We have been caught in a ‘wicked perfect storm’ for a few years now. Labour cancelled oil and gas exploration, then hit private landlords hard; resulting in a dwindling supply of rental houses and skyrocketing rents, made private housing less and less affordable… and that was before the pandemic hit. During the pandemic, they printed billions of dollars to splash around at will, further increasing asset values, particularly housing. Supply chain issues and cheap money have resulted in inflation at rates higher than we have seen in the last 30 years.
You all know this. Most of us can all make adjustments to counter inflation. Buy a couple less bottles of wine a week, leave the car in the garage at the weekend and cut out subscriptions you are not benefiting from like unused gym memberships and SKY TV. But my biggest concern is: what happens to those who really are at the bottom of the heap? Those who have little or no disposable income after rent (or an increasing mortgage) has been paid, who are facing power hikes, increasing fuel costs and spiralling food prices? What do you do when you really have nothing that you can cut out to save money?
Martin Lewis is worried. His entire career, since he became the self-proclaimed Money Saving Expert in 2003, founding the consumer website of the same name, has been framed around one simple, golden rule of financial happiness: get expenditure below income.
Today, he says, rampant inflation affecting food and heating is far outstripping the ability of many people to pay. Expenditure is shooting uncontrollably past income. “For people towards the bottom end, there’s nothing to cut back on. It is not an exaggeration to say that there are people we have to prevent freezing or starving.”
Daily Telegraph UK
Yes, this is a UK article but we all know that things are no better here. When a money-saving expert has a campaign to ‘heat the human’ by using electric blankets in a chair to save money on spiralling energy bills rather than trying to heat the house, you know things are bad. And as we go into winter, it will get very bad here too.
Successive Labour governments make more and more people dependent on benefits. The party that was once the party of the working man is now more interested in keeping as many people dependent on the state as possible. But that approach traps people in a cycle of poverty and welfare dependency that many never escape. Labour is not interested in getting people off welfare and into work, even at a time when employers need more workers. They prefer them to rot on welfare so that when the election comes around, they are terrified of losing their benefits and will always vote… Labour.
What a dreadful, dreadful way to run a country.
National governments come along and try to stop the decline; they need at least a generation to really make a difference but usually get no more than nine years. Then it is back to more welfare dependency, more handouts… and more ruined lives.
But suddenly, economic conditions for those on benefits and low incomes are the worst they have ever been. Of course, if you are the Labour party, it is just fine to pretend that beneficiaries are perfectly okay.
Apparently, this was a real email… from someone who doesn’t know if they pay rent or have a mortgage, to Maria Sherwood.
Whatever.
The OCR increased by 50 percentage points this week. Either your mortgage, or your landlord’s mortgage, depending on which you pay, will take care of that extra $20 per week and, when you add in increased fuel costs, power hikes and ever-increasing food prices, that $20 has gone nowhere. You are still worse off… much worse off.
And that is the problem. If you cannot get by, particularly if you work for a living, you are likely to feel pretty angry right now. And that anger ends up showing itself somewhere. Think of France and the storming of the Bastille. Think of the failed crops in Syria. When people cannot afford to feed their families, they get desperate. And anarchy is the next stage.
And aren’t we seeing anarchy now? Dairies are being robbed on a regular basis. Guess what gets stolen most? Cigarettes. Because they are so expensive. Not everyone gives up smoking. Some just go and rob a dairy. After all, chances are, with a government hellbent on reducing the prison population, they will get away with it… and they do. But now we are seeing luxury stores being ram raided. Yes, it is copycat crime, from the BLM riots in 2020 over the George Floyd murder, but never forget, there is a lot of hopelessness in America. And a Louis Vuitton bag is worth a bit, even on the black market. It might feed the kids, or feed the drug habit for quite a while.
By the way, inflation in the USA is even higher than ours. If America thought it had seen enough rioting in the last few years, they probably ain’t seen nothing yet.
The answer, of course, is to get as many people into work as possible, but that won’t happen with this Labour Government. They even deliberately understate the unemployment numbers by using a very narrow definition; you are only classed as ‘unemployed’ if you have been ‘actively’ looking for work in the last 4 weeks. Take a week off for family or other reasons, and you are no longer classed as ‘unemployed’. This allows them to claim that the unemployment rate is the lowest it has ever been, while the number of people on welfare skyrockets, including those who are simply ‘unemployed’ but classified by another name.
These people have my sympathy. They have been manipulated into the welfare trap as part of a political agenda. This should never be allowed to happen but that is socialist governments for you. This is the worst socialist government we have ever seen… and personally, I cannot wait to see the back of them.