Young people feel robbed of a better life but they don't know what to do about it

FoxEye said:
I'm upset because like so many, my future prospects are dim.

You could try to have a bit of empathy, but you don't seem to care. I work 9-5, therefore I'm a loser and don't deserve a house or anything but derision. I don't take "risks" by starting my own company, and I don't evade tax like the cool kids.

Also I wasn't born in the 60s so I'm late to the housing party. Property prices now set to rise 6-10% each year, making the value of anything I save diminish rapidly each year.

Thanks, Obama.
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I could have empathy, but you haven't given me anything to make me think you deserve it. Yea, getting a house is a bitch. Saving for a deposit is murder.
But you have the same opportunities as everyone else dealing with the same crap. Just because you work a 9-5 doesn't mean you don't deserve a house, but having some drive to better yourself and climb up the ladder, or setting goals bla bla bla you can do it. My mate got his own house at 22, left school at 18 and worked saving up. He earns probably 5x less than I do, but knew what he wanted so went for it and saved his ass off. He was only on 20k when he bought it!

You're the problem. You moan that everyone else is the problem but you won't do anything to make a difference in your own life. Sorry, but that's honestly what I believe.
 
randomshenans said:
I could have empathy, but you haven't given me anything to make me think you deserve it. Yea, getting a house is a bitch. Saving for a deposit is murder.
But you have the same opportunities as everyone else dealing with the same crap. Just because you work a 9-5 doesn't mean you don't deserve a house, but having some drive to better yourself and climb up the ladder, or setting goals bla bla bla you can do it. My mate got his own house at 22, left school at 18 and worked saving up. He earns probably 5x less than I do, but knew what he wanted so went for it and saved his ass off. He was only on 20k when he bought it!

You're the problem. You moan that everyone else is the problem but you won't do anything to make a difference in your own life. Sorry, but that's honestly what I believe.
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Agreed. Sitting around moaning achieves nothing. There were problems in the past too you know, even though housing was cheaper. :o
 
FoxEye said:
House prices.

Wish they were still 3x average salary - I'd have my own place by now.

Frankly I'm 34 and facing the prospect of *never* owning my own house, if I stay in this country.

And frankly the UK is a *terrible* place to rent, compared to the EU.
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You raise a good point there. Having recently bought a house (at 26), for £250K and seeing the total cost and how many years it's going to take...

Was talking to my girlfriend's parents about their house and how much it cost compared to income and the fact they'd paid it off easily ages ago.. Quite jealous.
 
FoxEye said:
Go play with the traffic. I've seen your replies to others in this thread and you're clearly part of the problem, not the solution.

The day is coming, believe me, when the rich will be torn down, and the poor will take back by force what they have been denied.

Can't wait. Our society is rotten to the core.
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To the Chinese factory worker who made the device you're typing on, you're the rich one.
 
Private landlords are also the problem, it should not be down to the private sector to provide housing stock for the less well off.

Rebuild the council stock, charge fair rent and ship those that refuse to look after it to barrow.
 
randomshenans said:
I could have empathy, but you haven't given me anything to make me think you deserve it. Yea, getting a house is a bitch. Saving for a deposit is murder.
But you have the same opportunities as everyone else dealing with the same crap. Just because you work a 9-5 doesn't mean you don't deserve a house, but having some drive to better yourself and climb up the ladder, or setting goals bla bla bla you can do it. My mate got his own house at 22, left school at 18 and worked saving up. He earns probably 5x less than I do, but knew what he wanted so went for it and saved his ass off. He was only on 20k when he bought it!

You're the problem. You moan that everyone else is the problem but you won't do anything to make a difference in your own life. Sorry, but that's honestly what I believe.
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4 years at 20k... Assuming he lived for free (somehow), then he managed to find a house for 80k.

That doesn't add up, I'm afraid.

Average cost of living for a year is going to be 10k for most people, so he bought a house for 40k.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Perhaps you mean he put down a deposit, and now faces the prospect of paying for his house for the next 20 years?
 
At the end of the day we do need many more houses, but we also need business to be a lot more flexible. People flock to the areas where the big businesses are. etc etc. Needs to be a balance on that to make sure there are houses where people need them and jobs where there are houses.
 
FoxEye said:
4 years at 20k... Assuming he lived for free (somehow), then he managed to find a house for 80k.

That doesn't add up, I'm afraid.

Average cost of living for a year is going to be 10k for most people, so he bought a house for 40k.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
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Whatever, he has a house, he's 28. You don't. He sucked it up and made it happen. He had no from family. You're getting bogged down by the problem, yet again.
 
randomshenans said:
Whatever, he has a house, he's 28. You don't. He sucked it up and made it happen. He had no from family. You're getting bogged down by the problem, yet again.
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He has a massive loan on a house. Let's not beat about the bush.

On 20k, he faces a lifetime of struggle to afford his repayments.

*This* is the reality for successive generations.

You *stubbornly* refuse to acknowledge that this situation is broken.
 
Certain types of young people are worse off. I think both young people have changed as well as the world around young people.

I think young people today have much higher expectations. A £5k car on your 17th birthday. Go to university. Tour the world. Young people, who here remembers baths in the metal tub, no dishwasher and washing machine? I bloody don't, but my parents certainly do; we didn't have to put up with that so we don't realise how good our Quality of Life is.

