Squeezed Middle Watch

[Quartz]

sorry - how can someone with enough education to have at one point been training as a lawyer, write with any kind of lucidity that the average earner used to be able to easily afford school fees.

I don't know if her claim is true, but if it were, could it be because in the 18th and 19th centuries 'school' was rather different? Plus the UK population has exploded, driving down salaries.

 

[spanglechick]

I don't know if her claim is true, but if it were, could it be because in the 18th and 19th centuries 'school' was rather different? Plus the UK population has exploded, driving down salaries.

She's talking about the 1970s and 80s.

 

[butchersapron]

School fees that were once affordable by provincial accountants, solicitors and doctors will now take a £30,000 bite per annum per child out of taxed income and again have become the preserve of the indisputably wealthy rather than indisputably average earner.

What a disgusting, inaccurate and arrogant thing to say. This, this is why a lot of people don't care about the top end of the middle class being 'squeezed' - or positively welcome it.

 

[_angel_]

sorry - how can someone with enough education to have at one point been training as a lawyer, write with any kind of lucidity that the average earner used to be able to easily afford school fees.

Because she is so out of touch, that is her idea of "average". Well done Guardian!

argh sorry it's the Telegraph. What's the difference?

 

[Belushi]

I like the bit where she threatens to lead the poor to the barricades

 

[Belushi]

argh sorry it's the Telegraph. What's the difference?

She is usually a Guardian writer.

 

[campanula]

She is usually a Guardian writer.

of the most vacuous sort.....lots and lots of faux-sentimental family stuff, larded with a smidgeon of social conscience.

 

[weepiper]

What a disgusting, inaccurate and arrogant thing to say. This, this is why a lot of people don't care about the top end of the middle class being 'squeezed' - or positively welcome it.

'Indisputably average'. Salaried GPs earn between £54,319 to £81,969.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I like the bit where she threatens to lead the poor to the barricades

She's an indisputably average member of the revolutionary vanguard.

 

[The39thStep]

Struggling with stamp duty at the moment

 

[treelover]

To see much of the future, 2000AD was ahead of its time...

 

[butchersapron]

O grow up.

 

[treelover]

Lucy Mangan stomping her feet in the Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...y-Mangan-on-the-fall-of-the-middle-class.html

Not surprised she has jumped ship to the Telegraph, just like Hartley Brewer

 

[treelover]

O grow up.

for a dystopian projection of the future it has no equal, doesn't talk about the means of production though, just how the masses will live.

btw, why is this more silly than posting images of a moray eel and john Prescott?

 

[butchersapron]

for a dystopian projection of the future it has no equal, doesn't talk about the means of production though, just how the masses will live.

It's fucking comic with a clown going around doing stuff that's not happening today. Grow up.

 

[Fez909]

sorry - how can someone with enough education to have at one point been training as a lawyer, write with any kind of lucidity that the average earner used to be able to easily afford school fees.

She probably means average among her circles. So the low earners would be middle-management and top teachers, with barristers, doctors and other well-paid professionals as her "average" and the hedge-fund managers and CEOs being at the top end.

It makes sense if you put yourself in her shoes. You just lack empathy and can't appreciate how difficult life has become for her and people like her.

 

[marty21]

Not surprised she has jumped ship to the Telegraph, just like Hartley Brewer

she was in the guardian at the weekend - she appears to be in 2 ships

 

[butchersapron]

she was in the guardian at the weekend - she appears to be in 2 ships

She in many ships. Making many money.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

She probably means average among her circles. So the low earners would be middle-management and top teachers, with barristers, doctors and other well-paid professionals as her "average" and the hedge-fund managers and CEOs being at the top end.

Yes, there's been research showing higher earners routinely overestimate average earnings. You can see it on here too from some posters.

 

[The39thStep]

Data from Savills, analysed by the FT, suggest that large numbers of high earners have been locked out of the London housing market due to rising prices. The research claims that areas such as Hammersmith and Camden are now unattainable to middle-class professional workers and are now the preserve of the “uber middle” and investors. People who could once have afforded Richmond, Wandsworth or Islington, are now buying their homes in Barnet, Lambeth and Haringey.

 

[moon]

This is an interesting article
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22002530

 

[Greebo]

she was in the guardian at the weekend - she appears to be in 2 ships

No man can serve two masters, but apparently Lucy Mangan is willing to do so. There's a name for people who do that on a regular basis...

 

[Quartz]

she was in the guardian at the weekend - she appears to be in 2 ships

I vaguely remember reading that the Telegraph and the Guardian share a lot of resources.

 

[tbtommyb]

Yes, there's been research showing higher earners routinely overestimate average earnings. You can see it on here too from some posters.

Quite a lot of that on show in the run up to the Budget. Times today has its headline 'Tories offer squeezed middle a tax reprieve' yet then goes on to discuss the 40p tax rate, paid by those in the top fifth of earners

 

[Belushi]

More incoherence from Mangan http://www.theguardian.com/lifeands...gan-5-richest-own-more-than-bottom-20-percent

 

[J Ed]

More incoherence from Mangan http://www.theguardian.com/lifeands...gan-5-richest-own-more-than-bottom-20-percent

That article is a bit infantilising about a subject that desperately needs more serious coverage.

 

[Belushi]

It's just more "Waah I'm middle class but Capitalism appears to be mistaking me for a prole!"

 

[Belushi]

Mangan again! Furious with her stupid parents for not owning a million pound house http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/may/03/missed-out-on-housing-boom-lucy-mangan

 

[butchersapron]

Mangan again! Furious with her stupid parents for not owning a million pound house http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/may/03/missed-out-on-housing-boom-lucy-mangan

Toynbee was moaning about inheritance tax yesterday as well - masking it with concern for inequality.

 

[friendofdorothy]

Catford is too good for her