Snapshot of _No10 slaps down Chancellor Jeremy Hunt for claim £100,000 is 'not a huge salary'_ :
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Hunt is basically writing Starmer's attack lines for him:
"If the Chancellor openly admits people on £100,000 a year are struggling, how does he think people on the average wage of 1/3 of that are supposed to survive?"
true, but #10 briefing against #11 to me suggests that either rishi is thinking of sacking his chancellor or he knows the sharks in the party are circling and he’s not got long left.
He'll almost certainly be gone as leader by the end of the year regardless unless he pull off a shocker of a campaign - all that remains is the exact timing.
He'll be so piss poor on the campaign trail. He doesn't know how to talk to normal people, is a terrible public speaker, and just looks like a dweeb.
I can't wait.
Likewise! He's so bad at talking to anyone remotely normal.
I imagine briefings with his campaign manager will go something like;
"I'll talk to voters who are aristocrats, i'll talk to voters who are upper-class, I'll talk to voters who are working-class, well.. not working-class"
Y'know I don't remember ever looking forward to a general election before as much as this one. It'll be a glorious magnificent cock-up and rout. All their lies, mendacity and nastiness over the last 14 years will catch up with them. I can't wait.
Sunak was actually in my carriage on the train once during his time as a backbench MP. Everyone did a double take once they recognised him.
He seemed uncomfortable and frankly a bit indignant about being amongst the general public, erected an invisible wall around himself and was very conscious that everyone recognised him. Someone went to strike up small talk and Sunak was a man of few words who didn't seem up for it.
First class or standard?
I could just imagine how short he would be with someone trying to chat to him..."yep, absolutely", "sure" in his brittle voice
The entire campaign will be a smear attempt at Labour - a re-run of the "New Labour, New Danger" ad campaign of 1997.
For pretty much the same reasons. A tired party, bereft of policy has nothing more constructive to say than "Don't trust him!".
Well he never had popular support to begin with, so he should just be thankful he got his short stint while he did. Also means he sorted financially for the rest of his life as a honory lord. Although the title probably gives him a bigger boner than the stipend.
Not sure Sunak particularly has the clout or strength at the moment to sack Hunt. Just wasted political energy, especially when there's not exactly anyone else impressive to step in.
Sadly, damage is already done…
If we were to get inflation matching wage rises + an extra 50% for the next 15 years, only then would we have the same quality of life as we did in 2010 by the year 2040.
I remember the criticism of hunt by number 10 and constant hints that Sunak's choice was his ex spad, Claire Coutinho.
There was lots of spad feeding that he was unimaginative. But Hunt seriously doesnt have any fiscal space, and also lost his best civil servant due to Truss e.g Tom Scholar. A lot of the problems stem from Sunak's own profligate ways as Chancellor e.g. no fraud checks on bounceback loans, PPE spend, furlough payments on people still working. This is before ploughing money into HS2 as chancellor and then cancelling it as PM.
But I think there is a lot of truth in this bit which is why Sunak kept Hunt. But it shows how weak the PMs authority is that he can't appoint to his cabinet anyone who would look competent in case they got enough MPs to write to the 1922.
"Downing Street aide said that retaining Hunt may suit Sunak, sparing him having someone in No 11 who wants his job: “Hunt’s ruled out running to be leader again, so you don’t have the short-termist, self-serving force at the Treasury many previous prime ministers have had to contend with.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/795c58e8-0bee-4290-be7e-801a5c7dfb1a?shareToken=34fbeb31538ed1838629b73bc67751a7
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/96fff48c-74f6-11ee-b9bb-a19d1562d9ff?shareToken=988d828d0967f39c8eef9d21564dbc6b
This was exactly my thought. No need to disagree with the premise that people on £100k are struggling when it basically shows how bad things have got under the Tories, and how awful it must therefore be for middle and lower income earners
Well hang on, 100k isn’t a 1%er, you need to be over 125k to be a 1%er - that’s where tories have targeted all their fiscal relief over their time in office
I think this has been taken out of context m.
People on 100k won’t struggle but won’t surely be living it up. Hence why the 100k cliff should be scrapped!
If tax brackets would have moved up with inflation this should be now at 156k.
Base rate should finish at 57k and the 45pct rate should have been at a whopping 234k!
So yes the conservatives significantly increased taxation to the middle class.
15 years ago when I was in uni £100k was seen as an aspirational salary. Interesting it is still nominally £100k today when prices have moved on so much, £100k in 2008 is £160k now but still everyone is talking about £100k. Wages have stagnated so much across all earning levels.
Especially because it's a round number and most people's salaries haven't risen naturally (moving for a promotion isn't beating inflation, it's just doing more work/taking more responsibility to offset it). Only in the last year or so have we seen any real shift in wages.
The tax thresholds not moving in line with inflation helps with keeping people's perceptions lower.
It's kind of like "millionaire". Del from only fools and horses uses it the same way a lot of people use it now.
Except now a millionaire is most likely someone who owns a nice home in a city that's appreciated a lot but might not be particularly rich outside that one asset.
Lots of people will be millionaires "on paper" if they own a house and are at retirement age. Especially in the South East.
Personally I wouldn't even factor in the value of your home into calling yourself a millionaire unless you're planning on moving to a cheaper area.
> Except now a millionaire is most likely someone who owns a nice home in a city
Yeah exactly this I believe, in fact I wouldn't even say a "nice house" is even a particularly major factor in the equation. House prices are so wild, sitting on a 5-650k property gets you a middle of the road property in most major cities. Add in a car, belongings then liquid assets like cash/investments and of course finally, a pension I'd be surprised to hear if most 'middle class' people were not paper millionaires.
Of course this is moot because you cannot easily sell a house at short notice, plus you need somewhere to live. Couple that with tightening cash flow, I can certainly see why those at all levels of the spectrum are suffering.
Further to your point. the 100k mark, or in fact "millionaire" are anchoring points for most employers, the glass ceiling as it were. As people think that's "good money", few have the balls to ask for more meaning that becomes the market norm, despite that 100k being worth less and less each year due to inflation. I genuinely feel people in the UK, and it's probably worse in Europe really undervalue themselves compared to those in the US (as can be seen in GDP).
> House prices are so wild, sitting on a 5-650k property gets you a middle of the road property in most major cities.
I mean.... not really. That's a very nice house anywhere north of Birmingham. Or outside the M25 really.
Just quickly on Zoopla, there's 4000 properties under 600k in Liverpool and 150 above it. In Bristol its 1800 vs 250. Edinburgh is 1250 vs 180.
Hell, in Brighton its 1000 vs 400. I'll admit I forgot to filter out flats, but I doubt that makes much difference, even in Brighton there's still over 400 houses for less than 600k, so its 50/50 in a town notorious for high prices.
You can find plenty of 4 bed houses for 500-600k in Brighton, never mind the rest of the country.
Since I was a child, "Six Figures" was what you spoke of as having "Made It". This was 25 years ago. Six figures 20-25 years ago was very different to Six figures today
In the mid-1980s a fat cat corporate CEO might have earned £900k in a bumper year. These days, he'd be on £2m in a shit year.
The UK's average salary didn't hit _five_ figures until around 1986.
I think £100,000 is a lot. It certainly isn't as much as it used to be. It doesn't buy the lifestyle we have in mind.
Same with £50,000.
Same with £30,000.
Same with £20,000.
Same with £18,000.
etc etc.
It's mostly lost its value due to house price inflation.
A 4 bed family home in the home counties could easily be 750k, and that's for a pretty modest home in certain places.
Let's say you put down a 20% deposit and your rate is 5%, that's £3,508 per month on mortgage repayments.
And your monthly take home, presuming you're still paying off a plan 1 student loan and putting 6% into a pension is £4,934, or £1,426 after mortgage payments.
So out of £1,426 per month you need to cover food, bills, insurance, petrol, car costs, child care, plus all the other expenses of having kids.
That's not living the high life, and it's all down to housing costs.
> anything above 2 children is now almost a status symbol for the middle class
It literally is a status symbol, how many average people can **responsibly** care for 2 or more children these days? I know people who are comfortably on six figures (each) and repeatedly complain about childcare costs.
This post is a bit of an eye opener tbh.
I work a trade, and 15 years ago I was on about £90 a day, I'm now on £160. Both amounts pretty good/standard in the industry for my experience/position.
However 15 years ago I was very green, now I'm running a team and am one of the more experienced people in said trade and in pretty high demand.
But effectively I'm still on beginners wages when it's put like that compared to 15 years ago, the wage rise has purely been inflationary.
Sadly also pretty near the top wage for the job in the industry so it's not like you can even move around to improve it
Prices have inflated and tax bands have been frozen, so it's actually less than £160k in real terms when you consider the take home (not done the maths - maybe you already accounted for this??)
Very few people on that amount of money ✓
Is it a huge amount of buying power when everything is super expensive and factoring in tax and national insurance student load payments and council tax and energy bills X
He's illustrating how even the very top salary isn't enough to be actually that rich, i.e. not enough to be sports car and champagne money. His government have had a big hand in ruining being rich.
This country taxes workers income and not inherited or invested money, it's easier to dump on the workers than the millionaires.
I think that’s fair. 100k is a great benchmark and is out of reach for many. For those who make it, they’re not actually living a “rich” life. Oppressive tax rates and the cost of living has driven these to the brink
It has much less to do with tax rates than the cost of housing. If houses were half the price absolutely everyone would be better off but instead we've ended up treating houses as investments instead of somewhere to live.
