Why Are Your Wages Falling So Fast?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 พ.ค. 2024
- Compared to real assets like property, food and energy, wages in the UK have collapsed in the last 20 years.
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Performed by Gary Stevenson
@garyseconomics
I work a minimum wage job. In April the minimum wage went up. The tax threshold of £12,500 has remained that way for years. If you adjust for inflation the tax threshold should be £18,000 by now. Since my wage has gone up £1p/h, it’s pushed my tax rate up considerably so I’m not really any better off.
I’m not sure what’s being used to calculate inflation nowadays, but in 2020 my weekly shopping bill was around £30-£40 a week. Now it’s sitting around £60 a week.
We’re being financially hollowed out as a society at this level.
Can you get a better paid job? Is there some constraint limiting you to minimum wage. All the best.
@@John-wf5ifThe point is not me being on a minimum wage. The point is, the recent minimum wage rise and tax threshold being at £12,500 means the minimum wage increase hasn’t helped me. Or anyone else on minimum wage. All it’s done is shift money away from ordinary people ultimately decreasing our living standards. The billionaires will be fine though.
@@DanielEdwards- I wholeheartedly agree. Inflation and taxation has hammered people. Central bank money printing and deficit spending has debased the £ immensely.
Official inflation figures are about half of real inflation.
The interesting thing about the latest minimum wage rise is that that itself has shown how wages have stagnated because all of a sudden, key workers, teachers particularly, are seeing how near they are to minimum wage and questioning whether it’s worth the toll of doing what they are doing or seeking easier work on what is now only slightly less money.
Given what has come before I can’t for one minute think that this will force wages generally to rise, what we will most likely see going forward is a squeeze on those earning 30 to 40k as they fall towards minimum wage. Given that the median income pre min wage rise was ~32k, we will end up without three basic classes (lower, middle and upper) and just two (lower and upper) and the lower will be bottom heavy to over 50% of the population.
The productivity/wage correlation decoupled in the 1970s. If some economist tells you "your wages are low because productivity is stagnating," they're just gaslighting.
It coincides with the US leaving the gold standard and money being backed by nothing
@@CryptoKiwi That's simplistic and uninteresting. You do you though.
@@falsificationismsometimes simple is correct. Ending the gold standard meant they could print and devalue money. Wages and house prices decoupled in the 90s in line with mass immigration.
Mass immigration supresses wages and skyrockets housing prices. 1.3 million immigrants to the UK last year, 700k net. We cant build houses fast enough to cope with that insanity to prices go up.
@@CryptoKiwi Imagine calling the US empire "nothing."
@someonenotnoone its a fact. It's only backed by threats of military violence.
"People would be able to take some time out to pursue a creative project". Underrated point. A more equal society would be a more entrepeurial and interesting one.
Oddly it was Thatch who enabled this in the early '80s. You could get a year's grant to start a creative business, the Enterprise Allowance Scheme.
This touches on a point I saw in another TH-cam video (not one of Gary's) about a year ago... We're going to see music become the sole preserve of rich kids. Starting out as a creative and original musician is damn hard, but it's possible if you can sustain yourself with a job that doesn't take up too much time but still pays just enough keep a basic roof over your head and two-minute noodles in the cupboard. Those days are disappearing and will soon be gone.
I was going to make the same point myself in the comments. We'd have a more vibrant, creative society in a more wealth-equal society, to use Gary's wording. It's a great point.
@@Old_Jack_Ketch I am a musician and we're already seeing this.
Not even close to being true
Just finished watching this and TH-cam followed it with an ad for property investment for passive income 🤪
We're going to need a seed change in thinking to achieve your goals Gary. The whole system is skewed to maintain the status quo.
Love your book. When you going to get your own TV show like money expert .
Not to maintain the status quo even; wealth is travelling up the pyramid faster and faster, and we have reached a tipping point where things are deteriorating rapidly for ordinary people. This are very much getting worse rather than staying the same.
Very well put tomato6460, can not agree more.
Indeed because he keeps saying 'passive income' he's piggybacking off all of those grifters if the TH-cam algorithm is picking it up.
Shadow ban check
@@tomato6460I’m 52 this month. Born to working class parents. I became an artist but had to retire due to illness. I’ve never seen anything like this now. I wish I had the power to. Describe to people what the U.K. was like when I was a boy & young man. Once upon a time even the poorest could afford to keep body & soul together. There was public houses everywhere. & people could afford to drink & socialise there. There was social housing. Vast Estates of it. Well maintained and affordable. Average people had hobbies & clubs and went trips and holidays every year. Unions were. Everywhere and everyone knew what they meant, because their fathers told them.
I don’t need to tell anyone how different the U.K. is now to that. But we’re only on a little shelf, just under the water. But still lit by the sun. Our feet can feel the colder waters below but we still see the sun & feel its warmth. But if we look down, oh it goes down a long long way. And there are monsters down there…
The problem with Thatcherism is that you eventually run out of assets to sell to overseas investors so that they can rip off British consumers.
Yep. All that's happened is we sold off assets as a country which made things look better than they were in the economy. Now we own nothing but pay to use it as a country.
the government rips off consumers we all consumers from the business owner
I couldn't agree more. Short term gain and long term pain. She sold the family silver... Sod the next generations
it's like being on a wood ship with a steam powered engine and you chop the ship up to power the engine, you'll go faster for a bit and then you'll have nothing left
She did a lot of good - free markets, low interference from goverment etc - these are powerful market/wealth drivers
Our economy struggling with uncertainties, housing issues, foreclosures, global fluctuations, and pandemic aftermath, causing instability. Rising inflation, sluggish growth, and trade disruptions need urgent attention from all sectors to restore stability and stimulate growth.
