Possibly, but always best to be wary of the tories' (both colours) spin about pensioners getting "£900 more this year"; that figure can only be correct for the relatively small cohort of those reaching pensionable age after 2016 and receiving the full amount of New State Pension. FoI figures show that to be about 1.5m out of a pensioner population of nearly 13m.
Most pensioners are on the lower, old basic state pension including my old Mum who gets £740 to live on every 4 weeks. The % increases might sound OK, but they're on very low base amounts. Don't forget the UK state pays it's retired workers the lowest % of average earnings of all 24 OECD nations.
Can't remember if I've said this elsewhere in this thread, but I think this point is crucial to understanding the impact of the cost of living crisis on people on benefits/people in low-paid employment.
I think politicians and bosses overlook the kind of 'compound interest' type effect that inflation/below inflation benefits/wage rises have had over the past couple of decades, not to mention wages freezes. Wages have stagnated over the past couple of decades for low-paid people. And the likes of bosses and politicians don't really have a clue, because in real-terms they've done well.
For example, politicians. I had a vague idea that MP salaries were around £73k, but then around the time of the election I read they were now £91k, but back in 2004, an MP's basic salary was £57,485.
Salaries of members of the United Kingdom Parliament - Wikipedia
So just looking at a couple of recent years:
If, in 2022, you were earning £84,144 and received a 2.1% payrise, you'd get an extra £2,440 in 2023, so...
In 2023, you'd be earning £86,584,, and if you then got a 5.5% pay rise, you get another £4,762 pounds extra.
So in 2024 you now get £91,346. And in the space of two years, your income has gone up £7,202.
Meanwhile, if you're now on £740 every four weeks, so £9,620 a year, and if you'd had the same increases...
In 2023, you'd have been on £9,090, so a 5.5% increase would have meant an additional £530 in the next year.
In 2022, you'd have been on £8,899, so a 2.1% increase would have meant an additional £191 a year.
So in the space of two years, your income, with same percentage increases, means your income has gone up a grand total of £721 - versus the £7,202 increase in income for a well-paid MP.
So the rich do just get richer and richer, in comparison to poor people. Those in positions of power and authority really don't have a clue how this has impacted on the lives of people at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum.
(And that's before you take into account bosses awarded themselves big bonuses, and how 'benchmarking' at the boss end of the spectrum always ends up with an upward spiral as CEO A compares themself to CEO B, who earns more, so CEO persuades the board to rubber stamp a package increase, then CEO C does likewise, as does CEO D, then CEO A thinks their package is out of whack as compared to CEO D, then the merry-go-round of inflated base pay and bonuses starts all over again. Meanwhile, they're all in a cost-cutting frenzy, laying staff off to increase profits, getting existing staff to do more for the same or less pay, trying to make staff feel like they're lucky to have a shitty low-paying job.)
www.theguardian.com
www.hackneycitizen.co.uk
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