Comments by "TJ Marx" (@tjmarx) on "UK strikes: nurses union wants ‘double digit’ pay deal" video.

Stop talking about things you don't understand. Their actual wages have increased significantly over the same period. Actual wages are what actually matter. None of you had even heard the term real wages before CH4 told you about them and you clearly don't know what the term actually means. Of course when you have high inflation real wages decline inversely. Inflation is the devaluation of currency, it by definition means your pound is worth less and can afford less. Fixing real wages is done by solving inflation, not by trying to get higher wages. Higher wages just increase inflation two fold. You might hate this but the reality is if you want inflation fixed and your pound to go further, you need to be more productive at work. The longer these strikes go on, the worse this gets. Get back to work.
4
@hydra66 Inflation is the devaluation of currency. That is related to how much things cost but is not the same thing. This is so much more complicated than that. That's why CPI is an inaccurate measure of inflation. It's been much longer than 2008 since the public service have had a wage rise that matched inflation. Inflation matching wage rises are rare, particularly industry wide or public service ones. When the do happen it's even rarer for them to occur all in one go, instead being spread across a number of years so as not to spike inflation. Large scale wage rises that match inflation, create higher inflation. High productivity (not growth) improves per unit costs which lowers B2B and in turn B2C pricing. High productivity also encourages foreign investment, both in terms of fiat speculators and foreign owned businesses. These help to stabilise and strengthen a currency, dropping inflation. Market corrections following high inflationary events are usually accompanied by a brief period of deflation. They don't take consumer prices back to where they were before the high inflationary event but they do drop them close to where normal levels of inflation would have otherwise had them. This is already starting to happen with energy pricing for example. Productivity in the UK has been abysmal for 2 decades, and that drives instability and rot across the whole of the economy. Add to that a constantly increasing national budget deficit since 2000, and the UK lacks the ability to borrow money to make any kinds of investments that would strengthen productivity or improve the economy. The government is already having to borrow almost half a trillion pounds a year to pay down interest on existing loans and pay for existing budget costs such as the NHS. That's why Liz Truss' budget led to a run. An already atrocious situation made worse. That budget deficit started under Tony Blair and was made worse by each subsequent government. It's a bipartisan issue. The deficit is caused by dwelling tax receipts. Despite the objectively bs claim from CH4, taxes aren't actually high. They're amongst the lowest on record as a result of successive governments dropping taxes to win government since the late 90s. Treasury suggest the base tax rate should be 37% in line with other contemporary markets around Europe. This is something the next government will have to look at in 2025.
1