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Absolutely spot on as ever - the house price bubble is actually a proxy for a wage price collapse. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to explain this to friends and haven’t really been able to put it so clearly.
Exactly. There are three inputs to production in classical economics: labour, capital and land, and the productive output is divided respectively between wages, interest and rent. If the total productive output stays the same but rent and interest go up, it simply means that wages go down by the same amount.
Mass immigration. Supresses wages and increases house prices due to massive demand increase.
Wow man, I'd never looked at it like that. Thanks for that
Well said. I've also noticed how fewer people now seem to have available income to buy more than the basics. It leads to a 2-tier economy with luxury for the 10% wealthiest who shop at Gucci, a few people in middle and mega-queues at Primark.
Wealthy people don't shop at Gucci, poor people who have come into a bit of money do.
I moved from London to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and here favelas exist because the extremely poor need to live close to the extremely rich. People commute daily from the favelas into the shopping centres with Chanel stores, to serve the rich.
Extreme poverty has been so far from the reality of the average Brit for so long that not only do we think it can never happen to us, we don’t really understand what it even is.
I come from Eastern Europe. I was 10 years old when communism ended in Poland. And I'm not a communist, but getting rid of the class system was one thing that the communists were successful at achieving. When I came to Britain I couldn't understand the word posh - not just the meaning of it, but the whole concept. In my brain there was no such thing at all, and there's no direct translation for this word in Polish. In the town where I lived back then, there was an Asda right next to a Waitrose. I was a freshie in England, I didn't know the supermarkets, I went to Asda, didn't like it too much, so I tried Waitrose and liked it better. Yes it was more expensive, but I had no dependants, no big expenses, and I'm very fussy about food, so I kept shopping at Waitrose. A colleague at work laughed at me once, and said that only me and our boss shopped at Waitrose. I didn't think much about it. A few years later I learnt that supermarkets in the UK belonged to classes. Never heard anything so ridiculous. It's a food store, after all! I heard another colleague at a different workplace telling people that she had been to Waitrose once in her life... Why? What sort of mental barrier made her believe that the store was somehow not for her? Morrisons is just as expensive, and people don't seem to have a problem going there. It's not about the price, it's about the class, that's what I realised.
When you look at the British prime minister, doesn't matter current or previous, and then you look at the Polish prime minister, one difference between them is that Tusk grew up in a block of flats just like most people in Poland. He went to a school that's just like the school I went to. That didn't stop him from becoming one of the most prominent people on the continent. People will never be totally equal, some are more intelligent than others, some are richer than others, or become more successful, some had loving parents, others had traumatic childhood. We're different. But there's a level on which people can and should, and in fact ARE equal. The class system is creating an artificial difference, a hierarchy between people, where there's none.
Totally agree! This is something I noticed very quickly in Brazil, living in São Paulo now. The huge number of people employed purely to serve the upper/middle class in jobs that don't really exist in the UK. Every apartment has doormen, shops, restaurants and even parks have security guards, services to cook, clean and drive you around feel barely more expensive than doing them yourself.
The reason this is all possible is high inequality and low wages for ordinary people.
The discussion about asset prices increasing as governments/banks devalue their currency coupled with the decrease in wages essentially disguising an economic collapse as a booming economy with wages perceived as stagnant is such an important and interesting point. It may be me, but I'm not sure I've seen anyone discussing this phenomenon in this context, excellent stuff Gary :)
Gary, please do not stop what your doing. Your way of delivering info is what universities should be doing. thank you!
They probably are, to an extent - but it would more likely to exist through the social sciences rather than economics?
My university is delivering this information and with even more detail
@@mr12aT your university also made you get into 50k + debt, only to earn less than Bob who just though himself coding and created his own IT business. I won’t listen to any advice they give you mate.
@@adeo767 lol, wrong. You 🐂 💩 🧑🎨
In the early US people could choose to claim land and work it themselves instead of working for others. This put a floor under the wages that people would accept. Now all that land is taken and the only option is to work for someone else at essentially the lowest wage we can bear. In economic terms wages will tend towards the return at the margin of production. Henry George explained about it in his book Progress and Poverty, where he argued that the wealth of land rightfully belongs to all of society and recommended a land value tax to redistribute the land's value without the disruption caused by land nationalisation.
Great stuff Gary. I have worried about increasing house prices for years. We bought our house in 1995 on one income. My husband is an electrician. We raised 6 children and I went back to work once the youngest was 4. We had no spare cash but we managed. In that time until now his wage has gone up by about 30%. The house value has increased 600% maybe more. Our children all work hard and have wages about the national average or above. On a double income their mortgages are mind blowing. How can they ever afford children? They can’t. It’s madness. Thank you for helping us to understand why these things have happened. I hope the general public will wake up to your message and join in the call for a tax on wealth. Where I live the rich are buying up all the property and turning them into holiday homes for themselves leaving local people unable to afford to live where they were born. These properties stand empty most of the year adding nothing to the local economy whilst our children are forced to move away from the area. It’s heartbreaking.
