Visiting family in the UK for the first time in about five years. Costs here are _way_ higher than I remember. I bought three hamburgers, three drinks, and two large pops at a burger shop here, the total was 48 GBP (about $60 USD). This was at Five Guys. I couldn't believe it.
I visited my co-worker in the UK, and over some beers, he mentioned he's getting taxed at 48-50% on top of this. Also 20% VAT on regular shopping. I couldn't believe it, so he pulled up his pay stub on his phone and showed me.
Family members out here who are working non-tech regular jobs are telling me they had to cut back on turning on their heating at night during the winter. I grew up in Canada, and lived seven years in Los Angeles, but now live in Asia. I don't know how the UK is going to get back to where it was 10ish years ago.
Five Guys is absolutely atypical and has always been very expensive. A burger and a soft drink in a Wetherspoons (love them or loathe them) will be between £5 and £7 depending on the burger.
> he mentioned he's getting taxed at 48-50% on top of this
Can't believe prices are so high...goes to Five Guys which is at least 3x any other burger chain.
I still can't believe how cheap the UK is. Big Mac meal near me is £6, cheeseburger is £1, 1kg of potatoes was 20p the other week, two-portion microwavable rice 20p, even a nice matured ribeye steak is only £5, it is genuinely incredible.
In particular, the price of stuff that comes from farmers is really too low in the UK (there has been massive competition in food retail, great...prices are extremely low but cost isn't an issue for 99% of the population...if you go into Tesco, it is staggering how limited their range of products is, the reason why is that they have driven prices so low that food production is often quite unprofitable...the recent trade deal with Morocco was also a real game-changer for food prices, UK farmers can't compete).
And the top rate of tax in the UK is 45%. When people say they pay more it is because they are paying for student loans (which aren't really on economic terms, are often forgiven totally, etc...the reason why we have this system is because wealthy students were getting heavy subsidies from free university education). But what people ignore is that you get substantial amounts of welfare and benefits.
For example, the govt recently introduced free childcare for a certain number of hours. Where do you think the taper would be? Probably median income? £28k? Maybe where child benefits stop £50k? Nope, £100k. You can earn £99k/year in the UK, and still receive benefits from the state. That is why taxes are "so high" (they aren't, taxes in the UK are amazingly low given the size of the state...we have wage subsidy programs worth tens of billions every year, housing subsidie worth tens of billions, on and on it goes, everyone on welfare).
Five Guys is not "3x any other burger chain", that is lunacy. I live in London and eat burgers a lot. Chains like GBK ("Gourmet" Burger Kitchen, of course just another mid-market chain, not gourmet in a classical sense), Honest Burger, Byron Burger, Black Bear Burger, Burger & Beyond, Patty & Bun, other imported USA chains like Shake Shack, and others. They're all popular places to go for a burger, and they're as or (typically) more expensive than Five Guys. You can find much more expensive burgers too. And yes you can find cheaper burgers, but not very nice ones (I do not enjoy Big Macs at all, and for that matter I don't like Five Guys either, but I can get something I like for their prices). I would say what I regard as a "decent" burger here has gotten much more expensive.
> the govt recently introduced free childcare for a certain number of hours
I'm guessing you don't have children because they actually promised to do it in a year. Nothing has changed yet. Also the extra funding for free hours works out at like 20p/hour which is way below what is needed for nurseries to break even on free hours.
I think you're massively overstating how good things are. Are taxes aren't high because they're paying for great services; they're high because they're paying for great fuckups. Brexit, corruption, too-good pensions deals, etc.
Are you really in here arguing that UK is not in a cost of living crisis? There's plenty of evidence that they are, and this seems like a needlessly contrarian post.
> For example, the govt recently introduced free childcare for a certain number of hours. Where do you think the taper would be? Probably median income? £28k? Maybe where child benefits stop £50k? Nope, £100k
So do you also think primary education is also welfare?
Five Guys has always been that price, but I agree with your point. As a Brit, the US is pretty crazy too though. I just saw a single broccoli for $7 at a grocery store in Palo Alto.
On my $172k salary I pay $59k in taxes which is roughly $1k more than I'd pay in the UK but in the UK that includes national insurance while in the US I pay health insurance on top. So while taxes sound crazy in the UK it's not actually different to the US - it's all marginal. VAT is only 7.25% in California but then you have to add 15-20% in tips when you're out.
California's tax rate is much higher than the rest of the country. The bay area's brocoli prices are much higher than anywhere except times square. The vast majority of the country is not facing prices like these.
If you're capable of earning $172,000 in salary in the US, you can trivially get an employer that covers essentially all the cost of your health insurance (if that's an important arrangement wherever you're at in life; ie if you want that packaged into your total compensation vs taxes calculation). That's the typical situation for someone with a salary that high in the US. Your scenario is pretending that people earning so much are commonly having to cover the cost of their health insurance, which is not the case.
Which is simultaneously in no way defending the mess that is US healthcare.
>VAT is only 7.25% in California but then you have to add 15-20% in tips when you're out.
I don't know about the rest of the UK because I haven't been but most non-casual places in London charge an automatic 12.5% service charge. It's the same thing.
I mean what you said is right. In general though, one would be earning much less in UK in IT/Tech/SW jobs compared to US. So overall earning remain higher in US.
agreed. US price is bat shit crazy. 'some' things are reasonably affordable in the U.S., like processed food in bulk, grains, dairy, etc. But eating out, rent, service labor, healthcare, are insane.
My unscientific burger comparison I think calls BS on the UK prices. Everywhere is expensive now.
The problem with the UK is Brexit and a country that went from being very supportive to small business and entrepreneurs to a high tax wasteland of averageness. The UK is the deepest into its decline of any western empire.
They are shuffling deck chairs on the titanic. the coronation was the canary for living in the past.
some data:
I looked at two restaurants in central London. Gordan Ramsey (expensive) and honest burgers. Their prices were 13 and 17 GBP for the regular burger. (16 and 21 USD respectively.
