One million cancel broadband as living costs rise • Hacker News Board

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#201

Post by banannaise » Thu, May 18, 2023, 5:03 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #93

Nextgrid wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently had to look at the property market again and the rents have increased significantly, in addition to the usual high cost of living increase and inflation/shrinkflation which doesn't show any signs of slowing down. I very much wonder how they expect "normal" people to survive. It looks like you need to fall quite far into the highest tax brackets just to be able to rent something decent in London, and buying i…

My girlfriend rents relatively centrally in London, and her rent has gone up ~40%. I have no idea how people on average salaries - even average London salaries - can afford to stay much longer.

It's like this all over the US too. The short answer is they can't. Rental companies have eaten all the disposable income, and now they're trying to come for the income that isn't disposable.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#202

Post by bluehoot » Thu, May 18, 2023, 5:04 PM UTC

HlessClaudesman wrote: post #55

monk_e_boy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than london and a couple of other cities, most of the country was already ranked as most deprived in Europe. Throw in Brexit, cost of living and most normal people are fucked. I'm a lecturer (5 yrs) and I'm struggling to pay my bills. We've been out on strike and nothing happened. NHS is struggling. Pay rises are around 0% for most people I know. Food inflation is around 16%. Foodbanks are struggling to feed fa…

UK was already creaking at the seems in the 2000's. I left in 2011 and have spent the last 5 years crawling up a sewer pipe of regulations trying to get my post brexit immigration sorted. Brexit was just a fantasy of better days to come that was actually pretext for a right wing power grab. And what do right wingers ultimately want? A world of red in tooth and claw capitalism with themselves as the permanent winners,…

stop being misled. tories, labour, it doesn't matter. two sides, same coin. government needs to end. international banking cartel needs to end. the synagogue of satan needs to end. evil needs to end.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#203

Post by anoonmoose » Thu, May 18, 2023, 5:05 PM UTC

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #197

jameshush wrote: post #153

Visiting family in the UK for the first time in about five years. Costs here are _way_ higher than I remember. I bought three hamburgers, three drinks, and two large pops at a burger shop here, the total was 48 GBP (about $60 USD). This was at Five Guys. I couldn't believe it. I visited my co-worker in the UK, and over some beers, he mentioned he's getting taxed at 48-50% on top of this. Also 20% VAT on regular shopp…

Five Guys is absolutely atypical and has always been very expensive. A burger and a soft drink in a Wetherspoons (love them or loathe them) will be between £5 and £7 depending on the burger. > he mentioned he's getting taxed at 48-50% on top of this That's the higher rate for those who earn the most and, again, atypical. https://www.gov.uk/income-tax-rates

Yup, using your link and this one [1] it would not be unreasonable to estimate that his friend is in the 98% or 99% percentile of earners in the UK.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-f...

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#204

Post by skippyboxedhero » Thu, May 18, 2023, 5:06 PM UTC

jameshush wrote: post #153

Visiting family in the UK for the first time in about five years. Costs here are _way_ higher than I remember. I bought three hamburgers, three drinks, and two large pops at a burger shop here, the total was 48 GBP (about $60 USD). This was at Five Guys. I couldn't believe it. I visited my co-worker in the UK, and over some beers, he mentioned he's getting taxed at 48-50% on top of this. Also 20% VAT on regular shopp…

Can't believe prices are so high...goes to Five Guys which is at least 3x any other burger chain.

I still can't believe how cheap the UK is. Big Mac meal near me is £6, cheeseburger is £1, 1kg of potatoes was 20p the other week, two-portion microwavable rice 20p, even a nice matured ribeye steak is only £5, it is genuinely incredible.

In particular, the price of stuff that comes from farmers is really too low in the UK (there has been massive competition in food retail, great...prices are extremely low but cost isn't an issue for 99% of the population...if you go into Tesco, it is staggering how limited their range of products is, the reason why is that they have driven prices so low that food production is often quite unprofitable...the recent trade deal with Morocco was also a real game-changer for food prices, UK farmers can't compete).

And the top rate of tax in the UK is 45%. When people say they pay more it is because they are paying for student loans (which aren't really on economic terms, are often forgiven totally, etc...the reason why we have this system is because wealthy students were getting heavy subsidies from free university education). But what people ignore is that you get substantial amounts of welfare and benefits.

For example, the govt recently introduced free childcare for a certain number of hours. Where do you think the taper would be? Probably median income? £28k? Maybe where child benefits stop £50k? Nope, £100k. You can earn £99k/year in the UK, and still receive benefits from the state. That is why taxes are "so high" (they aren't, taxes in the UK are amazingly low given the size of the state...we have wage subsidy programs worth tens of billions every year, housing subsidie worth tens of billions, on and on it goes, everyone on welfare).

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#205

Post by lucb1e » Thu, May 18, 2023, 5:08 PM UTC

bscphil wrote: post #111

lucb1e wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expensive to maintain: dunno, but I pay Slow: you can watch HD video ever since 3G came out, and 4G reduced latency a lot Doesn't scale: that's also a thing 4G apparently addressed. I've never run into capacity issues, just range issues Depends heavily on weather: never noticed it depending even slightly on weather. I've tested this in heavy rain because I indeed heard that 'straalverbindingen' have issues with this…

> I pay > you can watch HD video I wonder... do you primarily watch HD video over this wireless connection, or are you watching it via a more traditional broadband connection? In the US, I pay ~$10 a month for wireless data (across two phones), but these phones are on WiFi 90% of the time and we never watch video on wireless. Even if you have an unusual plan that allows unlimited streaming at that price (without limi…

> do you primarily watch HD video over this wireless connection

No, I'm just saying it's been possible ever since 3G rolled out, and tech has only gotten better since then. The person I responded to said that mobile data can't be used as a replacement for a landline, but in practice, 99% of us use the airwaves for this already. We call it Wi-Fi. A lot of mobile towers also first beam their traffic to another tower before your packets meet a fiber.

