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One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

bbc.com

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Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#281

Post by Nextgrid »

bnastic wrote: post #73
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…

> There is no reason to pay the money I am paying here if I can get better food, climate and general quality of life for the same (or even less!) money elsewhere in Europe Sure. And you should probably do that. But then a lot of other people are of the opinion that they can ignore food and weather and come to Britain. Net migration numbers in recent decades have not gone in favour of your line of thinking? UK high st…

> But then a lot of other people are of the opinion that they can ignore food and weather and come to Britain. Net migration numbers in recent decades have not gone in favour of your line of thinking?

As a labor camp, Britain is very nice and efficient. Depending on the job, their country of origin, and whether they are able/willing to evade taxes, it may work out that a couple years of suffering in shitty conditions will yield a decent nest egg to enjoy back home. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a nice place to live and build a future in. I wonder if there are stats on the average length of stay of those immigrants?

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#282

Post by c7THEC2DDFVV2V »

wskinner wrote: post #207
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

this isn't correct. At that rate of 125,140 you have already lost your tax free allowance of 12,500.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#283

Post by fauigerzigerk »

jon-wood wrote: post #219
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mean BT Wi-fi that's not free. https://www.btwifi.co.uk/

It’s “free” if you’re paying for a BT internet connection at home.

Exactly. I used it for a few days before my BT modem arrived at my previous address. It's OK-ish if you're lucky but it's certainly not free in any sense of the word.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#284

Post by BadTakeAbove »

xzel wrote: post #271
CydeWeys wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like an outlier though, no? The overall averages there are much lower. Also everyone I know in tech over here is making much more than that still.

That thats the case for the US as well. The average salary for US software dev, according to glassdoor, is 88,395/year, which iirc is about the same I've seen form other sources. Everyone working in FAAG is an outlier compared to the rest of the US. These conversations are usually pretty poor because context is very important and job + location + circumstance is seemingly pretty much impossible to compare to each oth…

Not really. You have to compare the equivalent rarity between the two countries. He's describing a 99th percentile income in the UK. The 99th percentile income in the US is $350K. It's not even close.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/charting-income-distribu...

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#285

Post by andy_ppp »

jjoonathan wrote: post #209
andy_ppp wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The money spent during COVID ($13tn of various money printing and government intervention) was largely spent into the economy owned by rich people - who do you think owns your mortgage and the banks and your debts and the super markets etc.

The poor still spent most of their money, the rich did not buy more yachts and expensive meals and attending "charity" galas etc. so what would usually be a circular flow became a direct increase in the wealth of the rich and direct decrease in the wealth of the poor. The inflation we see now is going to remain for a while but in the end prices over the next 3-5 years will nearly double and wages will remain the same.

The rich just increased their wealth and the working person got dramatically poorer. Poor people in the UK can't even afford food and Internet but at least the rich have never had it so good. Tax the rich.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#286

Post by thom »

hospitalJail wrote: post #213
jjoonathan wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

I was so angry about all of this. I had been waiting to time the market, I ended up only buying 30% down rather than the 50-80% down I was hoping. What happened in 2020 changed my understanding of markets. Politics>Economics for politicians.

Read the room, friend.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#287

Post by mustacheemperor »

EddieEngineers wrote: post #253
weaksauce wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

broccoli in socal hovers around 1-2 dollars a pound. that's just an outlier

Yeah I know, it was just so crazy I wanted to mention it somewhere and this post worked lol. Fwiw it was from https://www.draegers.com .

Draegers is probably the most expensive grocery store I have ever set foot in. The one near San Mateo has a crazy wine selection sometimes but I literally cannot fathom buying a week's groceries there. Beautiful produce, but you can get beautiful produce at a farm stand for a couple bucks too.

Not sure how to feel about the existence of luxury grocery stores. I'm sure the people who shop there are happy.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#288

Post by rjsw »

samwillis wrote: post #38

An interesting thing to note in contrast to this is the massive amount of PE cash being pumped into privet regional FTTP broadband companies. Affluent areas, such as where I live, are even seeing multiple competing companies pulling fibre through the OpenReach ducts. We have two along with BT to chose from in a town of only 30k people in the midlands. As others commenters have noted, the rich/poor divide is getting w…

In Manchester, there isn't even a date given for Openreach to lay fibre, there is a private regional ISP that has done it though.

I currently have FTTC. I'm either going to switch to fibre with the regional ISP or cancel my landline and change my FTTC contract to just rent the copper pair. Will use my mobile phone for voice calls.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#289

Post by dukeyukey »

rabuse wrote: post #152
andy_ppp wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All by design. Kill all small businesses by shutting them down, and get purchased by giant megacorps when they're worth nothing.

Although small businesses didn't really shut down, at least that I could see. Pubs sold delivery beer, restaurants went full-on collection and delivery, coffee shops turned into walk-throughs.

Tougher time absolutely, but almost all the visible small businesses in my area survived lockdown.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#290

Post by thom »

raydev wrote: post #270

Seems like both the article and many commenters here are overlooking the fact that most people have cheap mobile data plans. For most people's use cases (read: not readers here) that's enough. Most people living in cities and even most suburban areas have great coverage, so why bother paying for a landline?

While that’s a valid point, the Citizens Advice Bureau survey (which was conducted via an agency called Walnut Unlimited) asked follow up questions about negative consequences because of cancelling broadband and it was somewhat clear people’s quality of life suffered (12% of people said they cut back or cancelled broadband and experienced at least one negative consequence such as finding it harder to manage bills etc).

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/wales/about-us/about-us1/m...

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