Tag: Cost of Living Crisis

Minimum Wage, Maximum Exploitation: A Collapsing System Propped Up by Rising Taxes

Introduction

As the cost of living continues to climb across the United Kingdom, many households find themselves struggling to maintain even the most basic standards of financial independence.

With impending tax rises on the horizon, the pressure on those already living near the edge is set to intensify, pushing even greater numbers below the threshold of self-sufficiency.

This is not a temporary crisis, but a symptom of a deeper, systemic failure—a collapsing economic model that now survives only by extracting more from those who can afford it least.

The money-centric economic system that we have – The “Moneyocracy” – perpetuates itself by shifting the burden onto workers and taxpayers, while the promise of prosperity grows ever more distant for the majority.

Against this backdrop, it is essential to confront a fundamental question – one that exposes the uncomfortable realities at the heart of our economy.

A Question:

Do you believe the minimum wage is enough for a full-time worker to live on – and if so, why?

The answer to this question, which varies depending on one’s relationship with the minimum wage, reveals uncomfortable truths about the foundations of our economy and the way work is valued in this country.

What is not surprising is that those who already have financial security often agree in principle that low-paid workers should earn more. Yet when confronted with the implications of paying every worker enough to live independently, many recoil. Why? Because such a change would disrupt their own relationship with the economy.

The Minimum Wage Reality

Let us be clear: the national minimum wage in the UK is not enough for anyone working a full-time 40-hour week to live independently—free from reliance on benefits, charity, or debt.

The widespread acceptance of this wage stems from government and establishment narratives.

What is legally mandated is presented as morally and practically sufficient.

Yet, in truth, the minimum wage is a carefully placed rock covering a pit of myths and lies.

Those who benefit from the system prefer not to lift that rock, because doing so would expose their complicity in maintaining the illusion.

The Employee

A worker earning the minimum wage – currently £12.21 per hour, equating to £488.40 per week or £25,396.80 annually – cannot afford the basic essentials required for independent living.

The gap between what they earn and what they need is effectively the amount by which they are underpaid.

Employers exploit workers by failing to cover the true cost of living.

Regardless of how the deficit is filled—through benefits, charity, or debt—someone else is subsidising both the employee and the employer.

The Employer (Small Business)

Small business owners often insist they pay fairly because they comply with the law. Yet compliance does not equate to fairness.

Paying the legal minimum is not the same as paying enough for employees to live independently.

Common justifications include:

• “They can top up with benefits.”

• “I can’t pay more or I’ll go out of business.”

But these arguments miss the point. The government—and by extension, taxpayers—should not subsidise businesses that cannot afford to pay workers a living wage.

In reality, small businesses are also exploited: they cannot operate independently within the current economic system, because they too are constrained by models that undervalue their work.

The Employer (Big Business)

Large corporations differ because they can afford to pay more.

Supermarkets and other major employers of minimum-wage staff generate enormous profits – even during a cost-of-living crisis, like the one we are experiencing now.

They could easily pay wages that allow workers financial independence, if boards and shareholders accepted smaller returns.

Instead, big businesses exploit both employees and taxpayers. Workers are underpaid, while the government subsidises wages through benefits.

This allows corporations to maximise profits while keeping the mechanics of exploitation hidden from public debate.

The Government

Why does the government subsidise wages so small businesses can survive and big businesses can thrive? Why not simply set a minimum wage that reflects the true cost of living?

The answer is stark: doing so would collapse the system.

The economy functions by undervaluing the majority of jobs deemed “low-skilled” or of “little value.”

If wages reflected reality, the house of cards would fall.

The Taxpayer

The system is a con. The complex machinery of what can be called a Moneyocracy manipulates trust and deference so effectively that taxpayers rarely ask basic questions.

Why, in an economy where corporations make billions annually, must taxpayers top up their employees’ wages through taxes?

Why are we threatened with price hikes whenever government policy shifts, while corporate profits remain largely unscrutinised?

Following the money reveals the truth: wealth is funnelled in one direction, made possible only by exploiting workers, taxpayers, and weak governments.

Corporations profit by underpaying staff, then spin narratives that justify charging consumers more.

Reality Bites

Exploitation of normal people has gone too far. The system enriches the few by exploiting the many – sometimes multiple times over – so profits can grow while wages stagnate or reduce in real terms.

The Moneyocracy survives by perpetuating the myth that it is acceptable for many to grow poorer while a few grow disproportionately rich.

The promise dangled before workers – that if they play the game long enough, they too might “live the dream” – is false.

Humanity is destroying itself chasing a dream that continually recedes, because playing the game requires forgetting our true worth.

The basic equation of the Moneyocracy is simple: for some to be rich, most must be poor.

This is neither humane nor true.

