I can't speak to the poverty side, but anecdotally my colleagues and I work in a high-tech profession and our salaries are hardly competitive.

I'm earning less than 33K as a cybersecurity engineer and I'm struggling to save up for a house, my student loan has increased from interest since graduating, and I'm the frugal one at work.

UK wages have been stagnant for over a decade while the cost of living has increased so much.

There are better paying companies I could move to, and I'm keeping an eye out, but as the article states - there are systemic problems in this country that the people in power are failing to tackle.

Probably the UK central banker has the worst job in the world right now.

I can’t think of any other place where people’s sense of net worth is as tied up with their house price as it is in the UK, while at the same time the increase in house price that people have been conditioned to believe is the norm over the last decades is wholly unsustainable given the stagnant wages. Take a look at house price to wage ratio over the last two decades.

Something has to give eventually either a mighty correction in the housing market that will shock many that were lead to believe it is the only safe investment, or an uprising of those who have no chance of getting on the ladder.

I would love to be proven wrong by a sudden influx of broad-based well-paying jobs, but I just don’t see how and where they will come from.

"poverty cannot be tackled by raising incomes alone, and highlights housing and childcare costs, the additional costs of disability, and energy and travel costs as areas to be addressed"

I'm not sure how to interpret this since clearly raising income does allow people to pay these costs. If the report is saying the government needs to intervene in the housing, energy and childcare markets, then that would be a breath of fresh air.

Had a handful of UK-based employees join our company in a merger; I was shocked at how underpaid experienced professionals were compared to our (U.S.) wages – and I was incensed when our investors balked at a (nominal) raise for them.

I have a hard time separating agendas from reality these days, but I'd love to get someone who is smart on the UK's to understand how that country got there, especially considering my (probably wrong) impression that things like healthcare, a major expense here in the U.S., seem to be taken care of. I understand wages are stagnant, but... why?

I mean, listen to modern UK music for about 10 minutes and you’ll hear this. I like “nothing great about Britain”. “Top Boy” isn’t exactly about people thriving.

This is the danger of living somewhere with low salaries but justifying it by low cost of living and robust government welfare.

Once the rug is pulled and cost of living goes up or the government sucks you’re screwed. If you had a high salary you could just pay your way out of this mess yourself.

I started to fast to cut down on food cost. I think the last time I went to the shops, I had spend £10 on stuff that I was used to paying a little over £3 for. It's crazy times.

It is not going to be better. At least not anytime soon and not without significant mindset shift.

People are not getting more intelligent, but the jobs evolve to require more and more intelligent and versatile people to be productive.

For example, in the past you could spend a lot of time training to do a job, which you then performed for the rest of your life. This lets less intelligent people be productive in jobs they normally would not be able to do (intelligence defined as ability to handle novel problems). This is no longer an option.

Another problem is that companies become better at detecting who is and who is not productive. There is still a lot of possibility of improvement and this should be scary to people, because in my understanding most people in most organisations are unproductive.

Given that we can't stop the progress, I think it is important to start thinking how to deal with masses of people that will never be able to find place in the new market. In the past, they would be used as peasants and slaves to do marginally profitable jobs but this is no longer available except for special cases (like cab or delivery drivers) that are going to be vanishing soon.

For some reason people call this socialism and put a negative stigma on it. I like to think it is a necessary for the future of our civilisation.

There's a lot to be said about this— I want to bring up the conversation around exports. I'm no expert, but I was having a look at these.

The primary export of the UK are services, making almost half (~48%) of their total [1]. I can't help but compare this with France at ~34% [2], and Germany at ~19% [3].

As the rest of the world rises, how defensible is this sector for the UK? Germany exports a lot of industrial machinery, pharmaceutical products and vehicles, which means factories, a complex supply chain, brand recognition, patents, etc. Overall, things that are hard to move or replicate abroad.

- 28% of the UKs exports are Information Communications Technology. It has IMO a weirdly broad definition (including "marketing, manufacturing, assembling, servicing, installing, maintaining and/or repairing systems, software, equipment, machines, devices and apparatus" [4]), but it sounds to me like it's in large part knowledge-based, digital work.

What prevents an industry that doesn't involve machinery, factories, and supply chains from moving to India, for example? Net (exports minus imports), the UK accounted for 24.3% of ICT worldwide in 2003, and India for 3.3%. Now India is 16.3% net and the UK 13% [6].

- 13% of the UKs exports are Insurance and Finance. In 2003 the UK, net, was %40.7 worldwide. now it's 28%, mostly to the gain of the USA [7].

The UK has been running a trade deficit of about ~1.5% of GDP every year since 1998 [5][8], without the USA's capacity to print USD. I'm no expert. I just wonder if the UK is betting too much of its economy on industries where it'll have a hard time remaining as competitive as it currently is.

[1]: https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore?country=81&queryLevel=...

[2]: https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore?country=77&queryLevel=...

[3]: https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore?country=61&queryLevel=...

[4]: https://www.michalsons.com/blog/what-is-ict/2525#:~:text=%E2...

[5]: https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/stack?country=undefine...

[5]: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/tra...

[6]: https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/stack?country=undefine...

[7]: https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/stack?country=undefine...

[8]: Interestingly, France seems to also have a long-standing trade deficit (since ~2006). Germany has had a surplus since ~1993.

And that’s western Europe. Now imagine what’s happening in the poorer EU countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania etc)

If I lived in the UK, I would do everything in my power to leave RN.

Writing is on the wall.

Didn’t think I’d see “social contract collapse” in 2023 but here we are. Anyway, cute the flames, let’s eat the fucking rich already

I always chuckle a bit when I hear the term social contract. It's not legally enforcable, isn't codified, people can't choose to partake in it, and has always been intentionally vague. Almost like a trick to convince the masses that they're owed something by the "leaders."

they voted for Brexit, they get exactly what they voted for.

elections have consequences

The winning formula that seems to work without fail is more individual freedom/capitalism. (Not corporatism or crony capitalism or statism of course)

can the media please give the UK a break please? it's exhausting. go cover the us, france, whatever.

There is a breakdown of education and personal ambition. Once someone has been brought up to be 'feral' with no education and even a disdain for education, it tends to knock down families for generations.

I really don't understand. A drop in prices of housing alone will fix all the problems (as long as banks are backed by the central bank like they are in the US).

Write laws that:

- Prevent non-humans entities (trusts, shell-companies, foundations etc. from buying houses for the next 10 years)

- Ban airbnb

- Increase property taxes on vacant properties.