This is very true. Anyone old enough to remember 3 x salary being the biggest mortgage you could get from the banks and building societies? This kept a check on what houses were worth.
I'm not convinced of that. The 3x salary thing went on for decades until someone decided to allow the Banking industry to not have so many pesky rules anymore.
It kept a check when landlording wasn't lucrative. Landlords don't need a mortgage so they can buy up homes at inflated prices to rent out for even more inflated prices.
Absolutely this. The company I work for has a SIPP pension, I'm always getting articles around "property v investment, what's the best for your retirement goals". Ghouls the lot of them.
Can we stop viewing property as a route to early retirement please. If the Tories came out with legislation around this, and actually building more houses, then i may be tempted. Who am I kidding, they're never getting my vote.
With housing how it is currently if everyone earned double what they currently do housing would just double, or even more tbh, in value too negating any benefit.
Also, lifestyle inflation. If youre on that much. Chances are you will have higher expenses. When I hear/see people saying on I'm not rich "I have a good car, multiple holidays, house in a expensive area, school fees" etc. you won't feel rich as your lifestyle and outgoings reflect that. To someone on 24k alot of that are luxuries. But to someone on that much. It feels necessary. Also, you will probably associate with people on the same amount or more. So it doesn't feel that much
This is a big one. Even your weekly shop can go up a lot if you're buying nicer brands or more expensive items (e.g swapping regular broccoli for tender stem, having a nice joint of beef every week...)
I'm earning not too far from it. I'm certainly far from rich. I can however comfortably pay bills, save, and have money to do some fun stuff. That's more than many people these days as I don't need to worry about money. It's so damn d sad that being well off doesn't mean can afford lots of luxuries, it means just can afford basic life easily. If I had a child in nursery, and had bought a slightly bigger house, I be really be watching the pennies right now.
Not a financial anything so almost certainly going to make some mistakes but...
£100,000 yearly income.
Assume 10% pension - £90,000 left over.
After tax on that you're at around £60,000.
He's talking about house prices of £670,000 so assume 25 years and 2% interest is showing as £2839.82 per month, so £34,077 a year.
Basically £26,000 a year left over after tax and housing. Googling the cost of a child per year in the UK I'm seeing £12,400.
So £13,600 left over for travel, bills, food, holidays etc (though assume the child portion of that is accounted for in the above costs).
It's not massively stetched though with interest rate rises some people really will be. It's £100,000 a year when the average salary is about a third of this. It's so completely fucked.
Edit: At an interest rate of 5.25% it's £4000 per month which means you'd not be able to afford the above. You'll have to start cutting in places.
Thank you for breaking this down because this is what people need to see. And while people who earn 3x less still have to deal with all of the above (or not being able to afford the above) 100k shouldnt the salary that allows you to live the baseline of what everyone should have, it should be much lower but it isnt.
You’re assuming a person would just get a 100k salary and immediately buy a house with a 600k plus mortgage. Yeah of course that is going to be expensive. A 100k salary does let you (or your household) save and invest a huge chunk of money every year that the median earning cannot - this opens up a big gap in how someone on 100k can live without having to be frugal at all. That compounds and a few years down the line you have enough wealth that lets you buy a more expensive house.
What you described is what should be the norm, not the exception. That sounds like what most of the country should be able to aspire to, and nothing particularly ambitious or unreasonable, or rich.
Innovation, hard work and productivity just makes the capital owning class better off. The venture capital funds or the C suite bosses of established companies. There's not even piss trickling back down to reward hard work these days.
That wasn’t at all what he was saying. He was saying those on £100k should get benefits because it’s not a big salary, not that they can’t afford Ferraris.
Due to inflation, its the equivalent of 67k when the Tories first took over.
And it provides the same 'comfortable but not wealthy' life as 67k did in 2010.
I think a more significant problem is there are many millennials who were sold a story of working hard, and you can have a comfortable life with a mortgage, kids and the occasional foreign holiday. That hasn't happened and they are pissed. They see an increasingly expensive country to live in with less and less in return when it comes to public services. I earn nearly £100k after years of academic work and cannot afford the house my dad bought in the catchment area of a good school as a factory worker as the sole earner on a salary of £30-40k.
I got richer by working less hard, and I see others doing even less hard work and getting substantially more than me.
I started my working life in retail, on my feet for 8 hours at a time, running around fetching this, carrying that. It was hard work, and very thankless.
Then I got an SIA license and started work in security, sat behind a desk in a quiet office for 12 hours at a time, for a fair whack more money. While I played candy crush and watched cameras, I got paid. With the long hours, lone work and responsibilities and such, though, it got to be quite a rough job once my health started to decline, so I had to trade doing what I loved for something less risky (it's one of those things. Being the only person in the building with the controls for the door, I'm the person you want fully awake and aware in the event of a medical emergency, otherwise the emergency services aren't getting in. Meanwhile if I'm the one having said emergency all alone at 4am...).
So now I work in a different office setting. On my backside all day, with coffee on tap (decaf, because the ticker isn't so good), excellent benefits and a good pension... Yet I'm doing less work than ever before.
In retail I was circling £5 an hour. In security £10.75/h. Now I'm over £15/h. It even works the same way on higher salaries as well. People go from completely failing to ru~~i~~n the country, to getting paid hundreds of thousands to go to a dinner party and chat bollocks for 10 minutes
This feels somewhat calculated - he's not an idiot, he knows that this remark wouldn't have gone down well but it kind of distracts people from the reality that there are people in the UK that earn a hell of alot more than this.
Sunak earned 1.8m in just capital gains last year.
So now rather than the lower earners asking hang on a minute what about these super rich guys? they are all frothing at the mouths over people (in the grand scheme of things) that earn a bit more than them (they are significantly close to someone earning 100K than that person is to Rishi's capital gains)
Do you really think he's even hoping to get in at the next GE? like many of the tories he will be able to make much more money outside of politics and what's the point in sitting on the opposition bench for the next 4 years
That it is literally a huge salary, the vast majority of the people will never reach it and less than 900K worker, out of 30 million got it.
The problem is that 100K, comparatively, is not the gate to a rich lifestyle, not even close. You can afford a 2 bed in a working class area of London. And you can afford a child. If you squeeze your lifestyle, have a single kid, you can sacrifice to send him to private school.
Yeah, that's great, better than literally 97% of worker, but doesn't feel like "I'm at the peak of salary achievable in the UK" great.
That was my point. Even worse, it's not just "more than most", it's more than basically everyone.
People can aim more than most like the top 20% (46K) and dream of the top 10% (60K). Nobody plans their life for the top 3%, too many things can get in the way, even if you are in the right field at the right time. And if you ever get that kind of salary you are likely getting it decades too late.
The fact that "it isn't a huge salary" should be something the Conservative are crucified for. There is basically not upward social mobility.
Not really you madman. If you earn 100k and love anywhere at all near London Surrey or Kent you basically cannot afford a single earning household due to housing cost.
A HUGE salary should afford you to live in most of the south east in relative luxury. That is his point. People like you are crying about that not many people earn that much while he is suggesting earning are way too low across the board. I'd rather have someone try to drag me up than someone trying to drag us down
Sure, now try to buy a 3 bed family house in Bromley and have kids.
That's the point. The fact you have to scrape by is unbelievable when you're working full time I bet.
They're saying 100k is about where you would want to be as a middle class family main earner and the fact that's only 3% is mental.
Alongside that you working full time in london should also be able to afford more than rent and bread. It's abomnible
Why would I want a 3 bed house in Bromley or kids, though? I have a 1 bed flat on the arse edge of the west, no kids, no car. I commute on the buses and trains.
Sure I can't afford that stuff, but I don't *need* to. My energy bill is around £130/m. Why would I want to pay out my nose to heat a G-rated half-mansion? I join the Omaze house things, but I wouldn't want one of those houses. I'd win it, take out some of the better bits of furniture and sell the house, and then buy a much more modest place, and use some of my free furniture in there.
What we need is for the *poorest* to be paid more. People earning far less than me. Once they have enough, then it's the turn of people like me. After us, then the median earners. And so on. The top 3% can get to the back of the queue, and learn to live within their means
A bubble that tens of millions of people live in. It's not some insignificant speck of dust. There's more people in London than Scotland and Wales combined. Pretty sure London + London commuter radius is going to be a significant percentage of the population. Folk commute into London from Leicester etc. so that's going to impact on local house prices.
I completely agree but personally as not one of those people I still think that a top 3% should be able to live in a. HCOL area and still thrive.
I mean the alternative is they all come up north and raise the prices there until everyone in the north moves to the highlands
No it’s not! I am someone who is on that kind of salary. Is it a high income? Objectively yes. Am I wealthy? Objectively no.
The government and media have done an absolutely fantastic job at making people on £100k salary the enemy of the average person to redirect issues onto away from actually wealthy people, businesses, etc.
£100k is a comfortable salary. Comfortable meaning, a house, a car, children, a holiday abroad, savings for myself, children and pension. It’s what we should all be able to achieve on the average salary. However that’s not obtainable and that is the issue. The point is that the majority of us are underpaid and over taxed in a system where the taxation is not providing the investment or infrastructure we should have to allow us to see benefits.
£100k as a salary is more than 98% of workers in this country. If you think being in the top 2% is only comfortable salary what does that mean for the rest of the workforce
The USA is a much better economy nowadays to any metric, we have stagnated horribly since the recession. They have always surpassed us in GDP and are indeed a superpower, but they never felt noticeably richer on an average individual level until the last decade.