The Alternative

There is another way. A system built on real values – where people, communities, and the environment come first – can replace the current money-centric model.

This alternative requires transparency, local systems, and a commitment to prioritising human worth over profit. Instead of hiding self-interest behind complex structures, society must embrace a model where business and life are conducted openly, sustainably, and with fairness at the core.

The choice is absolute: continue with a Moneyocracy that exploits us all or build a future centred on people.

Path Forward

The Local Economy & Governance System provides the foundational framework for a truly people‑centric future – one where People, Community, and Environment sit at the heart of every decision.

At its core lies a new benchmark: The Basic Living Standard, a guarantee that every individual receives a weekly wage sufficient to cover all essential needs.

This principle of equity and equality is not an optional add‑on, but the priority that guides every part of the system.

By shifting away from exploitation and toward fairness, transparency, and sustainability, this model offers a pathway to rebuild trust and resilience in our economic and social structures.

To explore how this vision can be realised and what it means for the future, please follow these links:

The Local Economy & Governance System | Online Text
The Basic Living Standard Explained
Minimum Wage Maximum Exploitation PDF_Vers1_25Nov25Download

Facing the Economic Collapse: the Real Crisis Behind Money, Wages, and Freedom

Facing Uncomfortable Truths

It is regrettable that most people avoid confronting uncomfortable truths about the crisis we’re in.

Many actively ignore or dismiss what they know deep down to be true, preferring comfort over honesty.

But this habit of hiding from inconvenient realities isn’t new. It’s been passed down for generations. People have often chosen what feels good over what’s obviously right, leading us to our current predicament.

Pretending everything is normal, focusing only on ourselves, and letting others make decisions for us has brought us to the brink of systemic collapse.

The comfortable system we rely on is failing, and we must face this reality.

The Source of the Problem: Money

Many prefer to hear hard truths from trusted figures like academics or politicians, but deep down, we know the truth doesn’t depend on who says it.

It’s time to think, research, and analyse for ourselves.

At the heart of our problems is the money system. We’ve been conditioned to believe money is everything, shaping our choices and values around financial cost, reward, and status.

Yet, the money system itself is artificial. A belief system manipulated by private bankers, big businesses, and the politicians they control.

They change the rules to enrich themselves, transferring wealth and ownership away from ordinary people, all under the guise of normality.

Imminent System Collapse

Politicians obsess over “growth.” But for them, growth means increasing the size of the economy (GDP). Not helping small businesses or working people.

Real productivity has vanished as industries and assets have been sold off to those who profit from the system, while jobs have been outsourced.

GDP figures are misleading, counting money created through private finance and government borrowing multiple times. Politicians have tried to spend their way out of trouble, but even that strategy is failing.

With rising unemployment due to AI and unproductive sectors and a government so possessed by fear that they are regularly changing their minds, lenders are now worried the scam will be exposed.

Desperation has set in, and the government seems set to resort to ever-increasing taxes, hoping to keep the system afloat and their secrets hidden.

The System Enriches the Few

Prices keep rising while wages lag behind, making it harder for most people to keep up.

This isn’t new—it’s how the system was designed.

Once, a single working adult could support a family. But now, financial independence is reserved for the wealthy, while dependence and poverty are imposed on the rest of us.

The Myth of the Minimum Wage

The national minimum wage is misleading. It’s not enough to live on, but rather the lowest acceptable wage set by those in power, regardless of the real cost of living.

However, even the average wage isn’t enough for genuine financial freedom.

Financial Freedom Is the Solution

Almost every social problem can be traced back to the fact that the lowest-paid jobs don’t pay enough for people to live independently.

Admitting this would expose the system’s flaws and those who benefit from it.

The system survives by prioritizing money over people. Every decision made by those in power serves the money system. Not human needs.

Choosing People Over Money

If we want a better world, we must redirect government, business, and our rules to prioritize people, not money or the economy.

Unfortunately, our political leaders hide the truth instead of addressing it, covering up the growing cracks in the system.

Collapse Is Inevitable. But We Have a Choice

Systemic collapse is inevitable. But we can choose what comes next and who benefits.

If we do nothing, things will only get worse.

Those who created this mess believe they can protect themselves with wealth and security, but ordinary people will lose freedom.

The powerful will restrict our freedoms to protect their own interests.

Paradoxically, a collapse could be an opportunity.

If we embrace it, we can build a freer, fairer system for everyone. Something only possible when the current corrupt system is removed.

Our Local Future | FULL TEXT
Facing The Economic Collapse PDF_Vers1_14Nov25Download

Being on benefits isn’t a culture; for many it’s a living hell

As you read through the pages of this blog or read the eBooks that are available and recognise the story unfolding and the different parts that we can all see, you may be able to step back and observe the reality that those who ‘take from the state’ are the easiest for everyone else to blame.

