The Great Modern Shakedown: Why It Feels Impossible to Get Ahead Nowadays
You don't need a degree from Oxford to see that something has gone seriously wrong with the world. You just need to look at your bank statement.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about why everyone I know - from mates back home in the UK to people I meet on my travels - feels utterly trapped. There is this heavy, constant weight in the air, a feeling that no matter how hard you graft, you’re just running faster on a treadmill that’s being controlled by someone else.
It used to be simple enough. You work hard, you save up, you build a life. But today? The game feels rigged from the very first whistle.
Look at the younger generation. We’ve hammered it into kids' heads that university is the golden ticket. So, they put in the hours, graduate, and step into the real world carrying £50,000 or £60,000 of debt before they’ve even earned their first proper penny.
If they’re lucky enough to land a decent graduate job, they get slapped right in the face with reality. Between national insurance, income tax, and student loan repayments, a good salary can leave you facing an effective tax rate of around 62%. You’re paying top-tier whack from day dot on a salary that doesn’t actually buy you what it used to. British salaries have been flatlining for fifteen years while the state keeps taking a bigger slice of the pie. If you work for a company, you’re never going to get wealthy. You’re just keeping your head above water.
And what do you get for all that grafting? Absolutely zero chance of buying a front door, let alone a house. In London, average house prices are running at about eleven times the average salary... elsewhere in the country, it’s about eight times.
It’s stunting us. It’s stopping people from becoming actual adults. When I was living in South Korea, I saw the exact same thing... folks well into their thirties still living with their parents because a flat of their own was a pipe dream. It’s happening across Spain, Italy, and Greece, too. If you can’t afford a roof over your head, how are you supposed to get married, have kids, and start a life? You’re forced to stay a teenager forever.
It’s not just the big stuff like houses, though. The entire system has been "financialised." Everything has been broken down into a monthly fee to hide how bloody expensive it’s all become.
Take cars. Remember when you’d buy a decent motor for a few grand and it was yours? Now, everyone is pushed into PCP or HP finance agreements. It’s a glorified subscription. The car industry has used this to mask the fact that the relative price of a car has tripled or quadrupled over the last twenty years. It’s the same with mobile phones—an iPhone used to be five or six hundred quid... now it’s £1,200, because "it's only an extra tenner a month, mate."
We’ve created a debt-based society where you’re paying a mortgage on your car, a mortgage on your phone, and now people are even using apps like Klarna to buy fast food on credit. Think about that... borrowing money to buy a burger.
The house always wins, and in this economy, the "house" is the banks and the mega-corporations. They want us in debt because a man in debt is a man who can’t afford to say "no" to a bad boss or a low wage.
While the working and middle classes have been squeezed until our pips squeak, the people at the top have never had it better. Look back at the 2008 financial crash, or the massive amounts of money printed during the COVID lockdowns. Hundreds of billions of pounds and dollars were pumped into the system. Did it hit the high street? Did it help the average bloke putting food on the table? Did it fuck.
It went straight to the banks, the assets, and the wealthy. It’s been a massive, historical transfer of wealth away from the public back to the state and the elite. We get the inflation - ridiculous food prices, skyrocketing energy bills, crippling insurance - while they get the bailouts.
Now, the UK has nine million people on welfare, the state keeps ballooning, and long-term interest rates and bond yields across Japan, Europe, and the US are flashing red. The engine is smoking, and the politicians don’t know how to fix it. So what do they do? They start beating the war drums. Suddenly, all the talk on the news is about Russia, Iran, and China. History shows that when an economy is on the brink, a bit of foreign conflict is a very convenient distraction.
I don’t see a rosy future on the horizon for the UK or Europe over the next five or six years. It’s going to be a painful road back to reality.
Personally, I refused to stay trapped in that cycle. My plan is to stay out here in Asia, where I can breathe a bit easier, and focus entirely on growing my business. I’m putting my money into tangible things, such as precious metals and mining stocks, rather than trusting a financial system built on shifting sand.
And if it all goes completely belly up? Well, I’ll figure out a Plan B. But one thing is for sure... I’m done playing a game where the rules are designed to make you lose.