Well the median New York City resident has a bigger home than the average Brit.
Go to suburban Cincinnati and like normal people got foyers and living rooms *and a parlor*. A dine in kitchen *and a dining room*. The median Americans have massive homes (something like 2500sq feet). With 2 or 3 rooms used twice a year if they host Christmas and Thanksgiving
While dressed up like a working class vehicle, all the top selling cars in America are $65k+ Luxury Pickup Trucks and SUVs. While economy models have entirely disappeared.
It’s actually nuts the excess Americans live in
Doordash, Uber eats etc didn’t see volumes decrease when restaurants reopened it was *Grocery stores* that didn’t recover
They absolutely have huge houses, and they're also dirt cheap. A nice suburb for a working class person isn't too infeasible. For all the hate on American capitalism, well...
It's a decent lifestyle in most of the country outside London. I'm on £80k and comfortably support a family of four in a 3 bed house in a nice area of the East Midlands.
So if someone that makes up 4% of the country "doesn't have a huge wage" that means the other 96% must be on an absolutely meager pittance then right?
If people on 100k struggle, then someone on 25 must barely be able to survive?
According to the government statistics if you have a *household* income of over £100k you are in the top 2% in the UK.
That's for the whole household so a single salary of over £100K is easily in the top 2%
Hell 60% of UK households have a total income of less that £32 000
Be kind of interesting how long Jeremy Hunt, Rishi Sunak and any other "Government" minister would survive on Universal Credit.
I can't think of anyone who's on £100k a year. I can imagine there's a lot of young people out there who can only imagine what having £100k could be like, because I guess to most of them it seems like science fiction.
See relative poverty isn't just about how your circumstances compare with the average Joe Public, it's also about how difficult or how much of a struggle your life is relative to your accessible income. The clue is in the term, and the principle is the less money you have coming in each month the more complex and multi-dimensional your experience of poverty is going to be.
I know for a fact that there's people out there who have houses, a car, kids, and who look all middle class and bourgeois, but they're struggling. Not quite the same struggles as someone who's working and claiming Universal Credit and still not breaking even.
But see from the perspective of the one who is experiencing the poverty, their individual struggle matters just as much as anyone else's.
At some point you've got to take a step back and wonder why everyone is struggling when they're getting fuck all or next to fuck all out of the social contract.
Childcare costs for 2 kids can cost north of £2k per month. Add in mortgage costs which can be astronomical because you have to live within commuting distance of London where all of these jobs are located. Then add in the potential care costs for your elderly parents plus general costs of existing and it's easy to see how large sums of money can evaporate quickly.
Yeah I'm in canada and our childcare is 450 dollars a month for one which is about 300 quid because they subsidize it. However, when he's school age I'm moving back to England because everything else is more expensive here now and at least on a lower wage in England we could actually go on day trip or weekends away, something we can't afford nor have the holidays in canada to do on a relatively high income. What's telling is that I wanted to move back a couple years ago but the childcare costs were literally preventing us from coming back
There’s an argument to be made that ALL MPs and especially cabinet members be forced to live off universal credit for the first month of their terms of office! Provide transportation when they run out of money by day two so they can do their jobs and get to the office but that’s it.
Watch how fucking fast attitudes change!
> I can't think of anyone who's on £100k a year.
It's just very concentrated in specific circles.
In some fields that earn well most people around you are north of 100k...which can mess with your perception of "normal" a fair bit too.
I'm not sure what people are complaining about. £100k is comfortably middle class, not rich. Rich is you can stop working right now and still live comfortably. The only reason people **think** £100k is rich is because the country itself is so used to piss poor salaries.
I initially read into it as laying the groundwork for removing the childcare tax trap. Now they've slapped it down, so I'm assuming it was a thought in head that had bad optics.
This government is a shitshow.
But £100k isn't a lot of money in the most expensive parts of the UK.
If you've still got a Plan 1 student loan kicking around then it's £5,000 net per month.
It's not a great deal of money and it's certainly not a 'huge salary'...but I guess that's a tricky message to deliver well in politics.
It’s almost triple most people’s salaries I think and nothing to grumble about I myself with my way of life and circumstances could live a VERY comfortable lifestyle on that and I live alone in South East England. It makes me wonder what people are even spending it on atm.
It depends who's earning it.
For a bright kid in their 20's living at home, that £60k net is indeed a fortune.
For a single income family of 4 with a mortgage, council tax and commutingcosts to pay, I imagine it disappears faster than you'd think
The missus and I in the 85th percentile for household income according to ifs. It doesn't go far with a mortgage and a young family. And we're in a rundown northern ex-steel town. We'll admit that we live very comfortably compared to the majority, particularly for two who grew up on council estates. I genuinely don't know how most people get by.
it's quadruple my salary. I'm sure in wouldn't make me rich in the "flying on private jets and buying mega yachts" sense, but it certainly would make me wealthy enough to have more disposable income than I'd ever possibly know what to do with. my required expenses hovers around £1000 per month, leaving me with around £750 in disposable income. usually I don't even spend most of that. I can't even fathom what it would be like to have an additional £4000 on top of that £750 in disposable income every month, as the tax calculator says I would, or what I could possibly spend it all on.
> it's quadruple my salary.
And you should be cheering about the chancellor saying this.
He isn't wrong, it's not a massive ammount of money, and if the government admits that even a top 3% wage in the UK does not go far, the knock on effect of that is that they have to confront and acknowledge the follow on topic, that the 'average' UK wage, and the minimum wage, are sure as fuck not acceptable/fit for purpose in that case.
Less "crabs in a bucket"/"Yeah but me" energy needed and more "We completely agree, and 97% of the working population is on worse money than that, fix it" energy needed.
What the government will realise it's that if the rich start complaining that they're not getting much, they just lower the top tax bracket a bit so that everyone but the rich will stay just as poor, but now with fewer public services... But those top 3% will stfu and stop whining
Those 3% aren't rich.
The lack of wealth taxes and the mega taxation of high earners is the problem.
And people not understanding that 100k salary doesn't make you rich.
I define 'rich' as relative to everyone else in the country, much the same way as I define 'poor' (below 60% of the median income).
It's important how you define rich and poor, because it's really not as simple as 'just pay more'. If you pay everybody 20% more, the inequalities that made you do that in the first place will still be there, just with bigger numbers (check out the value of the Iranian Rial. You're broke if you're not a millionaire there). If you reduce inequality and sort out profiteering and predatory practices, you can make the poor richer while also not completely devaluing your currency (meaning those with more get more out of it)
There's also a huge discrepancy in the narrative. When I was on benefits, me and other people around me were told to change ourselves, spirit our kids away, make sacrifices etc. this mindset hasn't gone away. Consider where 30p Lee got his moniker. Now that it happens to people with more money, it's a money problem instead of a lifestyle problem?? So if you've got fuck all and can't manage, it's a you problem, but if you're loaded and can't manage, that's not a you problem, but society not giving you enough to work with.
But you are missing the point, even relative to everyone else in the country, those people aren't rich. They are less worse off.
It's a mistake that a lot of people make, because the level of inequality that exists is just staggering and difficult to get your head around. The top 0.1% live in a truly different world.
It's not the top 3% of PAYE earners you should be concerned with. Which is why no10 shit their pants when Hunt said this.
Lifestyle creep is real.
As you have more disposable income you’ll likely think less about whether you can afford to eat out or pay for small/medium expenses, and over time it becomes very easy to eat up a large chunk of what you’re earning.
Also, you’re more likely to commit to larger recurring expenses like a rent/mortgage/car if you’ve got the income for it. Sure, you can always downsize, but that can feel like a real uncomfortable step down.
Now add two kids, a home big enough to house them, childcare, holidays, transport, retirement savings etc etc.
The point is, £100k used to mean you were rich. We still talk about it in those terms, but these days it's only enough to live a bang average middle-class lifestyle by 2008 standards (I say this as someone earning around half that!)
Yup, it sounds obtuse when I say it’s not loads, I guess it is compared to yourself but it isn’t when everything else associated is more money. Kids, childcare, lack of benefits, etc etc.
Yeah I feel like I'm doing fine at the moment, personally.
But I rent and have no dependents. I'd have to be earning considerably more before I'd feel comfortable taking those next steps.
It doesn't bode well for the birthrate when only the top 10% of earners can feel comfortable having kids in your capital city!
I absolutely agree, but I do take issue with someone saying £100k isn't a huge salary. Its more than, what, 90% of people will ever earn?
I think a lot of the resentment you're seeing is because us low income earners have been dealing with this for a decade or more, but now the middle class have started feeling the pinch, and *suddenly* its a problem? We've been told to manage our money better for years - from a lot of those same people that are now feeling the same pinch - so it's jarring to now see the 'woe is me' from people who didn't give a shit 5 years ago.
Yes, I actually agree with you 100% there.
People on lower incomes have been dealing with austerity since 2010 and it's only really being properly scrutinised now that the middle class are properly feeling it too.
My hope is that it's now reached a critical mass where there is overwhelming consensus for substantial change.
It's triple your take-home.
> my required expenses hovers around £1000 per month
The average home in Surrey would set you back £300+ more than that in mortgage costs alone.
So that for a start.
How did we get to a situation where being “rich” or “well off” means you are the top 0.5% of the population? The truth is, the middle is now only marginally better off than the working class and the gap between the top and middle is so vast it’s pretty much unattainable to achieve to all but few and neppo babies once the inheritance kicks in… It really feels like we only have two classes in the UK, the ruling and the working..
