[adaml_623]

Is there a term from economics where a portion of the population do less and less because they can't afford to travel, properly eat or heat their homes? And who have no chance of educating themselves due to their circumstances?

People talk about the UK productivity gap and I wonder when society realises that people who can't afford to eat are not going make great workers.

[deergomoo]

> I wonder when society realises that people who can't afford to eat are not going make great workers

Society knows and has always known. This government does not care.

I’m quite well off (at least relative to the area I live) and yet I genuinely despair because it feels as though every form of social good is at breaking point.

[rvieira]

I second that. Perhaps it's a perfect storm of COVID (NHS degraded), international economic problems (inflation, fuel, food prices), Brexit (bankrupcies, universal shortage of staff, Horizon science funding, etc), fatigue of a decade+ Tory government, sometimes all bundled in one (travel chaos, no staff at airports due to Brexit and COVID), and a "fill your pockets while you can" atmosphere (billions of taxpayers money wasted on PR stunts, alleged fraud, etc), slow erosion of democratic institutions (lowering of standards laws, bonfire of enviromental and worker protection laws, losing trust in the police) but there's this gloomy atmosphere that things will get a lot worse before they get better.

[wiredearp]

Capitalism?

[nine_k]

Capitalism wants customers to run their capitalist businesses. Capitalism is more about making people consume mindlessly than preventing then from consumption.

But a society is not completely defined by its economic system. Other parts of the culture influence this a lot. It helps that the majority of the population can vote. But it's also about daily interactions, who is seen as undesirable where, etc.