an article by Torsten Bell published in the New Statesman
A family on the average wage would have to bank every single penny for 43 years to reach the wealthiest 10 per cent.
This year, average wages are set to be flat. British households, meanwhile, are in the middle of a projected four-year income stagnation. And our productivity has barely risen since the 2008 financial crisis.
Pay, incomes, productivity – that all are flatlining is the defining feature of our economics and our politics today. There’s a reason calling a general election in 2017, as wages fell, was a risky choice by Theresa May.
But one economic number that we rarely discuss has been increasing for some time: wealth. The value of land, it was recently reported, has increased by 412 per cent since 1995; UK households have £12.8tn of wealth. Crucially, our wealth is growing much faster than our income. Between 1955 and the 1980s, wealth was steady at two and a half times national income. Today, it’s closer to seven.
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