Re: Already paying 10%
That's optimistic ball-gazing - the pound is unlikely to recover to "normal", i.e. pre-Brexit, levels.
You only have to look at the long-term currency Hedge rates to get a feel for what the money markets think will happen. It's clear the GBP will be worth c. 7%-10% less than pre-Brexit (& yes, I'm already aware that speculation had already begun before the announcement in Feb. USD rate was 1.6-1.5 in late 2015, dropped & hovered to 1.4 around the announcement, and is now more steady at around 1.3.
So the net is GBP will be worth, say, 8% less. And whilst that will help our exporters a bit, don't forget their raw materials & goods will cost more unless 100% produced in the UK, AND the commensurate uncertainty that we've introduced into Europe will lower the Euro, too, so would effectively cancel most of our export benefits, certainly into Europe.
Long-term, it means a large part of our raw materials, and anything supplied by Global companies, who price their costs in USD, will cost 8% more, which will have to be passed on to us, the consumers.
Let's be generous and say the it's only a 5% hit, to account for purely domestic sourcing and EU imports / Euro weakness. Our wages won't rise due to the prolonged employment uncertainty, and so the overall effect is we will ALL be 5% poorer.
Personally, many of my customers have delayed IT projects, and focused their time on doing some housekeeping, which means my business loses a massive chunk of revenue, most of which won't recover, it just shifts everything else out, and so hits my pay packet directly, and hard, dammit.
So of course I'm mightily pissed off because that hurts me directly with a double-whammy of short-term penury and higher cost of living long-term.
My household will be OK, though, the IT industry isn't too badly paid, so we'll just have to tighten a little. But it'll be the worst-off who will suffer most from that kind of squeeze, and that hurts my social conscience.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