Of course (as a general rule), the sooner your signal gets to a fiber, the better it is for your connection speed and reliability, but mobile data (with good signal strength) is clearly fine for most purposes. I am waiting for the day where people realise this and mobile data scales up and gets too cheap to meter in the same way as today's landline connections don't charge per gigabyte (I'm ignoring the existence of Belgium here; pardon me, belgians!). For now, having a landline dug to your home and work plus paying for mobile connectivity is cheaper than going mobile-only and getting a practically unlimited data bundle. A lot of rooms are also sandwiched in a way that outside signals aren't as reliable as a local WiFi. I'd be surprised if the former is still the case in 15 years, and the latter in 25 (thinking of something like a femtocell here).

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#206

Post by kwere » Thu, May 18, 2023, 5:08 PM UTC

rejectfinite wrote: post #167

Im in another country with a desktop, fibre, phone plan, 3 monitors, laptop, on 24/7. Im watching youtube and netflix right now an HN on one monitor How do peolpe function with just phone?? omg

Some telecoms allow hotspots from phones to Pcs, and data plans are a afforable, considering most people rarely need more than 50-100 gb/month of mobile data. Personally in Italy i only use phone with hotspot, i pay 10$ for 200 gb data/month and i can "restart" the plan if i use all the data for 10$.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#207

Post by wskinner » Thu, May 18, 2023, 5:08 PM UTC

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #197

jameshush wrote: post #153

Visiting family in the UK for the first time in about five years. Costs here are _way_ higher than I remember. I bought three hamburgers, three drinks, and two large pops at a burger shop here, the total was 48 GBP (about $60 USD). This was at Five Guys. I couldn't believe it. I visited my co-worker in the UK, and over some beers, he mentioned he's getting taxed at 48-50% on top of this. Also 20% VAT on regular shopp…

Five Guys is absolutely atypical and has always been very expensive. A burger and a soft drink in a Wetherspoons (love them or loathe them) will be between £5 and £7 depending on the burger. > he mentioned he's getting taxed at 48-50% on top of this That's the higher rate for those who earn the most and, again, atypical. https://www.gov.uk/income-tax-rates

The top marginal rate of 45% in the UK starts at £125,140. Compare that to the US, where the top marginal rate of 37% starts at $578,125.

- Edited to correct incorrect US top rate.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#208

Post by oliwarner » Thu, May 18, 2023, 5:10 PM UTC

streptomycin wrote: post #196

jameshush wrote: post #153

Visiting family in the UK for the first time in about five years. Costs here are _way_ higher than I remember. I bought three hamburgers, three drinks, and two large pops at a burger shop here, the total was 48 GBP (about $60 USD). This was at Five Guys. I couldn't believe it. I visited my co-worker in the UK, and over some beers, he mentioned he's getting taxed at 48-50% on top of this. Also 20% VAT on regular shopp…

FWIW, in CA that order at Five Guys would be $55 ( https://www.fastfoodmenuprices.com/five-guys-prices/ gives prices at (8.95*3+3.06*3+7.41*2)*1.0725), but I imagine people in CA are richer than people in the UK...

Median household incomes $84k Cali vs $42k UK.

They're post-tax and don't factor major expenses like healthcare, household bills in general are almost double in California, but yeah, the average Californian is probably wealthier.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#209

Post by jjoonathan » Thu, May 18, 2023, 5:12 PM UTC

andy_ppp wrote: post #139

jarym wrote: post #96

And 3 million depend on food banks. Things are getting tough for lots of people and that's with extremely high levels of employment. Not sure this will go well if there is a recession that causes the jobless rate to increase.

Don’t worry, everyone is suffering - we’re all in this together… For example we’re set to have the highest private jet sales on record this year https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/01/private-jet-sa... Almost as if COVID caused a huge redistribution of money from the poor to the wealthy.

"By design" seems like a bit much, but the upper class sure didn't let the crisis go to waste.

Spend $800B so the poors can eat? Hand-wringing and pearl clutching up and down the air waves. Just think of the inflation!

Spend $3000B to pump real estate values? Complete silence, relatively speaking.

This experience made it very clear who was in charge and who wasn't. These are US numbers, but I tend to suspect the same story repeated itself all around the world.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#210

Post by ahallock » Thu, May 18, 2023, 5:12 PM UTC

jameshush wrote: post #153

Visiting family in the UK for the first time in about five years. Costs here are _way_ higher than I remember. I bought three hamburgers, three drinks, and two large pops at a burger shop here, the total was 48 GBP (about $60 USD). This was at Five Guys. I couldn't believe it. I visited my co-worker in the UK, and over some beers, he mentioned he's getting taxed at 48-50% on top of this. Also 20% VAT on regular shopp…

It's gotten to the point that I cook at home because the quality does not match the price anymore. And I'm lazy and work a comfy tech job, so you know it's gotten bad. Paid over $8 today for a slice of cheese pizza (regular size, not jumbo) and a small drink--this is in Cleveland, OH It's ridiculous.