by Pamar on 3/31/25, 9:21 AM with 80 comments
by reedf1 on 3/31/25, 10:27 AM
If you are a high-earning knowledge worker - you will be taxed to the pips, pay some of the highest OECD childcare costs, pay >= 35% of your paycheck in rent alone. The median house to median earnings ratio in even second cities like Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle are comparable to San Francisco. The older generation living an index linked lifestyle are completely immune to seeing these effects.
I've lived in the US too - there is a huge cultural difference in how house prices are treated. Even home owners bemoan high house prices, because they increase their property taxes. This is a huge cultural blind spot in the UK. And a similar system would be enormously helpful (but not exhaustive) in terms of incentives.
by schnitzelstoat on 3/31/25, 10:00 AM
I think older people might not be aware of how bad it is, as you are quite insulated from it if you are paying back a mortgage from a 10-20 years ago rather than renting at market rates.
If you have a good job you can get by, but with a significantly lower quality of life than a comparable job would have on much of the Continent, let alone in America.
That said, my experience is mostly limited to London and the South-East where I grew up, so perhaps it's better elsewhere but most of the jobs are in London, and anywhere even within commuting distance is ridiculously expensive. Getting a house like my parents or grandparents had would be impossible, and they weren't rich.
The new government has said they want to sort out the NIMBY stuff and get Britain building again, let's hope they do.
by anotherhue on 3/31/25, 10:26 AM
In the seventies social housing programs gave an entire generation a chance, and now that same generation is scalping their own offspring with the very same properties.
by kome on 3/31/25, 10:15 AM
by axegon_ on 3/31/25, 11:02 AM
by lsllc on 3/31/25, 10:13 AM
They all report more or less the same, hundreds of job applications going out, mostly zero, or only 1-2 responses (but for jobs that they have hundreds of candidates for).
Forget buying a house (which is totally unaffordable), even paying their monthly bills is a challenge.
Seems like with AI (for a lot of white collar jobs at least), this isn't going to get better. Governments might have to start thinking about UBI ...
by zabil on 3/31/25, 10:33 AM
A large portion of my salary goes toward rent and utilities. Fortunately, I work in tech, but I often wonder how others even manage.
Workplace conversations revolve around how expensive everything is and sharing tips on saving money. It’s definitely a source of anxiety.
by jfengel on 4/1/25, 9:31 PM
"Work" and "money" are hard problems. Any meaningful solution is going to be difficult to understand, and I think people know it. The economy fluctuates regardless of who is in office, making past experiences murky. A politician is going to have a hard time convincing them that any of their policies will actually work.
It's easier to find a politician who agrees with you on the culture wars, and then assume that their economic policies will also work.
So I take it with a grain of salt when they say that they're picking based on a sound consideration of a politician's economic policy. They can say it, and maybe even believe it, but I bet you'll find that the correlation to culture is even more predictive of their vote.
by tetris11 on 3/31/25, 10:32 AM
A dearth of half-promises from startups without any clear mission other than AI salad in the hopes they can entice lost VC or paranoid big corps to buy them out, in the meantime hollowing out their shell as much as they can with the biggest manic grins you could possibly imagine as they dry out from the inside.
It's a shitshow.
by frawleya on 3/31/25, 10:09 AM
by ghaff on 3/31/25, 10:49 AM