Off Topic Covid 19 restrictions have done one

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brownbagtiger said:
If either of you want to have an actual discussion on social history with some facts/sources, then do let me know. Otherwise I'm not interested in a pissing contest.
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A discussion centred on your interpretation of things you have read about rather than experienced? Yet you say Ric has no idea about what is happening at the time he is living in.
 
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Kalman said:
Real wages in the UK haven’t kept with productivity and growth. Real wages slumped after 2008 and have rose steadily since then but nowhere near enough to keep up with the increased productivity and growth. I read not too long ago the UK had the second worst real wages compared to living costs in Europe after Greece.

Yes, people earn more than they did 20, 30 and 40 years ago and consumer goods are more available but that’s largely due to the technological innovations. Everyone has a mobile these days. It’s pretty much accepted as necessary to have one today as much as an indoor toilet. But even though people earn more, the purchasing power of what they earn isn’t as great as it was decades ago. Rent is just one of the things that takes a larger chunk of people’s monthly earnings than it did 30 or 40 years ago. It was pretty common for a household of four to survive on one person’s income years ago. Today that’s really not possible anymore unless that one person earns a lot more than the average real wage.

Like you said, even people on benefits have access to smartphones and Netflix, technology so advanced that medieval kings and nobles couldn’t possibly conceive of. However, the wealth discrepancy between a peasant and a king in the 11th century was smaller than the gap between you or I and Jeff Bezos in the 21st century. So despite the increased economic growth and productivity, in real terms of wages, a person on benefits or minimum wage with a smartphone and Netflix is somehow even poorer than a peasant was 1,000 years ago.
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Your last sentence is a load of bull.
 
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Kalman said:
Are you familiar of this wacky concept called inflation and how cost of living has risen significantly higher than average income since ‘back in your day’?
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Well back in my day not long after I had got my first mortgage inflation was 25% and mortgage rates went up to 15%). Income tax was a basic rate of 35%, which was down from the 41% it was when I started work. So I am aware, in fact more aware, of inflation of this wacky thing called inflation than you are.
 
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Poverty exists in Hull and in many cases it is hidden. It exists in affluent areas and has no boundaries. It probably exists in the street where you live.
Modern poverty on the uk isn’t the people that you see buying takeaways and stocking up with chicken nuggets.
Modern poverty is the people who can cook but cannot afford to turn the cooker on because the utilities they pay for are on a card meter and that takes cash out of their accounts straight away instead of monthly.
They have jobs but are on zero hours, no kids, no benefits.
And these people live in the houses that you pass by. Some might be related to you and don’t want to be judged.

Modern poverty is NOT about being on benefits, it is not about living in social housing. It is not about putting yourself in the **** because you drink or take drugs.

How about the single person who has a zero hours contract and falls ill. No kids, rents a property, from a private landlord.
Money left over after paying rent and household bills… under £20 per week. That’s for food and travel. Can’t work no pay, fall into the benefit trap and have even less.

This false view about people on benefits being in poverty is just that. They are low
Income families. Their children are the route to funding.
 
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So .. the joys of covid have finally hit my home, started with cold like symptoms last Saturday, fever like symptoms on sunday, tested both days, and was negative, got up for work Monday morning and did a further test to make sure, and boom .. positive ! Wife tests positive on Tuesday, so here we are currently isolating. Got to say I honestly thought it was no more then a heavy dose of cold, but having said that both my wife and i are double jabbed, and ha e had boosters, so who knows if it had been worse had we not. Anyway wishing all well who encounter it, because even at our low levels of symptoms its not very nice !
 
The Omega Man said:
Poverty exists in Hull and in many cases it is hidden. It exists in affluent areas and has no boundaries. It probably exists in the street where you live.
Modern poverty on the uk isn’t the people that you see buying takeaways and stocking up with chicken nuggets.
Modern poverty is the people who can cook but cannot afford to turn the cooker on because the utilities they pay for are on a card meter and that takes cash out of their accounts straight away instead of monthly.
They have jobs but are on zero hours, no kids, no benefits.
And these people live in the houses that you pass by. Some might be related to you and don’t want to be judged.

