Brits tighten their belts, cash-strapped amid cost of living crisis

The neoliberal system leaves 40 percent of Britons with less than £25 at the end of each week, a survey by the Cost of Living Action (COLA) group has found. This is pittance and unlikely to stretch far under the cost of living crisis, where even employed people are finding themselves out of pocket.

Manufactured cost of living crisis

Privatised essentials like energy and extractive supermarket chains are driving the cost of living crisis. British Energy companies alone have accrued £125 billion since 2020, according to the End Fuel Poverty Coalition.

Meanwhile, profits for the German-owned supermarket, Lidl, rose by 297% since 2021. As for Aldi, its operating profit has risen by 50% and 72% since 2020.

While costs have increased due to climate change and other factors, supermarkets are using these  pressures to break even but to fatten profit margins — otherwise known as ‘greedflation’.

In other words, the fuel feeding the cost of living fire is the ‘privatisation tax’ on common essentials — not a natural disaster but a manmade problem.

Public ownership

A publicly owned Green New Deal could tackle the cost of energy. Just 1.2% of the Sahara Desert would be necessary to power the entire world’s energy needs. Solar is gradually replacing oil because of cheaper costs. It does not appear to be happening fast enough to mitigate climate catastrophe.

Plus, energy is an essential service that would be cheaper under public ownership.

What’s more, non-profit supermarkets could dramatically lower the cost of food and alleviate the pinch for ordinary Brits.

Holistic approach

Speaking about the latest survey, Labour MP Yuan Yang, co-convenor of the Living Standards Coalition, articulated the need for a holistic (all hands to the pump) approach.

The Cost of Living Action campaign has identified a critical challenge for those of us in Westminster to grapple with: that we need a holistic approach in order to create growth while tackling the cost of living crisis. As their campaign has correctly identified, this approach requires increasing incomes, reducing costs, and fairer taxation.

Conor O’Shea, campaign coordinator of COLA, spoke of the grating impact of these inflationary pressures on British society.

Millions of people are struggling with sky-high costs, and left in debt or with next to nothing left after paying bills each month. It’s no wonder people are feeling so worried and angry. The government must deliver transformational change that truly responds to the scale of the crisis. That means making the essentials affordable for everyone, ensuring everyone has access to the income they need to live well, and rebalancing the tax system with more and better taxes on wealth.

If these issues are not tackled at the root, Brits will have to tighten their belts — as if they haven’t done exactly that over the past decade.

Featured image via Unsplash/the Canary