No matter their background or reason for being dependent upon the State, Benefits Claimants have become scapegoats and little more than everyone else’s ‘guilty bastards.

Worst of all, they have now become a very easy target for those who are actually responsible for everything that is going wrong with the UK, to project their own guilt and fear upon.

For anyone receiving benefits when they could or would rather be ‘paying their own way’, being anywhere near the Benefits System, the many organisations that work within and around it, and being within the exploding sub-class of our society currently being gaslit by the financial benchmark of the National Minimum or Living Wage; life is a fearful, emotionally and practically challenging living hell.

In my recent research article and eBook ‘Is Poverty Invisible to those who don’t Experience it’, I discussed the realities that people using Foodbanks and in poverty face across the UK today.

Given the nature of the announcements due to be made as part of the Spring Statement this Wednesday and what we already know is on the way from the October ’24 Budget, I will expand here on 5 of the most important points of what being within or touched by the Benefits System means to many of those whose lives are touched by it:

1. It costs more to live than the Minimum or Living Wage allows

The elephant in the room that is the cost-of-living crisis, is this:

What we currently accept as being the National Minimum Wage or Living Wage, isn’t anywhere near enough for a single person without any parental, caring or partner responsibilities, to live independently without top-up benefits, help from charities (foodbanks), going into debt or raiding savings.

2. Working on the Minimum Wage means you still need help

People working in Minimum Wage jobs in the UK, cannot earn enough, working a 40-hour week, to pay their own way.

Those on Minimum Wage cannot live independently, without still having to jump through the hoops and requirements that come from being a benefit claimant; from ‘qualifying’ to get emergency food packages from Foodbanks; by going into debt using credit cards, loans or pay-day-credit type schemes; or by falling back on family or friends for handouts, just to make ends meet.

3. Being on benefits is no breeze: Welfare cuts are an act of increasing cruelty when many just want safe-to-climb ladder to escape

Being on benefits means being treated like you are someone else’s guilty bastard and like you are the one who is in the wrong.

The staff in jobcentres (understandably) often don’t really want to be there. They are regularly exposed to some of the UKs most unhappy people. When they themselves are at the cutting edge of a Benefits System that has ALREADY removed all sense of humanity from its heart and behaves like it already runs with the dehumanisation that we can expect from universal AI that is being  introduced for all the wrong reasons.

People who are not working or who have personal issues that have made them dependent upon benefits often feel vulnerable.

They suffer from the lowered levels of confidence that any form of unexpected or inescapable vulnerability brings. Even before they contact Jobcentres, the Benefits Office or any other organisations that provides the different services and offerings that provide income and support that comes from the public purse.

Some active claimants do use anger and exhibit loud forms of frustration. But this is often a self-protection mechanism and way to try and secure what they need from the System.

Sadly, these few are the stereotype upon which much of the prejudiced behaviour towards those on Benefits that reaches far beyond DWP staff is formed.

The profit-led private contractors who provide ‘back to work’ or ‘welfare to work’ services and ‘support’ are no better.

The tick-box culture that is applied universally towards anyone whose existence touches the welfare purse is one where claimants are considered capable of working if they tried, and therefore there because they choose to be.

Once through the turnstile of the benefits door, benefits claimants are considered worthless.

Nobody operating or administering the benefits system from within is prepared to look at anyone asking for help as being anything other than the same.

The Benefits system is inherently cynical and labels everyone who doesn’t work as being in the benefits queue as a lifestyle choice.

Unless benefits claimants possess a CV or situation which would be strong enough to indicate that they wouldn’t even be there in the first place, the experience of being just within the benefits system itself quickly takes its toll. Once inside, it is a downwards spiral for many where there is no genuine escape, even if you find a way to leave.

Politicians may indeed be openly questioning the number of unemployed who there because of mental health issues.

But beyond the torture of what it takes for growing numbers to keep up with a financial and money-centric culture that demands everyone keep up, the constant hits that come from being in ‘the system’ and treated like you are sub human by those who do and can work, makes for a progressively difficult challenge, that in the situation we all face today, has come down to little more than lucky breaks for the many who do want to escape.

4. Very few want to be on benefits – Living independently on a basic wage is key

I mentioned the angry and the frustrated above.

These are the people that hide behind a mask and fight the contact that they have with the Benefits System, because it’s what they believe they have to do, to survive.

Yes, many receiving benefits suggest openly and behave with a sense of entitlement. But this is the situation that decades of poor politicians – and therefore that we all have created, because of the responsibility that we all have, for appointing the politicians who have created, developed and maintained the mess that the UK is now in.

The stories of people who cannot step out of the benefits trap, because they cannot afford to do so, are also true.