And now you have people asking "why are birth rates dropping?" Like they actually don't know. The world has gone mad
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Great advice for retirement planning! Starting early and taking advantage of employer-sponsored plans can make a huge difference in the long run. And diversifying investments is crucial for managing risk. Thanks for sharing these valuable tips!
Spot on! Planning for retirement is crucial, and these pointers are gold. Diversifying investments is a key strategy plus, having an investment expert by your side can really help navigate the complexities and optimize your financial plan.
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That's truly remarkable.I hope you don't mind pointing me towards her direction.
I don't mind, she's Sophia Elaine. One of the finest portfolio managers in the field.
Absolutely smashing it lad - keep it coming
The pothole problem is due to corruption. The government officers giving out the contracts are being very well looked after.
Gary, we need Q&A sessions 🙏
Best video you have done. Economy needs lots of people buying in shops working in a garage repairing their stuff and getting an education. Being tourists, buying fuel. The top 1% won’t save us. Politicians nor Journalists talk this.
Is this one of the reasons why they are going after our farmers Gary ?
@@donnnaread6947 farmers ? Disappointing bunch as a whole. They believed in Brexit didn’t they.
If most people can’t afford the month, we can’t grow an economy. But FTSE is above 8000 so someone is making money out of 0 hours contracts, minimum wage and seeing children with rickets when their parents work.
@@donnnaread6947 yes in the sense that they own land that they want to buy. my feeling is that the
elite of the UK won't be satisfied, until they own every square inch of the country like in feudal times.
@@davidalderson7761 if brexit had have gone the way that people expected, we may have been better off. But for all of my life we’ve been in the EU and I had zero faith in our government executing any brexit that would benefit us. So I voted remain. It seems like it was a pointless, badly executed mistake. Those who voted leave did not get what they wanted and those who voted remain didn’t either. So who benefits?
@donnnaread6947 if they don't manage to dispossess the farmers then they can't take the profit and pay them minimum wage.
Brilliant explaination of how the ordinary working person is being screwed Gary,love your book, work and ideas mate.Bravo.
Such a amazing teacher. I've watched my way through most of the old videos but I still learn something new every week from Gary!
Love the videos Gary. I have seen first hand of exactly what you are talking about. I grew up in Jersey in the channel islands. From 2020 to 2023 an average 3 bed house went from 630k to over 845k it went from insane to absolutely insane! The island is the perfect example of wealth divide. I grew up with a single mum and brother living in low income states funded flats. The wealth of the island has exploded over the last 10 years and wages have stayed low for the average person. A few of my friends and like myself have left the island because of it I currently now live in the Highlands. When you have mates leaving who earn 100k plus saying its expensive that's when you know something is completely wrong and who can't even afford to buy an average flat while earning 100k.
I have lived in Jersey for 2 months it was abnormal for me .I wonder what would say here a rich person , I could think that taxation doesn't help at all because rich people can escape with their registered assets to Cayman Islands.
You are comparing apples and pears, wealthy people understand money, they understand how to use private limited companies, holding companies, they understand tax codes, good debt and bad debt and how to leverage. Their wealth is in assets which increase in value over time, especially when there has been lots of money printing that causes inflation and dilutes the value of the currency.
@MRW515 no they don't but they can afford to pay a man who does. It's not like, if you are born rich you are born different.
Well having rich parents makes one different in the money category😅@@James-mb3je
No offence but you moving to the highlands after selling your small flat for thousands just repeats the life inequality . Families and young people living in the highlands then can’t compete with you offering more for the house sale. Maybe you then have equity and but more assets making the whole thing start again
Solid video! I’m lucky enough to be in tech as a career as a programmer. Going my numbers my wage has increased as I’ve become more senior, tripling since I started, doubling in last 10 years. I’ve avoided debt apart from home loan, and bought only a small home well within our means. I feel money is tighter now than it was for us 10 years ago, despite the increases in income. This video does a great job of explaining why, thank you from Australia ❤
That's awesome. Thank you.
because of left fuckhead labor ?? did you vote green & teals ?
now middle class need 300k a household it going to get worse more taxes & regulations to come
there more cases more household struggling on 250k under labor 23 months than under liberals
These programming jobs are ridiculous. Sorry but you programmers are the reason why the economy sucks. Before the economy and everything worked without programming now you need endless updates and bs. Everywhere there is some nonsense programme installed. Its like you are blackmailing society. Everything needs to be IT software and nonsense so you can suck the money out of economy for yourself. IT people are emotionally the most selfish humans and the arrogance is surreal. What would you do if there was no electricity? You would be first ones to die because you know nothing about healthy relationships, nothing about spirituality, nothing about nature...you are like the Antichrist. Your life is about living behind computer and laugh at everyone who doesnt give a sh. t about coding.
Yes Gary.Wages have definitely fallen. 🥗🏡. 🚗. It's not only about assets ,it is also health. Both physical and mental. Children used to have cooked school lunches, milk in the morning.
More likely a chocolate bar for breakfast and a dairy lunch able for dinner
Now it’s a major controversy to want free school meals 🙄 about time we fight for better
@@WilliamAhlert how dare children get fed how outrageous
@@chrishart8548 I know right 😮💨
Free lunches are probably not the most important thing, I know every bit helps a tight budget, but paid lunches are probably a thing to stay, hear me out. The problem is with children have to navigate today's marketing-heavy sensationalist society...
