I met an entrepreneur who's paying over 50 percent in taxes everyone I meet here is complaining what
the hell's going on with those prices now everyone in London can't afford bread salaries aren't
matching and London's quite an expensive city to live in while many countries deal with inflation
here in the UK it's being called a cost of living crisis food prices happy con Sports everything's
gone up fuel prices house prices insanely High the UK economy is the only major economy expected to
actually shrink this year and UK's economy was just surpassed by India why do we have a cost to
live in crisis because we doubled the money supply in like two years I don't know how people are
even doing it everyone I speak to here blames the government brexit coronavirus Ukraine government
there are government in panic mode how do they expect us to continue I have a small business last
year the UK had three separate Prime Ministers this caused political chaos I don't think any
government has the willpower to actually make real change many here trace the root cause to a
decision made in 2016. because of accent brexits to blame the pound decreasing in value and never
really recovering but how much is brexit really to blame for all of this I mean you can't vote out of
the biggest trading block in the world and expect to have a growing economy some are leading London
others are leaving the UK all together a lot of people actually leaving the UK If we pay our taxes
they should come back to benefit us in some way shape or form uks might be losing its Competitive
Edge a lot of people have left to Portugal to Spain where it's nice and sunny better than in the
UK and flats are cheaper over there too can it get worse I hope not overall inflation stubbornly High
Cost of Living crisis the cost of living in the UK is rising and it's changing people's lives the UK
has fallen into its largest recession on record so is the UK actually collapsing and if so why
the complaints start with housing home prices here have risen a lot in recent years everyone I speak
to talks about the rising cost of rent the average rent in London reached 2500 pounds per month
that's about three thousand one hundred fifty dollars middle class workers really can't keep up
with the rental prices going up rent is absolutely crazy once upon a time you could get a room for
like let's call it four to six hundred pounds and it was a decent sized room if you had space for
everything now so you could possibly have stuff in storage and pay for storage as well as on renting
a room which is literally about the size of me putting my hands out like this many in London have
moved to cheaper Cities A lot of my friend friends who have to work in the UK they have left London
most of my friends they've gone up north they've gone up to Manchester let's say if you can rent
an amazing flat in Birmingham and Manchester for a thousand a thousand two hundred pounds a month
but that presents its own problems too then I don't think Manchester is a city can actually
handle it it doesn't have the infrastructure in the system but London does and it is struggling
a lot home prices are now set to fall this as the bank of England's increase in borrowing costs will
ultimately make mortgages less desirable wages in the UK are not keeping up with prices the salaries
and the pay Rises are not going up that quick with the prices the companies can't keep up the
IMF predicts that while other major economies are growing the UK's economy will shrink and the bank
of England expects a recession but how did the UK get here and why is the UK doing worse than
the us or Germany or France well there are many reasons for one its economy took a bigger hit
during the pandemic they wanted to print infinite money everybody wanted to not work during Corona
times which makes sense to a degree but then they were like all right let's just double the money
supply so we can pay the solution in most people's mind seems to be let's print more money that we
can pay them so basically it's just a never-ending cycle and everybody's kind of screwed the annual
rate of inflation hit 11.1 last October that was a 41 year high it's since gone down a bit most of
it increased food groceries definitely increased like at least 15-20 percent if at the beginning it
was saying that the price is going up like 10 now you can see the differences in like two last year
so 20 meanwhile the UK is facing challenges with soaring energy costs as it relies heavily on gas
generated electricity much of that as a result of the war in Ukraine electricity and gas like bills
they're probably the first immediate thing that I notice but in order to understand this story we
have to go back to 2016. brexit stands for British exit when the UK decided to leave the European
Union think of it like a divorce in 26 16 citizens voted to leave but by a very slim margin so the UK
went on this crazy journey to leave the EU and that impacted trade immigration and regulations
and on January 31st 2020 it officially happened it's definitely harder to do business here right
now estimates suggest that the UK's departure is costing the UK economy about 100 billion pounds
every year in that its economy is four percent smaller than it would have been if it had stayed
in the EU in addition to making trade harder it's also causing Staffing shortages we have
people that were ready to work that have now left the country run home whatever that demographic is
non-existent because of brexit buying luxury items here is now about 20 percent higher than it used
to be for international visitors meaning London is losing its status as a luxury destination
investment in both private and public sectors have been declining since the 1990s meaning
it's less likely to handle factors like brexit or the pandemic amidst the political changes like
the three prime ministers the pandemic the war in Ukraine and brexit there have been massive train
strikes which are causing havoc on transportation and that impacts business I have to restructure my
entire day also my clients can't even get to the salon sometimes because they've also got
to restructure some of my clients are coming down from uni they can't come down because of national
rail strikes the UK rail strikes are the largest instance of industrial action since 1989. the
strikes are taking place as workers demand better wages to cope with inflation but people cannot get
to work that affects the business because it means whatever money I'm meant to make for that day I'm
not making it I tend to plan my train rides around them a bit but I absolutely support the
strikers I've got no problem with the strikers at all if they need a strike that's what they
need to do so who's to blame here well it kind of depends on who you ask government mismanagement
I think the government's done a really poor job at managing it in the first place and particularly
when Liz Frost was in power she did a really poor job with managing the government's kind of budget
and Affairs the demand the constant focus on capitalism in all capitalism models for every
area of society is to blame as well not everything has to apply to a capitalist model like house and
food shelter clothing Education Health Care they don't need to be inundated with the constant need
to be profitable there's just infinite free money essentially for banks so that's kind of
like something went wrong on a scale of like 2008 nobody seemed to know this because it just wasn't
really spoken about and then conveniently Corona gave them an excuse to print infinite money they
control their finances they control the economy they set the budgets the taxes taxes are still
being increased as much as I didn't want to say it I think it's the government at the end of the day
while the UK population is slightly growing about 0.33 each year some people I meet say they're
thinking of leaving so I met an entrepreneur who's paying over 50 in taxes and now he's thinking
about moving to to the UAE to register his company there to avoid those taxes and he's also looking
at Portugal maybe he should live in Portugal where the cost of living is so much less a few have left
especially people that have younger children back home they feel like they are not going to get a
good quality of life here anymore so they've gone to restart elsewhere I can imagine people
leaving if they have that opportunity to a lot of uncertainty around elsewhere some have left
to other countries for work or like business opportunities things like this family life
as well it's affected a lot of people in lots of different ways but what happens next for as long
as this government's in charge it's just going to get worse and worse they're in panic mode
inflation is slowly coming down but it's still going to have long-term effects the government
is very well hiding the recession and it's been for a while now if we pay our taxes they should
come back to benefit us in some way shape or form but actually what's been happening is things are
going up things are more expensive they're telling us they want to raise taxes [Music]