Compared to seattle. If I pick Victory Tavern (which is ethan Stowall somewhat equiv to Gordan) thats a $21USD burger. Little woody's is a $7.50 burger but has no sides. add fries for 3.5 and you are at $11.
Seattle is no London. Yet these prices arent miles apart and I would put little woodys as a cheap burger and America is the King of burgers and Beef production so would expect to see cheaper options.
what I dont think brits really understand about US food prices in restaurants though in recent years in places like seattle is there is a 40% tax on the prices on the menu.
sales tax 10%
Living wage tax 10%
20%+ tip expectation
Everyone I talk to from earning $80K a year to $1M a year are not eating out as much as its absurdly expensive.
Just this week. 2 people. dinner at a reasonable seattle restuarant on a tuesday - not high end. 2 mains, shared appetizer and bread and 4 glasses of wine. $300.
> America is the King of burgers and Beef production so would expect to see cheaper options.
There are, in McDonalds, Burger King, In-n-out etc. What you are paying for is labor and the fast food places are optimized to reduce that specific cost. The drive thru, for example, increases demand per hour and thus lets kitchens specialize more, and invest in more machinery. Ray Kroc, a salesman, loved the 8 at a time milkshake mixer he was pitching so much he bought a burger chain to put them to use.
But inflation, and labor cost increases in the low end especially, mean prices are up now versus a decade ago.
Is your brother in Scotland? If not he should get his tax code checked.
Combining income tax and national insurance contributions, the highest marginal tax rate on your salary is 47%, and that is only on everything over £125k (about $150k).
The vast majority of people are in the standard rate band where you pay 20% IT and 12% NI contributions, a total of 32% on what you earn over the tax free allowance £12,500 and under the £50k higher rate threshold, at which point it switches to 40% IT and just 2% NI.
If you earn £50k you will pay 23% total tax on your salary.
If you earn £125k you pay about 38% total tax on your salary.
The very highest marginal rate he should pay is 47%, if he is paying more then someone screwed up.
FWIW, in CA that order at Five Guys would be $55 (https://www.fastfoodmenuprices.com/five-guys-prices/ gives prices at (8.95*3+3.06*3+7.41*2)*1.0725), but I imagine people in CA are richer than people in the UK...
They're post-tax and don't factor major expenses like healthcare, household bills in general are almost double in California, but yeah, the average Californian is probably wealthier.
To be perfectly frank, most people in the UK (and elsewhere really) just need to learn how to cook !
From a UK perspective, being able to cook achieves:
a) The ability to buy raw ingredients in bulk
b) You can cook dishes that last you multiple meals (and NO, this does not mean eating the same thing)
c) You can make soups and stocks from bones (all you need is bones, cheap vegetables, cheap spicing, and water)
d) VAT on raw ingredients is either 0% or 5%
e) Raw ingredients are cheaper than processed food
f) Raw ingredients are A MILLION times cheaper than restaurant prices (depending where you eat, you're typically paying up to 300% mark-up on ingredients because the restaurant needs to cover its costs)
And no it is not time consuming, the more practice you get, the quicker it becomes. And things like soups and stocks you don't even have to watch the pot, you just put it on and forget about it for a few hours.
The issue is that cooking becomes more enjoyable and fast if you have a well-stocked large kitchen which not many can have due to size constraints or budget constraints. Then there's also cleaning which is never enjoyable and takes a big chunk of time. Cooking is definitely efficient at 3 or more people, can have tradeoffs with 2 people and makes little sense if you live alone or with non-cooperating flatmates.
I don't know if you live in the UK or not, but in my experience, almost everyone cooks at home here. It's pretty rare I'll go out and have a sit-down meal any more expensive than McDonalds or a coffee and cake, and I earn _very_ well even for London.
It's gotten to the point that I cook at home because the quality does not match the price anymore. And I'm lazy and work a comfy tech job, so you know it's gotten bad. Paid over $8 today for a slice of cheese pizza (regular size, not jumbo) and a small drink--this is in Cleveland, OH It's ridiculous.
I wonder how this kind of thing will affect low-mid tier sit down chain restaurants (think Red Robin, Chili's, BJ's, etc).
Right now, to take my family to one of these restaurants for dinner would cost on the order of $100. At that price, I may as well just stomach the extra $30-50 and go get a nice meal at one of the local independent restaurants. The food and atmosphere will certainly be better.
My in-laws took us out for dinner last weekend at Red Robin and the bill after tip was about $140. (4 adults, 2 kids). That's seriously obscene for the quality of food at Red Robin, which isn't terrible but certainly not worth spending $140 for.
Visiting the UK from the US in January and I was impressed by how far the dollars went. There was a burger and beer special at Wetherspoon for something like 6-7 pounds and a beer was under around 1-2 pounds. So my experience was different than the parent. Those prices are reasonable in the US under the old exchange rates but cheap now.
That being said, everyone was complaining about the costs so I agree that for people living there, the costs have gone up. My auntie kept her house very cold and taxi drivers complained a lot too about prices and the insurance system.
> he mentioned he's getting taxed at 48-50% on top of this.
The highest income tax bracket is 45%, and you only pay that rate of tax on the money you earn past £125k – you don’t pay that rate on your entire income.
thats incorrect. you lose your tax free allowance, which is a furtger 12,500 tax paid. Plus you need to consider graduate tax and the interest on those 'loans' which currently sits at 4.5%
A quick search tells 5 guys burger prices are about same in US dollar vs UK pound ..e.g $9 here 9 GBP there. So yes, high price, but if anyone last few years still thinks that fast food is cheap and kind of daily thing is a victim of marketing myth.
It doesn't help that how its sneakily promoted by TV shows where beat cops, blue collar workers eating burgers and shake all the time where IT engineer like me would balk at such high prices
I'm not sure you'd be much different in the US. I find, among "fast casual" (i.e. step up from real fast food chains) burger chains, Five Guys is one of the more expensive.
