There's plenty of wealth in them thar Shires!
Having interviewed a couple of dozen households in the local area I've very much got the impression that people around here are wealthier than average!
I actually got to wondering whether my samples aren't maybe skewed a little bit towards more wealthier people, or a lot skewed.
It does make sense that you're more likely to take part in a survey if you're rich, as this is correlated with higher levels of education and so you'd be happier being interviewed both because it's life-affirming and because you identify more with the survey methodology.
I mean my sample, everyone's samples, probably are skewed, but honestly, just the sheer level of wealth I've been witnessing has been staggering.
I'm not talking about multi-millionaires here, but just 'apparently ordinary' people who are telling me they've got large 6 figures in savings - honestly, 3/20 people I've interviewed have maxed out their premium bons, £100K is the max holding, that's NOT typical!
The age profile is one factor...
I just did a bit of digging and discovered that a full 25% of people in Herefordshire are aged 65+, which substantially over the 19% national average....
https://images.inleo.io/images/revisesociology_F1HLuItGaCeH6Bsl.webp
And it's older people who have more wealth, mainly because they managed to buy their houses much cheaper decades ago and were then able to stack the savings, rather than having to spend half their wages on repaying mortgages, they would have been paying 25% or something around there.
I mean it's not rocket science!
And Herefordshire is a great place to retire...
Honestly, once you're out of Hereford, which is nice enough as it is, you've got so many quaint little villages....
I was interviewing around PeterChurch the other day, and stumbled across this....
Just one of many around here, this one actually had a great community hub - I went in to get a coffee, it was FREE! So I had to buy some cake and chuck some money in the tip jar, run by volunteers.
I mean this is the rural village idyll.
I'm currently working on the National Travel Survey and I think they've given me a wealthy sample area.... I pulled up into one driveway the other day (they were out) to be greated by a Tesla and a Bugatti sitting in the driveway.... presumably they were out in god knows what, probably their 4WD knowing the roads.
Resisting plugging BTC....
Well I can't really, but it's tempting, ALL these people with so much wealth, it'd be great to see just 5% of it hitting the crypto sphere...
It's out there, and the people with it don't need anywhere near all of it, that's the point I'm gonna end on!
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It seems the UK's population has been growing older in years as many European countries. Perhaps, you might import some young labor force as Germany.
We'll have to take some sort of action like that going forwards, otherwise there will be no one to pay the state pension!
After 65, few people will risk investing in crypto. But they have children and grandchildren. Therefore, part of the accumulated wealth will go into crypto and this process is already underway.
I know it's a generational thing, I'd just hope for a bit more imagination among retired people... if not 5%, 1% is nothing!
Fewer and fewer people in the working (and consuming) 20-65 age group and more and more in the dependant 65+. A recipe for civilisational collapse, although many other countries are in much worse situation.
Although there is a lot of capacity to change the dependency ratio, just not the foresite to do it!
Or the elderly people in our country, they have worked hard to build properties and their health is also good, but today the time of inflation is so high that no one can even buy their own house.