Feel Good Factor

Loads of Money!

It would seem things are on the up. Well the economy is anyway. If you believe the treasury report we are all feeling it too in our pay packets. Are you not? Really? Neither am I!
It must be said that I am a miserable swine whose glass is always half empty. I have never felt well paid but evidence is to the contrary. I am close to the top 10% of earners. Which suggests to me that there an awful lot of people being paid Jack S**t in the UK today. Also that my financial prowess is somewhat questionable. 

It is a fact that my pay has not risen much. 2 year pay freeze followed by a 1% rise. I know the tax changed and that would have improved my take home if it hadn't been wiped out by a huge increase in my pension payments. The net result is that I earn less in absolute numbers than I did when this coalition started 4 years ago.

To temper this at least I have had a job for the last 5 years, and as my research discovered, a well paid one. However life isn't getting cheaper and if I am feeling the pinch what is happening elsewhere?

The coalition are preening themselves a lot at the moment because the economy does appear to be in recovery. However I read a comment from a US counterpart in today's "I" newspaper that went along the lines of the deeper the valley the sharper the ascent and that the US was able to recover it's 2008 levels much more quickly and that we still haven't got that far.  Fair do's we had turned ourselves into such a banking nation we took a bigger hit,  still the coalition have been fairly draconian. Take for instance the closure of the police stations and more worryingly the fire stations in the North east (all to save a measly 5 million).

My concern is that I am now about to be hoisted by my own petard. Keynesian theory suggests that governments spend in recession and cut back in recovery. So now the government can really go for it! My spending power looks to be going only one way! 

I was struck however, as I mooched around Newcastle this afternoon, that we never really know the good times until they are gone. Even during the Blair years (97-05) when we were apparently doing well, there were still plenty that were not. There were still plenty of haves and have nots. You can usually see when we are doing well, as a nation, because there is more alcohol fueled trouble in the good times. 

Politicians are all over us with numbers telling us we are better/worse than before. I don't know that I have ever noticed a difference. 

But as I said my glass is always half empty