To add to that, prices in countries which were famous for being cheap tourist destinations, like Budapest/Hungary are out of control. Expect to pay 10-14 euros for a pizza, which is very much in line with western europe almost down to the cent. I'd wager earnings-averaged cost of living apart from HCOL areas are actually lower in the US right now, than Europe.
I went to a local chain in my area and wanted to purchase a single cheeseburger, similar to the McDonald’s McDouble. McDonald’s dollar menu items are now up to 3 dollars, and this local chain’s cheapest option was 5.50. I just left the drive through without buying anything.
Even the cheapest fast food isn’t cheaper than cooking at home anymore, which is very new.
Allow me to side step: in these high prices times, people should investigate one-meal-a-day or caloric restriction. Save money and restore your health at the same time. Spend the free time doing family hike, singing in a choir, playing chess or crafting.
Tax blaming is b/s. The problem in the UK is that not enough rich people are being taxed. Meanwhile, shareholders are crapping all over normals (see story today about the water companies dumping waste and then passing on £10bn bill to their customers). The Tory gov insists that privatisation is the key - meanwhile the NHS falls on its ass, schools are crumbling, trains are late and expensive and shit.
Don't get me started on Brexit. There is literally NO redeeming feature to this shit show - again caused by rabid right wing Tory assholes - and once again in the news is the UK car industry saying we're going to lose 800,000 jobs due to Brexit unless the gov pulls its finger out.
So - sorry - but don't bang on about high taxes OR your obviously minted higher rate tax paying mate. It's 12 years of Tory austerity that is REALLY hurting people over here. More taxes on the rich would help mightily.
Oh, and a £162m public bill to bury someone who owned more diamond hats that she knew what to do with. Don't get me started on the royal shitshow either.
Sorry to rant but I'm bloody horrified at the state of our country and it ain't taxes that are the problem.
> Meanwhile, shareholders are crapping all over normals (see story today about the water companies dumping waste and then passing on £10bn bill to their customers
This has been so egrigeous, water companies are literal monopolies that have been braking the law and there are no consequences.
I don't know why you'd think that, UK manufacturing is about the same as France, and quite a bit more than say Norway or Australia. Definitely not an outlier in any case.
Exactly the opposite of what should be happening. Homes should be connected with permanent, reliable, high capacity fiber optic networks.
Mobile connectivity plays an important role but it should be complementary, an add-on to the backbone not a substitute.
Given how the costs of digital technology are generally on a collapsing trend this suggests significant dysfunction. Reducing the computing experience of the entire population to mobile phones is a severe downgrade, a sort of digital precariat.
> Exactly the opposite of what should be happening. Homes should be connected with permanent, reliable, high capacity fiber optic networks.
> Mobile connectivity plays an important role but it should be complementary, an add-on to the backbone not a substitute.
I desire fiber everywhere as much as any other guy, but for some, 4-5G and a cellular phone is enough. They don't even know or perceive the difference between mobile broadband and landline.
FTTC are FTTH are both fibre. I'd rather they _did_ upgrade everything to to FTTC, which they can afford, and let those that can fund FTTH pay for it, than leave it as copper wire all the way to the exchange because someone said "FTTH or nothing!" With full FTTC coverage, you're 90% of the way there for a tiny fraction of the cost of full FTTH coverage.
DSL is not being sold as "fiber". People are being sold FTTC with a description of exactly what is is and what speed they can expect. Weetabix is being sold as fiber?
> Also known as fibre optic broadband, it’s our most widespread broadband. It uses powerful fibre cables to transmit signals to a cabinet on your street, before copper cables connect your home. That’s why you might have heard it called FTTC (fibre to the cabinet).
> The result is strong, reliable, superfast broadband, with average speeds up to 80Mb.
Wireless spectrum is limited and thus should be used for stuff that can't be wired such as mobile phones. Using it for static connections that can use wires is a waste.
If you only ever use your phone then there's no point in paying for broadband. I think a lot of people have been taking a look at their subscriptions and cancelling things which they seldom use. Do you really need a sub for a 500mbit connection when you use you phone? You can always cancel it and switch to a much cheaper slower connection or just use you allowance.
I had a Disney+ sub which I hardly used so I cancelled it along with several others I kept out of sheer inertia.
I'm surprised more people aren't doing the opposite. There are pay as you go phone plans that cost hardly anything. Meanwhile there is free WiFi almost everywhere, including at home. If you have broadband. So pay the cable company for fast internet and pay half that or less for mobile service, then connect your mobile to WiFi 97% of the time so you hardly use any mobile data.
The math gets even more dramatic if you have multiple people living in the same place. Broadband price gets divided by however many people you have there, higher cost of an unlimited phone plan get multiplied by the same number.
I can't remember the last time I used free WiFi and it actually worked as intended. It's always some combination of slow, broken, intermittent, and needs you to agree to terms and conditions too long to read.
It all depends on price details. In Norway one needs to pay about 20 Euro/month for a phone subscription with amount of data that allows, for example, watch YouTube or do video calls occasionally outside WiFi. Yet for 35 Euro/month one can get a mobile subscription with 1 TB of traffic with 10 MBit/s speed. That is enough to watch movies and do many kinds of remote work.
Yet the fiber costs at least 50 Euro/month. So it only makes sense to get broadband if it is shared by 4 people.
Unless you're one of those people who don't need internet to survive, then this is nonsense. Wifi is far from everywhere and I'm not going to manually connect to wifi just to check if my date is running late. Is this the 90s?
I pay €13 a month for my phone plan with Gomo and if I needed to I could get by fine just tethering off of that for everything. I pay for 500Mb fibre broadband (€30 a month) as a luxury and because I wfh.
OTOH the article cited as an example an old guy who go to the library to have internet access. It is very likely he can't even afford a mobile plan with data. I have known a number of people who rely on prepaid and only pay for it when they can. They will send you an email or ask someone to send you an sms so you can call them back.
Exactly, are these people entirely cut off from the internet or do they just use their ridiculously cheap mobile data? Imagine this article 10 years ago talking about UK people ditching their land line and surmising those people are being left behind.
