how are Brits so poor yet the country is damn expensive?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The social contract in euro countries has collapsed….”we will work for peanuts but have good health care and will retire on a crap, but comfortable pension.” I’m from Ireland and am comparatively loaded compared to my peers there thanks to going it alone in the USA, thanks to being able to read and thus get ahead here in a sea of ignorance….USA simply a different kind of shithole with more crap and greater access to loans. It’s also easier to hide cash in the USA there is more fluidity here…

In general, euros traded money for lifestyle. Their lifestyle now sucks…. Except for the educated and the rich, of course!!

So pensioners are also very poor, but earlier in the thread someone mentioned some triple lock on pensions and I think a common gripe is spending money on the old whilst the young scrape by. Is it that people are living longer, as in the US?

[Anonymous]

I’m from the UK and posted above and I still think that it’s because most British people live far simpler lives and accept as normal a much lower standard of living. For example, I have a friend who lives on the Isle of Wight (south coast of England). She’s a single mother of 4 children, she does some temporary part time work and earns about $8,000 a year from that. She receives spousal support from her ex-husband of around $12,000. She also receives a caregivers allowance from the government as she has a disabled child of about $5,000 a year. That is literally all her income. She lives in a tiny house not dissimilar to this one - https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/149546159#/?channel=RES_BUY
Her kids go to a great local school, they spend afternoons and weekends at the beach or at friends houses, they take the ferry to the mainland and go on super cheap holidays when she finds cheap flights, and it’s a great, simple, mostly happy life. She has a small old car that she bought for under $2000 but they mostly use public transport or walk everywhere. How many Americans would like to live like this?

[jsteele]

This is not a travel topic.