Britain's Rising Living Standard

...The way in which British national income is distributed has thus been radically changed...

...The great rearrangement in incomes in recent years has taken place with an increase of only about 7 per cent in average real consumption over what was available for consumption before the war...

...Translated into British money, these are good wages, particularly when two persons per household earn them, as is now very often the case...

...How Britons use their leisure and get their fun, therefore, is becoming "classless" rather than different from class to class...

...But the trend is upward in all these things...

...Before World War II, there were around 800,000 persons in Britain with incomes ranging from $2,500 a year to very high figures indeed...

...Searching for a phrase to cover these vast changes, an English writer, T. R. Fyvel, invented "the age of participation...

...This has to do with the fact that more and more of what Britons are enjoying in their leisure time is uniform throughout all classes...

...This may seem hard to square with the fact that prices are constantly rising and the country is still having very heavy weather in selling enough to the world to pay for what it has to buy, but it is true...

...Because the British Labor party believed that everyone should participate in the fruits of economic activity on a "fair shares" basis...

...They are three-and-a-half times what these workers earned before the war...

...Britain has now reached the point where any further progress along these general lines depends on increasing productivity, and today one of Britain's basic troubles is that productivity is not increasing fast enough...

...These goods are now in strong demand in Britain: records, radio-record players, vacuum cleaners, passenger cars, refrigerators, washing machines, radios, television sets, nylon stockings, lawn mowers, electric shavers, cameras, electric toasters, new houses...

...This is due in considerable measure to the radio, TV, the popularity of records, and the newspapers and magazines of mass appeal, not to mention the universal fascination of sports (and betting thereon) and the vast consumption of tobacco and beer...

...A revealing glimpse into this phase of the change can be had by looking at a list of articles the production of which has increased from one-third to one-and-a-half times during the last three years...

...It is simply that we Americans found our way to it first, still most conspicuously suggest the way to it to others, have carried it farthest, and believe most wholeheartedly in it...

...This is shown by the fact that in December 1955 only about one-third of all British households had a television set, about the same number were buying a house, less than a quarter had a washing machine, less than a fifth had a car, less than a sixth a telephone, and less than a twelfth a refrigerator...

...At the same time that the new consumption pattern is developing, another of an analogous character has also emerged...

...What has happened since those days, and with especial rapidity since 1945, is roughly this: The top group has been permanently reduced by inflation and taxes, both in numbers and in income...

...It was confirmed by the Labor party as part of its "cautious revolution" when it was in office, and the Conservatives have not tampered with it since their return to power...

...Britain is today moving toward an "American" pattern of consumption...

...We Americans arrived at the practice more or less by following the logic of democracy on the one hand and the logic of the mass - production mass - consumption equation on the other...

...A big segment of the bottom group has seen its wages increase around three-and-a-half times in spite of inflation and taxes, it is markedly better off...

...A good deal of the money now flowing into the hands of the 20 million Britishers who are better off than they have ever been before is being spent for more and better food, more and better clothes, and better furnishings for better homes...

...The 7.5 million British households that arc better off than before the war are beginning to see what this means, and they like it...

...If this trend continues, the so-called American pattern of consumption will prevail in Britain in a couple of decades...

...Britons today are, in great numbers, starting toward the pattern of consumption in which the things listed above are "normal," not exceptional...

...Britain is being overtaken by it...

...To be sure, not everybody in Britain is better off than before World War II, and a lot depends on what group you look at...

...This is the level the food, clothing, shelter level at which one would expect improved standards of living to show themselves first...

...We Americans have developed several names for this, depending somewhat on which aspect is being emphasized, e.g., "people's capitalism," "mass consumption," "the socialization of consumption" (as contrasted with the socialization of the means of production), "democratization of culture," and so on...

...This change of income-distribution pattern has been creeping up on Britain for a long time...

...But, on all the available evidence, the "age of participation" that is, an age in which more and more people are cut in on the benefits of material and cultural progress is not peculiarly and uniquely American...

...All that can possibly be done by rearranging the slices of the pie has now been done the pie must now become markedly bigger if more people are to have more...

...Of course, certain habits of the British working people have helped them cash in on their good fortune, notably the practice of limiting families so that children do not eat up added income, the ever-increasing habit of letting wives work, and the freer use of consumer credit, even within the limitations imposed in an effort to stop inflation...

...It is these people who are Britain's newly prosperous group, and what has happened to them, and what will happen to them and probably a good many other Britons in the near future, tells a lot about where Britain is going if she can overcome inflation and the balance-of-payments difficulty...

...It is entirely certain that more and more wage earners will better themselves as time passes...

...BRITAIN'S RISING LIVING STANDARD By C. Hartley Grattan An 'age of participation,' with millions enjoying things they could never afford before, has overtaken England Life is getting better for millions of people in Britain...

...Because this kind of thing is most highly developed in the United States, its appearance elsewhere is often alleged to be "Americanization" and greeted with hostility by those who either look down their noses at the mass consumption of what were recently luxuries, dislike the classless popular culture which accompanies the former, or dislike both...

...Thus, in 1938 there was in Britain one car for every 24 persons, in 1955 one for every 14, and by 1960, if the present trend continues, there will be a car for every 8 persons...

...it is not becoming Americanized for that reason: it has simply entered, by a road peculiar to itself, the "age of participation" which America pioneered...

...Now this list is more an indicator of what the newly prosperous are beginning to buy fairly freely what they clearly aspire to possess than of what they usually have...

...So described, what is happening in Britain bears a suspiciously exact resemblance to what has been going on in America for many years...

...But about half the 15.6 million households in Britain are markedly better off than before the war...

...And the significant point is that they have started...

...Around 7.5 million of them are earning between $28 and $56 a week...

...And there was a vast group of something like 20 million which got along on incomes below $900 often a good deal below...

...The middle group has seen its money incomes rise to about double prewar rates, but not enough to make up for the effects of inflation and taxes, so it is now from 15 to 30 per cent poorer than it used to be...

...Britain, in other words, is experiencing the massive impact of two forces: the increasingly liberal distribution of mass-produced goods and services to a greater and greater proportion of the total population and the simultaneous spread of a fairly uniform "culture," chiefly through the omnipresent, inescapable mass-communications media...

...But the change is not confined to this level it is also reflected in spending on luxuries and on goods and services that are now in the process of being transformed from luxuries into necessities...

...There was a sizable middle group of something like 6 to 8 million with incomes from $900 up to $2,500...

...When combined with constantly rising money wages, this lag is at the root of the chronic inflation which has been reducing the purchasing power of the pound by about 5 per cent per year since World War II...

...The most conspicuous are undoubtedly taxation policies designed to soak the rich and favor the poor, thus equalizing spendable income these have been in force for a long time and the full employment that has existed since the war and has made incomes remarkably constant over the year's...

...A good many forces and policies helped to make it possible...

...Any future changes are extremely unlikely to restore the prewar position of the top group, but it is fairly certain that the middle group which includes most salaried workers will slowly improve toward its prewar position...