Has Britain reached ‘Peak Wealth’?

So the year-long squeeze on real earnings is now officially over. Figures released by the ONS this morning show that average earnings in the first three months of this year were 2.9 per cent ahead of what they were in the same period of 2018, while CPI inflation was 2.7 per cent ahead. In other words, we are all, on average, 0.2 per cent better-off than we were last year. That is no great deal, it has to be said, and continues the poor run of growth in real incomes ever since the global economic crisis of a decade ago. It is unprecedented in the industrial era to have had such a long peacetime period in which the population does not really grow any richer. According to an IFS analysis, past falls in real incomes have lasted two years (1865-67), four years (1874-78), two years (1921-23) and two years (1976-77).