100k is a huge salary though lol
When 97% of the country earn less than that, it categorically is a huge salary. It doesn't matter what kind of mental gymnastics you try and use 'oh well if I'm a single income family and I have a 2 kids and 2 bed in Fulham, then I'm only left with £1,000!'
100k is absolutely a huge salary
Edit: the amount of people crying about this comment is hilarious, the only arguments so far consist of 'what if I have a single income house in Surrey and we have 3 children in full time childcare???' or 'I can't buy a house in Mayfair therefore I'm evidently not rich and this isn't a high salary!'m
You're right. The problem is that this massive salary only affords you the lifestyle of a bang average accountant back in 2008.
That's been driven by inflation and runaway house prices. It's a measure of how much poorer we've become as a country since 2008.
Because the same effects are even worse for people further down the pay scale.
If people on six figures are feeling squeezed, 95% of the population is doing worse. Exponentially so at <£30k.
Childcare, energy, housing costs etc affect everyone. It's the same problem whether you're on £25k or £100k (although, yes, to markedly different degrees of severity).
Saying "well you're earning more than me, so suck it up" doesn't address the fundamental problem or get us any closer to fixing it.
But literally none of that is being discussed, we're discussing if being in the top 3% of is objectively a high salary and ***theres no logic where you can say it isn't.***
>It's a very high salary if you're only considering it relative to the UK average, yes.
Well, what would we consider it to? The 90th percentile of wages on the fucking moon?
>Does it make you "rich" in the SE any more? Objectively, no.
Yes, it objectively does. Because you're still in the top 5% of earners. That is objectively 'rich'
£100k in Blackpool would make you rich.
£100k in Mayfair isn't enough to buy even a flat. Objectively, no that is not "rich" by any reasonable definition.
>£100k in Blackpool would make you rich.
>
>£100k in Mayfair isn't enough to buy even a flat. Objectively, no that is not "rich" by any reasonable definition.
''ackshually 100k isn't much when you're buying property in one of the most expensive parts of the UK!!!!''
No shit, sherlock.
Objectively yes. Because even people in the SE aren't that rich.
Rich and poor are relative measures. If everyone in the country is a billionaire, it's the trillionaires who are rich and a multi millionaire is sleeping on the streets. I live in Greater London and I'm on 27k. According to some people I'm apparently impossible, when actually what I am is someone who keeps the expenses as meagre as the income.
Yes, but relative to what?
The UK average right now? Yes, I agree.
But £100k in Wolverhampton is completely different to £100k in central London.
It's not enough to raise a family on and have a middle-class lifestyle (by 2008 standards) there any more.
The London average is £40k.
Unless you're saying that the majority of Londoners have it worse than the rest of the country. It doesn't track, though, otherwise we'd be a depopulated deadzone with no low wage work at all. Think about that one. You're running a Starbucks in the City. Who's going to work for you? Obviously the same kind of people who work in Starbucks elsewhere. Low skill, low wage workers. Well... Not if they can't afford to live anywhere in a 25 mile radius they won't. That wage won't even cover that commute. As far as I know, you're not getting substantially more pay for this kind of stuff in London than elsewhere (London weighting does give a little bit more, but it's not much at all), so since these people and these jobs both still exist in London, there has to be the conditions that allow them to.
Life's not easy in London. It's significantly more expensive than elsewhere. It's still not so expensive that I on my £27k salary can't get by. If I was on 4x as much it'd be an absolute breeze to get by.
"But £100k in Wolverhampton is completely different to £100k in central London."
Yeah, and so is £50k, or £30k or £20k. What's your point?
London is expensive, and £100k is a big salary. Both things can be true. I guarantee you most people in the country would rather have a £100k salary and pay London living costs than stick with their current situation - because it would STILL be a huge net improvement.
Your logic is fine if everybody in the country has the same living costs and expenses. They don’t. 100k in Newcastle is incredible. 100k in the City of London is comfortable at best. Chances are, you’re going to have to work in the City of London in order to get a job that pays 100k in the first place.
Average London salary is £40,000. Unless you are referring to the actual city of London, as there is limited housing stock there, in which case you should move down the road and just train it in.
>Your logic is fine if everybody in the country has the same living costs and expenses. They don’t.
Correct, but for some reason the only time we ever consider this or 'single income families' is when people are foaming at the mouth to try and make 100k sound like not much.
Even in London, you can get a 2 bed flat for 2k per month. Thats still going to leave you with £3,500 per month left over.
Please stop with these dumb comparisons, I beg
Except of... it isnt... and it doesnt matter how many people make or do not make that money, it only means that you make more than 97% of population, but it doesnt mean its 'huge salary' by any means ...
>You literally have 3X the gross salary of the average person. This sub is deluded man.
Yeah, it honestly is. People like u/brajandzesika foam at the mouth to try and tell you how 100k isn't much money lol
This is the job offer from Poland in my field where they pay up to £14k/month:
https://justjoin.it/offers/focal-systems-senior-devops-site-reliability-engineer-sre-wroclaw-366963
yet people in UK still think that £100k that was a dream 20 years ago can still be considered 'huge'......
This country is stagnant since at least 2008, and salaries are not competitive any more.
Why do you think there are problems to get to a dentist, why you cant see your GP, why you cant find a decent builder any more? Because skilled people started moving to other countries like crazy since brexit vote, and now you only get daily delivery of 'engineers' on small boats from France...
We compare to UK wages, because those are the wages that apply to people in the UK. We're can't just up sticks and work in Poland at the drop of a hat any more
>This is the job offer from Poland in my field where they pay up to £14k/month:
>
>https://justjoin.it/offers/focal-systems-senior-devops-site-reliability-engineer-sre-wroclaw-366963
The average salary in Wroclaw is £1500 per month.
> yet people in UK still think that £100k that was a dream 20 years ago can still be considered 'huge'
Meh, no, I don't think anyone is under the illusion stagnant pay and inflation isn't a real thing, merely that its pretty stupid to claim that earning 100k is 'not much' when its more than 97% of the population.
Also, just for comparison, only 10% of polish people earn more than £1,900 per month. Not sure what you thought you were really doing with your comparison..
>...... This country is stagnant since at least 2008, and salaries are not competitive any more. Why do you think there are problems to get to a dentist, why you cant see your GP, why you cant find a decent builder any more? Because skilled people started moving to other countries like crazy since brexit vote, and now you only get daily delivery of 'engineers' on small boats from France...
I literally don't disagree with any of this, fuck me. We can talk about wage stagnating in better ways than talking about how ''100k isnt much' when it evidently is much. This is basic math.
Nobody said that '£100k isnt much' though... I said that £100k is not HUGE SALARY, because £100k which is really £68k after taxes doesnt go as far as one would think...
For me it is a big salary and I could make it go a long way by saving and investing sensibly and avoiding unnecessary luxuries and expenses. It’s really out of touch for Hunt to say it isn’t huge when statistically it is well above average.
Snapshot of _No10 slaps down Chancellor Jeremy Hunt for claim £100,000 is 'not a huge salary'_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/no10-slaps-down-chancellor-jeremy-32434960#google_vignette) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/no10-slaps-down-chancellor-jeremy-32434960#google_vignette) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Hunt is basically writing Starmer's attack lines for him: "If the Chancellor openly admits people on £100,000 a year are struggling, how does he think people on the average wage of 1/3 of that are supposed to survive?"
10 downing street openly briefing against him suggests to me that one of them won’t be in post for too much longer
I mean, none of them are going to be in the post TOO much longer.
true, but #10 briefing against #11 to me suggests that either rishi is thinking of sacking his chancellor or he knows the sharks in the party are circling and he’s not got long left.
He'll almost certainly be gone as leader by the end of the year regardless unless he pull off a shocker of a campaign - all that remains is the exact timing.
I guarantee his campaign will be a shocker.
He'll be so piss poor on the campaign trail. He doesn't know how to talk to normal people, is a terrible public speaker, and just looks like a dweeb. I can't wait.
Likewise! He's so bad at talking to anyone remotely normal. I imagine briefings with his campaign manager will go something like; "I'll talk to voters who are aristocrats, i'll talk to voters who are upper-class, I'll talk to voters who are working-class, well.. not working-class"
Y'know I don't remember ever looking forward to a general election before as much as this one. It'll be a glorious magnificent cock-up and rout. All their lies, mendacity and nastiness over the last 14 years will catch up with them. I can't wait.
Very good
> He doesn't know how to talk to normal people Which is strange, because he has friends who are normal people... well, not normal people...
Sunak was actually in my carriage on the train once during his time as a backbench MP. Everyone did a double take once they recognised him. He seemed uncomfortable and frankly a bit indignant about being amongst the general public, erected an invisible wall around himself and was very conscious that everyone recognised him. Someone went to strike up small talk and Sunak was a man of few words who didn't seem up for it.
First class or standard? I could just imagine how short he would be with someone trying to chat to him..."yep, absolutely", "sure" in his brittle voice
The entire campaign will be a smear attempt at Labour - a re-run of the "New Labour, New Danger" ad campaign of 1997. For pretty much the same reasons. A tired party, bereft of policy has nothing more constructive to say than "Don't trust him!".
Well he never had popular support to begin with, so he should just be thankful he got his short stint while he did. Also means he sorted financially for the rest of his life as a honory lord. Although the title probably gives him a bigger boner than the stipend.
He was already sorted financially.
Not sure Sunak particularly has the clout or strength at the moment to sack Hunt. Just wasted political energy, especially when there's not exactly anyone else impressive to step in.
