FOR the past three years, airwaves, screens and column inches have been saturated with news of the cost-of-living crisis, inflation, industrial disputes, soaring energy costs and the resultant profiteering. These have been unimaginably difficult years for the vast majority of people in Wales.

Most have had little if any financial breathing space in what has amounted to collective anxiety as one month is struggled through to the next. Despite the fact that inflation shows some tentative signs of slowing, living standards show no indication of improving in Wales.

This week, the Bevan Foundation released its summer 2023 Snapshot of Poverty report which showed that the cost-of-living crisis remains poised to grind down people’s ability to live decent and dignified lives.

Moreover, as it often does, the effects of this ripple outward to family, friends, and the support systems that become indispensable in the absence of a concerted effort to prevent poverty by the government.

More than four in 10 people who have been forced to cut down on essentials like food have been forced to borrow money from family and friends.

More than one in seven are struggling to actually afford essential items; more than one in four are eating smaller meals or skipping them entirely; debt remains a significant problem with 29 per cent of people borrowing money between April and July 2023, with 13 per cent of these experiencing arrears on at least one occasion.

This has been a hammer blow for those groups of people hit especially hard throughout the duration of the crisis: people on universal credit or legacy benefits, those renting in the private sector, the disabled and parents of children under 18.

This all culminates in the bleak picture painted by the Bevan Foundation’s report: life continues to simply be about treading water for thousands of people.

This is compounded by the state of public services, infrastructure and transport. It is estimated that up to 25 per cent of the bus network in Wales will be axed without long-term funding, something that bus companies and passengers, as well as Plaid Cymru throughout many sessions of critical examination of the Welsh government in the Senedd, warned of well in advance.

This perhaps demonstrates that the idea that investment in public services must be dependent on their capacity to generate growth is alive and well in policymaking. This is part of the same ouroboric logic that has resulted in the crushing austerity that has kept many communities suspended in a perpetual state of crisis.

The fact that there has been very little movement on the standards of liveability so far in 2023 does not bode well for the remainder of the year.

Whilst some additional support has been announced by the Welsh government for the colder months ahead, this seems to be on a drastically reduced scale when compared to last year.

The chronic crisis of everyday liveability caused by energy, housing, food and fuel costs amidst general inflation is altogether unmanageable for working people. Without a major step change and direct focus on people’s living standards, levels of hardship will remain just as significant as they have been thus far, if not worse.

The mainstream recommendation for those people and households struggling to live would be to get a better job with higher wages, because higher wages will raise incomes and living standards.

Even if we accepted this logic, in Britain, where low wages are normalised outside of the main metropolitan centres, the rise in disposable income from an increase in gross income is completely negligible.

Economic growth — typically measured by GDP and GVA — will allow for “higher wages,” which will increase disposable income and allow people greater choice in the market from which a tax dividend can be yielded to finance public services, so the logic goes. The main political parties agree on this objective, they simply disagree about how to get there.

At any rate, “jobs, jobs, jobs” hasn’t worked. There needs to be a reset in how we think about the aims of economic policy.

The aim of “more jobs, better jobs, more jobs again” is often fitful in many areas outside of metropolitan centres.

Rather than intemperately fixating on GDP and GVA, policy must be geared more directly towards what drives an economy — people. The wages that people earn must be made liveable, and the public services they engage with must be given levels of investment commensurate with the needs of our society.

A shift away from higher gross value added per capita to a focus on people’s capacity to live dignified and decent lives — from ends to means — must be what we focus on to ensure that we move beyond the crisis of liveability. This is what needs to be at the centre of economic policy.

Luke Fletcher is MS for South Wales West and the Plaid Cymru economy spokesperson.