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11:25 am, January 9th, 2026 - 9 comments
Categories: cost of living, Economy, employment, energy, housing, inequality, interest rates, jobs, Living Wage, monetary policy, tax, taxpayers union -
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Reposted from Richard Murphy
Affordability has become the defining political issue in the United States. It will soon be unavoidable in the UK. But the way the problem is being framed remains fundamentally misleading.
Most discussion of the cost-of-living crisis still revolves around prices: food, fuel, energy, and transport. These are visible and emotionally resonant. But they are not the real reason why so many people feel they can no longer afford to live.
The real affordability crisis lies elsewhere. It lies in the systematic extraction of income from households.
People are paying too much rent.
They are paying too much mortgage interest.
They are paying excessive interest costs embedded in everyday purchases.
And they are paying monopoly rents to companies that dominate essential services and face little meaningful competition.
This is not simply inflation. It is a transfer of income upwards, built into the structure of the modern economy.
Housing is the most obvious example, but it is far from the only one. Telecommunications, banking, utilities, water, insurance, digital services, and online retail all operate in markets where consumers are locked in. Switching is difficult. Alternatives are limited. Prices rise because they can.
Financialisation has deepened the problem. Modern products are routinely bundled with insurance, warranties, and service contracts that are rarely needed and rarely used. The profitability often lies not in the product itself but in the financial add-ons attached to it. These practices are deliberate, normalised, and highly lucrative.
Supermarkets do this. Banks do it. Utilities do it. Online platforms do it. And because regulation is weak or captured, these costs are treated as inevitable.
Seen this way, the affordability crisis is not a failure of markets to behave. It is a failure of politics to act.
Governments have chosen not to regulate rents.
They have chosen not to restrain monopolies.
They have chosen not to control interest costs.
Regulation still exists, but too often it is designed to protect investor returns rather than household affordability.
This was not always the case. We once accepted that essentials should not be vehicles for profit extraction from captive users. We once regulated prices. We once acted in the public interest.
Affordability can be restored. But only if we change the logic of policy.
That means recognising extraction for what it is, accepting that it is not inevitable, learning from what once worked, and demanding political action.
The economics is not mysterious. The tools are already available.
The only uncertainty is whether we choose to use them.
Richard Murphy is a British former chartered accountant who campaigns on issues of tax avoidance and tax evasion.[1] He founded the Tax Justice Network. He is a Professor Emeritus of Accounting Practice at University of Sheffield Management School.
So long as we have politicians who directly benefit from this extortion, nothing will change.
So long as the system makes it financially impossible for those further down the food chain to run for parliament, nothing will change.
hard agree on that last sentence. The parliamentary system is brutal too, are the good people still going into parliament?
there's something about the entrenched nature of neoliberalism and how long its been running. Even someone as remarkable as Ardern was stymied by it in the end. Voters want security now and it's hard to see them voting for candidates with big change policies.
Yeah neoliberalism is a hard nut to crack. I'm not sure we have a viable alternative that is palatable to the masses. The problem is that we all want to believe the lie of neoliberalism, but few actually recognise the lie for which it is.
Monbiot in his Youtube documentary on neoliberalism presents a good overview of it, but does not really have an answer to ravenous monster that it is
Agree on the extraction point.
These days so much of pretty basic services is subscription plus add ons or user pays based.
I resist as much as I can. Then there's the built in obsolescence to products rather than making them fixable.
It's hard to move away from all that without some widespread public pressure on politicians to change things.
Obsolescence is my pet hate. As a RW environmentalist I love biking to work everyday. So when my neighbour was throwing out a 70 year old Hercules bike I snapped it up. I pumped up the tyres and behold it rides like a dream. One evening I flicked on the dynamo and the headlight pumped out a beautiful warm yellow glow… I've lost count of the number of shit lights I've bought, broken and replaced over the last decade.
I agree with Murphy about rent and extraction.
However incomes are not keeping pace with costs.
We should watch what comes IN to households, as well as what goes OUT.
IMHO, it starts with confusion about what the term "socialist" means.
I've always believed it to mean putting the good of the country's people before the profits of the country's corporations. Not to mean that businesses shouldn't be in business to make profits, but not at the expense of it's citizenry.
But, the right wing are always quick to link socialism with communism. They take every opportunity to do it and it makes it harder for socialist parties to win over the swinging voters.
Somehow, drawing a similar link between capitalism and fascism – also an unfair comparison – never seems to occur to people.
I did a long comment looking at the Third Way academic agitator Anthony Giddens, now Baron, on TDB and put link below.
(That's the same honour that Lord Dowding the man who mastered what some called The Battle For Britain in 1940? and kept smarty Hitler at bay for long enough to give Brit a chance. Yet Giddens and he are put on the same rung.)
The Wikipedia site showed that Giddens swept all before him over some years, including me I feel and NZAO with trade agreements that Prof Jane Kelsey tried to slow down.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2026/01/04/millennial-micro-aggression-policing-liberation-through-estrangement-and-the-cult-of-ghosting-we-are-a-very-lonely-specious-with-the-illusion-of-24-7-social-media-connection/#comment-970480
It might be interesting to look at after listening to Monbiot. (And I am hoping TDB will have this think post to put up ideas of a thoughtful nature.)
It's a good watch the Monbiot Capitalism/Neo-Liberalism doco.
Ties into this post nicely.
I keep coming back to sharing being at the heart of an alternative to capitalism. It is in accord with our nature. It feels good to share and it feels good to be shared with.