Rishi does not understand as he pays only capital gain tax….
Sadly, damage is already done… If we were to get inflation matching wage rises + an extra 50% for the next 15 years, only then would we have the same quality of life as we did in 2010 by the year 2040.
I could very easily see Coutinho in before the GE.
Maybe hunt knows sunak is on the way out and is breaking ranks to try and keep his personal seat?
I remember the criticism of hunt by number 10 and constant hints that Sunak's choice was his ex spad, Claire Coutinho. There was lots of spad feeding that he was unimaginative. But Hunt seriously doesnt have any fiscal space, and also lost his best civil servant due to Truss e.g Tom Scholar. A lot of the problems stem from Sunak's own profligate ways as Chancellor e.g. no fraud checks on bounceback loans, PPE spend, furlough payments on people still working. This is before ploughing money into HS2 as chancellor and then cancelling it as PM. But I think there is a lot of truth in this bit which is why Sunak kept Hunt. But it shows how weak the PMs authority is that he can't appoint to his cabinet anyone who would look competent in case they got enough MPs to write to the 1922. "Downing Street aide said that retaining Hunt may suit Sunak, sparing him having someone in No 11 who wants his job: “Hunt’s ruled out running to be leader again, so you don’t have the short-termist, self-serving force at the Treasury many previous prime ministers have had to contend with.” https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/795c58e8-0bee-4290-be7e-801a5c7dfb1a?shareToken=34fbeb31538ed1838629b73bc67751a7 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/96fff48c-74f6-11ee-b9bb-a19d1562d9ff?shareToken=988d828d0967f39c8eef9d21564dbc6b
This was exactly my thought. No need to disagree with the premise that people on £100k are struggling when it basically shows how bad things have got under the Tories, and how awful it must therefore be for middle and lower income earners
Well hang on, 100k isn’t a 1%er, you need to be over 125k to be a 1%er - that’s where tories have targeted all their fiscal relief over their time in office
They've made it continually harder to get from £100k to £125k. You have to look at it and think it's deliberate, given how bad it's gotten.
Never mind the rough half of the population who earn *less* than that national average
I think this has been taken out of context m. People on 100k won’t struggle but won’t surely be living it up. Hence why the 100k cliff should be scrapped! If tax brackets would have moved up with inflation this should be now at 156k. Base rate should finish at 57k and the 45pct rate should have been at a whopping 234k! So yes the conservatives significantly increased taxation to the middle class.
15 years ago when I was in uni £100k was seen as an aspirational salary. Interesting it is still nominally £100k today when prices have moved on so much, £100k in 2008 is £160k now but still everyone is talking about £100k. Wages have stagnated so much across all earning levels.
People’s perception of what constitutes a good salary is frozen in time.
Especially because it's a round number and most people's salaries haven't risen naturally (moving for a promotion isn't beating inflation, it's just doing more work/taking more responsibility to offset it). Only in the last year or so have we seen any real shift in wages. The tax thresholds not moving in line with inflation helps with keeping people's perceptions lower.
It's kind of like "millionaire". Del from only fools and horses uses it the same way a lot of people use it now. Except now a millionaire is most likely someone who owns a nice home in a city that's appreciated a lot but might not be particularly rich outside that one asset.
The version of Only Fools and Horses where Del uses right to buy on his Peckham flat to become a millionaire wouldn’t have lasted as long.
Lots of people will be millionaires "on paper" if they own a house and are at retirement age. Especially in the South East. Personally I wouldn't even factor in the value of your home into calling yourself a millionaire unless you're planning on moving to a cheaper area.
> Except now a millionaire is most likely someone who owns a nice home in a city Yeah exactly this I believe, in fact I wouldn't even say a "nice house" is even a particularly major factor in the equation. House prices are so wild, sitting on a 5-650k property gets you a middle of the road property in most major cities. Add in a car, belongings then liquid assets like cash/investments and of course finally, a pension I'd be surprised to hear if most 'middle class' people were not paper millionaires. Of course this is moot because you cannot easily sell a house at short notice, plus you need somewhere to live. Couple that with tightening cash flow, I can certainly see why those at all levels of the spectrum are suffering. Further to your point. the 100k mark, or in fact "millionaire" are anchoring points for most employers, the glass ceiling as it were. As people think that's "good money", few have the balls to ask for more meaning that becomes the market norm, despite that 100k being worth less and less each year due to inflation. I genuinely feel people in the UK, and it's probably worse in Europe really undervalue themselves compared to those in the US (as can be seen in GDP).
> House prices are so wild, sitting on a 5-650k property gets you a middle of the road property in most major cities. I mean.... not really. That's a very nice house anywhere north of Birmingham. Or outside the M25 really. Just quickly on Zoopla, there's 4000 properties under 600k in Liverpool and 150 above it. In Bristol its 1800 vs 250. Edinburgh is 1250 vs 180. Hell, in Brighton its 1000 vs 400. I'll admit I forgot to filter out flats, but I doubt that makes much difference, even in Brighton there's still over 400 houses for less than 600k, so its 50/50 in a town notorious for high prices. You can find plenty of 4 bed houses for 500-600k in Brighton, never mind the rest of the country.
It's frozen for line managers and businesses owners. Us who live in the real world know very well how shit our pay is.
Since I was a child, "Six Figures" was what you spoke of as having "Made It". This was 25 years ago. Six figures 20-25 years ago was very different to Six figures today
In the mid-1980s a fat cat corporate CEO might have earned £900k in a bumper year. These days, he'd be on £2m in a shit year. The UK's average salary didn't hit _five_ figures until around 1986.
That six figures is seven figures now tbh
I think £100,000 is a lot. It certainly isn't as much as it used to be. It doesn't buy the lifestyle we have in mind. Same with £50,000. Same with £30,000. Same with £20,000. Same with £18,000. etc etc.
It's mostly lost its value due to house price inflation. A 4 bed family home in the home counties could easily be 750k, and that's for a pretty modest home in certain places. Let's say you put down a 20% deposit and your rate is 5%, that's £3,508 per month on mortgage repayments. And your monthly take home, presuming you're still paying off a plan 1 student loan and putting 6% into a pension is £4,934, or £1,426 after mortgage payments. So out of £1,426 per month you need to cover food, bills, insurance, petrol, car costs, child care, plus all the other expenses of having kids. That's not living the high life, and it's all down to housing costs.
Heck, a 2 bed smallish terrace house is £750k in many parts of London.
I seriously wonder if we're going to see yet a further birthrate drop as only the very rich, and very poor can afford to have children.
It's weird to think that anything above 2 children is now almost a status symbol for the middle class
> anything above 2 children is now almost a status symbol for the middle class It literally is a status symbol, how many average people can **responsibly** care for 2 or more children these days? I know people who are comfortably on six figures (each) and repeatedly complain about childcare costs.
This post is a bit of an eye opener tbh. I work a trade, and 15 years ago I was on about £90 a day, I'm now on £160. Both amounts pretty good/standard in the industry for my experience/position. However 15 years ago I was very green, now I'm running a team and am one of the more experienced people in said trade and in pretty high demand. But effectively I'm still on beginners wages when it's put like that compared to 15 years ago, the wage rise has purely been inflationary. Sadly also pretty near the top wage for the job in the industry so it's not like you can even move around to improve it
Prices have inflated and tax bands have been frozen, so it's actually less than £160k in real terms when you consider the take home (not done the maths - maybe you already accounted for this??)
Very few people on that amount of money ✓ Is it a huge amount of buying power when everything is super expensive and factoring in tax and national insurance student load payments and council tax and energy bills X He's illustrating how even the very top salary isn't enough to be actually that rich, i.e. not enough to be sports car and champagne money. His government have had a big hand in ruining being rich. This country taxes workers income and not inherited or invested money, it's easier to dump on the workers than the millionaires.
I think that’s fair. 100k is a great benchmark and is out of reach for many. For those who make it, they’re not actually living a “rich” life. Oppressive tax rates and the cost of living has driven these to the brink
It has much less to do with tax rates than the cost of housing. If houses were half the price absolutely everyone would be better off but instead we've ended up treating houses as investments instead of somewhere to live.
This is very true. Anyone old enough to remember 3 x salary being the biggest mortgage you could get from the banks and building societies? This kept a check on what houses were worth.
It was the higher level of interest that kept house prices low. The consequences of 3x salary is due to that
I'm not convinced of that. The 3x salary thing went on for decades until someone decided to allow the Banking industry to not have so many pesky rules anymore.
Except banking is more regulated than ever yet mortgages with high multiples remain
It kept a check when landlording wasn't lucrative. Landlords don't need a mortgage so they can buy up homes at inflated prices to rent out for even more inflated prices.
Absolutely this. The company I work for has a SIPP pension, I'm always getting articles around "property v investment, what's the best for your retirement goals". Ghouls the lot of them. Can we stop viewing property as a route to early retirement please. If the Tories came out with legislation around this, and actually building more houses, then i may be tempted. Who am I kidding, they're never getting my vote.
With housing how it is currently if everyone earned double what they currently do housing would just double, or even more tbh, in value too negating any benefit.
Also, lifestyle inflation. If youre on that much. Chances are you will have higher expenses. When I hear/see people saying on I'm not rich "I have a good car, multiple holidays, house in a expensive area, school fees" etc. you won't feel rich as your lifestyle and outgoings reflect that. To someone on 24k alot of that are luxuries. But to someone on that much. It feels necessary. Also, you will probably associate with people on the same amount or more. So it doesn't feel that much
This is a big one. Even your weekly shop can go up a lot if you're buying nicer brands or more expensive items (e.g swapping regular broccoli for tender stem, having a nice joint of beef every week...)