...and they learn from everyone around them having to do the same. The premise of valuable is something which costs money, the more the better.
Or it's a "bargain", in which case you services market you the "insane discount you get". Children are exposed to millions of ads and they've seen thousands of Michelin-grade meals served on their phones. Add peer pressure to this culture, my example being the staggering increase in schools of apple products % vs e.g. your android phones.
Nowadays a person is always better off regarding free or cheaper things as inferior, disposable and detestable, because of the hundreds and thousands of "appealing" offers which an individual is presented daily. Marketing industry nowadays is extremely able to sell en-masse hype information even to well-educated adult humans, including complete rip-offs or downright scams presented as opportunities etc.
We live in a culture in which "appearance" is your selling point #1. World economies and even the financial markets themselves, which we deem with utmost seriousness reverence are prone to the same hype waves.
My example being the 200$ rabbit AI black box being just a makeshift android app redirecting your questions to ChatGPT. If you insisted on using their "turbo models", you could just pay a few dollars in OpenAI tokens and these are already quite overpriced to begin with.
It's kind of hard to blame parents for struggling to give children the excellent examples of how to navigate such complex things, so children might be likely to just end up rejecting your "free lunches which their parents did not pay for".
Of course all this is changing and many people just wear a posh mask, in fear of being mocked by their fellows, so as this is disappearing, many things will change as well.
I have just started my own business and trying to raise me and my families equality. You explained this so well.
Good on you for taking control of your own life! Same here. Sick of begging someone else for time off, basics of living and taking abuse while just trying to get on.
He's lost control of his life the moment he had kids.
Building wealth involves developing good habits like regularly putting money away in intervals for solid investments. Financial management is a crucial topic that most tend to shy away from, and ends up haunting them in the near future. Putting our time and effort in activities and investments that will yield a profitable return in the future is what we should be aiming for. Success depends on the actions or steps you take to achieve it. "You're not going to remember those expensive shoes you bought ten years ago, but you will remember every single morning when you look at your bank account that extra 0 in there. I promise, that's going to be way more fun to look at everyday", I pray that anyone who reads this will be successful in life too. 🙏🙏🙏
You're right, you've remind me of what someone once said "The mind is the man, the poor is in it and the rich is it too". This sentence is the secret of most successful investors. I once attended similar and ever since then been waxing strong financially, and i most tell you the truth..investment is the key that can secure your family future.
I agree with you had a senior colleague at work who was doing well but never had an investment. Unfortunately he lost his job and went from living a comfortable life to hardship. There would had been something to fall back on if he had an investment
That's why I always urge everyone to start somewhere now no matter how small, this is literally the time for that, forget material things, don't get tempted,i became more better the moment i realized this.
yeah investment is the key to sustaining your financial longevity but venturing into any legitimate Investment without a proper guidance of an expert can lead to a great loss too
exactly! That's my major concern and what kind of profitable business or investment can someone do with the current rise in economic downturn
Faceless Man on your sweater is SO perfect for your message and your channel! The symbolism!!
I’ve always struggled to understand basic economics, I think it’s kept mysterious on purpose & the way you simplify things is sooooooo helpful. If everyone got what you are describing how could anyone not want to fight for that??? 🙌✊🏻💕
You are right on it being kept complicated. I recommend economics in one lesson as a great book to get you started.
That’s entirely by design. I went to a rough inner city comprehensive, we weren’t taught about the value of money or the basics of investing, we were taught how to make a cake though. Go figure…
@@robe1811 This isn't the answer either
David Graeber's definition of slavery in his newest book "The Dawn of Everything", defines slavery as someone who is unable or "not allowed" to form personal relationships with another... So if one does not own property, unable to bond or form relationships with another, and is the property of another, than one can be considered a slave.
How does owning property have anything to do with that?
@@keithparker1346 If other people own as property the resources you need to survive and you're not free to obtain such resources otherwise, how are you not a slave to those owners?
People really have to understand what wealth really is and it’s assets that give a passive income not wads of cash that just gets spent. I understand this now.
All you need to know, to understand the U.K in a nutshell, is that passive capital growth is taxed at a lower rate than your labour is. Let that sink in….
Well explained. I sincerely hope more people pay attention to this because the prediction for this current trajectory is pretty grim.
"Short term thinking" is that sums up the UK all over. We can't even build a road that weathers correctly, or doesn't partially collapse/pothole within a matter of months, this also goes for things like you say poorly made goods with influx of Chinese made items at "low cost" on platforms like Temu which people mop up. Meanwhile the western world has priced their goods so high there is almost no alternative; while making obscene margins. Then we have the entire Government essentially being ran by the private sector through consultancies, often foreign with that money exiting the UK economy not returning into the cyclical local economies sucking cash out of the UK never to return. We favour large corporate chains in our cities and towns, completely destroying local economic chains again with the money leaving the local economy back to a central point.
I'd love to see a shift back to multiple localised economies that are self sustaining than the absolute drive for centralisation/globalisation of everything. Local shops buying from local shops, selling to local customers has to be ultimately healthy because all of that money circulates in the local economy.
Yes, but consider it as also long term thinking. They are selling you out(in the uk per example) for their own families multigeneration wealth. Which the average British pleb will have to work for them to get a sliver of. If you think about the current relation in long term it reversed it would sound like ' why should you be tolerated, when this will impoverish my grandchildren."
