“How do you answer the Reagan question?” asked John Rentoul (yes, I know), Chief Political Commentator for The Independent, in a recent emailed newsletter.

“He asked in the 1980 US presidential election campaign: ‘Are you better off today than you were four years ago?’ The equivalent question at the coming British election would be: ‘Are you better off today than you were 14 years ago?’”

Rentoul reckons he compiled a list of ways in which people think they are better off – but admitted that few of them were to do with Tory government decisions. He suggested sending any good answers to Conservative HQ, where they’ll be needed.

The short answer to the question is simple: unless you’re a billionaire, you are much worse off now than in 2010 – and this is by design.

The Tories came into office saying they would get the national debt down and they tried to do this by changing it from being public debt to private debt – in other words, by transferring the burden onto private citizens, whether we deserved to shoulder it or not.

In addition, though, idiots like David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak went on a spending spree that actually tripled the national debt anyway.

The aim here was to pass huge amounts of wealth to the super-rich, making it possible for them to buy what we call assets (whether businesses, houses or even groceries) at super-inflated costs because that ensures that the rest of us can’t afford these things.

It was all part of the plan. This way, they could say the tax burden on us was too high and we needed to have that money put back in our pockets so we could pay for the basics – meaning the public services we need and love would have to go (including, ultimately, the National Health Service).

This would impoverish most of us even further because the cost of buying services individually, from private suppliers, is always far higher than that of paying for them via taxes; without contributions from rich people or those who don’t need those services at the time, the cost goes through the roof – and don’t forget to add on the profit that greedy owners/shareholders demand!

I mention this because the Mirror has published an article explaining that we are – on average – £10,000 worse-off today than a decade ago. That was 2014, four years into the devastation that the Tories had been wreaking on us all.

But the figures go back all the way to 2010, which is handy for us:

The report by Centre for Cities shows the average person in the city has missed out on a total of £45,240 over the last 14 years, as a result of lower levels of growth. Aberdeen has been hardest hit of the UK’s 63 largest cities and towns included in the analysis, while Burnley was named worse off in England, where the average person was £28,090 worse off since 2010.

In London, gross disposable income is £13,590 lower than if it had grown in line with 1998-2010 trends. Middlesbrough and Sunderland experienced similar average shortfalls of £13,200 and £12,730 per head. People in Cardiff were £13,080 worse off on average.

The report says the amount we pay on housing has also worsened and eaten into people’s disposable incomes. The proportion of children living in relative poverty has risen in almost every city since 2014, with a particular increase in in-work poverty. In 2021 there were six cities, all in the North and the Midlands, where over a third of children are from households in relative poverty – as recently as 2014, there were none. In Birmingham, there was an increase of 60,000 children living in relative poverty over that period.

Only seven places – Aldershot, Bristol, Derby, Northampton, Slough, Telford and York – are now better off, which has been explained by underwhelming growth in the 1998-2010 period.

So the places that are better-off are those that didn’t do well under Labour. That’s not an endorsement of the Tories, of course.

None of the solutions offered for this increased poverty address the main issues, which are the intentional over-pricing of goods and services and the removal of public services.

This is because the rich – who include every single human being in Parliament along with all of their advisers, doners and friends – are absolutely set on cutting taxes so they can fill their own pockets.

In fact, the only plan that makes sense would be to increase taxation of the super-rich, to claw back some of the money that was handed to them on a plate, and to use it to restore public services.

This would take a huge load off of working and working-class people, making it possible for us all to get on with our lives.

With none of the so-called “main” political parties offering this, though, the question must be asked:

What are you going to do about it?

Source: Interactive map shows UK is worse off now than a decade ago – with Brits £10k poorer – Mirror Online

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