There is something perverse about a situation where claimants will not take the risk of taking jobs and opportunities because of how they will be treated by the benefits system and what support they will lose immediately if and when they take those steps to get out.

Unless they cannot work because of other commitments or they find themselves genuinely unable to do so, there are few Benefits Claimants who have entered or remain within the Benefits System by choice.

5. A Minimum Wage that is guaranteed to be a Living Wage would change everything

Another truth that we have turned a blind eye to, is that many people who cannot do so currently, would be very happy to be working in Minimum Wage jobs IF they actually paid what its costs to live independently.

Many people would choose to work in Minimum Wage jobs, in receipt of a wage that they could live independently on. Because their only working responsibility or responsibility to others would then be to do what they are asked for the time that they are at work.

Many of us would be very happy just to work a working week and at the same time earn enough so that all of the bills and the essentials that it takes  to live an independent and self-sustaining life today are paid for. Just as long as we don’t then have to go looking for and making ourselves vulnerable to anyone or anything else, reaching out for help, just to make  ends meet.

The Basic Living Standard | Full Text
Is Poverty invisible to those who don’t experience it? | Full Text
The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government | Full Text
Being on Benefits 24Mar25 PDF_Vers1_3Feb26Download

The introduction of Price controls on foods, goods and services may become essential as this cost-of-living crisis develops. We would be fools to rule out rationing becoming necessary too

Yes, it does feel a bit like being the voice of doom and gloom as I write and produce videos about all the things that are going on and talk about what we can realistically expect as being likely to happen next.

The point is, that if someone like me can see what is happening and what is likely to happen next, the people we have elected as MPs have absolutely no excuse not to do so too.

In fact, our public representatives should be well ahead of the curve in both their horizon scanning and thinking than most.

Regrettably, they are not.

To be fair, the complexity of the growing problems and how each and every one of them interacts with the others is mind bogglingly scary to say the least.

Yet it is the culture of ‘let’s always take the easy option’ that exists, top to bottom within the British Political System, that has made the difficulties that are only just starting for us, significantly worse.

There are many people in this Country today who cannot afford to feed themselves, home themselves, clothe themselves, transport themselves or function normally in any way on the wages or income they have, without debt or benefits – or what is really a subsidy from the Government and therefore everyone else in some way.

Prices of the foods, goods and services that provide the basic essentials for life are spiraling out of control. Living at the standard we are experiencing even today, will soon become unaffordable for most.

Yet the complexities I mentioned above, all come back to just one thing: That the economic system we have today has been developed to benefit the self-interests of the few. That those driving it have continued to push prices up in the pursuit of ever-growing profits for as long as our stupid politicians have printed money and kept handing it out. When instead good politicians would have faced up to reality and dealt with the problems for wider society that have been caused by that same greedy few.

The Covid Pandemic has caused stupid politicians and greedy business and financial leaders to overplay their hand.

In fact, the inflationary spiral they have created together is now out of reach of any form of control they possess. Indeed, the only actions our weak-minded politicians have to address the issues are only serving to make the whole problem worse.

Events, or a coming chronology of them – which will have been caused by so many different profit-driven people with influence behaving in the same way, will combine to make basic food unaffordable where it is available. It will be absent from the supermarket and shop shelves where it would otherwise be not.

Food riots, as the system collapses and the old order makes way for a new one that will work for all will settle the mind of many. Especially the politicians that we have for the time that their waning power remains.

Greed, hoarding and any kind of self-driven prioritisation will have to go out of the window.

That will mean supermarket rationing as we experienced during the early Lockdowns. There will be an immediate need for Government to step in and fix prices along the entire food and essential goods supply chain, so that nobody can use this time of crisis to profit off the backs of us all.

Some of the more economically minded will baulk at the idea of any kind of price fixing, price regulation or price controls, because of its non-capitalist and non-market-friendly nature.

But the reality is that the epoch of easy money and making massive profits by exploiting the many to benefit the already bloated few, is now reaching its end.

A new system will emerge that will be fair to all. But it will not resemble anything that we’ve seen or experienced before.

As we walk the pathway to get there, it will be necessary to ensure that what we still have available – which will plenty for all of us without the influence or intervention of ongoing greed – will be made available fairly to all.

Money as we know it is likely to become only one of many different ways to make payment as change takes place. And it is therefore just as likely that rationing of the essentials that are available will also be necessary for everyone.

The times ahead may prove to be painful. But it’s the future which is possible for everyone once the change has been completed that we should look forward to.

The opportunities for a fair and just way of living, where everyone and everything matters are not just a pipe dream. They really exist and are there for us all.

After the pain, we have much happier times in store.

From Here to There Through Now | Full Text
The Local Economy & Governance System | Online Text
The Basic Living Standard Explained