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I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

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Re: I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

#221

Post by 93po »

arrowsmith wrote: post #83
rhubarbtree wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re looking at the wrong numbers. Wealth, not income. Wealth inequality is through the roof. Poverty is through the roof. More people using food banks than ever. More people on zero hours and low paid contracts. If you think the problem with the UK is that rich people are leaving, then you have no idea about the reality of living in the UK. Visiting some of the towns in this book would be a starting point.

> Poverty is through the roof. More people using food banks than ever. More people on zero hours and low paid contracts. Is that supposed to prove me wrong? I said that everybody is getting poorer. > Wealth inequality is through the roof. Wealth inequality, while high, is still roughly where it was in 2007. (Source: https://equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk/ ) > If you think the problem with the UK is…

The statistics they provide are the result of self-reporting by people they interview, and they themselves talk at length about the challenges and errors that may exist in their data and sampling: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal...

I think this is inherently going to be a poor way to get an accurate representation of wealth inequality, because if you ask a bunch of really wealthy people worth $100mm+ how much money and assets they have, and especailly when these are very privacy focused people, they're going to either:

1. decline to respond in any way

2. if they do respond, they are very likely to misrepresent and downplay their wealth

3. very likely to have wealth that isn't UK based and therefore wouldn't disclose it to anyone for any reason

4. have a lot of very valuable things, like owning a private businesses, that may not necessarily have a price tag attached to them, and so therefore hard to represent when asked "how much money do you have?"

even though reports throughout years would always have this same issue, i think the problem is that as wealth for the 0.1% rises, that rise is not going to get well represented or collected

Re: I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

#222

Post by arp242 »

fallous wrote: post #68

If, as a humorist, you are concerned about whether you can publish your humorous book you can be certain that you live in a cursed timeline. Additionally if you think there are two kinds of jokes: those that were once funny and those that were never funny, then I suggest that your jokes were at best lazy. The human condition is pretty constant throughout the ages and those jokes that are aimed at such universal exper…

> If, as a humorist, you are concerned about whether you can publish your humorous book you can be certain that you live in a cursed timeline.

This has literally always been the case. The topics have shifted, and some other details have changed, but in essence it's no difference. Try publishing a humorist book about, say, sex or religion in the 50s. Or the world wars, or maybe something that features gay characters. Or civil rights-type stuff (in US).

Re: I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

#223

Post by [deleted] »

93po wrote: post #221
arrowsmith wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Poverty is through the roof. More people using food banks than ever. More people on zero hours and low paid contracts. Is that supposed to prove me wrong? I said that everybody is getting poorer. > Wealth inequality is through the roof. Wealth inequality, while high, is still roughly where it was in 2007. (Source: https://equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk/ ) > If you think the problem with the UK is…

The statistics they provide are the result of self-reporting by people they interview, and they themselves talk at length about the challenges and errors that may exist in their data and sampling: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal... I think this is inherently going to be a poor way to get an accurate representation of wealth inequality, because if you ask a bunch of really wealthy people w…

[deleted]

Re: I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

#224

Post by globalise83 »

svat wrote: post #15

Loved the fact that this post didn't go where I expected it to (or at least, didn't remain there). That a book like this probably wouldn't be published today, or would be less popular today, is a point that has been made many times by many people, about many different books, TV shows, jokes, etc. But the author actually moves on from there; the observation is that even in his own opinion , the same joke isn't funny t…

I think the difference is between, let's say, Ricky Gervais making a joke about a little boy with cancer, and Ricky Gervais making a joke about THAT little boy with cancer right there in Seat 7G. Everyone now knows these crap towns are dying.

Re: I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

#225

Post by stavros »

HideousKojima wrote: post #70
arrowsmith wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He also did The Invention of Lying , which, 16 years since I watched it in the cinema, is still the answer I give without hesitation to "what's the worst movie you've ever seen?"

For me that has to be High Life . Pitched to me as "Robert Pattinson has to to take care of a baby in space", in reality it was basically a side plot to "serial killers and rapists are stuck on a spaceship together" and all that implies.

Yeah I don't know, you're selling it well. I kind of want to watch that.

Re: I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

#226

Post by robinsonb5 »

barry-cotter wrote: post #204
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And as with so many modern issues, the housing problem was largely created by Thatcher - her Right to Buy policy.

