Why living standards for the working class will continue to fall post recession

Millions of people on low-to-middle incomes face years of declining living standards and are seeing their hopes of home ownership disappear, a major report will conclude this week.

The study by the independent thinktank the Resolution Foundation questions whether the new phenomenon of falling living standards and lower aspirations will be reversed, even when the UK economy returns to robust health.

The report, entitled Growth Without Gain?, will suggest that those in the "squeezed middle" are losing out in the post-boom era, as the highest earners take more and more from the proceeds of limited growth and so-called "middle-skilled" jobs are replaced by advancing technology.

As a result, the current generation of hard-working individuals is being left dependent on lower-paid jobs in retail, hospitality and care and can no longer expect, as their parents did, to see their living standards rise as output expands.

Writing in the Observer, the thinktank's chief executive, Gavin Kelly, an economist and former No 10 deputy chief of staff, says the assumption that growth will trigger a return to an era of abundant skilled jobs and home ownership for all is at best "contestable" and at worst "risible".

Kelly says politicians have yet to grasp the dangers of the phenomenon, let alone how to address it in the interest of 11 million low-to-middle earners who make up a crucial sector of the electorate. Echoing remarks by the business secretary, Vince Cable, who warned of a severe squeeze in living standards, Kelly says: "As yet there is no emerging political response, nor even a shared sense of which elements of this challenge are reversible and which need to be accommodated. Our political class haven't been here before: none of us have."




This is exactly why we must be concerned by the choices being taken by our capitalist polititians today. Inflicting pain and hurt on the working class will treat them into the ground further resulting in many falling into severe povety.

But as we eventually climb out of this economic crisis as no doubt we will at a huge expense to the working class our living standards will take years if not decades to recover to anything like what they wre pre banking crash.

What is even more concerning is that no one has any idea how long this will last and as always the working class will see its living standards rise the last out of all of us sadly.

They are always the class that gets burdened with bailing out the capitalists and the wealth takers.

So we must be well aware of what is going on now and wise up to the capitalists thinking. As the pressure grows on the working class to pay for the capitalists mistakes the calls will grow for a change in the system no doubt. This is when i am hoping people will start to re think about socialist ideas and the alternative to what we have. To know that there is anotehr way and we do have a choice will be key to the working class finding a way out of this constant cycle of bailing out its masters.