The "Coping Classes"
Good lord, households on £88,000 a year are now the "professional poor". Here's an article that surpasses even the whinging of Nick Cohen or the entitlement culture of Nigel Farndale. It might be a bit tongue-in-cheek, it's hard to say."The Coping Classes"
Of course the premise the entire article is based on, that
According to research by the price comparison website uSwitch, disposable incomes have plunged to their lowest levels for a decade, thanks to a 42 per cent rise in the cost of essential household goods.
is utter hogwash, as even someone with the slightest awareness of economic and price trends would know.
Let's just recap just some of the errors she makes
* The survey she refers to does not show disposable incnome is at its lowest level for a decade. In fact the survey (which is not reliable) shows household income has risen by nearly 50% in that decade.
* What it purports to show that the % of income that is left over after bills is at its lowest for a decade. It doesn't reall do this either, given its definition of bills is selective, and in some cases misleading (internet services?)
* She forgets that expenditure on many items has risen enormously as the costs have decreased. For example, she notes that "we're dolefully flying with Ryanair rather than BA", rather forgetting that people 20 years ago didn't fly with BA on weekend jaunts to New York or Madrid - they didn't fly at all. She seems to have been on holiday in the last three years to a small village in Spain, a five star hotel in Puglia, similar in Bahamas and Mauritius.
* House prices - these are always a cost in these whinges, until they are falling, when they are an indictment of the government.
And so on, but I can't go on.
Labels: house prices, Nick Cohen, Whinging
posted by Matthew @ 1/29/2008 10:41:00 AM
Comments: 7
