Skip to content

Comment on Demand for UK Food Bank Up 15% Year on Yearparent

Comments

Obviously every nominal value is going to be higher YoY. That just immediately follows from inflation.

Almost every year in almost every country will have:

- record GDP

- record government spending

- record total wages

- record stock market prices

- record asset prices

- record government debt

You need to put these values in relation to something, otherwise they don’t mean anything.

For the UK, take for instance the public sector net wealth (Ie. Everything the UK public collectively owns). It collapsed drastically, from 220bn in 2006 to -900 bn in 2025.

Absolutely off the charts. As a result of this, the government can’t provide health care and basic support for its citizens anymore.

Question: who has all this wealth now, who is the UK indebted to?

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxe...

https://www.statista.com/graphic/1/298478/public-sector-expe...

no, I speak in relative values to GDP

only during WW2 was spending higher.

on top of it UK does no longer spend on military or infrastructure, it goes overwhelmingly to consumption of dependent population

> tax revenues are higher than ever, government spending is higher than ever, social programs and social spending is higher than ever
Obviously every nominal value is going to be higher YoY

It's not just nominal. You can see on the Institute for Fiscal Studies website that, as proportion of GDP, public spending has not been notably higher than since the second world war:

https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-data-item/uk-government-spe...

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.