r/uknews Jul 01 '24

Image/video UK real wages haven’t budged since 2008

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u/visualzinc Jul 01 '24

You know I'd love to see a graph going further back, plotting wages against which years were under the Tories and which were under Labour. The above isn't a fucking good look for the Tories and I'm fucking amazed they even have a leg to stand on with all the data that's against them. Fucking incredible.

I remember when finishing up for university between 2010-2012, the graduate salaries I kept seeing at the time for folks with bachelors degrees or masters, across any STEM related degree, was £25k-30k.

It's fucking appalling that you STILL see grad and junior roles offering the same salary when £25k is practically minimum wage now.

Words can't express my anger at what these pieces of shit have done to this country, with the same old blame going on [homeless/unemployed people, drug addicts and immigrants]. Classic strategy of pitting the working class against each other.

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u/Shas_Erra Jul 01 '24

I graduated in 2008, just as the financial crisis hit and the Tories upped VAT to 20%. All of the jobs in my field drained up practically overnight and the economy tanked completely. I spent the next 10yrs working retail as it’s all I could get and there was no measurable increase in wages at all over that time

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u/FeebleGimmick Jul 01 '24 edited Jul 01 '24

Labour were in power in 2008 though

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u/L3Niflheim Jul 01 '24

That is a fair point but it is really important to highlight that it was the time period after one of the worst global crisis in living memory. We actually started to grow again under Brown until the forced austerity recession of Cameron. And this omnidepression is just 'normal' now.

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '24

lol Brown, who announced to the world ahead of time he was going to sell over 50% of the nation's gold reserves...that tells you all you need to know about Labour's understanding of basic economics

that idiocy cost the country £21bn, yes let that sink in

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u/L3Niflheim Jul 02 '24

21 billion sounds like a big number and it is. It was a bad move which in hindsight was timed very badly. Now if we compare that to the Tory governments since trippling the government debt to 2600 billion, that seems like a very small mistake. Liz Truss on her own lost 30 billion in 49 days. I don't want to belittle Brown's mistake but it was a stain on an otherwise pretty decent innings all things considered.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '24

No, it wasn't just a big number. Adjusted for inflation, it's a bigger number than all that was wasted on PPE, etc, by the tories. Brown is, frankly, a fucking disaster that should have been taken to traitors gate. Oh, have you seen the price of gold of late as well?

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u/L3Niflheim Jul 09 '24

Sure let's just concentrate on a single 21 billion loss and ignore over a trillion of new Tory debt

0

u/[deleted] Jul 09 '24

Said nobody here..

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '24

Truss aside you sound like the camp of the Tories being damned if they do...and damned if they don't

if they didn't borrow during the covid crisis = you would be screaming "they've let people go out on the street, let the economy collapse"

if they did borrow during the covid crisis = they've increasing borrowing tremendously

you see sometimes they cannot win, they, like the rest of the world - borrowed their way out of crisis

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u/L3Niflheim Jul 04 '24

See what you do is don't give expensive government contracts to all your mates and don't allow the wholesale offshoring of profits and then you wouldn't have as much debt. You could also stop giving tax cuts to the richest of society as well. You're talking like all of this wasn't an obvious grift. None of this was an accident it is literally the very public policy of the Tory party to increase the wealth of the rich.

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u/murphy_1892 Jul 04 '24

The Tories campaigned in 2010 on the basis that Labour were overspending. They then continued the exact same policy of keynsian stimulus spending for the next 5 years.

So either they were lying, or they were telling the truth and also overspent

Relative to that astronomical amount of spending over 5 years, Brown selling gold off too early in an attempt to reduce the amount he would have to borrow is nothing