The puzzle of rising UK wages reveals an unprecedented and tragic truth | Hacker News Reader

The puzzle of rising UK wages reveals an unprecedented and tragic truth

theguardian.com

10 pointsdecremental6 comments

>It does seem to me to be the worst decision in peacetime any country in the world has made in a thousand years.

I don't even know what to do with this. Anyone, at ANY place on the political spectrum, can name many more catastrophic decisions within the 21st century. Why would this educated person write this? Is it supposed to be interpreted as a joke by a sympathetic reader, and to induce outrage in others?

It's half hyperbole half joke, with a fairly reasonable point snuck in since the decision genuinely ranks up there with other peacetime decisions made in comparable circumstances.

This isn't a knock against you specifically but this is unbelievably obvious to me and I'm genuinely curious that have you have to ask/bothered to ask at all. I genuinely think hackernews encourages a lack of empathy in readers because these comments are rife all over the place be it this one or people moaning about clickbait headlines because they didn't read the first line of the article etc.

Besides, the author still has a point: Brexit is either pointless or a disaster. The only argument I will accept in favour of it is if you are arguing against large blocs in general and believe the EU is doomed to fail, but even then it seems like sinking the ship in the name of killing the captain.

Maybe I just missed the tone then, it doesn't seem obvious to me with the surrounding context that it's supposed to be hyperbole. And I don't think hyperbole is very useful with politically charged topics either.

"In the US, there was a big rise in the unemployment rate to just under 20% in April, before falling back steadily to 7.1% in November. But wage growth actually rose sharply, and was 5.9% in November. The picture is the same in the UK. After an initial drop into negative territory earlier this year, there was a sharp rise for -2.9% wage growth to 3.2% in October.

So, everyone is better off right? Actually not. XpertHR, a consultancy specialising in pay, reported that pay settlements limped towards year end with median settlements at 2%.

Labour economists have never seen anything like this before. It appears that what has happened both in the UK and the US is that the lower part of the wage distribution – the lowest-paid workers – has just dropped out."

Very interesting.

In Australia we've seen 15+ years of wage stagnation.

Will salaries rise with inflation?

Traditionally we'd have said that, yes they will.

But perhaps not this time. Supply and demand laws in the labour market are not working as expected it seems. Maybe. We shall see! :-)

> Will salaries rise with inflation?

usually it's the other way around - (some) inflation is caused by salary increases.

[December 2020]

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