The reality is mobile data can cover your minimal internet requirements in the UK.
I'm on 'mobile broadband' in a city of 1 million in the UK midlands. That's where you pay a monthly fee and get a mains powered router pod that connects itself to the vendor's G4 mobile network. Several companies offer this.
I ditched my landline phone and pay just under £15 a month. Works fine. Easily saturates the wifi card on my old Thinkpad at the same time as her indoors is watching Emmerdale over the same connection.
Happy customer (at the moment, mergers in the pipeline).
It should be illegal to restrict tethering or charging differently for tethering. There are really no technical reasons for a phone to even convey whether it is using the data or sharing data using a hotspot. It is purely for price gouging. I also hate that even unlocked phones don’t have a way to stop the provider from knowing whether tethering is being used or not.
On the other hand, before moving abroad I used to live in a sleepy quaint village a few miles north of Cambridge, and was already able to switch from wired broadband to mobile broadband back in 2017 — just a few percent of UK households is sufficient for "a million".
It isn't necessary for everyone to be able to do this to get headlines, and logic, like this.
Just yesterday I was trying to sign up with Verizon for my new address. Fiber is not available in my building, so they offer "5G Home Internet" for $60-$80/mo, which is crazy expensive for what it is. I asked whether there were ADSL lines available, since these were recently available for as cheap as $15/mo. It seems this is no longer the case. Maybe there's a market here?
EDIT: I am in the US, and I've just realized this is a UK-oriented article. Nevertheless, the point might still stand.
Ask them for a landline phone. They'll either have to run new copper or choose to install fiber. Once they run copper then get a DSL company to run through that. Generally they won't want to run copper and don't want competition so they'll go ahead and run fiber. In either case I believe the law they're constrained by is local ordinances giving them a region based monopoly for traditional landline access in exchange for ensuring everyone has a phone. If you force the issue they'll run SOMETHING to your door. And through that something you'll have more options.
Will they still run copper? Out here on Long Island Verizon will not install new copper and existing cu lines are on 3rd party life support. Work had to replace a copper phone line for the fire alarm with an internet bridge and wireless backup after it went dead and the tech told us "We don't run new copper."
T-Mobile 5G Home Internet is $50/month. They’re using spare 5G capacity because they overbuilt their network. You’ll see congestion during peak usage times, but it’s fine otherwise.
It’s still always interesting to see how vested interests and rent seeking seems to be a big part of US business culture. I wonder if the US would be more or less successful without these uncompetitive business practices.
> vested interests and rent seeking seems to be a big part of US business culture
This is also true about nearly every other country that exists or has existed throughout history. US is notable for being, on average, much more competitive and less corrupt.
(But it's heading in the wrong direction, and that's only on average. Many countries have caught up, and a few others have surpassed it.
I'm surprised they're quoting you $60-80/mo. Verizon's 5G home internet is $50/mo (or $25/mo bundled with one of their premium wireless plans or $40/mo bundled with Visible's $35/mo Visible+ wireless plan).
Why would you want DSL? In my area, Verizon's DSL is 3.1Mbps which really isn't good for much and costs $75/mo ($40 for the DSL and $35 for the required home phone service with it). You also have to pay $3.50/mo for the router or buy it for $100.
Verizon stopped expanding Fiber for the most part which is a shame. AT&T is doubling its fiber deployment in their markets.
Do you have a cable provider that's your broadband provider? Verizon is generally only offering 5G Home Internet in areas where there are other broadband options so it seems curious that you'd be interested in DSL over a cable connection offering 100x the speed.
>$25/mo bundled with one of their premium wireless plans
I mean, this contributes to my point: it's only "cheap" if you buy into their plan and also upgrade your phone. For a variety of reasons, this isn't a good fit for me, and I'm beginning to suspect there might be a small-but-respectable market of others who resemble me.
I tried Verizon 5G for several months. It could be very fast (600Mbps down, maybe 100Mbps up) but it wasn't very reliable. We had some days where it just didn't work (maybe two days out of six months.)
It's $50/mo (IIRC) if you have mobile phone service with them. For me, the worst part was that they want you to mount their 5G device on your window, and I'm in the city and have only a few windows. It's not an ugly device really, but I don't want to glue a big device to my living room window.
Note that if you use Verizon for your cell phone and have a 5G plan, the price halves. Setting up AutoPay lowers it further, down to $25 best case. (I'm currently paying $35 for 5G Home Plus.)
I just got Verizon home internet for 25$ a month, and they offer 200$ back if you stay on the service for 6 months(I am also on their phone service so that may be why the price is cheaper?).
"Too slow" is most always the wrong word. Too much buffer bloat is what causes most of the problems. I survived fine on a 6/.5kbs dsl connection from ATT for years. I had set up a few QOS rules on my router using fq_codel. Night and day difference. I was regularly on voip calls for work while netflix was showing on two different TVs with no issues. It is really depressing that bloat is still an issue.
Do you specifically mean ADSL to exclude ADSL2 and ADSL2+? Through the entire pandemic I had a 20Mbps ADSL2+ line, and we had no problems with two of us remoting into work or one of us remoting in while the other streamed Netflix.
If you're referring specifically to ADSL then yes, however VDSL is passable, typically 100 down/10 up. Fiber would be ideal, but not worth 4-5x the price IMO (currently paying $33/month).
Disagree, it’s not ideal but it’s perfectly usable. I lived in a rural town with 4.5mb/s down and .25mb/s up DSL for a couple years and even 4K Netflix worked perfectly fine.
Recently had to look at the property market again and the rents have increased significantly, in addition to the usual high cost of living increase and inflation/shrinkflation which doesn't show any signs of slowing down.
I very much wonder how they expect "normal" people to survive. It looks like you need to fall quite far into the highest tax brackets just to be able to rent something decent in London, and buying is absolutely out of reach.
Ironically enough, part of what makes those areas desirable is various businesses (such as food service, etc) that rely on low/unskilled labor to function, against which a war of attrition is being waged on. That war is being won and as a result a lot of those businesses have now themselves failed - I've now seen multiple repossession notices on closed restaurants/shopfronts and more and more vacant commercial property, and the high street never really recovered since the pandemic.