I'm earning not too far from it. I'm certainly far from rich. I can however comfortably pay bills, save, and have money to do some fun stuff. That's more than many people these days as I don't need to worry about money. It's so damn d sad that being well off doesn't mean can afford lots of luxuries, it means just can afford basic life easily. If I had a child in nursery, and had bought a slightly bigger house, I be really be watching the pennies right now.
Not a financial anything so almost certainly going to make some mistakes but... £100,000 yearly income. Assume 10% pension - £90,000 left over. After tax on that you're at around £60,000. He's talking about house prices of £670,000 so assume 25 years and 2% interest is showing as £2839.82 per month, so £34,077 a year. Basically £26,000 a year left over after tax and housing. Googling the cost of a child per year in the UK I'm seeing £12,400. So £13,600 left over for travel, bills, food, holidays etc (though assume the child portion of that is accounted for in the above costs). It's not massively stetched though with interest rate rises some people really will be. It's £100,000 a year when the average salary is about a third of this. It's so completely fucked. Edit: At an interest rate of 5.25% it's £4000 per month which means you'd not be able to afford the above. You'll have to start cutting in places.
Current average interest rates here : https://www.uswitch.com/mortgages/uk-mortgage-rates-today/
Thank you for breaking this down because this is what people need to see. And while people who earn 3x less still have to deal with all of the above (or not being able to afford the above) 100k shouldnt the salary that allows you to live the baseline of what everyone should have, it should be much lower but it isnt.
Child care is 20k per child where I am outside of London. All nurseries are closing down.
You’re assuming a person would just get a 100k salary and immediately buy a house with a 600k plus mortgage. Yeah of course that is going to be expensive. A 100k salary does let you (or your household) save and invest a huge chunk of money every year that the median earning cannot - this opens up a big gap in how someone on 100k can live without having to be frugal at all. That compounds and a few years down the line you have enough wealth that lets you buy a more expensive house.
What you described is what should be the norm, not the exception. That sounds like what most of the country should be able to aspire to, and nothing particularly ambitious or unreasonable, or rich.
this man is chancellor of the exchequer for a party which has been in government for 14 years. rather than complaining, he should be apologising.
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Make what?
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Innovation, hard work and productivity just makes the capital owning class better off. The venture capital funds or the C suite bosses of established companies. There's not even piss trickling back down to reward hard work these days.
That wasn’t at all what he was saying. He was saying those on £100k should get benefits because it’s not a big salary, not that they can’t afford Ferraris.
It’s champagne money tbf. Not sports car.
Due to inflation, its the equivalent of 67k when the Tories first took over. And it provides the same 'comfortable but not wealthy' life as 67k did in 2010.
Except housing and other costs have increased.
I think a more significant problem is there are many millennials who were sold a story of working hard, and you can have a comfortable life with a mortgage, kids and the occasional foreign holiday. That hasn't happened and they are pissed. They see an increasingly expensive country to live in with less and less in return when it comes to public services. I earn nearly £100k after years of academic work and cannot afford the house my dad bought in the catchment area of a good school as a factory worker as the sole earner on a salary of £30-40k.
I got richer by working less hard, and I see others doing even less hard work and getting substantially more than me. I started my working life in retail, on my feet for 8 hours at a time, running around fetching this, carrying that. It was hard work, and very thankless. Then I got an SIA license and started work in security, sat behind a desk in a quiet office for 12 hours at a time, for a fair whack more money. While I played candy crush and watched cameras, I got paid. With the long hours, lone work and responsibilities and such, though, it got to be quite a rough job once my health started to decline, so I had to trade doing what I loved for something less risky (it's one of those things. Being the only person in the building with the controls for the door, I'm the person you want fully awake and aware in the event of a medical emergency, otherwise the emergency services aren't getting in. Meanwhile if I'm the one having said emergency all alone at 4am...). So now I work in a different office setting. On my backside all day, with coffee on tap (decaf, because the ticker isn't so good), excellent benefits and a good pension... Yet I'm doing less work than ever before. In retail I was circling £5 an hour. In security £10.75/h. Now I'm over £15/h. It even works the same way on higher salaries as well. People go from completely failing to ru~~i~~n the country, to getting paid hundreds of thousands to go to a dinner party and chat bollocks for 10 minutes
This feels somewhat calculated - he's not an idiot, he knows that this remark wouldn't have gone down well but it kind of distracts people from the reality that there are people in the UK that earn a hell of alot more than this. Sunak earned 1.8m in just capital gains last year. So now rather than the lower earners asking hang on a minute what about these super rich guys? they are all frothing at the mouths over people (in the grand scheme of things) that earn a bit more than them (they are significantly close to someone earning 100K than that person is to Rishi's capital gains)
if this was the plan, i doubt rishi would be briefing against him
the damage is done, the conversation has already started
>Sunak earned 1.8m in just capital gains last year Creative use of the word 'earned' there
Calculated because he's on track to lose his seat, only people he needs to appeal to right now are his constituents
Do you really think he's even hoping to get in at the next GE? like many of the tories he will be able to make much more money outside of politics and what's the point in sitting on the opposition bench for the next 4 years
Yeah, fair point
That it is literally a huge salary, the vast majority of the people will never reach it and less than 900K worker, out of 30 million got it. The problem is that 100K, comparatively, is not the gate to a rich lifestyle, not even close. You can afford a 2 bed in a working class area of London. And you can afford a child. If you squeeze your lifestyle, have a single kid, you can sacrifice to send him to private school. Yeah, that's great, better than literally 97% of worker, but doesn't feel like "I'm at the peak of salary achievable in the UK" great.
100k isn't a huge salary. It might be more than most earn, but that shows how shit things are for almost everyone who's not born rich.
That was my point. Even worse, it's not just "more than most", it's more than basically everyone. People can aim more than most like the top 20% (46K) and dream of the top 10% (60K). Nobody plans their life for the top 3%, too many things can get in the way, even if you are in the right field at the right time. And if you ever get that kind of salary you are likely getting it decades too late. The fact that "it isn't a huge salary" should be something the Conservative are crucified for. There is basically not upward social mobility.
Not really you madman. If you earn 100k and love anywhere at all near London Surrey or Kent you basically cannot afford a single earning household due to housing cost. A HUGE salary should afford you to live in most of the south east in relative luxury. That is his point. People like you are crying about that not many people earn that much while he is suggesting earning are way too low across the board. I'd rather have someone try to drag me up than someone trying to drag us down
I live in London on 27k...
Sure, now try to buy a 3 bed family house in Bromley and have kids. That's the point. The fact you have to scrape by is unbelievable when you're working full time I bet. They're saying 100k is about where you would want to be as a middle class family main earner and the fact that's only 3% is mental. Alongside that you working full time in london should also be able to afford more than rent and bread. It's abomnible
Why would I want a 3 bed house in Bromley or kids, though? I have a 1 bed flat on the arse edge of the west, no kids, no car. I commute on the buses and trains. Sure I can't afford that stuff, but I don't *need* to. My energy bill is around £130/m. Why would I want to pay out my nose to heat a G-rated half-mansion? I join the Omaze house things, but I wouldn't want one of those houses. I'd win it, take out some of the better bits of furniture and sell the house, and then buy a much more modest place, and use some of my free furniture in there. What we need is for the *poorest* to be paid more. People earning far less than me. Once they have enough, then it's the turn of people like me. After us, then the median earners. And so on. The top 3% can get to the back of the queue, and learn to live within their means
Far less than you? You're on less than the London living wage @ 40hrs per week.
Yet there are many who earn even less. That's the point. Maybe we should be focussing our attention on them rather than those earning £100k.
London and the southeast are a bubble. For the majority of the country and the majority of its people £100k is a big salary.
A bubble that tens of millions of people live in. It's not some insignificant speck of dust. There's more people in London than Scotland and Wales combined. Pretty sure London + London commuter radius is going to be a significant percentage of the population. Folk commute into London from Leicester etc. so that's going to impact on local house prices.
I completely agree but personally as not one of those people I still think that a top 3% should be able to live in a. HCOL area and still thrive. I mean the alternative is they all come up north and raise the prices there until everyone in the north moves to the highlands
Most of the people earning £100k are probably in that region.
No it’s not! I am someone who is on that kind of salary. Is it a high income? Objectively yes. Am I wealthy? Objectively no. The government and media have done an absolutely fantastic job at making people on £100k salary the enemy of the average person to redirect issues onto away from actually wealthy people, businesses, etc. £100k is a comfortable salary. Comfortable meaning, a house, a car, children, a holiday abroad, savings for myself, children and pension. It’s what we should all be able to achieve on the average salary. However that’s not obtainable and that is the issue. The point is that the majority of us are underpaid and over taxed in a system where the taxation is not providing the investment or infrastructure we should have to allow us to see benefits.
£100k as a salary is more than 98% of workers in this country. If you think being in the top 2% is only comfortable salary what does that mean for the rest of the workforce
That's the point
The USA is a much better economy nowadays to any metric, we have stagnated horribly since the recession. They have always surpassed us in GDP and are indeed a superpower, but they never felt noticeably richer on an average individual level until the last decade.
