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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

#321

Post by biohax2015 »

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.

Politics = economics

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#322

Post by nly »

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.

Actually it's 47% since there's 2% national insurance

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#323

Post by hammyhavoc »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #195
hammyhavoc wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BT works just fine. Have used it for at least 8 years without any fuss. I don't even know that I've connected to it unless I checked, it just does it. As such, I use very little cellular data.

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

In the context of the comment I'm responding to that mentions "the opposite", that consists of paying for a home internet connection.

If I'm paying for a home BT internet connection, I get free BT WiFi, which hugely off-sets my cellular data usage. As a result, I pay just £9.50 per month for my phone plan on a rolling contract with Virgin.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#324

Post by xmprt »

waswaswas wrote: post #280
wskinner wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure where you're getting the $20,000/year healthcare spending number, but that looks like it is too high by an order of magnitude. See e.g. https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2... , which puts median annual household spending on healthcare between $1,500 and $5,540 in 2019. If you're talking about total annual healthcare spending, that is largely paid by employers so should be account…

This article is specifically limited to people with employer-sponsored healthcare plans. $20k is a reasonable estimate for a family trying to get decent health insurance independently.

You mentioned this earlier

> In the US, someone earning $155,000 USD...

Later you say

> $20k is a reasonable estimate for a family trying to get decent health insurance independently

So are we talking about people who have full time jobs and employee sponsored healthcare or are we talking about people getting health insurance independently?

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#325

Post by mvdtnz »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #204
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…

Are you really in here arguing that UK is not in a cost of living crisis? There's plenty of evidence that they are, and this seems like a needlessly contrarian post.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#326

Post by AnthonyMouse »

jstanley wrote: post #101
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised more people aren't doing the opposite. There are pay as you go phone plans that cost hardly anything. Meanwhile there is free WiFi almost everywhere, including at home. If you have broadband. So pay the cable company for fast internet and pay half that or less for mobile service, then connect your mobile to WiFi 97% of the time so you hardly use any mobile data. The math gets even more dramatic if you h…

> there is free WiFi almost everywhere Have you actually tried to use this? I can't remember the last time I used free WiFi and it actually worked as intended. It's always some combination of slow, broken, intermittent, and needs you to agree to terms and conditions too long to read.

> Have you actually tried to use this?

I have. Most establishments have decent WiFi which is easy enough to connect to because they want you to sit there all day and keep buying $5 lattes. Once in a while you get stuck somewhere the WiFi sucks, but that only matters if you're transferring enough data to care, and those two things rarely overlap. So a couple times a year you have to pay $3 to transfer a lot of data over cellular, which is way less than what you're saving by having a cheaper plan.

Although I will say that WiFi terms of service are a blight that should be prohibited by law. Nobody reads them the same as nobody reads the Facebook terms of service, and all 99% of them say is a hundred paragraphs of "don't break the law" which is already implied. All the terms of service do is interfere with what should be a protocol where an access point intended to be public announces itself as such and then any device in range which is still on cellular automatically switches to it with no configuration required.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#327

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #204
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…

45% probably includes retirement contributions.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#328

Post by dukeyukey »

c7THEC2DDFVV2V wrote: post #311
JimDabell wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he mentioned he's getting taxed at 48-50% on top of this. The highest income tax bracket is 45%, and you only pay that rate of tax on the money you earn past £125k – you don’t pay that rate on your entire income.

thats incorrect. you lose your tax free allowance, which is a furtger 12,500 tax paid. Plus you need to consider graduate tax and the interest on those 'loans' which currently sits at 4.5%

But you're still only paying the lower rates on income until you hit £125000, and at that income those student loans aren't gonna exist for long.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#329

Post by byefruit »

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

https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-data-item/combined-marginal...

49% kicks in at £55k at combined NI and Income.

(This all ignores the 14% that's hidden on the employer side)

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#330

Post by dmje »

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…

Tax blaming is b/s. The problem in the UK is that not enough rich people are being taxed. Meanwhile, shareholders are crapping all over normals (see story today about the water companies dumping waste and then passing on £10bn bill to their customers). The Tory gov insists that privatisation is the key - meanwhile the NHS falls on its ass, schools are crumbling, trains are late and expensive and shit.

Don't get me started on Brexit. There is literally NO redeeming feature to this shit show - again caused by rabid right wing Tory assholes - and once again in the news is the UK car industry saying we're going to lose 800,000 jobs due to Brexit unless the gov pulls its finger out.

So - sorry - but don't bang on about high taxes OR your obviously minted higher rate tax paying mate. It's 12 years of Tory austerity that is REALLY hurting people over here. More taxes on the rich would help mightily.

Oh, and a £162m public bill to bury someone who owned more diamond hats that she knew what to do with. Don't get me started on the royal shitshow either.

Sorry to rant but I'm bloody horrified at the state of our country and it ain't taxes that are the problem.

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