I also think that for your average (i.e. not bright) young person, the world around you is slightly less accommodating. Your average young person might go to a BTEC college and be mislead to go onto a mediocre uni to study a questionable course and get a 2.2 and the be surprised when no one wants to employee you. Perhaps 30 years ago you wouldn't have been told to go to uni in the first place- maybe you'd be an apprentice or work in an independent shop and get in on a trade and then eventually start your own plumbing or whatever business, without 25+k debt

We also want spend more money on things like Sky / mobiles, internet, iMacs, holidays, car finance.

This leads onto my second point that I have a theory that today's young people are not as clever or have less common sense / self preservation than older generations and get themselves into debt and believe everything they hear from credit card companies etc. Maybe due to there being more safety nets if you get yourself into some form of trouble?

However, at the same time I do feel that more young people, think the world owes them a free ride than would have done 30 years ago. Perhaps because life was harder for my parent's parents and this reflected in their parenting, this meant my parents didn't expect as many handouts as today's youth would?

But hell I'm a young person so what do I know about previous generations except what I see in Life on Mars?
 
FoxEye said:
He has a massive loan on a house. Let's not beat about the bush.

On 20k, he faces a lifetime of struggle to afford his repayments.

*This* is the reality for successive generations.

You *stubbornly* refuse to acknowledge that this situation is broken.
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It's nearly always a struggle to begin with, it certainly was for us at the beginning. You also forget, that guy won't be on £20k for the rest of his life, so it will get progressively easier and easier.

You should use more of your energy doing something positive instead of being angry and finding reasons why not to do something.
 
oldbag said:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/15/young-people-pessimistic-future-britons

Are any of you feeling like this?

Is it just a case of every future generation from now on being worse off and paying for the previous generation's screw-ups? i.e a downward spiral?
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No.

The youth of today don't know how lucky they are. They're all lazy gits and should stop moaning all the time. Get out an do something with your life, you moron! (Me talking to my kids in a few years time.)
 
I earn more than both of my parents combined and I've been working less than a year after uni. This is through a combination of hard work and a supportive family.

Presuming no disasters, I'm almost guaranteed to be better off financially than them. However, most of my friends are not so fortunate. The price of housing has completely screwed over the wealth generation of the middle to low income persons of the country.
 
FoxEye said:
Also LOL at "taking a risk" when buying more property.

These people bought their first house when it cost about 3-5 years salary and no more. They then watched the value of that asset grow and grow. Then they added more property, and let renters pay the mortgages.

Where's the risk? People will always need a place to live, and the government will not let house prices crash. We know this. They will do whatever it takes to keep the house market afloat. Even if it means spending public money to keep prices going up, like they've done recently.
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Funny enough these people still only buy houses at 3-5x their salary because mortgage providers wont lend them any more!
 
Considering my parents generation went through a typhoid outbreak, i consider myself humbled.

But if people don't expect society to be better around them than before, then something has gone wrong.

There is unfortunately a whole generation of pre-historic gentlemen/ladies in governance that understand very little about the world after the internet came onto the scene, this is at serious odds to anyone younger than 40 (Majority wise).

So don't go wondering why young folk take a single look at politics and decide to ignore it for the rest of their lives.
 
SPG said:
Yes and why is that ? NO MORE AFFORDABLE HOUSING STOCK

Thatcher done this country over, we are paying the price tenfold now as all party politics is based on GREED.
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Its largely down to interest rates actually and that's got nothing to do with party politics these days - they've been set by the MPC since 1997 and are currently at historical lows... Compare rates in the 90s to rates in the 70s and 80s...
 
Bear said:
It's nearly always a struggle to begin with, it certainly was for us at the beginning. You also forget, that guy won't be on £20k for the rest of his life, so it will get progressively easier and easier.

You should use more of your energy doing something positive instead of being angry and finding reasons why not to do something.
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Precisely. His equity is rising, his wages have obviously risen a lot more since then too and he now has a girlfriend, who I'm sure they're thinking about living together, so you know...
 
FoxEye has it right, lack of supply aside it's a major problem that the government won't let house prices crash by keeping interest rates stupidly low, in effect taking money from people who are responsibly saving to prevent people who irresponsibly bought houses on the premise that house prices would always go up and interest rates will stay low forever. And that's not even mentioning the fact that baby boomers are funding their retirements by saddling their children with huge amounts of public debt etc rather than take a cut. But that comes down to voting power too as previously mentioned

It's worse in the USA where this imbalance is even clearer on your tax return where people write off vast swathes of mortgage interest but renters get zip.
 
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Rich_L said:
FoxEye has it right, lack of supply aside it's a major problem that the government won't let house prices crash by keeping interest rates stupidly low, in effect taking money from people who are responsibly saving to prevent people who irresponsibly bought houses on the premise that house prices would always go up and interest rates will stay low forever. And that's not even mentioning the fact that baby boomers are funding their retirements by saddling their children with huge amounts of public debt etc rather than take a cut. But that comes down to voting power too as previously mentioned

It's worse in the USA where this imbalance is even clearer on your tax return where people write off vast swathes of mortgage interest but renters get zip.
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He undoubtedly raises some valid points and the system is broken. I think it's ridiculous that the government is propping up house prices. Realistically though, you can be bitter about a situation that won't change or try and make the system work for you. I know which is the healthier option.
 
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