I think you and Paul Johnson of the IFS are the only economists I'll listen to going forwards - you speak great sense and explain complex things simply and clearly so well done, love the channel. What can we do to reverse this - I tell everyone about the channel in order to educate them and make them aware of what's going on but what else can we do now protests have been basically banned and the police are getting more anti-public demonstrations?
The hoodie is another reason for me to like Gary
Great analysis as always. Totally admire what you're doing and how you've found your voice on this. Keep up the good work. I keep telling people about you.
26yo here @£25k
The whole thing is fooked.
25 & about 17k here, I have lost money moving back to the UK 😂
@DanRobards: I guess that you have few or no qualifications / skills? Employers are always will to pay good money for talent.
Every time I watch one of these vids I end up craving a cup of tea! Great product placement, Gary.
I saw a an old rich man who park outside a house in my area. I heard him say to his granddaughter:”when you are older, all of this(houses) will be yours!
Gary you are completely correct!
The biggest issue that I see people have is that they think what they do cannot make a difference. It may not make a difference to them, but if they can teach their kids/family lessons like this and pass down any assets they accumulated, the difference down the generations is staggering
Yes, doesn't take much luck if you are careful. OFC it just takes 1 drunk/gambler/serious illness/injury, to wipe out generational wealth. Now throw private healthcare into the mix and a family passing down wealth becomes increasingly difficult.
@@James-mb3jeprivate healthcare?
@@RichardEnglander you're unfamiliar with the concept?
Hi
@@RichardEnglandersometimes it isn’t a luxury, but the difference between dying early or private treatment. I have a wonderful NHS cardiologist, she recommended me for treatment as I was born with a heart problem, have managed so far, but she now said this was essential. Six months later this consultant who dislikes private medicine, does not do work in the hospitals private wing, advised me I needed to get this treatment and they were not going to provide it. Not a luxury,but essential for me.
Excellent as always Gary, keep them coming.
This is the most comprehensive video on the current economy state that I've seen, and I've seen hundreds of them. Thank you Gary! You explain that in a way anyone can understand and that's priceless.
Gary, i agree with the urgent need to address wealth inequality, so keep up the good work. But the elephant in the room is that employers, in the workplace, suppress wages to boost their profits. Yes, they are investing in new machinery/technology and reducing their workforces, but that means they have to super-exploit their remaining workers to maintain their RATE of profit, as profits come from underpaying workers. Wealth/asset inequality leads to a concentration of economic and political power and this has allowed them to destroy trade unions and slash both wages and the social wage (health, social housing, education, benefits etc). To deal with this we need to strengthen trade unions to fight back to raise wages and reduce profits.
Agreed - “behind the bastards” has a great episode on this, called “Jack Welch is the reason you got laid off”.
The government crooks steal 66% profit from independant & franchise owners in australia
And let's not forget everyone who is paying tax is helping to save employers money in their wage bill. Benefits for working people - something new in my lifetime. Now essential for many people's survival but....shouldn't a working week pay a wage a worker can live on without additional funding? Employers must be so happy with this situation.
Cost of living, inflation, frozen allowances, poor training, down sizing workforce, ineffective unions, redistribution of profits to shareholders in dividends and bonuses to executive bosses.
A great, down to earth presentation. Thank you
I work a low paid job. I own my home outright and am of the older generation. I am living very frugally saving hard as my teenage children will need a hand to start out. I need to help them get through university without too much debt and ensure they have a roof over their head. Gary is really good and i would like to see him on tv more but the people who control tv don't like what he has to say
Gary and Martin Lewis are the same - they're about enriching themselves, not you.
@@Craig121000
We are all about enriching ourselves as much as we can. Gary is secure in his income. That is reasonable.
Gary's economics is accurate. He's explaining what is really going on. My children and grandchildren are less well off than I was. The direction of travel is now backwards into poverty. That is clear.
You seem to be implying that his message is making him money. If this is what you believe you should explain how if you think you can.
You've misunderstood my comment.
No one under the age of 60 watches TV anymore.
@@JD-ny9qj
You are indeed a follower of fashion.
As a young man from an extremely working class background, coupled with skepticism of authority throughout my whole life.
Gary Stevenson’s story and his content resonate with me loud and clear. I’ve only found out who he is recently, but can confidently say I will be contributing to delve into his content more and more into the future.
Top class video. Thanks for the insight 🫡
Enjoying these Insightful economics videos.
One of my favourite vids of yours so far. You draw together the dimensions of wealth inequality covered in your other videos in a very cohesive and understandable argument. Thanks Gary. You are the man!
Thank god for Gary.
It’s highly disturbing, not particularly the thought of moving towards abject poverty, but experiencing so viscerally a significant decrease in living standards compared to your parents.
I was privately educated and from a middle class family. A significant % of my parents disposable income was spent on my education, to set me up to have a life at least as good as theirs, which is just impossible with the cost of housing and the stagnation of wages.
Right now, the economy is insidiously destroying people’s lives and it all boils down to greed and corruption of the wealthy class. Something NEEDS to be done to fix this.
Greed is a massive factor. But the FIAT system is the underlying cause. Buy bitcoin.
Great video Gary thank you for speaking up for the working class , wish you were in government , the politicians could learn a lot from you
Thank you for educating us, much appreciated.
Great content.
So well explained, half way through and learning so much! Thank you Gary.
