and if my food costs went up 4x, Theres no amount of cutting I could do that could keep the power and water on, or keep a roof over our head, because not only have I cut all my luxuries out years ago, I’ve cut out a good deal of necessities. Hell, some meals are just meals for eating nutrition, not meals to lvie or thrive with. I’ve cut literally everything and anything I can cut, thats not my own wrists.
I don’t think we’re living in similar tax brackets.
I used to live off £8k just fine. Now on £29k but my increase in spending is just on luxuries I could easily survive without, or goes to savings.
Like I don’t need expensive bags on my bike, I could use 2x Aldi carrier bags and strap a couple of bamboo canes to the panier rack to support them. I used to have a setup close to that and it works pretty well. Isn’t waterproof of course.
I haven’t kept up with the state of things in Britain (I left some years ago), but were I am now (Portugal) it was just recently on the news that credit card debt is the highest it has ever been.
This kind of thing is a signal that people’s finances are tight (read: they have no savings, spending everything they earn), as many people use credit card debt (which, remember, tends to have 20%+ APR interest) for dealing with unexpected large expenses (for example, their fridge stopped working) that they can’t pay for directly from their savings.
From what I remember from the UK, even before Brexit things were getting worse for most people with average real incomes for the lower 90% of the population in economic terms falling at about 1% per year.
From what I’ve been reading it’s the same or even worse in the US.
So, how likely is that the various effects of higher oil prices (not just on food prices but on the prices of pretty much every physical product due to transportation costs as well on the prices of fuel for people who still have ICE cars) will, when a large percentage if not even the majority of people are in a financially tight situation with no significant savings, cascade into all manner of problems, from mortgage defaults to companies going bankrupt (with people losing their jobs) because their revenues went down due to lower sales and their costs went up due to higher fuel prices?
Further, specifically for Britain, never forget that the response of the Government to the 2007 Crash was to support bankers and more broadly asset owners and make most people pay for it via Austerity (something which in turn fed the discontent that gave Leave a victory in the Referendum and thus Brexit).
Absolutelly, people will basically do like you and squeeze little savings here and there, yet when lots of people do that companies’ revenues fall and some will be bankrupt, plus some things (like mortgages and rents) aren’t really flexible (wellm not easilly: sometimes you can downsize but even that has costs) and with the current housing market a lot of people are spending most of their after tax incomes on housing.
and if my food costs went up 4x, Theres no amount of cutting I could do that could keep the power and water on, or keep a roof over our head, because not only have I cut all my luxuries out years ago, I’ve cut out a good deal of necessities. Hell, some meals are just meals for eating nutrition, not meals to lvie or thrive with. I’ve cut literally everything and anything I can cut, thats not my own wrists.
I don’t think we’re living in similar tax brackets.
I used to live off £8k just fine. Now on £29k but my increase in spending is just on luxuries I could easily survive without, or goes to savings.
Like I don’t need expensive bags on my bike, I could use 2x Aldi carrier bags and strap a couple of bamboo canes to the panier rack to support them. I used to have a setup close to that and it works pretty well. Isn’t waterproof of course.
I haven’t kept up with the state of things in Britain (I left some years ago), but were I am now (Portugal) it was just recently on the news that credit card debt is the highest it has ever been.
This kind of thing is a signal that people’s finances are tight (read: they have no savings, spending everything they earn), as many people use credit card debt (which, remember, tends to have 20%+ APR interest) for dealing with unexpected large expenses (for example, their fridge stopped working) that they can’t pay for directly from their savings.
From what I remember from the UK, even before Brexit things were getting worse for most people with average real incomes for the lower 90% of the population in economic terms falling at about 1% per year.
From what I’ve been reading it’s the same or even worse in the US.
So, how likely is that the various effects of higher oil prices (not just on food prices but on the prices of pretty much every physical product due to transportation costs as well on the prices of fuel for people who still have ICE cars) will, when a large percentage if not even the majority of people are in a financially tight situation with no significant savings, cascade into all manner of problems, from mortgage defaults to companies going bankrupt (with people losing their jobs) because their revenues went down due to lower sales and their costs went up due to higher fuel prices?
Further, specifically for Britain, never forget that the response of the Government to the 2007 Crash was to support bankers and more broadly asset owners and make most people pay for it via Austerity (something which in turn fed the discontent that gave Leave a victory in the Referendum and thus Brexit).
Absolutelly, people will basically do like you and squeeze little savings here and there, yet when lots of people do that companies’ revenues fall and some will be bankrupt, plus some things (like mortgages and rents) aren’t really flexible (wellm not easilly: sometimes you can downsize but even that has costs) and with the current housing market a lot of people are spending most of their after tax incomes on housing.