As far as I'm concerned I am considering leaving this country once my current lease expires unless business picks up significantly to offset the increased costs (doesn't look likely from what I see). There is no reason to pay the money I am paying here if I can get better food, climate and general quality of life for the same (or even less!) money elsewhere in Europe.
Other than london and a couple of other cities, most of the country was already ranked as most deprived in Europe.
Throw in Brexit, cost of living and most normal people are fucked.
I'm a lecturer (5 yrs) and I'm struggling to pay my bills. We've been out on strike and nothing happened. NHS is struggling. Pay rises are around 0% for most people I know. Food inflation is around 16%. Foodbanks are struggling to feed families.
Companies are making record profits, these are distributed as dividends to shareholders (the rich) who then go on to buy more shares or other assets (e.g. houses)
Where I live most houses are Air B&B for a lot of the year, this has destroyed most villages by the coast. House prices have doubled or more. So a lot of those families have moved into towns, forced to rent rather than buy. Tons of money that used to go into mortgages (investments) is now funnelled to rich people who own the housing stock.
There's a lot of crazy stuff going on. The UK has a shrinking middle class. The middle class used to drive the economy. The rich poor divide is breaking the country.
A better TAX system would fix most of the problems. But our government is not interested.
Of course we do. However, other people have mentioned people might just be using their phones instead.
As an example:
https://www.voxi.co.uk/for-now - £10/month unlimited calls, texts, data for 6months - then you go onto a £10/month plan but without the unlimited data.
Seems like a bigger issue is people not knowing about these tariffs.
I'd like to add, I firmly believe everyone should have government provided "basic" internet that's at least 38Mbps or something similar. I really do hate what the government has done to the UK over the last decade so I'm not on their side or anything.
They're not that bad at all. There's a lot of fud. The whole world is struggling at the moment, you won't find a single country that isn't affected by high interest rates or inflation or some other crisis or issue. We're real doomers in the UK so everything is the end of the world.
I think the rise in food bank usage over the last decade and a half has been quite alarming[0]. You can find supporting statistics elsewhere too[2][3].
I know that plenty of people are doing alright and, in my opinion, this group is vastly over-represented on HN. The food bank usage stats suggest that the living conditions of people across this country have been getting worse for a while now, and while the pandemic and inflation have exacerbated this problem, they did not create it.
It's interesting - I follow various UK and Canadian subreddits, and you get almost the same rhetoric in both.
"This country is much worse than it used to be, I'm going to emigrate soon"
Except in the UK, they're going to emigrate to Canada.
The UK does have some uniquely local problems to deal with, but they're overlayed with a global downturn as well. It's easy to attribute the whole thing to local problems, when in fact a big chunk of it is global. The issues seem to mostly be the same - the massive house price inflation that's sucking the joy out of life for everyone under 40.
The uncompetitiveness of Britain has been obvious for decades. For a highly developed English-speaking country it is very underrepresented in software tech.
No it is not. What I liked about the UK was you could get a software job anywhere. Not just London, but out in the sticks, some small town, there will be a software company, hiring developers, selling stuff to industry, off the VC radars. In addition you have the knowledge hub of Cambridge, e.g. Microsoft Research and a startup scene in London, as well as being a financial centre that employs lots of IT for that. Britain should learn to code? It invented it! Turing. "Glasgow" Haskell Compiler, etc.
If there is a high demand for coders in the UK it suggests that the tech environment is strong. Otherwise what are those coders going to do? I think the issue is more to do with business than technical competence.
Uh, I don't think that's true. The UK is 3rd in tech investment, only behind the US and China. The other non-US English-speaking countries are _way_ behind the UK here.
London alone gets more tech investment than Canada, Australia, and New Zealand combined.
Tbh, as others said, coding is not the problem. Everything else is.
In fact, Britain is kinda the poster-boy for the thesis that "learn to code" is not a universal remedy for economic malaise. A large percentage of the population simply can not, and will not, work with computers at a level worth paying for.
Seems like both the article and many commenters here are overlooking the fact that most people have cheap mobile data plans. For most people's use cases (read: not readers here) that's enough.
Most people living in cities and even most suburban areas have great coverage, so why bother paying for a landline?
While that’s a valid point, the Citizens Advice Bureau survey (which was conducted via an agency called Walnut Unlimited) asked follow up questions about negative consequences because of cancelling broadband and it was somewhat clear people’s quality of life suffered (12% of people said they cut back or cancelled broadband and experienced at least one negative consequence such as finding it harder to manage bills etc).
And 3 million depend on food banks. Things are getting tough for lots of people and that's with extremely high levels of employment. Not sure this will go well if there is a recession that causes the jobless rate to increase.
"By design" seems like a bit much, but the upper class sure didn't let the crisis go to waste.
Spend $800B so the poors can eat? Hand-wringing and pearl clutching up and down the air waves. Just think of the inflation!
Spend $3000B to pump real estate values? Complete silence, relatively speaking.
This experience made it very clear who was in charge and who wasn't. These are US numbers, but I tend to suspect the same story repeated itself all around the world.
Employment metrics make less sense now that poorly-paid gig work is ubiquitous. Just because you "have a job" doesn't mean you'll be able to afford basic necessities.
The gig workers I know do it because they like the money, it's the best money available to them. So I don't know about the "poorly-paid" part, there's so much demand for gig work people complain they can't find enough of it.
Also because just this year broadband companies raised the prices by inflation + several percents. I.e. my monthly bill increased by > 10 quid. And in the same time I'm in a contract (till the end of the year), so I can't even switch.
It's not surprising that people cancel their contracts if they can.
It's amazing that one-sided contracts like this (where you're committed to a term, but they're not committed to a price) don't violate consumer protection laws. What if they chose to double your monthly bill?
They can't. The contract generally says the price rise will be inflation plus a specified percent. Otherwise, eg if they raise call costs, they have to tell you that you can cancel penalty free - which I have done multiple times.