Modern poverty is NOT about being on benefits, it is not about living in social housing. It is not about putting yourself in the **** because you drink or take drugs.

How about the single person who has a zero hours contract and falls ill. No kids, rents a property, from a private landlord.
Money left over after paying rent and household bills… under £20 per week. That’s for food and travel. Can’t work no pay, fall into the benefit trap and have even less.

This false view about people on benefits being in poverty is just that. They are low
Income families. Their children are the route to funding.
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Thanks Tom saved me typing it
 
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The Omega Man said:
Poverty exists in Hull and in many cases it is hidden. It exists in affluent areas and has no boundaries. It probably exists in the street where you live.
Modern poverty on the uk isn’t the people that you see buying takeaways and stocking up with chicken nuggets.
Modern poverty is the people who can cook but cannot afford to turn the cooker on because the utilities they pay for are on a card meter and that takes cash out of their accounts straight away instead of monthly.
They have jobs but are on zero hours, no kids, no benefits.
And these people live in the houses that you pass by. Some might be related to you and don’t want to be judged.

Modern poverty is NOT about being on benefits, it is not about living in social housing. It is not about putting yourself in the **** because you drink or take drugs.

How about the single person who has a zero hours contract and falls ill. No kids, rents a property, from a private landlord.
Money left over after paying rent and household bills… under £20 per week. That’s for food and travel. Can’t work no pay, fall into the benefit trap and have even less.

This false view about people on benefits being in poverty is just that. They are low
Income families. Their children are the route to funding.
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Well said. Just to add that a lot of people in work are also in receipt of benefits, and many will also be living in poverty.

I suppose it’s tempting for some posters to take a definition of poverty from the 1960s and apply it to 2022. It’s utterly meaningless though.
 
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The definition of poverty is a movable feast[sic] as it depends on what you're comparing to.

Relative poverty will always exist by the very nature of how it is worked out, especially if you limit it to an already wealthy nation, as it is more a measure of disparity than poverty.

Take the estimations of relative poverty to a global scale, and everyone in the UK would fall in to the extremely fortunate and wealthy category.

Living in the UK, or most western countries during current times makes us among the most fortunate people that have ever lived.
 
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DMD said:
The definition of poverty is a movable feast[sic] as it depends on what you're comparing to.

Relative poverty will always exist by the very nature of how it is worked out, especially if you limit it to an already wealthy nation, as it is more a measure of disparity than poverty.

Take the estimations of relative poverty to a global scale, and everyone in the UK would fall in to the extremely fortunate and wealthy category.

Living in the UK, or most western countries during current times makes us among the most fortunate people that have ever lived.
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As Fred west would say Dutch it’s all relative
 
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The Omega Man said:
I was very shocked to find that one of my relatives had gone without eating for 3 days during lockdown as they were not “entitled” to receive help as they were on furlough and on 80% of their minimum wage.
It really did make me weep. As a family we sorted them out. But it still makes me angry that they had to be cast aside like that.
Food poverty in 2020 is shameful.
Child food poverty should never exist, the food outlets who are doing this shouldn’t have to, but thank goodness they are.
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I posted this last year. The relative had 2 Oxo cubes a day as that is all they had left in their cupboard. That 20% loss of income, was their food budget for the month.
 
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Barchullona said:
Well back in my day not long after I had got my first mortgage inflation was 25% and mortgage rates went up to 15%). Income tax was a basic rate of 35%, which was down from the 41% it was when I started work. So I am aware, in fact more aware, of inflation of this wacky thing called inflation than you are.
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I don’t where boomers got this idea that we give a **** what it was like ‘back in their day’. It’s boring and irrelevant and has about as much contribution to any conversation as a lingering fart.
 
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