I remember seeing a study which concluded that the 70’s were the best decade to be working in for the average person. More disposable income.
Wonder how much immigration we had back then.
Tax steals a lot of our pay. Someone on 25k actually pays about 9k tax. My council tax is 2.5 k alone and I only earn about 18k
Ted heaths austerity agenda ultimately led to thatcher, and both caused countless deaths and the uneven playing fields you see today.
@@fanfeck2844i don't think your maths adds up. On 25k you'd be taxed on the 13k over the 12k threshold so you'd pay about 3k tax
@@fanfeck2844 now add import duty 10% , 20%vat ' 55% fuel excsie ' 60% alchoal excise you pay more than 9000 tax
The trouble with hard work is it don't pay, never has, and never will, but millions do just that,
Hit 346k today. Thank you for all the
knowledge and nuggets you had thrown my way over the last months. Started with 14k in
Outstanding!!
Cool Studio Ghibli hoodie
He was spirited away
Gary you are so brilliant I love learning from your videos but I feel so helpless and depressed, what can we do? How can we get them to tax the rich who do we vote for? Where do we protest xx
Another great video and I’ll share it with others. Your subscribers have started to grow even faster in the last week or so! 😃
Great video. Love genuine people who can explain economics in such a way
This is an excellent analysis of what's happening in the UK/US.
Wealth inequality needs to continue.
@@Craig121000pray tell, why is that?
Finland also
@@Craig121000 Alright, you can be in the lowest percentile and let me know how you feel
It's great being wealthy, and being able to beat inflation. 😁😁
You and prof wolf should do a collab, both on point. Thank you for fighting for us
Brilliant 👏👏
Thanks for your great video! And the other one about true wealth too. Since around 2009 I was thinking about similar topics. It feels great to see more people speaking out loud about these things. Subscribed.
Gary, I dont know if I've just absorbed enough of your material, but the balance you describe between high quality goods for everyone and luxury/low quality goods being produced in a failing economy is exactly what i am trying to describe in an article I'm working on.
Reassuring that it sounds like i am on the right track.
I'm stuck in the middle of exactly this in the perfume world. Happy to elaborate if it helps. The cost of something like Chanel or Arianna Grande has rocketed, and there are cheap knock-offs at the low end. I'm the middle handmaking original ones for people like my friends and me, but the middle is just disappearing.
the circular economy we had in better times is not happening anymore. the rich are taking to much from the economy so lower income people have less to spend, so we have high streets full of pound shops.
@@SarahMcCartney4160 thanks for this. Do you have any links to stats that I can look at as this would be helpful for either this or my next article. It would be great to hear about anything else you think is of note on the subject.
Also glad to hear about your home industry and hope this is taking off for you. I think the promise that the internet had of eliminating the bottlenecks (distribution, mass marketing) has yet to be fully realised. Every "artisan" such as yourself setting up in business brings that a step closer and reduces the imbalanced flow of wealth!
@islandsedition I don't yet have stats. I don't run this small business from my home; it's employing 6 people and we have a small studio in West London, and customers worldwide. Happy to talk about trends though. There are links on my channel page at 4160Tuesdays.
Supply and demand, the producers have figured out that you can charge more if you produce less as long as you can keep new producers out of the market.
Oil, housing, healthcare ect is controlled and is the profit centre.
f150 is $10000usd more wholesale in usa , now add 10% import duty , 20% vat ' 55% fuel excise in uk government crooks
Monopolies definitely destroy markets, but that is a different subject. Even without monopolies asset inflation increases inequality.
Well explained thanks.
thank you Gary! putting issues into a larger context is, for me, extremely helpful.
Another way of looking at this is that extreme wealth is actually dependent on poverty; if that makes sense? I don't know how that's sustainable, but it is what it is.
I don't know how rich people live with themselves either.
The academic way of saying it is that wealth and poverty are relative. They're relational concepts. The concept of wealth is completely meaningless without the concept of poverty. Furthermore, on a finite planet with finite resources, any wealth accumulated must by definition be depriving someone else of resources and creating an equal and opposite amount of poverty.
if middle class & upper class pay more taxes they will lose there homes & businesses ! the government a parasite to private sector . Socialism leads to communism us all poor renting off the state
@@IshtarNike what utter nonsense. If a fisherman sells fish and a woodcutter sells wood, neither is in competition, both can prosper and society benefits from both endeavours. Stop looking for excuses for not achieving success
You'd find that more people would require the wood, and not the fish.
Obviously that is not true anymore.. Capitalism is about concentration of wealth. Fewer and fewer owns more and more. That means the fisherman and woodsman will be outmanouvered by larger player. It's just a matter of time.@@Panzerfaustchen
Another brilliant video. Thank you. What a criminal racket it all is.
Gary we’d value your input on this:
Understanding the Pareto Principle (The 80/20 Rule)
Originally, the Pareto Principle referred to the observation that 80% of Italy’s wealth belonged to only 20% of the population.
More generally, the Pareto Principle is the observation (not law) that most things in life are not distributed evenly. It can mean all of the following things:
20% of the input creates 80% of the result
20% of the workers produce 80% of the result
20% of the customers create 80% of the revenue
20% of the bugs cause 80% of the crashes
20% of the features cause 80% of the usage
And on and on…
Go on Gary love what you're doing keep at it
Thanks @garyseconomics - So why is the mainstream media and Economists in general largely blind to this? 🤔🤔 thanks for the great work. Keep it up 👍👍
Mainstream media are owned by the wealthy people, they aren't going to let the cat out of the bag
They're not blind to it, but they won't say it because it's not in their interests to say it. They'll be fired by the rich owners of the newspapers, tv stations, etc.
