Government debt and the future of living in the UK
Government debt is enormous, as a percentage of GDP it is higher than Ethiopia, Cuba or Zambia.
The new figures are out today about how much debt our wonderful government has. The estimate I heard was £700 billion with the liabilities from RBS and Lloyds being over £1 trillion. I know that the £1 trillion will not all be bad debt but I would guess that 40% of that is worthless leaving the government with a debt of £1.1 trillion in total. There are about 61 million in the UK and about 30 million of them are working at the moment. So, each working person is carrying a debt of £36,000 or 1.5 times the annual average salary. This is after 10 years of economic boom and we are now entering, in my opinion the worst financial disaster in living memory (that includes World War 2). If an average person could manage to save £4,000 per year then it would take them 9 years to pay off their share of the debt and they wouldn't have any saving at the end of it. With the government being in such deep trouble, tax's will rise, income will fall (job shortages mean no wage inflation) my question would be, is this really the country to settle down in?
The future for the UK does not look good. The baby boomers are all approaching retirement and as far I am aware the birth rate is falling. That would suggest a possibility that the few young people will be supporting a large proportion of older people through their pension payments (on top of their enormous share of government debt!). How will they be able to save for their own retirement? In the future I think I may be looking for more information on this as if true, living in the UK will be expensive and there will be little (if any) disposable income. Of course, maybe this is the big plan; force people to live a life where credit is the only possible way to exist. That way the government and banks will own you and your freedom will be nothing but a gilded cage.
19.02.2009 01:21 - Posted by doahh - Comments: 0 - Economics & politics
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