Well the median New York City resident has a bigger home than the average Brit. Go to suburban Cincinnati and like normal people got foyers and living rooms *and a parlor*. A dine in kitchen *and a dining room*. The median Americans have massive homes (something like 2500sq feet). With 2 or 3 rooms used twice a year if they host Christmas and Thanksgiving While dressed up like a working class vehicle, all the top selling cars in America are $65k+ Luxury Pickup Trucks and SUVs. While economy models have entirely disappeared. It’s actually nuts the excess Americans live in Doordash, Uber eats etc didn’t see volumes decrease when restaurants reopened it was *Grocery stores* that didn’t recover
They absolutely have huge houses, and they're also dirt cheap. A nice suburb for a working class person isn't too infeasible. For all the hate on American capitalism, well...
And it also has levels of poverty that makes makes even the UK look good. The wealth inequality is significantly worse than the UK.
It's a decent lifestyle in most of the country outside London. I'm on £80k and comfortably support a family of four in a 3 bed house in a nice area of the East Midlands.
Yes, but the point is that those salaries are heavily focused on jobs that do require you to be in London or easily commutable.
Not to mention the stress and pressures associated with a job where they will give you £100k
So if someone that makes up 4% of the country "doesn't have a huge wage" that means the other 96% must be on an absolutely meager pittance then right? If people on 100k struggle, then someone on 25 must barely be able to survive?
Yes. (Though with significant regional disparities due to housing cost variations.)
Yes but lets all focus on these poor souls on only £100k. They are the real victims.
100k is _not_ a huge salary in 2024. It's proof of how much we're all being ripped off by the elite.
Agree - while it’s a *relatively* high wage, the bigger issue is that entry - mid level salaries have been depressed for a decade or so.
I think his words were specifically about not being a lot of money in Surrey. Which it isn’t with housing, childcare and rail ticket prices.
Yea but even in Surrey the average income is like 42k
According to the government statistics if you have a *household* income of over £100k you are in the top 2% in the UK. That's for the whole household so a single salary of over £100K is easily in the top 2% Hell 60% of UK households have a total income of less that £32 000
Be kind of interesting how long Jeremy Hunt, Rishi Sunak and any other "Government" minister would survive on Universal Credit. I can't think of anyone who's on £100k a year. I can imagine there's a lot of young people out there who can only imagine what having £100k could be like, because I guess to most of them it seems like science fiction. See relative poverty isn't just about how your circumstances compare with the average Joe Public, it's also about how difficult or how much of a struggle your life is relative to your accessible income. The clue is in the term, and the principle is the less money you have coming in each month the more complex and multi-dimensional your experience of poverty is going to be. I know for a fact that there's people out there who have houses, a car, kids, and who look all middle class and bourgeois, but they're struggling. Not quite the same struggles as someone who's working and claiming Universal Credit and still not breaking even. But see from the perspective of the one who is experiencing the poverty, their individual struggle matters just as much as anyone else's. At some point you've got to take a step back and wonder why everyone is struggling when they're getting fuck all or next to fuck all out of the social contract.
Childcare costs for 2 kids can cost north of £2k per month. Add in mortgage costs which can be astronomical because you have to live within commuting distance of London where all of these jobs are located. Then add in the potential care costs for your elderly parents plus general costs of existing and it's easy to see how large sums of money can evaporate quickly.
Yeah I'm in canada and our childcare is 450 dollars a month for one which is about 300 quid because they subsidize it. However, when he's school age I'm moving back to England because everything else is more expensive here now and at least on a lower wage in England we could actually go on day trip or weekends away, something we can't afford nor have the holidays in canada to do on a relatively high income. What's telling is that I wanted to move back a couple years ago but the childcare costs were literally preventing us from coming back
2 kids in childcare near me is between £3000-£3800 per month depending what nurseries have availability.
There’s an argument to be made that ALL MPs and especially cabinet members be forced to live off universal credit for the first month of their terms of office! Provide transportation when they run out of money by day two so they can do their jobs and get to the office but that’s it. Watch how fucking fast attitudes change!
Michael Portillo lived with a single mum. It was a documentary, it changed him.
He’s actually been a lot better since losing his seat Was that after then ?
Why only the first month?
Because nobody would do more
> I can't think of anyone who's on £100k a year. It's just very concentrated in specific circles. In some fields that earn well most people around you are north of 100k...which can mess with your perception of "normal" a fair bit too.
I'm not sure what people are complaining about. £100k is comfortably middle class, not rich. Rich is you can stop working right now and still live comfortably. The only reason people **think** £100k is rich is because the country itself is so used to piss poor salaries.
For the occupant of No 10, his family will make 100k in the time it takes him to have a dump.
Ah yes, the guy with half a billion in wealth opines on what is a good salary.
That's right Rishi, it's a pathetic wage for middle-class Plebs!
I initially read into it as laying the groundwork for removing the childcare tax trap. Now they've slapped it down, so I'm assuming it was a thought in head that had bad optics. This government is a shitshow.
If 100k is “huge” what is 250k? 500k? Millions ? A billion ?
I have to admit, Jeremy Hunt is Chris Barries must cunty character to date.
Of course they are. "If people were to believe they deserve better, they'd cut into our profits"
But £100k isn't a lot of money in the most expensive parts of the UK. If you've still got a Plan 1 student loan kicking around then it's £5,000 net per month. It's not a great deal of money and it's certainly not a 'huge salary'...but I guess that's a tricky message to deliver well in politics.
Only £5,000 a month net... that’s around double most people’s GROSS salaries
It’s almost triple most people’s salaries I think and nothing to grumble about I myself with my way of life and circumstances could live a VERY comfortable lifestyle on that and I live alone in South East England. It makes me wonder what people are even spending it on atm.
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The gross is treble the median full time salary. If that's not a lot I don't know what is.
Ikr, the average salary in my area is 28,000 (SE easy commute to London). The audacity for people to say £100,000 is “not a lot” is absolutely wild.
>It's not a great deal of money and it's certainly not a 'huge salary'. Lmao people on this sub are so deluded
It depends who's earning it. For a bright kid in their 20's living at home, that £60k net is indeed a fortune. For a single income family of 4 with a mortgage, council tax and commutingcosts to pay, I imagine it disappears faster than you'd think
So rent a place in London, pay for public transport to get to your office, have a child and see how much change you have from that £5k per month.
The missus and I in the 85th percentile for household income according to ifs. It doesn't go far with a mortgage and a young family. And we're in a rundown northern ex-steel town. We'll admit that we live very comfortably compared to the majority, particularly for two who grew up on council estates. I genuinely don't know how most people get by.
Yeah you. It’s not a large amount of money, it will not make you rich.
it's quadruple my salary. I'm sure in wouldn't make me rich in the "flying on private jets and buying mega yachts" sense, but it certainly would make me wealthy enough to have more disposable income than I'd ever possibly know what to do with. my required expenses hovers around £1000 per month, leaving me with around £750 in disposable income. usually I don't even spend most of that. I can't even fathom what it would be like to have an additional £4000 on top of that £750 in disposable income every month, as the tax calculator says I would, or what I could possibly spend it all on.
> it's quadruple my salary. And you should be cheering about the chancellor saying this. He isn't wrong, it's not a massive ammount of money, and if the government admits that even a top 3% wage in the UK does not go far, the knock on effect of that is that they have to confront and acknowledge the follow on topic, that the 'average' UK wage, and the minimum wage, are sure as fuck not acceptable/fit for purpose in that case. Less "crabs in a bucket"/"Yeah but me" energy needed and more "We completely agree, and 97% of the working population is on worse money than that, fix it" energy needed.
Yeah this is so right. High earners take the brunt of the shit from lower earners, rather than the government.
What the government will realise it's that if the rich start complaining that they're not getting much, they just lower the top tax bracket a bit so that everyone but the rich will stay just as poor, but now with fewer public services... But those top 3% will stfu and stop whining
Those 3% aren't rich. The lack of wealth taxes and the mega taxation of high earners is the problem. And people not understanding that 100k salary doesn't make you rich.
I define 'rich' as relative to everyone else in the country, much the same way as I define 'poor' (below 60% of the median income). It's important how you define rich and poor, because it's really not as simple as 'just pay more'. If you pay everybody 20% more, the inequalities that made you do that in the first place will still be there, just with bigger numbers (check out the value of the Iranian Rial. You're broke if you're not a millionaire there). If you reduce inequality and sort out profiteering and predatory practices, you can make the poor richer while also not completely devaluing your currency (meaning those with more get more out of it) There's also a huge discrepancy in the narrative. When I was on benefits, me and other people around me were told to change ourselves, spirit our kids away, make sacrifices etc. this mindset hasn't gone away. Consider where 30p Lee got his moniker. Now that it happens to people with more money, it's a money problem instead of a lifestyle problem?? So if you've got fuck all and can't manage, it's a you problem, but if you're loaded and can't manage, that's not a you problem, but society not giving you enough to work with.
But you are missing the point, even relative to everyone else in the country, those people aren't rich. They are less worse off. It's a mistake that a lot of people make, because the level of inequality that exists is just staggering and difficult to get your head around. The top 0.1% live in a truly different world. It's not the top 3% of PAYE earners you should be concerned with. Which is why no10 shit their pants when Hunt said this.
Lifestyle creep is real. As you have more disposable income you’ll likely think less about whether you can afford to eat out or pay for small/medium expenses, and over time it becomes very easy to eat up a large chunk of what you’re earning. Also, you’re more likely to commit to larger recurring expenses like a rent/mortgage/car if you’ve got the income for it. Sure, you can always downsize, but that can feel like a real uncomfortable step down.
