that regulation is ‘crucial’ I have yet to see anyone that can mount a defense of most European legislation other than ‘it doesn’t affect you directly’ – and in some cases that’s true but indirectly this , which in fairness began in the 80s and 90s under Thatcher (albeit without her approval) and Honest Johnny Major but which was turbo charged under Blair/ Brown, costs us all. And the only solution really is to draft revised legislation without any involvement whatsoever from either the judiciary or Civil service.
An acquaintance told me regulations are needed to deal with the complexity of the modern world. How often people confuse cause and effect!
European legislation and directives were taken by the Civil Service and enacted to their maximum effect.
This was claimed to be ‘future proofing’ the regulaion as it was always going to be a one way ratchet.
The Landfill Tax is a typucal example of implementation of a directive in extremis.
Yes, running a business – even just one holiday let, as I do – is often a regulatory nightmare…
There were 609,000 mortgage advances made last year, the highest since the 2008 crash excluding 2021 when there was the ‘post covid surge’. Maybe it is difficult in some places more than others, as has always been the case.
Cost of food – In 1977 a cucumber in Romford market was 20p, which adjusted for inflation would be £1.20. I bought one the other day in Aldi for 89p.
How much were avocados in 1977? How much was quinoa in 1977?
How much were smartphones, PCs or broadband subscriptions?
The man is not just a buffoon, he’s an outright charlatan.
Listening to Stevenson explaining economics is a bit like watching a 10 year old using a chunky crayon to draw a picture for 6 year olds to explain how a nuclear reactor works.
The 6 year olds are, of course, impressed.
I think that is offensive to 10 years old.
If economics was a science then Stevenson would be laughed out of town. He’s the equivalent of someone turning up at an astrophysics convention and making a presentation about how the earth is flat.
But of course it isn’t, so he won’t be.
I know its a TV program but why did they let the arts and entertainment journo write a piece on Gary Stephenson?
Looks like Gaz has given up:
https://order-order.com/2026/07/09/wealth-tax-campaigner-gary-stevenson-im-quitting/
I find his Jafaikan accent and general scruffiness worthy of the beasting of all beastings.
We don’t get to see the question that provokes his gay little outburst, but it appears to be a perfectly reasonable enquiry as to his own financial position.
For a man who concerns himself tirelessly with the financial position of others that doesn’t seem unreasonable.
Oh what a surprise! I learn from the video he’s yet another product of Oxford.
But rarely Cambridge, have you noticed? Cambridge breeds martyrs and Oxford burns them, I read somewhere.
I mean sure, raze ’em all t’ground. But Oxford first. And maybe we should pause and take stock after Oxford’s ashes have ceased kicking up a stink, then see whether Cambridge ought to follow.
Let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater. There remain serious minds out there doing serious work (at Cambridge and elsewhere), and against terrible odds.
And I’d sooner raise rebellious minds, those of martyrs, than I would those which will quell them.
Btw, it’s an odd linguistic tic, but in Arabic – the lingua franca of political Islam – a martyr is an aggressor in the name of God. But, for us, a martyr is wholly passive and usually a victim. But the Musselmans, I think, also regard their aggressors as victims.
How do you make an edible sandwich out of that?
There remain serious minds out there doing serious work (at Cambridge and elsewhere), and against terrible odds.
Are there? They’ve had decades to assert themselves & get the assoles thrown out of both shitholes. Which casts serious doubts on how serious they are. That’s my response to anyone lauds the work done at universities & bleats about their “reputations”. You want to keep your reputation get shot of the shitheads. Otherwise, you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas.
NO he is not: he went to LSE.
After he made his (probably ill-gotten) £millions he did a post-grad at Keble (one of the second-class colleges) taking a two-year M. Phil (either a downgrade from a D Phil or, unusually, applied for a M Phil and failed to get an upgrade to a D Phil).
Ultimately the reason we’re in the shit – and there’s really no other diagnosis – is the public sector and other members of the lanyard class, be they from Europe, indigenous or part of the nebulous ‘third sector’. That is ultimately the only honest answer. Woke and politically correct beliefs are like a cancer and only by total excision can the patient be cured.
Is there a useful measure of living standards? If not, the assertions of both Gaz and Timmy are equally suspect.
However, we could compare the increase in wages with the increase in general prices over the past 20 years. Wages up 70%, prices up 75% That demonstrates that we are all poorer.
House prices have risen too of course. What factor suppresses wages and increases house I wonder? Does Gaz ever address it?
And then came Wickard v. Filburn and destroyed it all.