Hey Gary, love the channel and loved the book.
Scott Galloway recently gave a Ted Talk on how the US is destroying the future of its kids. Goes hand in hand with your message. There's a collab the world needs!
Really good and clear overview and description of the situation.
Amazing video, couldn’t be put any clearer
Cheers for the great channel and great hoodie. Good luck on your mission, we all need wealth inequality to reverse.
What Gary didn't mentioned but is very crucial - immigration. Sure, there often is need for immigration, especially in aging population, but mass immigration just fuels the fire. Vast majority of immigrants into Western Europe, USA, Canada etc are relatively poor compared to the locals (especially middle class). They aren't spenders, they only make by, they send money back home etc. There is a reason why shops, warehouses, factories, farmland work, public services have a lot of immigrant workers - ITS CHEAP. Why increase the salary of a local person, if you can just hire an immigrant and never increase their salary? And this fuels the wealth inequality even more.
"The fact that India and Nigeria are (on average) “poorer countries” does not mean that Indian or Nigerian migrants to the UK who qualify for a skilled work visa are going to be earning a low salary here. The new system doesn’t let in people from poor countries because they’re from poor countries - it lets them in because they have a job offer in a relatively well-paid and/or highly skilled job.
Indeed, even under the old system the average Indian or African migrant earned more than the average Brit or European."
@@mellowmarkable The majority of immigrants in western world end up working low skilled work. UK's factories, farmlands etc. are full of immigrants from all over (not just Asia, Africa, but Europe as well) who generally work for lower wages. I'm from Eastern Europe and I know very well how the recruitment of eastern european workers goes and what their pay is. Immigrants are a cheap workforce for business owners.
Of course he won’t ever touch immigration lol.
That would lower wages, but wages are going up. It is just that spending power is dropping because goods prices and especially asset prices are rising faster than wages. And the effect of cheaper labour would be a lowering of goods prices, because they can be produced for less. But that also isn't happening. I'm sorry but your theory doesn't match the facts.
@@bramvanduijn8086 Ofc, it doesn't mean that wages necessarily drop, they will increase over time. Cheap workforce that often is ready to work for whatever puts a negative pressure on wages and it slows it down. Its literally economics 101 - if you have a worker shortage and people are picky about their jobs, wages has to raise. If there isn't a shortage and there are a lot of foreign newcomers to the market that are willing to work for even less the locals, then wages don't grow.
Asset prices (e.g. property) has risen due to a decade of low interest rates.
As for goods - do you actually believe that companies actually do significant price drops for their goods when energy costs and so on back down again? lmao.
Well said! Thank you for your time👍👍👍👍
Such an excellent video Gary! You’ve explained the wages but also the false feeling that the economy is doing well in a nutshell. Kudos! Thank you for doing this. Not once would you ever see this type of explanation on TV.
Thank you for everything you are doing to help educate us,
we need more people like you in the world, a real life Hero!
100% without this man, I'd be feeling so lost and helpless. The elites really have enslaved us...
we just don't see the chains anymore. Inhumane!
@@howitshouldvebeen1174 I'd say we are worse off than slaves.
At least slaves were promised protection, food and a roof over their head for being a slave,
We pretend the paper has value and we slave our entire lives for it, but the value of money has decreased so much,
no-one is able to pay their bills, no-one is able to keep up with weekly food shops, and the pizza man comes quicker than the police so we have no safety, no protection and everything just keeps getting worse. What kind of world did we glitch into
Sorry, Gary, but if politicians aren't going to change the inequality problem, what kind of solution is there?
Bitcoin is our best bet. All fiat currencies return to their fair value: zero.
@@jbennison5672 Bitcoin doesn't solve anything, since it reacts to market forces it is basically a fiat currency. The value of bitcoin will forever be bouncing up and down like crazy, so the best use of bitcoin is as a random number generator.
The possible solutions are: politics, panic, give up, the poor noticing and joining the class warfare that the rich started against them decades ago, or stop using money entirely so you can insulate yourself from whatever mess the rich are creating.
- Politics is unlikely to work, because government is controlled by rich people, and advised and lobbied by those companies that farm (i.e. protect and feed off of) the rich.
- Panicking is exhausting and you won't keep it up forever.
- Giving up is depressing.
- Class warfare if it gets violent too soon will end in the poor getting exterminated every other generation while things get worse. The lower number of poor people will temporarily slightly increase wages. The rich don't need the poor anymore anyway. Or at least, they think so. On the other hand, if it can slowly ramp up the violence there is a small chance for this to work. Then different people will be in government to be advised and lobbied by those companies that farm the rich.
- I hope that after we stop using money the rich all notice that you can't get richer if nobody is working for you and join the rest of us. Then we can get back to using money again, because money is really useful!
But getting there is a massive undertaking with a lot of seemingly too big stumbling blocks. And maybe they are, I can't see the future.
You need to set up multiple overlapping supporting social networks. You want at the very least a food cooperative, a water cooperative, and a housing cooperative; and that's just for your primary needs.
