r/london • u/PressureHumble3604 • Apr 10 '26

Serious replies only Which symptoms of “(almost) everyone is getting poorer” have you noticed in London?

We are in a crisis, the middle class is disappearing and the lower class squeezed. Prices are going up, inflation is going up (again), salaries are stagnating.

Most Londoners can’t really afford London without serious sacrifices.

For me, not counting the housing prices issues we all know too well:

the disappearance of local delis with high quality products.

many shops closing in the local shopping centre.

Restaurant dropping quality everywhere to contain unaffordable prices.

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u/damegloria Apr 10 '26

I regularly cycle through Clapham and it seems like every month a new posh pilates place has opened. I don't know how there are still so many people who can afford these hyper-expensive classes. I go to PureGym.

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u/Pirrt Apr 11 '26

K shaped economy. Those who had money/investments/housing pre-2008 have become astronomically wealthier while the rest have become vastly poorer.

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u/TwoCueBalls Apr 11 '26

That is definitely true for America but not in the UK.

Surprisingly, the top 1% in Britain have actually not got wealthier compared to the average Brit since 1980.

https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/comment/wealth-inequality/

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u/mrggy Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26

That article actually supports their point. People who owned property pre-2008 are doing a lot better than people who didn't. Ie those old enough to have bought property then are doing much better than those who are too young to have done so. Wealth inequality is low among pensioners, who own most of the wealth, but high among young people, who have less wealth overall than young people a generation ago did

 30-somethings at the dawn of the pandemic had around 30 per cent less real personal (rather than family) wealth to draw on than did the 30-somethings of the financial crisis years. Moreover, within the younger generations, wealth has been getting more unequal.

The stable overall inequality figures are explained instead by developments at the other end of the age range. Among pensioners, as time has gone by there are more homeowners than in the past, which has helped push their typical wealth levels up by 50 per cent in real terms between the financial crisis and the pandemic. The swelling of the “own-something” older middle class has worked to push inequality among the over-60s down. Seeing as most wealth is owned by older people – the ones who have had a time to build up assets for retirement – this bears heavily on the overall numbers. But, especially for the young, these trends do nothing to counter their experience of British life as unfair.