US Election

In this country what do you need to earn if you’ve got say 2 kids and a mortgage on a 3 bed house to have a comfortable life? Around 80 or 90k? And best will in the world there is a social strata of people who won’t get anywhere near that.

How can the economy work for them? The only way I can see it is through brilliant public services. Across the board. Nationalising monopolies such as power and water and making them work for people. Making sure the NHS is fit for purpose. Making educational aspiration and social mobility feel more possible again. Reinstate the post war social contract destroyed by Thatcherism. The issue for Labour is that they don’t have years to do this. The far right is ready to lie and lie and step in with false promises.

I don’t lead a particularly lavish life style don’t have any habits these days other than buying records but can’t say I feel in any way ‘rich’ or have much left over most months despite earning money as a couple that I would have only dreamed about when I was a kid. Prices are about right. The 6 quid / 7 quid pint isn’t outlandish but wages have lagged so no one can afford anything.

neoliberalism and the lie of trickle down economics has failed. So the centre left needs to find solutions and find them fast

 

Agree with a lot of this, but I disagree that all prices are about right. Not only did the onset of Covid grossly inflate prices they often reduced the amount/size/quantities of products and went seemingly unchecked. The price of a pint is outlandish and can vary by as much as 50% between establishments that are quite close to each other, Tarn is a great example of this.

 

80 or 90k? We've got 2 kids a 3 bed house and 2 cars and don't earn anywhere near that and neither does my Missus and we don't go without

 

Whilst I agree that we should have PR, the vast majority of democracies use it, including many that have voted for loonies. So you could also say the oppisite. We live in strange times where the truth is becoming harder and harder to find and people are believing some weirdest stuff they read or watch on the internet.

 

There are some good points in there and there is no doubt at all that the divide between rich and struggling is wider than its ever been and the rich only want to make that wider. Content to spend money on anything other than tax. While others struggle to keep heads above water or make much progress and headway.

What I would say is that I think there are two trains coming down the line. One is climate change that if prepared for (as much as is possible) trillions of pounds would need to be spent. That could save people considerable amounts in bills and provide safety and security, but the dialogue seems more about other minor things. If we don't prepare, we have disasters and huge costs associated with them. Either way, there will be culture wars stoked. the question would be if such disasters manifest with high frequency under a populist climate denying leadership... what is the public reaction.

Secondly, and near term this could be an even bigger issue. AI. There will be a day, probably in our lifetimes where tens if not hundreds of thousands of people... and potentially millions (and I'm just talking UK now) are no longer needed to do varying jobs. That will only worsen as AI gets more trusted (rightly or wrongly) and utilised more widely, not to mention how swiftly it evolves.

Anything moving stuff is unlikely to need a person in situ. Deliveries, taxis, haulage, couriers, maybe even pilots.... redundant, no need. Anything that requires utilising information and presenting it in a certain format. Accountancy, legal, creative industries. I can see massive cuts to peoples jobs.

The question is.... what do these people do in the future? How are they paid? If businesses are saving huge labour costs and transferring that into technology while improving productivity and profit... what does the state do with those profits? What do we do with the super rich raking in these enlarged profits? Do we just pay people to exist? And if we don't, what views do such people have if they can't fulfil something and have pride in it, let alone have aspiration or opportunity to "get ahead"? Could we see resentment aimed at AI "owners" rather than migrants?

We're entering very volatile times and I'm not sure the answers we might find today may even last until tomorrow.

 

Yes I agree with this. Perhaps in places like London but anywhere else nah. You'd be far and away in atleast the upper middle class with that sort of money

 

£80-90k in London for a couple with kids isn't going to get you far at all. In Central areas a 2 bed house will cost you in excess of £750k and in many areas way and above that. A 3 bed house, i'd expect well over a million. Obviously you can live further out, but in nicer areas you're still spending way in excess of what is affordable for a couple on £90k with a mortgage multiplier of 3-4x.

 

Jimmy Viz means £80k-90k as a combined couple's income.

It very much depends on where you live and when you got a mortgage. If your job involves working in a bigger city and you have been stuck in a rental spiral for most of your adult life, then that's absolutely what's needed to get by without looking over your shoulder.

 

I agree with you about this, but the people continually vote for parties and politicians that cut public services and privatise anything not nailed down. Even if Labour successful privatized water, power and rail in the next 4 years, and subsidized them so all public transport was effectively free, you would sooner or later (and egged on by the papers) find some Tories or Reform in charge that would reduce the service and/or sell it off. It got the stage that they even tried to privatise the probation service (and failed).

A majority of people want to pay less tax, then complain that the services get worse. Then vote for the people that made the services worse - while they end up paying more tax for the privilege.

And you've also got the perception and education battle. So many Trump voters think that him bringing inflation down will reduce prices they pay. When it will just decrease the rate of increase in those prices. If prices did go down, they'd then complain when wages followed and job losses increased. How do you convince people that take minimal interest in politics what the effects of these policies would be? They want a simple 3-4 word slogan but the world is not a simple place and they can't be arsed to listen to a 2,000 word detailed explanation.

