Influencer ethics

Yeah most people who bought houses 25+ years ago don’t appreciate that it’s exponentially more difficult these days. I don’t blame them, it’s not their fault, but a lot of people say ‘it was just as hard to buy a house in our day’ which I’m afraid is factually BS. It’s so far off it’s almost laughable.

The Bank of England has an inflation calculator that shows how ridiculous it’s become.

My parents bought a house in 1989 for £75k. As per the above calculator, that’s £199,000 in today’s money.

Their house was valued at £425-450k, so it would cost double to buy today, even if they were able to get lending at that amount.

My parents may not have had Starbucks and McDonald’s but they had beer, concerts and the cinema. Plenty of things to spend your hard-earned on in those days too.

The reality is, wage growth has been non-existent for so long now that even squirrelling away every penny is not enough to get most people anywhere near buying a house. Meanwhile those who already own are sitting on enormous capital, and in some cases multiple homes.

I’m fairly capitalist and right of the centre when it comes to economic politics so I don’t believe in taking away from the wealthy, many of whom have worked their backsides off but, wages need to increase, drastically across all industries. We can’t keep giving things away for free or offering subsidies, it hurts more than it helps in the long run. People are quick to demonise the 1% but neglect to remember that they foot the bill for almost 30% of the public purse. The top 10% fund well over half of it. Meanwhile, nearly half of the country contribute no income tax at all. None. Yet we’re increasingly expecting everything to be free, cheap or subsidised. It simply cannot work like that forever.

We also need to get people back to work by giving them something (and better wages) to aspire to.

FadedFrontiers I agree, the rise in house prices is a disaster for the younger generations and simply fuels even greater profits for the rich and increasing inequality. We have not been taxed so highly since just after WW2, the freezing of the tax threshold is a HUGE extra tax burden on the less well off and people who should never pay higher rate tax are now paying it. By the time the freeze ends, even basic rate pensions will be taxed. The ludicrous situation of the government giving you your pension and then taking money back.

People don’t spend stupidly because they simply can’t afford to, perhaps there is a little more disposable income up north due to a large difference in house prices.

So the young bear a tax burden like never before, high rentals because most can’t afford to buy a house, suffering a cash grab on their wages the like we have not seen since the 20s….much of it engineered by greedy banks and institutions, government largesse and waste. To cap it all, inflation has placed another huge burden on their finances, followed by the governments wish to increase VED, refusal to lower VAT (which is a hugely unfair tax that disproportionately affects the less well off. If this isn’t enough we have absurdly high energy prices, massive increase in prices for food, insurance etc.. and ever increasing council Tax from the hugely poor administration/running of those bodies.

At every turn ordinary people are being rinsed out of most of their wages…..It makes me feel a little sick that this has been allowed to happen and MPs whose vested interests allowed this to happen look set to enjoy a 7.1% pay increase from April 24, taking their basic salaries (without all the extras and pension) to £93,000 per annum.

P.S. All these price rises have massively increased the income from VAT, so they could lower it to 15% if they wanted to…one wonders why they don’t?

The issue I have is not with paying high tax, I’ve lived in countries where I’ve paid even more, it’s that I can’t see where it’s being spent…

HarveyMushman The issue I have is not with paying high tax, I’ve lived in countries where I’ve paid even more, it’s that I can’t see where it’s being spent…

It’s not just about tax though, it’s overall cost of living and even the tables for that don’t take into account our generally lower wages (and other disparities with comparison countries).

e.g. Belgium is one of the highest taxed countries in Europe, with a cost of living about 25% less than the UK….how can that be. Trust me we’re getting rinsed so badly most people don’t realise. I travelled far and wide in my life and there were not many countries I went to with a lower standard of living than the UK.

My first exposure to this was Iran at 13 years old (1973)…I spent 3 months there when the Shah was in power and my eyes literally popped out of my head when I saw how well people were living compared to the UK. People in the UK had absolutely no idea how far down we were! Airconditioned massive shopping Malls, good roads good street lighting, huge range of food in the shops and markets, much of which I had never seen before, compared to our very very basic offerings in the UK. Nice cars, nice housing and a generally great standard of living. Of course they fecked that up when they got a religious leader and booted out the Shah.

Iraq was doing pretty well too, until the west “helped them”

DavecUK

Completely agree. You don’t even need to visit the countries to see just how far ahead many are when it comes to standards of living. League tables tell us all we need to know.

I do sometimes wonder how much our ‘stiff upper lip’ and ‘be thankful for your lot’ mentality is hindering our progress… That’s not to say simply acknowledging the issues will fix them but keeping things on a pedestal undeservedly for nothing more than old fashioned British pride certainly isn’t helping.

Wow this thread has some serious legs! but may be getting a bit off topic :-)

In other news did anyone catch the Lance Hendrick YouTube video that just came out? It was almost on the money of what Tompoland was talking about and reference free gear, Patreon, biases and potential influence of/by influencers. The other interesting thing was Lance breaking out deep dives into a new channel with less fully technical videos in his main channel. I’ll be more interested in the deep dive channel to be honest. But shorter videos probably have more mass market appeal so that may be part of Lance’s strategy to generate a bit more traction and revenue.

Just do what you enjoy Tompoland and if that includes video reviews and building an audience and making enough money from Patreon and/or YouTube to buy cool coffee gear and get free coffee gear to play with I say go for it.

Lots of disdain for the wealthy and successful.

I think there’s a misconception that everyone with wealth woke up one day rolling in cash money. I’m not saying they deserve any sympathy but a lot of people with money work incredibly hard. Incidentally the ones who didn’t, and often the ones with the above viewpoint, simply watched their property assets rocket in value…

If an influencer is making big money from their channels, I’d go out on a limb and say they’re working probably 80+ hours a week. The odd casual video would probably make pence rather than pounds.

Again, lots of hate here for the youth of today. I’m hardly a spring chicken but I can appreciate it’s not the cakewalk some people think it is.

Back on track…….it we assume that a Youtube influencer has gone to all the bother, time and expense of setting up a channel, then I can only think of two reasons for doing that…….fame or fortune. Nothing wrong with either of those. But, there is a big BUT. In my professional life, I always valued and paid for advice from Professionals. Now, I mean Doctors, Dentists, Lawyers not the loose definition meaning earning a living from. When you pay for advice, then there is a good chance that the person giving the advice could be sued if they got it wrong. As an Independent Financial Adviser, any advice that I gave had to be written, and that advice stayed for the length of the life of the plan and beyond. That means I could be dead, the regulator the FCA could receive a complaint about advice I gave 30 years ago, and the wheels would start to turn. If the advice was found against me, the injured parties could attempt to sue my estate and if not successful, apply to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. Absolute madness!!

So, perhaps you can see why I dislike people going on to YouTube with little or no experience (or ethics) and presenting themselves as coffee experts whilst receiving free equipment to ‘review’ in a non-biased way. I wonder just how many people across the world have bought coffee equipment based on their favourite reviewers vlog, then lived to regret it!