[simonbarker87]

Really!? Everyone I know who works is very pleased with how the economy has recovered, many friends under 30 have bought a house (without parental help), many are nearing 40% tax bracket and my Facebook feed is full of people going on holiday. Not sure which UK you are living in but the one I'm in is pretty nice - well it was, until this vote.

And before you say I'm in some kind of elite I run a small factory in the north east of England and even my lower paid members of staff go on holiday once a year.

[IshKebab]

> many friends under 30 have bought a house (without parental help)

Wow really? Do you live up north? Or have rich friends?

I mean I think the UK economy is in pretty good shape (especially compared to the rest of the world), but let's not pretend that houses are remotely affordable.

[toyg]

>north east of England

Property market here in the north is nowhere as crazy as in London. Which is why the constant moans about it in national media are extremely grating for us (it's actually hard to flog houses, over here).

[gambiting]

You can buy a house in the North for 100-200k without any problems, and saving 10k for a deposit is not exactly difficult if you have a job. I'm in the same situation as OP, live in UK, everyone I know is quite well off and the economy is doing very well for us(or was until today).

[monk_e_boy]

I think I'm one of those rare people who lurk on hackernews, but who's friends are normal working types. Nurses, janitors, teachers, teaching assistants, plumbers, electricians, carpetenters, fisher men. None of these people are on your facebook feed, or hackernews comment section. These are the people who have had enough of all this crap. We're not stupid. We're just poor.

[wastedhours]

I am honestly struggling to see how people believe leaving will make us richer (as has been the rhetoric from the leave campaign) - taxes will quite likely not change, that money will almost certainly not filter back into the pockets of the workers, and will be used to prop up other sectors of the economy that will suffer as a result of this, or to just pay down other debt (which whilst a benefit, still wont help most individuals over their working lives)...

[ohnomrbill]

I imagine that a lot of leave voters hoped that this will make them richer in the short term (though reality seems to be sinking in). I think the more compelling argument is one that is certainly felt, but harder to put into words - the British want protectionism back.

If you're a factory worker, you might not care that the EU makes the UK richer through free trade. That the EU benefits you overall doesn't matter - you would prefer a system where the pound is weaker, and imports/exports are tough, if it means that the manufacturing needs of British workers are served by British citizens like you. Having a manufacturing job, even if it is less lucrative, is more appealing than having no job and watching the rest of the country enjoy a slightly higher quality of life. Open borders mean you let in foreign doctors and scientists; it also means that you let in cab drivers and factory workers, in greater numbers. The British are pushing back against this. Unskilled workers would rather have a dose of protectionism than the possibility of a vacation in Spain.

For what it's worth, I think that the leave vote will not bring the kind of protectionism the British want.

[evgen]

Well you sure aren't going to get any richer now. This is going to have an unpleasant impact on the UK economy (not as bad as the gloom and doom of this morning's news, but bad) and I can assure you that the pain is not going to be felt much at the top end. Get ready for your grocery bill to go up by 20% in the next few weeks and for a massive wave of redundancies.

[monk_e_boy]

At least something is happening. We didn't do it to get rich, we did it to stop the status quo, the endless rut of being so fucking skint all the time.

Putting petrol and groceries on the credit card is getting boring now. How many maxed out credit cards does one family need?

Rich folk keep saying "Why? Why? Why?" and we say "Why not?"

[tremon]

we did it to stop the status quo, the endless rut of being so fucking skint all the time.

As is (sadly) customary with major elections and campaign promises, I think you'll feel cheated again. There certainly are (were) good arguments to be made for leaving (the inability of the EU to fundamentally change its structure, the EP giving all of Europe the big finger when it happily elected Juncker as president instead of a reformist, the ideal of self-determination); but economics isn't one of those.

[IshKebab]

The vote wasn't to 'stop the status quo'. It was to leave the EU. There's no reason to think that will make you any better off.

"I'm fed up with being poor. I'm going to show those big-wigs that we've had enough! By voting to... leave the EU. Yeah. I'm like, 15% sure it has something to do with the EU."

[gambiting]

Let me put it this way - I make 25k/year. My partner makes 30k. We can afford a house here in the north without having to save up for the deposit for a decade first. Are our salaries extraordinary? Are we rich? 1% of this country? Or maybe I just live in some bubble?

[omurphyevans]

You do.

You're in the top 10% of the country:

http://www.ifs.org.uk/wheredoyoufitin/

[MagnumOpus]

£55k a year household income is well into the top 10%, and probably top 5% for the region. Not extraordinary, but not at all typical.

[corin_]

"The most recent SPI report (2012/13) gave annual median income as £21,000 before tax and £18,700 after tax.[1] The 2013/14 HBAI report gave median household income (2 adults) as £23,556." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_Kingdom#T...

You can be outside the top 1% and still be significantly better off than many.

[DanBC]

> Not sure which UK you are living in

The UK where waiting times for A&E are at the longest they've been for years; where waiting times for NHS consultant-led treatment are at the longest they've been since they introduced maximum wait times; where there are no in-patient MH beds for adults (seriously, just last week all adult inpatient MH beds in the country were occupied. (This significantly increases risk of suicide)); where the rates of suicide are increasing (after many years of decline) (and we know that economic decline increases rates of suicide).

[junto]

That's nothing to do with the EU. That's years of neglect, lack of investment and poor management by a series of UK governments both Tory and Labour.

If we want a good health service and good schools then we need to invest. There problem is the only way that is going to happen is if we borrow the money (Labour tried that - no thanks), or you raise taxes. Raising taxes political suicide, which no party wants to do, especially the Tories. Then it needs to actually be managed wisely with a clear plan of operational action for a longer period than five years between each national election. These things take time, and each time we swap leadership they throw out the plan and start from scratch. It's like a constant series of pivots in no particular direction.

[DanBC]

No, I know it's nothing to do with the EU.

That's the point - people were told by Brexit that leaving the EU would free up £350m per week, and the money would be spent on NHS.

I know that was a lie, you know it was a lie, but many people believed them.

The Sustainability and Transformation Plans were looking rough before brexit. I dread to think what they'll be like now.

[pas]

People are more likely to post (and like) holiday pictures than we have no money pictures.

[simonbarker87]

You still need the money to go on holiday in the first place and the OPs point was that working people in the UK can't afford to go on holiday.

[pas]

We live in a world where a few percent GDP drop is a recession. It does not mean _everyone_ suddenly lacks money to buy a plane ticket. But when a few percent means tens of millions of people, I don't really think we should base our (economic and other kind of) policies on some dude's Facebook stream.

There are working people who will just get laid off, because they have been hired to - let's say - coordinate a "shared service center" enlargement, but now that won't happen, because the company will instead freeze every expansive project in the UK due to the suddenly increased uncertainty, and that guy (gal) will probably won't go on holiday, though he (she) will have a lot of free time to like the holiday posts of others on Facebook.

[lkiernan]

FWIW you don't, the level of debt some people have is staggering.

[keithpeter]

What does your factory manufacture?

PS: Good luck with it, lovely part of the country.