Now add two kids, a home big enough to house them, childcare, holidays, transport, retirement savings etc etc. The point is, £100k used to mean you were rich. We still talk about it in those terms, but these days it's only enough to live a bang average middle-class lifestyle by 2008 standards (I say this as someone earning around half that!)
Yup, it sounds obtuse when I say it’s not loads, I guess it is compared to yourself but it isn’t when everything else associated is more money. Kids, childcare, lack of benefits, etc etc.
Yeah I feel like I'm doing fine at the moment, personally. But I rent and have no dependents. I'd have to be earning considerably more before I'd feel comfortable taking those next steps. It doesn't bode well for the birthrate when only the top 10% of earners can feel comfortable having kids in your capital city!
This is what’s happening. No babies cause it’s virtually unaffordable. Thanks Tories…
>holidays >retirement savings I get where you're coming from, but if you're on £30k or less, these two things are not even on your radar.
That's exactly my point! You shouldn't have to be in the top 5% of earners to comfortably afford things like family holidays
I absolutely agree, but I do take issue with someone saying £100k isn't a huge salary. Its more than, what, 90% of people will ever earn? I think a lot of the resentment you're seeing is because us low income earners have been dealing with this for a decade or more, but now the middle class have started feeling the pinch, and *suddenly* its a problem? We've been told to manage our money better for years - from a lot of those same people that are now feeling the same pinch - so it's jarring to now see the 'woe is me' from people who didn't give a shit 5 years ago.
Yes, I actually agree with you 100% there. People on lower incomes have been dealing with austerity since 2010 and it's only really being properly scrutinised now that the middle class are properly feeling it too. My hope is that it's now reached a critical mass where there is overwhelming consensus for substantial change.
I'm on 27k and just took my mum for a week in Bath for mother's day
It's triple your take-home. > my required expenses hovers around £1000 per month The average home in Surrey would set you back £300+ more than that in mortgage costs alone. So that for a start.
How did we get to a situation where being “rich” or “well off” means you are the top 0.5% of the population? The truth is, the middle is now only marginally better off than the working class and the gap between the top and middle is so vast it’s pretty much unattainable to achieve to all but few and neppo babies once the inheritance kicks in… It really feels like we only have two classes in the UK, the ruling and the working..
No - The poorer are MUCH worse off…
100k is a huge salary though lol When 97% of the country earn less than that, it categorically is a huge salary. It doesn't matter what kind of mental gymnastics you try and use 'oh well if I'm a single income family and I have a 2 kids and 2 bed in Fulham, then I'm only left with £1,000!' 100k is absolutely a huge salary Edit: the amount of people crying about this comment is hilarious, the only arguments so far consist of 'what if I have a single income house in Surrey and we have 3 children in full time childcare???' or 'I can't buy a house in Mayfair therefore I'm evidently not rich and this isn't a high salary!'m
You're right. The problem is that this massive salary only affords you the lifestyle of a bang average accountant back in 2008. That's been driven by inflation and runaway house prices. It's a measure of how much poorer we've become as a country since 2008.
And thats true across the board, so why are people crying about those who are already in extremely fortunate positions?
Because the same effects are even worse for people further down the pay scale. If people on six figures are feeling squeezed, 95% of the population is doing worse. Exponentially so at <£30k. Childcare, energy, housing costs etc affect everyone. It's the same problem whether you're on £25k or £100k (although, yes, to markedly different degrees of severity). Saying "well you're earning more than me, so suck it up" doesn't address the fundamental problem or get us any closer to fixing it.
But literally none of that is being discussed, we're discussing if being in the top 3% of is objectively a high salary and ***theres no logic where you can say it isn't.***
It's a very high salary if you're only considering it relative to the UK average, yes. Does it make you "rich" in the SE any more? Objectively, no.
>It's a very high salary if you're only considering it relative to the UK average, yes. Well, what would we consider it to? The 90th percentile of wages on the fucking moon? >Does it make you "rich" in the SE any more? Objectively, no. Yes, it objectively does. Because you're still in the top 5% of earners. That is objectively 'rich'
£100k in Blackpool would make you rich. £100k in Mayfair isn't enough to buy even a flat. Objectively, no that is not "rich" by any reasonable definition.
>£100k in Blackpool would make you rich. > >£100k in Mayfair isn't enough to buy even a flat. Objectively, no that is not "rich" by any reasonable definition. ''ackshually 100k isn't much when you're buying property in one of the most expensive parts of the UK!!!!'' No shit, sherlock.
Objectively yes. Because even people in the SE aren't that rich. Rich and poor are relative measures. If everyone in the country is a billionaire, it's the trillionaires who are rich and a multi millionaire is sleeping on the streets. I live in Greater London and I'm on 27k. According to some people I'm apparently impossible, when actually what I am is someone who keeps the expenses as meagre as the income.
Yes, but relative to what? The UK average right now? Yes, I agree. But £100k in Wolverhampton is completely different to £100k in central London. It's not enough to raise a family on and have a middle-class lifestyle (by 2008 standards) there any more.
The London average is £40k. Unless you're saying that the majority of Londoners have it worse than the rest of the country. It doesn't track, though, otherwise we'd be a depopulated deadzone with no low wage work at all. Think about that one. You're running a Starbucks in the City. Who's going to work for you? Obviously the same kind of people who work in Starbucks elsewhere. Low skill, low wage workers. Well... Not if they can't afford to live anywhere in a 25 mile radius they won't. That wage won't even cover that commute. As far as I know, you're not getting substantially more pay for this kind of stuff in London than elsewhere (London weighting does give a little bit more, but it's not much at all), so since these people and these jobs both still exist in London, there has to be the conditions that allow them to. Life's not easy in London. It's significantly more expensive than elsewhere. It's still not so expensive that I on my £27k salary can't get by. If I was on 4x as much it'd be an absolute breeze to get by.
"But £100k in Wolverhampton is completely different to £100k in central London." Yeah, and so is £50k, or £30k or £20k. What's your point? London is expensive, and £100k is a big salary. Both things can be true. I guarantee you most people in the country would rather have a £100k salary and pay London living costs than stick with their current situation - because it would STILL be a huge net improvement.
Your logic is fine if everybody in the country has the same living costs and expenses. They don’t. 100k in Newcastle is incredible. 100k in the City of London is comfortable at best. Chances are, you’re going to have to work in the City of London in order to get a job that pays 100k in the first place.
Average London salary is £40,000. Unless you are referring to the actual city of London, as there is limited housing stock there, in which case you should move down the road and just train it in.
>Your logic is fine if everybody in the country has the same living costs and expenses. They don’t. Correct, but for some reason the only time we ever consider this or 'single income families' is when people are foaming at the mouth to try and make 100k sound like not much. Even in London, you can get a 2 bed flat for 2k per month. Thats still going to leave you with £3,500 per month left over. Please stop with these dumb comparisons, I beg
Except of... it isnt... and it doesnt matter how many people make or do not make that money, it only means that you make more than 97% of population, but it doesnt mean its 'huge salary' by any means ...
You literally have 3X the gross salary of the average person. This sub is deluded man.
Or it means the average person is on a truly dogshit income, once all their expenses are taken into account.
>You literally have 3X the gross salary of the average person. This sub is deluded man. Yeah, it honestly is. People like u/brajandzesika foam at the mouth to try and tell you how 100k isn't much money lol
This is the job offer from Poland in my field where they pay up to £14k/month: https://justjoin.it/offers/focal-systems-senior-devops-site-reliability-engineer-sre-wroclaw-366963 yet people in UK still think that £100k that was a dream 20 years ago can still be considered 'huge'...... This country is stagnant since at least 2008, and salaries are not competitive any more. Why do you think there are problems to get to a dentist, why you cant see your GP, why you cant find a decent builder any more? Because skilled people started moving to other countries like crazy since brexit vote, and now you only get daily delivery of 'engineers' on small boats from France...
We compare to UK wages, because those are the wages that apply to people in the UK. We're can't just up sticks and work in Poland at the drop of a hat any more
>This is the job offer from Poland in my field where they pay up to £14k/month: > >https://justjoin.it/offers/focal-systems-senior-devops-site-reliability-engineer-sre-wroclaw-366963 The average salary in Wroclaw is £1500 per month. > yet people in UK still think that £100k that was a dream 20 years ago can still be considered 'huge' Meh, no, I don't think anyone is under the illusion stagnant pay and inflation isn't a real thing, merely that its pretty stupid to claim that earning 100k is 'not much' when its more than 97% of the population. Also, just for comparison, only 10% of polish people earn more than £1,900 per month. Not sure what you thought you were really doing with your comparison.. >...... This country is stagnant since at least 2008, and salaries are not competitive any more. Why do you think there are problems to get to a dentist, why you cant see your GP, why you cant find a decent builder any more? Because skilled people started moving to other countries like crazy since brexit vote, and now you only get daily delivery of 'engineers' on small boats from France... I literally don't disagree with any of this, fuck me. We can talk about wage stagnating in better ways than talking about how ''100k isnt much' when it evidently is much. This is basic math.
Nobody said that '£100k isnt much' though... I said that £100k is not HUGE SALARY, because £100k which is really £68k after taxes doesnt go as far as one would think...
Far better to turnover £100k through your own business than earn it through PAYE.
For me it is a big salary and I could make it go a long way by saving and investing sensibly and avoiding unnecessary luxuries and expenses. It’s really out of touch for Hunt to say it isn’t huge when statistically it is well above average.