Future living standards will be better

A reasonable way to predict future living standards in the UK is to look at what well-to-do people are doing today, and to suggest that more middle-of-the-road people will be doing that in future.

When I was a boy in the 1940s and early 50s there was only one person in my street who owned a private telephone. The rest of us had to use coin call boxes, although she voluntarily would pass on urgent messages to street neighbours. She was the only person in the street who owned a television, albeit a huge thing the size of a cocktail cabinet with a tiny screen. No-one in the street owned a car, and none took holidays abroad.  

All of these things are now commonplace for people of middling means. People have TVs and cars and go on foreign holidays routinely.

Many well-off people today have second homes, sometimes abroad. It is reasonable to predict that those of more modest means will have access to the same, and that owning more than one property might become the norm.

Some rich people today fly using private jets, usually rented rather than owned. It is quite possible that ordinary people will be able to do this in the future. Supersonic flight, once accessible only by those who could afford to fly Concorde, might well become the norm for those of more limited means.

Only the super-rich today can fly into space, but there is every prospect that in the future this might become a possibility for middle-class people prepared to splurge on an exotic experience.

In my boyhood most ordinary people had fairly boring diets heavy on bread and potatoes, but enlivened by occasional sweets and chocolate. Better-off people could afford better foods. Now more interesting and tastier foods are priced well within the means of most people. It is entirely reasonable to see what richer people are eating today and to suggest that more exotic foods will become commonplace. Perhaps lab-grown foods and genetically modified ones will improve the dietary possibilities for most people.

The formula seems to be that what starts as the prerogative of the rich becomes cheaper and more affordable. As living standards increase, ordinary people gain access to what was once reserved for the rich. Meanwhile the rich move on to even more luxurious lifestyles.

Cromwellian Roundheads might bewail the access by ordinary people to the finer delights of life, and curse and rail against the rise of luxury over simplicity, but for the rest of us, new wealth brings new opportunities and new chances for enjoyment and improvement. In this contest the Cavaliers will always win.

Madsen Pirie