Anyone who says “you can’t argue with” obviously never met either of my ex-wives.
“You can’t argue with Stevenson’s statements that living standards are falling and people are struggling to get by, nor can you doubt the sincerity of his beliefs.”
I really hate people who say that you can’t argue with something instead of constructing coherent arguments for why it’s correct.
And:
1) you can undoubtedly argue with both those statements as this thread shows
2) you can doubt the sincerity of his beliefs, not that sincerity of beliefs matter. There are those that claim that various dubious historical figures in Germany and Russia were sincere in their beliefs ~100 years ago. I’s not really an argument for agreeing with those beliefs
“Undeniably, wealth is concentrated in the hands of the super-rich”
Wealth being concentrated in the hands of the super-rich is true by definition. It doesn’t matter though as what matters is consumption ability. And, paraphrasing Sowell:”compared to what?” Let’s not forget that the alternative is 100s of millions dying and the rest living in poverty
Someone will explain this to me I am sure, but how are our living standards rising if we are importing (economically neutral or worse-than-useless) people faster than the economy is growing
Depends upon the definition of “our” chosen. If we compare the average standard of living of all those currently in the country with the average standard of living of those people one, two, three, five years ago we should find that they have gone up. If we compare the then standard of living of those in the country one, two, three, five years ago with the standard of living of the survivors we could get a different answer [for avoidance of doubt I have not yet done the sums, I am just explaining that the sums are different]. My pension has not risen in line with inflation (DWP keeps telling me that a lot of it should only go up by 1.1% or less) but any refugees on benefits – which are at *half* the rate for UK citizens – will be better off than he/she was in Africa or Asia.
Yeaaaah. So, no, they’re not.
Plus, the better standard of living stuff takes no account of who’s been raped or murdered in the meantime as a by-product of
building the economyimporting rapey stabbers.I mean, if you actually have thousands of families desolated and desecrated, but they’ve all got nice touch-screen ‘phones and Netflix, are we really that much better off?
My suspicion is that your economy is producing less & less real value. Real value being what you eat, wear, live in, drive etc. And doesn’t include DIE inspectors or DEI advisors to keep you clear of the DEI inspectors.
The crunch will come in the future when you try & cash in your assets in exchange for things of value. Like dinner. You won’t find anyone wants to exchange dinner for your pension or house.
Yup. Even if the economy has grown, the State has taken the growth and pissed it away on crap none of us wants.
The house price argument presumably reflects the fact that we’ve lived in a falling interest rate period for about forty years. If we are now entering a rising rate period of equal length house prices will presumably decrease.
Another thing that strikes me is how many more highly paid jobs there are than when we graduated decades ago. Our own younger generation earns far, far more than we ever did; we can’t be alone in this.
Anyway I’ll bet that much of what I dislike about the state of the economy comes down to government misbehaviour especially endless budget deficits, mountains of regulations, unselective mass immigration, and the deliberate fucking up of education.
Falling house prices are difficult – few home owners are prepared to take a direct financial loss by selling a property for less than they paid for it. (Not necessarily a completely rational viewpoint, but it’s undoubtedly there.)
20 years ago graduate salaries in the SE started at around £22k, the equivalent now is in the low 30s. If it had kept in line with CPI or CPIH then it would be ~£5k higher.
But “graduates” aren’t the same beasts, nor in the same numbers.
Kings of yore spent the people’s money on extravagances like Neuschwanstein and Versailles. At least they left us some nice castles. And pyramids of Giza.
Today’s governments’ extravagances are for windmills. Our grandchildren will be left with derelict wind turbines and pylons. Thanks, guys.
Things have gone wrong at the top.
‘Struggling’ is a journalist word meaning they would be struggling if they were in the same position.
Here’s a brutal fact: Mississippi has the lowest per capita income of the 50 US states. Mississippi’s per capita income is HIGHER than UK. Whether your ‘living standards are falling’ or not, you are in deep doo doo.
Well Mississippi (according to Google) has major exports of petroleum and coal, agricultural products, manufactures, chemicals and timber. So colour not very surprised its wealthier than the UK.
But of course our host here keeps telling us that selling each other cups of coffee (grown elsewhere of course), and ever more expensive houses is the way to a wealthy society, so what would I know?
Selling each other expensive cups of coffee will increase GDP. That is not the same as becoming wealthier.
Wealth is comparable to a lake or reservoir, GDP to a stream flowing into the lake or reservoir; many commentators ignore the river running out of the lake or reservoir.
major exports of petroleum and coal
Wut?