Would anyone agree that the price for punting hasn't increased much over the years.
Yes, agreed. The £120-130 average you quoted may be a bit low, esp. for London. But you're right , WG hourly rates haven't really increased that much since the 90s. This is even clearer if rather than comparing to MackyDs, we compare to pussy inflation. By pussy inflation I mean the massive relative gain for lasses in the dating market, at the expense of young men.
('Dating market' is just a metaphor, I'd agree with any fluffys who claim that it doesnt capture the whole of civvy romance, the magic of love etc. But the market metaphor helps one understand what's happening at a society wide level.)
Back in the 90s, as fuzzyDuck suggests, an average bloke could easily pull his share of civvies if he made the effort. And sometimes that effort was little more than buying a couple of cans of cider. Vastly harder for the average young bloke to score these days... Pussy inflation since the 90s probably over 500%. Studies have found over 50% of 20-30 year old men are single, close to 30% not having sex even once in the last year.
This has all been discussed before, so let me put something new on the table. The single biggest cause of pussy inflation, and for that matter the decline in SPs (esp young native brits) is falling birth rates.
Falling birth rates is the fact of facts for understanding what's been going on here. To see why they make such a difference, one also needs to consider the tendency for a good proportion of young women to chose to pair up with older men. When we have rising birth rates like back in the 60s, only a small proportion of young women were lost to older men. One of reasons for the summer of Love. But now, after decades of sub replacement level falling rates, older men (e.g. the 40-50 yr old cohort) heavily outnumber 20-30 year old women; they're taking a much higher proportion. So no where near enough lasses to go round for young men, and hence pussy inflation. Other causes play a part, but falling birth rates are a much bigger driver than trivial factors like Feminism or OnlyFans.
Taking this back to punting, a big reason for punt inflation staying relatively low, is the fact falling birth rates less of a thing in LatAm, and there is much financial hardship there. Basically, the Brazillians have saved punters bacon!
