Im late 80's and think around this time is your flip of the coin group, when I look to people around my age group home ownership seems about 50%, University debt was very much affordable if you worked a job as well.
Tories lost the 2019 election among working age adults
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Im late 80's and think around this time is your flip of the coin group, when I look to people around my age group home ownership seems about 50%, University debt was very much affordable if you worked a job as well.
Even 50/50 is worse than previous gens tho, where it was more like 70/30.
And it's been getting progressively worse since. The people after us are even more screwed.
The people burying their heads in the sand and saying, "Nothing to see here" will probably not have long to wait to see the results of this growing problem. The future is totally unsustainable, and something is going to give/break, in the next decade I would imagine.
Soldato
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I'm curious what suggestions you have for an individual to solve these problems?
You are moaning about the purchasing power of those at the end of, or approaching the end of, their working lives, when compared with other groups at earlier stages. These groups will never be comparable on a here and now basis, because the former has had 40 years or so of earning to accumulate and invest wealth, to borrow money and pay it back, and generally to invest, where the latter has not. The only way to make them comparable is forced equality of outcome, effectively reallocating wealth and preventing any future ability to accumulate wealth by anyone.
If you completely ignore the final salary pensions that no longer exist, etc, etc, that you keep refusing to address in order to pretend we're just bitter, and that there's no inequality at all. Oh and of course your insistence that we all want communism
Sadly, much of it is the classic 'not my fault, must be X' approach that has characterised populist politics for decades just by changing the X regularly.
Note this doesn't mean that it's entirely the individuals fault, there is an element of luck, an element of the impact of individual choices (which is not the same as blame, it can be as simple as deciding to stay where you know rather than moving, or deciding you don't want to commute or travel. These things all have impacts over time).
The problem is, until you get past the mindset that other people are holding you back, no amount of intervention or support will help. Sometimes you need to hear harsh truths, or have the unrealised consequences of things you have done explained, and that is often not pleasant.
The trouble is, you appear to be invested in the idea that you're special.
Special because you made it and the existence of poor people proves that not everybody can make it. It's almost like the more poor people there are, the more special you feel.
So instead of having an ounce of empathy for the current working poor (which you entirely lack), you would prefer there to be a system where the majority are poor, and only special people like yourself can elevate themselves - purely by their own efforts and never because anyone helped them in any way, no that would not suit the narrative.
I wouldn't say any generation had it good but there is a huge discrepancy in effort vs reward these days. My parents (hitting 70) in the early days had to make sacrifices and battle with interest rates but they came through that with something worth it at the end. For too many people these days starting out in otherwise similar circumstances as my parents they won't even get close to the same outcome.
Soldato
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If you are late 80's you had no university debt unless you mean you went to Uni in the late 80's.
If you went to uni in the 80s you had no debt, but if you were born in the 80s then you were among the first to pay for your tuition.
This is a pretty good way to look at it.
Many of us have parents that worked hard, but also they had very average jobs. They weren't engineers or doctors, they had blue collar jobs. And they managed to end up with mortgage-free
These days you can work your ass off in a blue collar job and never expect to own your own home. Heck you can work your ass off in most jobs and need two incomes just to save a deposit.
But some people would like to say the only factor in the equation is whether you will "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" or not. They refuse to see the world for what it is.
If you completely ignore the final salary pensions that no longer exist, etc, etc, that you keep refusing to address in order to pretend we're just bitter, and that there's no inequality at all. Oh and of course your insistence that we all want communism
I'm near enough the same age as you, and you are older than my wife, stop pretending that it's an us and them situation, it's not.
19 years ago I was a new graduate, working full time for minimum wage in McDonald's so I could afford to live. I'm in a much better situation now, but not without sacrifice, serious struggles (especially as my wife suffers from a degenerative spinal condition that has got steadily worse over time), spending large amounts of time away from my family due to work travelling and so on.
I don't know your circumstances, but spending time blaming others for where you are will not help in the slightest, it will just make you appear bitter and angry, which will hold you back more.