Right to Buy does not explain why the same trend is visible all over the Anglosphere, from Dublin, Ireland, to Wellington, New Zealand, to Sydney, Australia, to Vancouver, Canada. The people don’t want housing built near them and the politicians listened. Lower supply than demand for decades leads to steadily rising prices. If you want to see the alternative look to Tokyo, Austin or Seattle. Build so much housing tha…

To me the biggest problem is the buy-to-let market, which means anything affordable is snapped up in seconds by people with money to invest, rather than people who just want a home to live in.

I think it's mainly a symptom of the unusualy low interest rates over the last 20 years: people have invested in residential property not because they particularly want to be landlords, but because it's perceived as the easiest way to get a better return on your money than a savings account that pays near zero interest.

I know of more than one person who's now looking to sell their rental property because they found out the hard way that "landlord" is actually a job title, not just the name of their savings account, that properties need to be maintained and that letting agents will find a way to swallow the vast majority of any profits.

I also know more than one person living in rented accommodation with appalling maintenance lapses. One had a shoddy roof repair last year which left the gutter missing. When the next rainstorm caused water to cascade down the outside wall and flow in above the back door, the letting agent had the nerve to shrug and say "old properties do that".

Another had a rotten wooden lintel above a street door scraped out, filled with expanding foam and painted over.

Re: I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

#227

Post by chownie »

stavros wrote: post #126
a_dabbler wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Wealth inequality, while high, is still roughly where it was in 2007" This is not whats represented in the source you cited? In the graph titled "Top 10% and Bottom 50% Wealth Shares in The UK 1900-2020" you can clearly see the wealth owned by the top 10% increased from 54.4% in 2007 to 57% in 2020 and likely even higher now 5 years later.

Right, but the maximum is 92.7% and the minimum is 46%. A 3% difference seems small enough to be noise.

If the floor is 46% and the ceiling is 92.7% that 3% is much less likely to be noise.

Re: I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

#228

Post by sireat »

For an earlier example see KLF - It's Grim Up North https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20XLWEjN9eI

As a non British I though this was always a bit of dark British humour tradition.

See Black Adder, also

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Heroic_Failures - which mentions towns like Keynes.

Re: I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

#229

Post by kasey_junk »

mschuster91 wrote: post #214
lotsofpulp wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Broad market index funds have performed spectacularly over the last few decades, and far more than 1% have them (or could have had them) for retirement. It has been the standard recommendation since I graduated college in the early 2000s. Of course, many people prefer to invest in extra big and luxurious houses/cars/vacations/restaurants/alcohol/coffee/etc out and I would even throw in educations with low ROI, rather…

> Of course, many people prefer to invest in extra big and luxurious houses/cars/vacations/restaurants/alcohol/coffee/etc out and I would even throw in educations with low ROI, rather than broad market index funds. The problem is, index funds have no inherent value, they (just like all stocks and other financial derivatives/instruments) are effectively a paper with one or another form of "IOU" written on it. Economic…

> No one's gonna come and kick you out of it.

Real estate suffers from the whims of the market, governmental policy and especially war. Even if you rule out outliers like imminent domain (used on many many homeowners in the first half of the 20th century in the US) or destruction via war, simple economic changes as we saw in 2008 cause people to lose their homes.

Re: I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time

#230

Post by James_K »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #211
firefoxd wrote: post #33

One thing that has been accentuated over the past few decades is the idea that you are responsible for your success. When you were poor, lacked means, or didn't have a good job, it was because the god of fortune didn't smile on you. Only the fortunate experienced success. Now only losers are broke and live in crap towns, and winners drive expensive cars. With this idea in mind, calling it crap towns becomes an attack…

I feel like the opposite has been accentuated for around 15+ years now, especially after the 2008 recession. The 1990s/2000s felt like "you make your own luck", but since I got out of college, it seems the 90% luck / 10% effort idea is the mainstream (including "who you know is more important than what you know"). Maybe it is just me growing up, or maybe it's the proliferation of access to data due to the internet, s…

I would estimate the bigger cause of malaise is the fact that things just seem to get worse. Housing gets more expensive, shops close down, towns die. One can't help but get the feeling there is a continual tightening of the screws. Every year, the country sinks a little further down. What can you do if you want to stop it? Brexit? Reform? Very unsatisfying answers, but the only ones people are given beyond "lay down and accept it".
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