Annoyingly, I just got a new mobile contract as I was leaving BT and moved to EE.
I had agreed to a price of £x per month. After 2 weeks, I hadn't even had my first bill in, I got a letter saying the price was going up because of inflation...
This one annoys me. Yes technically you're out of contract when they raise the price, but usually they only give you 30 days to move which isn't always enough to organise an alternative to avoid loss of service. They imply that the price is assured but it isn't at all and often they jack it up just months after taking out the so-called "contract". And the contract terms have been getting ever longer. The regulator needs to force advertised contract prices to be fixed for term.
In the case of Virgin Media, they said each year it will increase by RPI plus 3.9%. It's ridiculous and I'm not sure what they're trying to accomplish, cynically in thinking they're anticipating a vicious cycle of rising prices, people cancelling, so upping prices on whoever is left.
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I visited my co-worker in the UK, and over some beers, he mentioned he's getting taxed at 48-50% on top of this. Also 20% VAT on regular shopping. I couldn't believe it, so he pulled up his pay stub on his phone and showed me.
Family members out here who are working non-tech regular jobs are telling me they had to cut back on turning on their heating at night during the winter. I grew up in Canada, and lived seven years in Los Angeles, but now live in Asia. I don't know how the UK is going to get back to where it was 10ish years ago.
> he mentioned he's getting taxed at 48-50% on top of this
That's the higher rate for those who earn the most and, again, atypical. https://www.gov.uk/income-tax-rates
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-f...
- Edited to correct incorrect US top rate.
It's not atypical if it's a fifth of workers.
49% kicks in at £55k at combined NI and Income.
(This all ignores the 14% that's hidden on the employer side)
I still can't believe how cheap the UK is. Big Mac meal near me is £6, cheeseburger is £1, 1kg of potatoes was 20p the other week, two-portion microwavable rice 20p, even a nice matured ribeye steak is only £5, it is genuinely incredible.
In particular, the price of stuff that comes from farmers is really too low in the UK (there has been massive competition in food retail, great...prices are extremely low but cost isn't an issue for 99% of the population...if you go into Tesco, it is staggering how limited their range of products is, the reason why is that they have driven prices so low that food production is often quite unprofitable...the recent trade deal with Morocco was also a real game-changer for food prices, UK farmers can't compete).
And the top rate of tax in the UK is 45%. When people say they pay more it is because they are paying for student loans (which aren't really on economic terms, are often forgiven totally, etc...the reason why we have this system is because wealthy students were getting heavy subsidies from free university education). But what people ignore is that you get substantial amounts of welfare and benefits.
For example, the govt recently introduced free childcare for a certain number of hours. Where do you think the taper would be? Probably median income? £28k? Maybe where child benefits stop £50k? Nope, £100k. You can earn £99k/year in the UK, and still receive benefits from the state. That is why taxes are "so high" (they aren't, taxes in the UK are amazingly low given the size of the state...we have wage subsidy programs worth tens of billions every year, housing subsidie worth tens of billions, on and on it goes, everyone on welfare).
I'm guessing you don't have children because they actually promised to do it in a year. Nothing has changed yet. Also the extra funding for free hours works out at like 20p/hour which is way below what is needed for nurseries to break even on free hours.
I think you're massively overstating how good things are. Are taxes aren't high because they're paying for great services; they're high because they're paying for great fuckups. Brexit, corruption, too-good pensions deals, etc.
This is the point where you "claim" it but say you don't want to receive any payments.
https://www.gov.uk/child-benefit-tax-charge
So do you also think primary education is also welfare?
On my $172k salary I pay $59k in taxes which is roughly $1k more than I'd pay in the UK but in the UK that includes national insurance while in the US I pay health insurance on top. So while taxes sound crazy in the UK it's not actually different to the US - it's all marginal. VAT is only 7.25% in California but then you have to add 15-20% in tips when you're out.
Which is simultaneously in no way defending the mess that is US healthcare.
I don't know about the rest of the UK because I haven't been but most non-casual places in London charge an automatic 12.5% service charge. It's the same thing.
(Sales tax, not VAT)
But you need to also add local sales taxes, so your sales tax in Palo Alto is actually 9.125%
some data:
I looked at two restaurants in central London. Gordan Ramsey (expensive) and honest burgers. Their prices were 13 and 17 GBP for the regular burger. (16 and 21 USD respectively.
Compared to seattle. If I pick Victory Tavern (which is ethan Stowall somewhat equiv to Gordan) thats a $21USD burger. Little woody's is a $7.50 burger but has no sides. add fries for 3.5 and you are at $11.
Seattle is no London. Yet these prices arent miles apart and I would put little woodys as a cheap burger and America is the King of burgers and Beef production so would expect to see cheaper options.
sales tax 10% Living wage tax 10% 20%+ tip expectation
Everyone I talk to from earning $80K a year to $1M a year are not eating out as much as its absurdly expensive.
Just this week. 2 people. dinner at a reasonable seattle restuarant on a tuesday - not high end. 2 mains, shared appetizer and bread and 4 glasses of wine. $300.
There are, in McDonalds, Burger King, In-n-out etc. What you are paying for is labor and the fast food places are optimized to reduce that specific cost. The drive thru, for example, increases demand per hour and thus lets kitchens specialize more, and invest in more machinery. Ray Kroc, a salesman, loved the 8 at a time milkshake mixer he was pitching so much he bought a burger chain to put them to use.
But inflation, and labor cost increases in the low end especially, mean prices are up now versus a decade ago.
Or better yet, how much is a burger at Dick's now?
that's quite up-market - you would pay much less at macdonalds.
> he mentioned he's getting taxed at 48-50% on top of this
he must be earning a fair bit then 40 to 45 percent is the norm for good, middle-class salaries.
but you are right, inflation here in the uk is getting quite frightening.
Combining income tax and national insurance contributions, the highest marginal tax rate on your salary is 47%, and that is only on everything over £125k (about $150k).
