The UK Seems Stuck

Looking at the UK economy right now, it feels like someone hit "pause" years ago and just can't find the remote. Wages aren’t going up, job quality isn’t improving, and younger folks are actually worse off than their parents were. Since 2010, the average family not in retirement lost about £2,200 a year, while retirees seem to be just fine. What gives? Productivity has stalled: The UK used to get better at producing over time, but that’s hit a wall. Since 2019, productivity has only increased by 1.1%. Stuck in old patterns: If you’re a homeowner, you’re doing okay. But if you want to build or move, good luck. There’s a shortage of 4 million homes in the UK. House prices have shot up way faster than wages, making it super tough for young people to own anything. Brexit added extra challenges: Exiting the EU took a hit of about 4% out of the UK’s economic capability. The new trade deals aren’t even close to making up for that loss. The government is in debt: Debt has hit 94% of GDP, and with high interest rates, investors aren’t trusting the UK like they used to. Rules are a growth killer: The tax system is so complicated that starting a business or relocating for a better job is a hassle. Those with inherited wealth tend to pay less tax than working people. Trust in politicians is really low, only 14% have faith in them. Businesses are hesitant to invest more. A lot of young people feel like the game is rigged against them. And this isn’t just a problem in the UK. Any country that prioritizes the wealthy and keeps things stagnant while making it tough for the younger generation to create a future faces similar issues. If we want genuine growth, we need to simplify building and moving.

If home ownership is an issue then the UK government has lots of things it could try to improve this. For instance the government is the biggest land owner. Why not utilize some of that land to build community housing? This would surely get the rent prices way down. In many cities where factories have been closing its no longer justified to have high rent, yet owners don't care and simply seek to rent to the highest bidder. Of course this just widens the divide between low income earners which just keep becoming bugger and bigger part of the pie with inflation. The thing with government projects like public housing is that they have the potential to be very efficient. I.e. built at low cost and having lower upkeep costs due to profit not being part of the equation. It would of course mean having to employ more people in the public sector. And with the way states are structured these days, offering low taxes to corporations and large conglomerates, it's not seen as a viable alternative. It seems like the UK is suffering from its own invention, neoliberalism. That's not to say that more public involvement would save the economy. The state being more efficient at offering solutions for problems like housing actually LOWERS the GDP. So increasing home ownership woulda actually go against some measures we use to calculate the success of an economy. That's because the market doesn't care about our humanity that much. Such contradictions will always be present unless there's radical changes in how a state functions from the ground up.

The UK is victim of the woke mind virus. The common man/woman for that matter a 2nd class citizen. It happens all over the planet where governments only get an idea about the public when entering X, formerly known as Twitter.

UK has gigantic debt to service and could be in far worse condition if that got out of hand.   The smart thing would be to reduce that debt and increase the security of the nation and the worth of its currency, raising the value of wages for all workers and so on.      Instead UK like many other countries increases its debt and stagnates from the constant reliance on centralized governance that dominates an economy.   It could develop far worse, population is not falling so there is some growth occurring but its swimming upstream against the tide of bs pouring forth from endless politics.

4.4 million social housing units seem too few to you? Lol. False. It is widely known how efficiently the public sector works. LMAO. Upside down. The UK has dug its own grave since it has moved further and further away from the free market. The icing on the cake is that fucking communist of a president which they have now.

Yes indeed, if there's a housing issue it's never a bad idea to contribute more to people's housing needs. I can't understand how some see this as something to criticize. Obviously leaving housing to the market has failed to fulfill most people's need miserably. If the government can reduce or eliminate reliance on market factors for people to simply have somewhere to stay it's definitely better. We as humans can't function without a house so it's pretty fundamental of a need to fulfill. We shouldn't care if the GDP takes a hit from it. A housing market existing to such extent is more hurting the economy other than anything else. This month could be spent on goods and services that move the productive economy more.

False. No matter how much you repeat the lie you are not going to turn it into truth. Just look at what is happening in the USA. California follows the policies you like while Texas follows free market policies. People migrate from California to Texas and despite the increase in population not only are house prices not going up there but they are going down. Meanwhile, in California, they continue to rise.

California, the entirety of the USA and pretty much any country you can come up with these days is a free market economy. The downsides you're noticing are very real and there's no denying that when housing is left to the "free market" capitalism and its profit incentives that stand above human needs fucking ruin it. By giving a family a house to own you assist them in withdrawing from the so called housing market as they'll no longer rely on having to pay rent to get by. Countries that implement housing assistance that simply pays people rent end up spending more on the long term and also just make rent worse because they simply also help the market grow along with very few families.

False. In UK the Government spending accounts for 45% of GDP that, and the innumerable amount of regulations and taxes is far from being a free market economy. The fact that you have some freedom to set up a business is far from being a free market as such. Upside down. It is these incentives that have made it possible for 8 billion people to live on earth today with living standards that were unimaginable just a century ago. State control policies have caused the most hunger, death and destruction in the history of mankind.

