this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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UK Politics

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[–] Aux@lemmy.world -5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

There's a good post on Reddit with video proof from 1977 - https://www.reddit.com/r/Britain/comments/15s3zsw/food_prices_back_in_1977/

The basket showed in the video is £26.17 in today's money. It will cost £22.06 today from the same Tesco. There are more examples in the comments. In short: everything is chaper now and people earn more. It's a fact.

[–] UrbonMaximus 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If people spent the same amount of money on housing as they are paying for food, maybe you'd have a point. Even in the link that you've provided, people calculated that housing is about x6.1 median salary today compared to x2.7 in 1977.

[–] Aux@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago

I didn't know you could eat your house... Also overall affordability wasn't that much better back then. Again, plenty of examples there.

[–] BluesF 5 points 1 year ago

Ah yes, as any statistician will tell you - 10 items from one shop is more than enough to determine the impact of inflation over 50 years.

[–] julietOscarEcho@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It absolutely won't cost £22 quid, that's CPI adjusted of course if you read the comment you're referring to. But yes, in real terms (asking honestly do you know what that means? your comment seems pretty ill informed) food is cheaper. So are some other items like consumer electronics. On the other hand housing and utilities (you know the majority of a household's spending) has advanced well ahead of inflation. Hence "cost of living crisis" which maybe you think is imaginary.

Worse, while average earnings have outpaced inflation the bottom end of the distribution has accrued almost none of that benefit. Massive increases in inequality mean that while for the comparatively well off (and the very well off) things are mostly fine for a sizeable chunk of society life has been getting materially harder.