2022 the UK’s worst year for real wage growth since 1977, TUC says | Hacker News Reader

2022 the UK’s worst year for real wage growth since 1977, TUC says

theguardian.com

31 pointsrobtherobber11 comments

The UK economy, political class and workforce are all being found out.

Honestly, I blame the education system that feeds all of these things. Trouble is, it needed to be fixed 20 years ago.

Either that or we're in a period of rampant global inflation.

Then why isn't rampant global inflation feeding into UK wage inflation? Why indeed is 'wage inflation' the horror that the broken austrian school consider it to be? Why was multi-decade house price inflation not considered an equivalent evil and managed by policy?

Maybe, not all inflation is bad, but the wrong kinds have been permitted and the current 'wrong' kinds are now being punished. And if working families are going hungry, its very clear the wrong kind of inflation is being suppressed.

What are the core issues you see, and what about the workforce is being found out?

Terrible productivity, slowly failing education, transport and health. Ever increasing cost of ageing and uninsulated crumbling victorian housing stock. Rigid planning and nimbyism, failed long term energy strategy. And most of all, an ageing population who vote Conservative and Brexit every chance they get.

Yep, I don’t disagree with many of those points. I find the discussion on “productivity” interesting, as the solution always seems to be to import labour to create growth at a macro scale, but which does not result in a growth in wages - and therefore which does nothing for productivity. I however, don’t like the connotation that it produces, as if the UK is full of lazy people who need to get back to work. The reality is, work does not pay. Immigrants were eager to work in the UK when it financially benefited them, as any sane person would. The solution is not to now tread down on the UK working person/class, but what _is_ the solution? I don’t see one post-brexit.

Your 20 years feels way off. The bulk of the problems (i.e. a decade plus of terrible governance, Brexit vote, lack of investment, self defeating austerity) stem from the votes of a predominantly older generation (yes hashtag not all old people etc etc).

The problem for the UK is and will remain the older generations - post silent generation - until nature runs its course and the country can undergo much needed reform.

It's neither accurate nor helpful to oppose generations. Your comment is also in rather poor taste.

I could highlight that many of the 'young generation' voted for Jeremy Corbyn's Labour... and IMHO a reason is that they were too young to remember what his policies really meant because they were born after the fall of the USSR.

Labour has been losing, not because of "old gammons" but because there have been unelectable through terrible manifestos.

This will likely change in the next general election. They'll be just enough better and the Tories have burnt themselves at this point.

"Young and stupid, old and mad", perhaps there's a middle ground.

Re. Brexit is not that the old generation ruined it for the young, it's that they did vote when the young did not.

I'm not from the UK but Im old enough to remember Corbyn running a very much "anti-globalist", anti EU/Brussels agenda just packed a bit different than your Brexit campaigners - the substance all the same.

I had written a long reply but I don't think it was particularly constructive. I'd dispute it being inaccurate to talk about a generational divide when one clearly exists. We shouldn't avoid discussion of such a divide to save blushes.

Age of the Labour -> Tory switch trending upwards and partisan divide by age increasing https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/comment/my-generation-b...

Age a key dividing line https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/how-britain-voted-2019-election (including disclaimer from linked resource "it would be a mistake to treat all voters of a similar age, gender, class and so on as a homogenous group.")

Vote by age divide over time https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ea3xOuRXgAAa8Wk?format=jpg&name=...

I was responding particularly to the GPs implied claim that (the on average more highly educated) people educated after around 2000 were somehow the cause of the disaster that is current English politics.

Brexit vote, age strongly correlated with leave vote % https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36616028

I am not denying that people tend to shift towards the right with age or that older people were more likely to vote for Brexit.

But that's neither why Labour is in the opposition nor why Leave won.

I objected to that suggestion and the rather nasty 'generations war' tone.

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