Oh surely because the UK has some government spending it can't be a capitalist economy right? I'm sure they also have a worker's party ruling the country but it's just hidden under the house of lords, the royal palace, all the bourgeois parties that keep running for elections. Yeah yeah, if must be a huge fucking conspiracy. Now it all makes sense. SHADOW SOCIALISM. Even after the dissolution of the USSR, the UK remains the last bastion of socialism in the entire world. It's just that nobody has realizedyet. Shhhh

Almost half of the GDP is not just "some" government spending, and also in the reply you have failed to mention the amount of regulations and taxes. Yes, many of us know that Starmer is a fucking socialist no matter how much you want to deny it. He has made the worst UK budget in decades, and is driving out the wealth creators to create a nation of state dependents which is every socialist's dream.

A huge chunk of the GDP is going into administration and pensioner payments number 10 and parliament.   https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cdp-2025-0035/ The feeling stuck part is when you have a lot of mates who complaining is their kind of sports. You don't see them and work active on your and your family's benefit and you feel better. Forbid all negativity.

What worries me most is debt + low growth. A country can carry high debt or low growth, but both together is dangerous. If investors lose confidence further, servicing that debt gets painful fast. That’s when governments start squeezing workers harder through taxes and stealth inflation, which only deepens the stagnation loop.

The point here is that the overall economic situation is much worse than it was under Liz Truss, including the following: Labour 'lose control' as gilt yields rise above worst of Liz Truss era But there are still those who see the UK as a kind of capitalist conspiracy and not the opposite. You can find examples of them in this very thread.  The UK is a reflection of what the US would be today if Kamala had won, a country on its way to becoming a third world country. Importing a lot of people from those countries, giving them benefits from the outset, stifling growth with regulations and taxes, and driving out talented, wealth-creating natives in order to have a country of captive voters who put up with the totalitarian control measures that are the wet dream of socialist politicians.

As someone living here, the housing point hits hardest. Wages going up a bit doesn’t matter when rent and house prices run away faster. Even people with “good jobs” feel stuck. It creates this sense of running in place. That frustration is probably why so many younger people feel disengaged from politics and the system.

If people in the UK that many of us thought are having it the easy way are talking like this, what is the hope for people that are living in developing countries that never finish developing and there's no hope of that development being completed. If the UK that's regarded as developed country and developed economy is crying out loud this way, we are forever fucked in our country. Maybe the UK people are starting to feel what people in Africa and other Asian countries has been facing for as long as humanity can remember. If the young people of today want to make something for themselves, they have to make a statement and call for a total reset of the system. If not wealth will only be circulating in the hands of the privileged few that has captured the system many years ago. But if they are waiting for things to change on their own, nothing will, it will only get worse.

This sums up the frustration really well, and a lot of people in the UK feel this even if they don’t phrase it so clearly. The big issue isn’t just low growth, it’s who benefits when growth does happen. When productivity stalls, housing is locked behind regulation, and debt rises, the burden quietly shifts to younger and working people. The housing point is key. Protecting existing owners while blocking new supply creates artificial scarcity, pushes prices up, and transfers wealth upward without creating anything new. That alone explains why working harder doesn’t translate into getting ahead anymore. Brexit didn’t create all these problems, but it clearly made an already fragile system weaker. Combine that with high debt, complex taxes, and policy uncertainty, and you get exactly what you described: businesses hesitate, people lose trust, and ambition drains away. You’re right that this isn’t only a UK problem. Any country that prioritizes preserving old privilege over enabling mobility eventually hits this wall. Growth doesn’t come from defending what already exists, it comes from allowing change — building more, lowering barriers, and letting effort actually pay off again. That’s the real fork in the road.

That is very widespread, also due to exaggerated social media consume. Social media has become really loud, you can feel the pressure the socalled influencers suffer under to pay for their mansions and lambos.

It's not the UK that feels stuck, the whole world feels that way. In general, I don't like the way capitalism goes. Rich people are getting richer and poor are getting poorer, this is the phrase that we hear very often and it has reached to the point where rich are so rich that it's extremely, extremely difficult to join the club while they and their kids are strongly securing their bright future. Sadly, their appetite is also growing and they want more. The monopoly that they have allows them to exploit working class. Basically, the only way to escape the poverty and join the rich's club is to either become an athlete, an influencer, OF/Instagram model, streamer or become a popular Hollywood actor if you somehow manage.

Because they started a proxy war with Russia that has not only sucked them dry, but also deindustrialized Europe as a whole. It pretty much started around 2014 which is around the same time as Brexit since the dictatorship thought they could burn EU (as the proxy) alongside Russia and  then come back to it as the savior. Little did they know the fire they started burnt everyone including themselves. The economic situation with the recession and all that is felt everywhere too... This is a World War after all...