 

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Combined income of £80 to £90k is above average but not hugely so, even outside of London. I believe the average salary in the UK for someone who's university educated is around £44k.

 

Good post.

I would argue there is a third train - defense. The world is changing and we - and other countries in Western Europe - are going to have to increase our defense spending if we want to continue to live in an openly democratic society. It'll be interesting to see where that money comes from.

Your final paragraph raises some apt and very depressing points. Unfortunately, I believe we need to take these to a logical conclusion and ask...

• why will we need to educate people?
• why will we need to provide free healthcare for the people?

This, utlimately, is what the far right are seeking and it absolutely infuriates me that the proletariat don't see it and are actually contributing to it by continuing to vote for them.

 

As an aside into AI. LLMs are very good at searching through large amounts of data and finding answers. Or presenting that data in a format that is interesting.

They are terrible at correctly answering questions or generating information from scratch. I use them regularly as part of the job and you have to sanity check any results from them because they can be completely incorrect. They are easy to confuse as the examples below shows:



The LLM models are an interesting stepping stone, but are not an advance on AGI - artificial general intelligence. They are also very easy to manipulate to give the results the owner wants - Grok would likely return more right-wing based answers than other models, and is likely to get worse as people leave Twitter.

 

They have just built some ‘starter affordable’ houses behind me. £325k as lowest available. So you are what looking at 2k just for thae mortgage. 24k a year out of your combined salary of 90k. Your combined take home pay for that is what 5k so you have spent 45% of your income before you have done anything else.

 

The issue in the UK is poverty, this has been driven by too many factors to get into, but the official figure is 18% of the population living in poverty. As a comparison, this is 3.4% in Ireland (figures can vary a little depending on definition of poverty). The way to lower poverty is of course investment in education and local services. However there are so many people in poverty in the UK that the tax burden they create is huge, so we end up treading water, taxing those who work more and more and standing still or regressing in terms of social services and education.

This is a grim question, but with 18% of the population in poverty, is the UK already past the point where we can fund and tax our way to a better quality of life for this demographic, or has a critical mass already been reached and passed?

The tax system is completely broken with personal thresholds last being slightly adjusted in 2021 and being frozen until 2028. This will take nearly 50% of workers into the 40% tax band - 48% with NI included. We also have a ridiculous system where when the £100k thresehold is reached, an individual's tax free allowance starts to dwindle, making the de facto tax rate between £100k and £125k 60% and 68% of earnings with NI. If the individual has a young family they also lose out on free childcare over £100k, which frequently means that people earning a little over £100k are taxed over 100% of earnings.

Long post, but what I'm trying to get at is that no one is winning. Those in poverty are trapped in poverty because the cost to raise so many out of it is astronomical and that astronomical cost is falling on workers just to tread water, so no one is winning at the moment other than the super rich.

 

It won't forever be thus. Whether its 2 years, 5 years or 25 years, the future is coming and history tells us that business isn't averse to replacing human capital when it can.

 

Hi there, I had work to do and can’t be on this board all day. There were local reports in Springfield, Ohio of Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs and geese from the local ponds. Trump was repeating this as locals were concerned, there have been some reports confirming this and denying this so I’m not sure. The immigrants in that town are all Haitian (I think the population doubled with all the influx from Haiti). I think the comments are inflammatory and hyperbolic probably but I don’t find them racist. He didn’t say black people are eating cats and dogs? Haitian isn’t a race and he didn’t target them because of race yet because of the reports coming out. Are you saying those reports are racist? If all the immigrants were from England and reports came out from that town saying “English people are eating cats and dogs” would that be racist? I don’t think so. Stupid statement but that’s not racism.

Any other genuine examples? Because the left has been shouting this racist rhetoric now long before that.

 

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/31563060/trump-ukraine-war-plan-election/

The Don has a plan to end the war in Ukraine.

 

But in this country we are heavily taxed fuel, roads, n.i, council tax for poor services.

Ive just seen on here many loving labour's budget in taxing employers n.i more and rising the minimum wage.
That's great, now a company will have to pay 600-800 a year per employee more in n.i so say that company employs 15-20 people that's around 16k a year it will have to pay more plus now the base rate of pay has gone up so even skilled people will want more money. When the landlord, carehome owner, nursery owner or whoever has to pay more who do you think pays for it? Her or does she put the product price up? She does so inflation rises.

 

Opinion | Donald Trump’s Racism: The Definitive List, Updated - The New York Times

This is from 2018.

We watched 20 Trump rallies. His racist, anti-immigrant messaging is getting darker. - POLITICO

This is from 2024.

I'm sure if you searched for examples of Trump racism you'll find plenty. It's just something of a surprise this is even disputed.