OT: Cost of living

Arguably businesses are in a better position to do something about it. If your cost of production doubles, there's a good economic incentive to reduce those costs - and you may well be able to get a loan on that basis. You are also able to change what you do: if you're doing something energy intensive, maybe you need to shift to a product line that isn't so. If your product takes a lot of energy to make, maybe you should make a different product - or else ask people to pay what it costs (even if fewer people will do so).

Meanwhile for consumers 'staying alive' is the mission statement and there's not a lot of flexibility to diversify into alternative endeavours.

I know the above is oversimplistic and it's not straightforward to change for many reasons, but at the end of the day businesses exist to make money. If you aren't making money you need to change things so that you are.

Theo

You knew (or ought to have known) that mortgage rates were very atypically low at any time these last fourteen or fifteen years. You could not have reasonably supposed that they were going to remain down at *negative* interest rates (after inflation) for ever.

...for everyone, unfortunately.

But I'll bet they're down around what had been "normal" rates by the year's end.

I can't help but think that the government should scrap all these assistanceschemes and concentrate on changing the quasi-legal system under which fuel retail prices can be increased with official sanction even when international market-clearing prices have fallen, and are still falling.

And perhaps scrap the 5% VAT and (certainly) the abominable "Green levies".

Yes, there are an amazing number of businesses doing really simple stuff like ordering in half a container of Chinese s*it and selling it in ones and twos on eBay.

Only Leftycunts expect the world to make their business profitable because its what they want to do. (cf Publicly funded ArtStudents)

In the RealWorld you have to find out what people are prepared to give you money for, that you can actually do.

Or charge more to cover your higher costs.

Corse there is with the biggest cost, heating.

Am 24/02/2023 um 14:39 schrieb R D S:

Not so strange.

Cost of living is always engineered to be higher than your wages, otherwise how would bank make a profit? You are supposed to spend and borrow. Savers are terrorists, at least in the eyes of banks.

I think to answer this, and the same question has happened before of course, who remembers Harold Wilson stopping people from taking money abroad, or the

You will also not that pay rises seem to nowadays be calculated in %, not actual money terms as the Unions did not want to end up with everyone earning the same, but in fact its completely bogus, since the rich actually grow richer this way far faster than the lower wages folk do. I think that the whole system should be changed to give people a living wage by government, and additions to that are topped up by companies, based on the persons talents. The money to pay the living wage would be taken from the companies and ring fenced for what it was meant to be used for. Then everyone could see how efficient the Government really was. Obviously the problem here is that since much is done abroad, this sort of radical change would make companies leave these shores and make stuff elsewhere where there was no such system in place.

So if you have an answer to all of this that works for a country, does not make having more money get more money, and does not scare off companies, I'm sure Government are all ears. As a footnote. Look into the backgrounds of many of the riche and important countries leadership and you seem to find many are ex bankers and the like. Brian

The industrial revolution in the UK was based mainly on the majority of people working long hours for little money.

But the Government have no money of their own so tax the general population to give them back their own money minus the cost of administration.

and additions to that are topped up by companies, based

Ah, the leftist ideal that companies should make no profit which usually means no future investment and no future jobs. Remember how well our Nationalised industries worked in the past :(

Amazing how many people overlook that.

I think many people have forgotten, or perhaps never knew, that the entire public sector is paid for out of the profits of private businesses. Those clamouring for businesses not to make a profit are also clamouring for the elimination of the public sector. Such wealth as is created in the public sector (e.g. education, better health) is all intangible and cannot be used to pay bills, salaries or benefits.

Eh?

When I started work, I didn't have a bank account. I didn't open one until four years later. My wages were paid to me in cash, in a little envelope upon which were written details of National Insurance and Income Tax deductions as well as union and other deductions.

Remember that I didn't have a bank account?

The bank were getting nothing from me.

But...

Even when I opened an account, the bank didn't charge me anything. It has remained so (other than for a couple of personal loans and the very occasional modest overdraft) ever since.

Over th past fourteen years, there is something in that.

Bullshit given the wide variation in wages.

By lending for the more expensive items like houses and cars and business machinery etc.

The banks would certainly like you to do that, but they can't force or even encourage you to do that.

Nope, they need the savers' funds to lend to those that need to borrow.

Brian Gaff snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote

Because the country was bankrupt.

What it has always been.

In spades in the century before that, full depressions too.

Bullshit.

That's bullshit too.

That's bullshit with the readily portable stuff like tea, cotton, wool etc.

The rich don't get paid wages.

No thanks, plenty would choose not to work.

Impossible to measure. That's why footballers, actors and politicians all get stupid wages.

Not even possible.

We already know that its completely hopeless at that.

Which already happens.

Not even possible.

Far more aren't, specially with the likes of Gates, Zuckerberg, Brin etc.

That is just plain wrong.

Wrong.

Thats bullshit too with education.

Is it? From various taxes the Government pays for many public services/NHS etc. The people employed in those services also pay taxes - income, VAT etc. which in turn gets recycled to pay for public services. So, say, for every £100 paid out for public services £30 comes back in taxes (just made up figures as an example). Effectively the Government only has paid £70 for £100 worth of public services but where did this £70 come from in the first place? Various taxation from non-public services aka the private sector.

Admittedly services such as refuse collection, some social services, fire, police etc. are partly or wholly funded by local taxation but again where did householders who work for a Government funded public services get their money to pay these local taxes seeing that the Government doesn't have any money of its own.

Was it?

So why did all those hundreds of thousands of people move from agriculture to industry and from farmworkers' cottages to the burgeoning terraced house suburbs of those places?

Because they liked the smell of coal smoke and lubricating oil?

It always is after two or three years of Labour government.

"There is no money left".

Many a true word...

alan_m snipped-for-privacy@admac.myzen.co.uk> wrote

Yep. FAR more is raised in total taxes than just via income tax on private businesses.

That isnt income tax on private businesses.

That's not the entire public sector.

Where do you get that ratio from ?

Nope.

From the total tax revenue, plus the govt deficit.

But only a small part of profit of private businesses.

And very little of that from PROFIT OF PRIVATE BUSINESSES.

Still not PROFIT OF PRIVATE BUSINESSES.

That's not true when Blair and Brown got the bums rush at the ballot box.

Corse nothing like that ever happened under a Tory govt, eh ?

Fraid not.

You erroneously assume that the life of a farm labourer was a bed of roses. The industrial revolution also coincided with somewhat of a revolution in the use of rural land and methods of farming requiring a smaller workforce. As a result many were kicked out of their cottages.