To have anything resembling a good life you also need luxuries like entertainment and the materials and knowledge needed to make your environment prettier. So you're going to need a library at the very least, and to figure out some way to support artists and artisans, so your food, water, and housing cooperative had better produce a lot of surplus!
Luckily we can use money during the starting up phase, because this would get a lot harder without. This is a gradual process, as more of your needs and wants are supplied by your cooperatives, the less money you will need. At some point you're going to notice that you haven't paid for anything all week. A couple years later you notice you've gone a month without paying for anything. (Outside of helping out with the needed work, of course, the work still needs to be done.) All this assumes that the government won't be used to interfere with your work, so you'd better hope the rich are getting richer because of systemic issues, because if they're paying attention they'll get the government to ban your type of organizing and/or raid your cooperatives on spurious grounds.
Spot on Gary, this is a good one to share as it covers lots of points from previous videos and ties it all together. Love the passion
Thanks Gary
*Wow!!! excellent I really do have a question. For someone with less than $10,000 or above to trade, how would you recommend we enter into trading as a newbie? I am looking at studying some traders and copying their strategy rather than trading myself and losing money emotionally. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions.*
I would recommend to reach out to Mavis. What impresses me most about Mavis is how well she explains basic concept of winning before actually trading for you. And letting you use her trade signals. And she will also teach you how to trade as she trade for you. This goes a long way to ensure winning trades.
Please I'm a beginner where can someone reach Mavis?
She's mostly on what'sapk using the info below
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About 30 years ago we bought our house, interest rates were high but prices were reasonable. Our house price was 2x our gross annual income and it was a battle to pinch pennies to pay all the bills. Now the equivalent income couldn’t afford to buy the same house because it is 4.2x the gross annual income. The math doesn’t match up to the ideals that the middle class grew up with of contented families enjoying living in a comfortable home with enough income to afford to enjoy time with friends and family.
Thanks Gary. That's made it clear for me!
Always interesting, Gary. You put economics into plain relatable language.
Cheers
Thanks for sharing Gary - such a vitally important issue to understand the economy today.
Wages are falling because wealth is being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands year on year. There's less capital circulating within the "real economy".
Perfectly put. Thank you ! 💯
Keep explaining all you know and understand because you make it so clear and obvious, painfully obvious but perfectly clear !!
I'm an immigrant and I'm thinking to leavevthe Uk because the wage is simply becoming a slavery wage. I can't even get a train in this country, life isn't what it was 5 years ago, it's worse and worse.
It’s tempting but the problem is worldwide and in every country. It’s a fundamental problem in countries with extreme wealth inequality and it’s starting to hit the “first world” countries now too. You’re better off staying and fighting for a better tomorrow friend ❤
Go wherever your social network is strongest and where your ability to grow your social network is strongest. Because you're going to have to organise and work together with other people to get enough water, food, and housing without depending on money. And the only way to do that is together. Housing is going to be toughest nut to crack because of exploding asset prices, followed by food (because growing food requires at least some assets i.e. land). But the only chance is to organize in spite of government. Sure, vote, that never hurts. But don't think it absolves you from the responsibility of taking action.
Free trade means corporations can avoid paying local taxes and use cheaper overseas labor to produce goods and services. Tax laws allow the wealthy to avoid taxes through trusts and owning corporations which allow tax write offs and tax avoidance. I know from being brought up poor, learning about investing and working my way to the upper middle class. The financial sector essential produces nothing but reaps huge financial rewards. Most people don’t have a chance to have a secure life.
Thanks for explaining clearly
Your message is spreading Gary!
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the Basic Income model and if you think it could work, Gary. If it did people would have all the stress and worry about their regular living expenses taken away and then be able to make the kind of choices you were talking about, time to look after a young family, taking a break when ill or injured, time out for creative projects. Basically, space to breathe and live. Sounds like an ideal dream, but could it actually work in reality? What do you think?
The tricky part would be getting the money from the rich to redistribute as a Universal Basic Income to the rest. Because as it is now without much tax on the wealthy, it'd just be the average people all becoming averagely poor, which only somewhat helps. It may put some pressure on employers to pay better as you would no longer "have to" work at terrible jobs, in many cases. 🤔
I actually did a quick spreadsheet of this once with some example wages from my own country. It would require raising income taxes on everyone, but almost everyone will have a net increase in spending power except the top few percent, who will lose a small percentage of their net income but won't come even close to being middle class, let alone poor.
We need you as Chancellor of the Exchequer mate. There is already a system that is supposed to rectify this, it's government.
But who do we get. Jeremy Hunt
Super informative content. Thank you for doing this!!
Thanks for your Videos Dieter from Germany
Inflation is a TAX. I think a TAX that reflects how badly the government is running the country. My observation is that people are rubbish at conceptualising indirect taxes - if they taxed wages at an additional 10% people would be on the streets - if you devalue their wages by 10% no one really notices.
Some of us are able to swerve inflation. 😁
👍Govt spends 45% of GDP and taxes a similar amount.
The average joe is paying 45% (roughly) of their income in tax through all the different taxes
@@CCP_Operative when you account for VAT , petrol )70% tax) , NI etc , council tax - I suspect 70%
That inflation would not be a problem if central banks handed out new money to everyone instead of allowing bankers to sort out what happens with it.
@@someonenotnoone you print more money you cause inflation - doesn’t matter where it’s directed