Lede

The modern economy keeps asking workers to applaud survival while treating extreme wealth as proof the machine is healthy.

Hermit Off Script

This is about wages first, because that is where the trick begins. I am supposed to clap because work exists at all, as if employment were a charitable weather pattern. But when pay rises mostly happen because government drags employers to the legal minimum, I do not call that generosity. I call that supervised reluctance. The official floor itself tells the story: the National Living Wage is judged against roughly two thirds of median pay, not against the full cost of a decent life. Real wages only got back to their 2008 level in 2024, and real regular pay growth was just 0.4 per cent in November 2025 to January 2026. So yes, people are not mad when they feel that working harder can still leave them thinner at the end of the month. I can live with millionaires existing. Billionaires are where the mask starts slipping. I am not treating “fair pay would erase every billionaire” as physics. I am treating it as a moral X-ray. When billionaire wealth jumps by more than 16 per cent in a single year, while everyone else is told to be grateful for legal minimums and motivational wallpaper, the system is not rewarding virtue. It is rewarding position. Oxfam says 60 per cent of billionaire wealth comes from inheritance, cronyism or monopoly power. That is not a meritocracy. That is a relay race where some runners inherit the bicycle. Then comes the second sermon: if wages are rubbish, become a founder. Fine, as a side hustle, sometimes. As a universal escape route, spare me. ONS says the five-year survival rate for UK businesses born in 2019 was 38.4 per cent. The British Business Bank still talks openly about structural access-to-finance barriers for entrepreneurs. So the advice is often translated as follows: take a risk, but only if you can afford failure. People with family capital can miss repeatedly and call it learning. Everybody else misses once and gets a debt souvenir. For some, it becomes panic dressed up as ambition. And yes, tax matters, but I am not interested in fairy tales from either tribe. It is reasonable that people with more pay more. It is also true that states write rules, thresholds and advantages that can tilt rewards toward wealth long before anyone breaks a law. HMRC puts the total tax gap at GBP 46.8 billion, while the official avoidance slice is GBP 0.7 billion. So the scandal is not just cartoon offshore villainy. A lot of it is the quieter architecture of ownership, bargaining power and political preference. Now AI arrives to sell the same old gospel in chrome: abundance later, pain now. IMF work warns the gains can flow upward when capital owns the tools. Same sermon, shinier altar. Work below, wealth above, hope outsourced to software.

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What does not make sense

• Calling a legal minimum a generous raise.
• Praising hard work while real pay crawls and bills sprint.
• Telling workers to “think like owners” after making ownership unattainable.
• Selling startups as liberation to people with no buffer for failure.
• Pretending billionaire wealth is always the clean result of merit.
• Treating AI as a social rescue plan when the ownership of the gains is already lopsided.

Sense check / The numbers

1. Real wages in Britain only got back to their 2008 level in 2024, and real regular pay growth was just 0.4 per cent in November 2025 to January 2026. That is not a boom. That is a limp with a necktie. [Resolution Foundation] [ONS]
2. From April 2026, the National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over is GBP 12.71 an hour. The House of Commons Library says the April 2025 rate reached 65 per cent of median earnings, while the current remit says it should not fall below 66 per cent. That is a low-pay safeguard, not shared prosperity. [Gov.uk] [Commons Library]
3. The five-year survival rate for UK businesses born in 2019 was 38.4 per cent. So “just start a business” is not universal economic advice. It is motivational graffiti with invoices. [ONS]
4. Oxfam says billionaire wealth jumped by over 16 per cent in 2025 to USD 18.3 trillion, and says 60 per cent of billionaire wealth comes from inheritance, cronyism or monopoly power. The lift to the top did not come from everyone suddenly discovering grit. [Oxfam]
5. HMRC estimates the UK tax gap at GBP 46.8 billion in 2023 to 2024, while the official avoidance slice is GBP 0.7 billion. That suggests the problem is not only rule-breaking. A lot of the bias sits inside the rules and the wider structure of wealth. [HMRC] [OECD]
6. IMF research warns that AI can increase wage inequality, and when workers are replaced, owners of capital prosper. So the shiny future is only generous if the ownership is not hoarded. [IMF]

The sketch

Scene 1: Annual raise, ceremonial edition
Panel description + dialogue:
A worker holds a payslip marked “+GBP 0.50” while rent, tax and utility bills tower behind like nightclub bouncers.
Worker: “Is this a raise?”
Bills: “Only if arithmetic has resigned.”