Soldato
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Look at real people from these times and the lives they led, not tabloid tales.
Wages were poor which is why people switched jobs a lot to get better wages. Expectations were low for the average person. The lifetime ambition was to buy you own home for your retirement. People could not 'easily afford' houses. Houses are always at the maximum the market will bear whatever the age.
They were very lucky then as only a small minority were allowed to go to University, schools pushing people to go in other directions. If the same number of people went to University now as then, there would be no fees. It is the huge expansion of people going to Uni that has made it unaffordable for thr nation.
Poor paid jobs but fairly secure as they could not get people to do it. This is the reason they went to the Caribbean to get people to do these jobs.
Not so much tied to property as tied up in funds trying to generate money for their fund. A house is a house, no matter the price. You still need to live there. If it goes up or down in price it is irrelevant for most people as they still live in the same property.
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Soldato
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Very true. Schools were putting students off going to Uni in my day. Fees were paid but living costs via the student grant were related to your father's income, means tested. There were plenty articles about student's fathers not helping with their living costs, as they were meant to, and students having to work or give up. Bliar's expansion of higher education meant it was now unaffordable for the nation and fees were introduced.
I know it will be somewhat subjective but the world I grew up in as a kid people generally had a house, even if they wouldn't pay the mortgage off until getting close to retirement, commensurate with their kind of income/work. These days that is very much not the case - someone working in a professional role around here will often not comfortably afford the kind of house a blue collar worker back in the day would eventually be able to own.
Which goes to show that you know absolutely nothing about me, at all.
I'm not special, no more than anyone else is special. I've had luck, I've had support, I've made mistakes and I wouldn't deny any of it. I don't believe I'm special, that would imply that I don't believe others can succeed in changing or improving their lives, and that most definitely isn't true. I believe in offering a hand-up, not a hand-out, and in offering hope to get people to the point where they can see what a hand up can do. Trapping people in anger at others is the exact opposite of offering them hope, it implies that it can't get better, that nothing they do can change it. I don't accept that, but sadly it appears you do.
Life isn't fair.
The most important lesson I ever learned. Doesn't give excuses for me to allow others to **** me over, but it explains all of the random things that can happen to a person that can lead to a path of (relative) riches or a path of rags and ruin.
Single biggest contributers to my current levels of comfort (relative to my peers)? Luck *100, the choice not to have children, the risk taken to relocate. I have no idea where I'd be if anything was done differently as that is the nature of the universe. I have no idea what is round the corner. I just plod, and remember there's no arbiter of fairness to any of it when things go badly for me.
Since this is a thread about politics I have a strange relationship with both the main parties as my earlier life was **** with no hope then it all turned around circa 2015. Do I credit that to the Tories and blame everything on Labour? I'd be tempted, and I'd find reason, but I know it has nothing to do with them at all at the personal level and I don't want to give them any credit for my success and the same with any failure.
The most important lesson I ever learned. Doesn't give excuses for me to allow others to **** me over, but it explains all of the random things that can happen to a person that can lead to a path of (relative) riches or a path of rags and ruin.
Single biggest contributers to my current levels of comfort (relative to my peers)? Luck *100, the choice not to have children, the risk taken to relocate. I have no idea where I'd be if anything was done differently as that is the nature of the universe. I have no idea what is round the corner. I just plod, and remember there's no arbiter of fairness to any of it when things go badly for me.
Since this is a thread about politics I have a strange relationship with both the main parties as my earlier life was **** with no hope then it all turned around circa 2015. Do I credit that to the Tories and blame everything on Labour? I'd be tempted, and I'd find reason, but I know it has nothing to do with them at all at the personal level and I don't want to give them any credit for my success and the same with any failure.
Even more recently it's gotten significantly worse: I bought my house 10 years ago for £280k, it's now worth approaching £450k and I could no longer afford it if I wanted to buy it in similar circumstances.
It's no wonder fertility rate has plummeted in the last decade.
Soldato
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The market obviously thinks people can afford it or they would move to other models if they could not sell their houses.