UK News
Bank of England tells people to ‘accept’ being poor and stop asking for raises
Hugh Phill, who earns roughly £190,000 a year, said people should accept they're going to be worse off.
Georgina Pellant -
27th April 2023 
The Bank of England’s chief economist has said that people need to accept that they are poorer and stop asking for pay rises.
Huw Pill told a podcast that there was a reluctance in the UK to accept that “we’re all worse off and we all have to take our share”.
Pill, who earns an annual salary of £190,000 according to The Guardian, added that people need to “stop trying to maintain their real spending power by bidding up prices whether through higher wages or passing energy costs on to customers etc.”
The comments from Mr Pill come at a time of unprecedented national strikes across the public sector, with more than 133,000 public and civil servants set to walk out on 28 April.
Mr Pill told the Columbia Law School’s Beyond Unprecedented podcast: “The UK, which is a big net importer of natural gas, is facing a situation where the price of what you’re buying from the rest of the world has gone up a lot, relative to the price of what you’re selling to the rest of the world, which is mainly services in the case of the UK.
“You don’t need to be much of an economist to realise that if what you’re buying has gone up a lot relative to what you’re selling, you’re going to be worse off.
“So, somehow in the UK, someone needs to accept that they’re worse off and stop trying to maintain their real spending power by bidding up prices whether through higher wages or passing energy costs on to customers etc.
Read more: Passport Office workers begin five-week strikes over pay and pensions
“What we’re facing now is that reluctance to accept that, yes, we’re all worse off and we all have to take our share; to try and pass that cost onto one of our compatriots and saying, ‘we’ll be alright, but they will have to take our share too’.
“That pass-the-parcel game that’s going on here, that game is one that’s generating inflation, and that part of inflation can persist.”
Featured Image — Flickr.