Scene 2: Bootstrap cathedral
Panel description + dialogue:
A billionaire on a stage sells “startup freedom” to a crowd standing on empty wallets, while a velvet staircase marked “family capital” rises behind him.
Speaker: “Fail fast.”
Worker: “On what cushion?”
Speaker: “Preferably inherited.”

Scene 3: AI salvation, ownership sold separately
Panel description + dialogue:
A robot feeds tasks into two chutes marked “redundancy” and “returns” while shareholders catch the second in velvet buckets.
Worker: “Where does the productivity go?”
Robot: “Upstairs.”

What to watch, not the show

• Wage floors set as political minimums rather than a real share of prosperity.
• Wealth growing through ownership, inheritance and monopoly power faster than work pays.
• Tax debates getting reduced to villains and loopholes while the broader architecture still favours capital.
• Housing costs, Council Tax, water bills and frozen thresholds chewing through nominal pay gains.
• Startup mythology ignoring access-to-finance barriers and survival odds.
• AI ownership concentration, because the tool is not the story – who captures the gains is.

The Hermit take

Work should build a life, not subsidise someone else’s private weather.
When survival is sold as opportunity, the economy is heckling its own workers.

Keep or toss

Toss
Keep enterprise, invention and fair reward.
Toss the sermon that low pay is discipline, inherited capital is merit, and AI hype is a welfare policy.

Sources

• ONS – Average weekly earnings in Great Britain: March 2026: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/averageweeklyearningsingreatbritain/march2026
• Resolution Foundation – Labour Market Outlook Q4 2025: https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/app/uploads/2025/12/LMO-Q4-2025.pdf
• Gov.uk – National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage rates: https://www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates
• House of Commons Library – National Minimum Wage statistics: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7735/
• ONS – Business demography, UK: 2024: https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/business/activitysizeandlocation/bulletins/businessdemography/2024
• British Business Bank – Five-year Strategic Plan: Fuelling Ambition, Driving Growth: https://www.british-business-bank.co.uk/sites/g/files/sovrnj166/files/2025-11/five-year-strategic-plan-report-2025.pdf
• HMRC – Tax gaps summary: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/measuring-tax-gaps/1-tax-gaps-summary
• HMRC – Illustrative tax gap by behaviour: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/measuring-tax-gaps/7-tax-gaps-illustrative-tax-gap-by-behaviour
• Oxfam – Billionaire wealth jumps three times faster in 2025: https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaire-wealth-jumps-three-times-faster-2025-highest-peak-ever-sparking
• Oxfam – Takers Not Makers: https://www.oxfam.org/en/takers-not-makers-unjust-poverty-and-unearned-wealth-colonialism
• OECD – Mapping trends and gaps in household wealth across OECD countries: https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2025/06/mapping-trends-and-gaps-in-household-wealth-across-oecd-countries_37e92f18/4bb6ec53-en.pdf
• IMF – AI Adoption and Inequality: https://www.imf.org/en/publications/wp/issues/2025/04/04/ai-adoption-and-inequality-565729
• IMF – AI’s Real Risk to Wages: https://www.imf.org/en/news/podcasts/all-podcasts/2023/12/07/berg-vaziri-ai-risks-to-wages
• Resolution Foundation – Happy new tax year 2025: https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/app/uploads/2025/04/Happy-new-tax-year-2025.pdf
• Resolution Foundation – Living Standards Outlook 2026: https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/app/uploads/2026/02/LSO-2026.pdf