Flickr/Dr John2005
, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Poverty and social hardship in the UK
With Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at US $2.94 trillion (2014), the UK has the fifth largest economy in the world after Germany and Japan. It also suffers from acute income and wealth inequality and, according to Oxfam, “one in five [or 20%] of the population live below our official poverty line, meaning that they experience life as a daily struggle.”
The Conservative government repeatedly proclaims that the bitter medicine of economic austerity, so badly needed to ‘balance the nations wobbly books’, is the ‘right thing to do’ – yes, it’s painful, but "we’re all in this together" and our economic plan is working. Unemployment and inflation are low, and the economy is ‘growing’, faster in fact than any other industrialised nation.