The vast majority of people are in the standard rate band where you pay 20% IT and 12% NI contributions, a total of 32% on what you earn over the tax free allowance £12,500 and under the £50k higher rate threshold, at which point it switches to 40% IT and just 2% NI.
If you earn £50k you will pay 23% total tax on your salary.
If you earn £125k you pay about 38% total tax on your salary.
The very highest marginal rate he should pay is 47%, if he is paying more then someone screwed up.
In Scotland they have slightly higher rates.
Even if you double the fries because they're not "large" you're still under $25. Five Guys is batshit insane.
They're post-tax and don't factor major expenses like healthcare, household bills in general are almost double in California, but yeah, the average Californian is probably wealthier.
At my local Five Guys in LA, a cheeseburger is $11.79, compared to $9.84 on that site. Ten times out of ten I'd just go to In-N-Out.
There is this little inconvenient thing called the Russian Invasion of Ukraine that is still ongoing since 1 year, 2 months, 3 weeks and 4 days.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/mar/06/soaring-gas-pr...
From a UK perspective, being able to cook achieves:
And no it is not time consuming, the more practice you get, the quicker it becomes. And things like soups and stocks you don't even have to watch the pot, you just put it on and forget about it for a few hours.Right now, to take my family to one of these restaurants for dinner would cost on the order of $100. At that price, I may as well just stomach the extra $30-50 and go get a nice meal at one of the local independent restaurants. The food and atmosphere will certainly be better.
My in-laws took us out for dinner last weekend at Red Robin and the bill after tip was about $140. (4 adults, 2 kids). That's seriously obscene for the quality of food at Red Robin, which isn't terrible but certainly not worth spending $140 for.
This. I paid ~$130 for dinner the other day, and it taste worse than a meal I regularly cook at home. And I suck at cooking
That being said, everyone was complaining about the costs so I agree that for people living there, the costs have gone up. My auntie kept her house very cold and taxi drivers complained a lot too about prices and the insurance system.
The highest income tax bracket is 45%, and you only pay that rate of tax on the money you earn past £125k – you don’t pay that rate on your entire income.
It doesn't help that how its sneakily promoted by TV shows where beat cops, blue collar workers eating burgers and shake all the time where IT engineer like me would balk at such high prices
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You're forgetting about when it's inevitably delayed or cancelled and you're stuck.
Even the cheapest fast food isn’t cheaper than cooking at home anymore, which is very new.
Five Guys is probably the most expensive fast food around here. It's not a surprise.
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Don't get me started on Brexit. There is literally NO redeeming feature to this shit show - again caused by rabid right wing Tory assholes - and once again in the news is the UK car industry saying we're going to lose 800,000 jobs due to Brexit unless the gov pulls its finger out.
So - sorry - but don't bang on about high taxes OR your obviously minted higher rate tax paying mate. It's 12 years of Tory austerity that is REALLY hurting people over here. More taxes on the rich would help mightily.
Oh, and a £162m public bill to bury someone who owned more diamond hats that she knew what to do with. Don't get me started on the royal shitshow either.
Sorry to rant but I'm bloody horrified at the state of our country and it ain't taxes that are the problem.
This has been so egrigeous, water companies are literal monopolies that have been braking the law and there are no consequences.
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Mobile connectivity plays an important role but it should be complementary, an add-on to the backbone not a substitute.
Given how the costs of digital technology are generally on a collapsing trend this suggests significant dysfunction. Reducing the computing experience of the entire population to mobile phones is a severe downgrade, a sort of digital precariat.
UK solved that problem by allowing DSL to be sold as "fiber".
> Mobile connectivity plays an important role but it should be complementary, an add-on to the backbone not a substitute.
I desire fiber everywhere as much as any other guy, but for some, 4-5G and a cellular phone is enough. They don't even know or perceive the difference between mobile broadband and landline.
DSL is not being sold as "fiber". People are being sold FTTC with a description of exactly what is is and what speed they can expect. Weetabix is being sold as fiber?
https://www.bt.com/broadband/fibre/
> Also known as fibre optic broadband, it’s our most widespread broadband. It uses powerful fibre cables to transmit signals to a cabinet on your street, before copper cables connect your home. That’s why you might have heard it called FTTC (fibre to the cabinet).
> The result is strong, reliable, superfast broadband, with average speeds up to 80Mb.
Digging trenches and maintaining lines is not a collapsing trend.
>Reducing the computing experience of the entire population to mobile phones is a severe downgrade
Probably not. Most internet traffic is TikTok, Netflix, adware and people yelling at one another. The useful bits are exceedingly narrow.
Why?
I had a Disney+ sub which I hardly used so I cancelled it along with several others I kept out of sheer inertia.
The math gets even more dramatic if you have multiple people living in the same place. Broadband price gets divided by however many people you have there, higher cost of an unlimited phone plan get multiplied by the same number.
Have you actually tried to use this?
I can't remember the last time I used free WiFi and it actually worked as intended. It's always some combination of slow, broken, intermittent, and needs you to agree to terms and conditions too long to read.
Between line rental and dsl costs you'd struggle to get it that cheap through a landline, even ignoring the fact you still need mobile data.
Yet the fiber costs at least 50 Euro/month. So it only makes sense to get broadband if it is shared by 4 people.
Unless you're one of those people who don't need internet to survive, then this is nonsense. Wifi is far from everywhere and I'm not going to manually connect to wifi just to check if my date is running late. Is this the 90s?
The reality is mobile data can cover your minimal internet requirements in the UK.
I ditched my landline phone and pay just under £15 a month. Works fine. Easily saturates the wifi card on my old Thinkpad at the same time as her indoors is watching Emmerdale over the same connection.
Happy customer (at the moment, mergers in the pipeline).
This also assumes that people don't need to transfer significant quantities of data on a regular basis for whatever reason.
This article is about people living UK, which a much smaller country that has much better mobile coverage.
Um, I live 2km from the Google headquarters and I have zero cell reception in my apartment. That's the state of technology in 2023 for you.
