Obviously every nominal value is going to be higher YoY. That just immediately follows from inflation.
Almost every year in almost every country will have:
- record GDP
- record government spending
- record total wages
- record stock market prices
- record asset prices
- record government debt
You need to put these values in relation to something, otherwise they don’t mean anything.
For the UK, take for instance the public sector net wealth (Ie. Everything the UK public collectively owns). It collapsed drastically, from 220bn in 2006 to -900 bn in 2025.
Absolutely off the charts. As a result of this, the government can’t provide health care and basic support for its citizens anymore.
Question: who has all this wealth now, who is the UK indebted to?
> > tax revenues are higher than ever, government spending is higher than ever, social programs and social spending is higher than ever
> Obviously every nominal value is going to be higher YoY
It's not just nominal. You can see on the Institute for Fiscal Studies website that, as proportion of GDP, public spending has not been notably higher than since the second world war:
I believe your statement can be 100% true without affecting the truth of the parents statement. It's possible for a government to charge high taxes and have high social spending while also funneling larger and larger amounts from the poor to the rich through regulations and government agencies that favor and act for the interests of the rich.
There's just no ability to get anything done. Whether it's big projects (HS2) or the basics (emptying bins, fixing potholes), nothing seems to work any more. And it feels like most of our tax is being converted directly into private profits while getting very little done.
No OP but I left right before Brexit and live in an Eastern European country now. We still have a lot of the problems as the UK, but what I like is that individual autonomy is a lot higher.
That has two faces though, as it means if you are earning minimum wage or have some kind of disability and can't work it's probably a worse place to be, as the social support is a lot weaker.
On the other hand if you are earning a decent wage (think generic office worker) you can live a pretty good lifestyle. Safety, health care, education, housing, opportunties are all much better than the UK. Taxes are about the same, corruption I'd say is worse (on paper it's better), roads are worse (partially due to our climate being harsher).
> 24 million people receiving benefits (aka cash) in uk
It looks like most of those people are claiming State Pension / Pension Credit. Which doesn't make it not true, but it's maybe not what most people will think of first when you talk about benefit claimants.
Spending is paid for out of tax and all those people will have paid tax. Paying less tax than someone else doesn't make a free rider. Deliberately opting out of an obligation while taking from the group makes a free rider.
also self entitlement, reliance on the government is at the highest, individual autonomy is at the lowest ever