Yes, I need broadband and Wi-Fi to do anything at home.
It isn't necessary for everyone to be able to do this to get headlines, and logic, like this.
EDIT: I am in the US, and I've just realized this is a UK-oriented article. Nevertheless, the point might still stand.
Yeah, that's kind of the issue. That, and latency.
This is also true about nearly every other country that exists or has existed throughout history. US is notable for being, on average, much more competitive and less corrupt.
(But it's heading in the wrong direction, and that's only on average. Many countries have caught up, and a few others have surpassed it.
Why would you want DSL? In my area, Verizon's DSL is 3.1Mbps which really isn't good for much and costs $75/mo ($40 for the DSL and $35 for the required home phone service with it). You also have to pay $3.50/mo for the router or buy it for $100.
Verizon stopped expanding Fiber for the most part which is a shame. AT&T is doubling its fiber deployment in their markets.
Do you have a cable provider that's your broadband provider? Verizon is generally only offering 5G Home Internet in areas where there are other broadband options so it seems curious that you'd be interested in DSL over a cable connection offering 100x the speed.
I mean, this contributes to my point: it's only "cheap" if you buy into their plan and also upgrade your phone. For a variety of reasons, this isn't a good fit for me, and I'm beginning to suspect there might be a small-but-respectable market of others who resemble me.
It's $50/mo (IIRC) if you have mobile phone service with them. For me, the worst part was that they want you to mount their 5G device on your window, and I'm in the city and have only a few windows. It's not an ugly device really, but I don't want to glue a big device to my living room window.
I very much wonder how they expect "normal" people to survive. It looks like you need to fall quite far into the highest tax brackets just to be able to rent something decent in London, and buying is absolutely out of reach.
Ironically enough, part of what makes those areas desirable is various businesses (such as food service, etc) that rely on low/unskilled labor to function, against which a war of attrition is being waged on. That war is being won and as a result a lot of those businesses have now themselves failed - I've now seen multiple repossession notices on closed restaurants/shopfronts and more and more vacant commercial property, and the high street never really recovered since the pandemic.
As far as I'm concerned I am considering leaving this country once my current lease expires unless business picks up significantly to offset the increased costs (doesn't look likely from what I see). There is no reason to pay the money I am paying here if I can get better food, climate and general quality of life for the same (or even less!) money elsewhere in Europe.
Throw in Brexit, cost of living and most normal people are fucked.
I'm a lecturer (5 yrs) and I'm struggling to pay my bills. We've been out on strike and nothing happened. NHS is struggling. Pay rises are around 0% for most people I know. Food inflation is around 16%. Foodbanks are struggling to feed families.
Companies are making record profits, these are distributed as dividends to shareholders (the rich) who then go on to buy more shares or other assets (e.g. houses)
Where I live most houses are Air B&B for a lot of the year, this has destroyed most villages by the coast. House prices have doubled or more. So a lot of those families have moved into towns, forced to rent rather than buy. Tons of money that used to go into mortgages (investments) is now funnelled to rich people who own the housing stock.
There's a lot of crazy stuff going on. The UK has a shrinking middle class. The middle class used to drive the economy. The rich poor divide is breaking the country.
A better TAX system would fix most of the problems. But our government is not interested.
As an example:
https://www.voxi.co.uk/for-now - £10/month unlimited calls, texts, data for 6months - then you go onto a £10/month plan but without the unlimited data.
We also have social tariffs for broadband too:
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/compare-broadband-deals/br...
Seems like a bigger issue is people not knowing about these tariffs.
I'd like to add, I firmly believe everyone should have government provided "basic" internet that's at least 38Mbps or something similar. I really do hate what the government has done to the UK over the last decade so I'm not on their side or anything.
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I know that plenty of people are doing alright and, in my opinion, this group is vastly over-represented on HN. The food bank usage stats suggest that the living conditions of people across this country have been getting worse for a while now, and while the pandemic and inflation have exacerbated this problem, they did not create it.
1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/382695/uk-foodbank-users...
2. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/food-bank-demand-and-th...
3. https://www.trusselltrust.org/news-and-blog/latest-stats/end...
"This country is much worse than it used to be, I'm going to emigrate soon"
Except in the UK, they're going to emigrate to Canada.
The UK does have some uniquely local problems to deal with, but they're overlayed with a global downturn as well. It's easy to attribute the whole thing to local problems, when in fact a big chunk of it is global. The issues seem to mostly be the same - the massive house price inflation that's sucking the joy out of life for everyone under 40.
Britain should unironically learn to code.
We also have good Computer Science courses at universities. Research at these universities is also decent.
And in Silicon Valley you don't have to go too far before you hear a British accent.
We’re here quietly - all working for American / multi-national companies. Just little of the Silicon Valley startup culture here in the UK.
London alone gets more tech investment than Canada, Australia, and New Zealand combined.
In fact, Britain is kinda the poster-boy for the thesis that "learn to code" is not a universal remedy for economic malaise. A large percentage of the population simply can not, and will not, work with computers at a level worth paying for.
Most people living in cities and even most suburban areas have great coverage, so why bother paying for a landline?
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/wales/about-us/about-us1/m...
Almost as if COVID caused a huge redistribution of money from the poor to the wealthy.
Spend $800B so the poors can eat? Hand-wringing and pearl clutching up and down the air waves. Just think of the inflation!
Spend $3000B to pump real estate values? Complete silence, relatively speaking.
This experience made it very clear who was in charge and who wasn't. These are US numbers, but I tend to suspect the same story repeated itself all around the world.
Mind boggling system failure when you can have smartphones for 100bucks but not enough income to pay bills and food regularly.
The gig workers I know do it because they like the money, it's the best money available to them. So I don't know about the "poorly-paid" part, there's so much demand for gig work people complain they can't find enough of it.
Capitalism has succeeded then.
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I had agreed to a price of £x per month. After 2 weeks, I hadn't even had my first bill in, I got a letter saying the price was going up because of inflation...
2 weeks!