So let me get this straight this means:

1) Working more for less
2) Having less rights
3) No pension (designed out) due to being born too late
4) Paying more for everything
5) Answering to private sector figure fudge’s, legalised fraudsters and blatant liars
6) Accepting less and poorer public services with those that are left an intentional shambles.

Sounds wonderful. Apparently Britain is booming and after they have upturned the last sofa for a few quid down the back it’s happy times. Still the funeral business is unaffected I hear!

Yet we have more of everything compared to our parents and their parents. Weird eh?

@ 5thElefant – Hmmmmm depends on generation and appears to be in decline.

You only have to look at the improvements in health and technology to see anyone of any age is better off than they would have been 25,50,75 years ago.

You’d think the opposite from the amount of whinging. The sense of entitlement increases too fast for technology to keep up.

Yet we have more of everything compared to our parents and their parents. Weird eh?

Deoends what things – iphones sure – a house to let or buy that isn’t a two our drive from work, not so much. We have a lot of extra crap and seemingly a lack of basics.

5thElefant – Member
Yet we have more of everything compared to our parents and their parents. Weird eh?

depends how old you are.
For instance housing, what was an affordable family home that was 3-4x annual salary and easy to pay off in 20 years has become an aspirational millstone around the neck for the young people. Free education is going, free healthcare is falling away.

I’d also like to make the point that unless your household is earning 100k a year, life in places like London is actually of a lower quality in many respects than getting by on a graduate wage in the Philippines – a third world country. You’d have to be in the bottom 20ish percent (ie those living in slums) in the Philippines for it to be worse.

I’m “really” looking forward to my extra ten years of life dribbling in a piss soaked armchair in front of a TV with a smashed screen and single flickering candle in its empty husk in the confines of a rotting portakabin staffed by abusive illiterate trafficked slaves. Not sure I’m going to blame my parents for it though. It was all my fault for not working hard enough. Luckily a capitalist will pay my family enough for my remaining functioning organs so they won’t have to flytip me in the grounds of the PFI labour compound.

5thElefant – Member
Yet we have more of everything compared to our parents and their parents. Weird eh?

Apart from:

Houses, pensions and job security. Plus more debt.

The sense of entitlement increases too fast for technology to keep up.

A bit harsh but we have massively better life chances than 90% of the world’s population. A sense of perspective is important.

My parents generation were very fortunate with opportunity and economic breaks. It’s too late for my generation to catch up to the level they have enjoyed/squandered.

Are our generation prepared to engage in proper political activity to make the changes needed to give our kids the chance to have better opportunities? Or are we just going to get bitter and rant on the interweb?

You get the politicians and society you deserve.

Yet we have more of everything compared to our parents and their parents. Weird eh?

Oh well, that’s alright then, I’ve a astonishingly powerful pocket computer…Can’t afford a house, but you k’now, who am I to grumble?

You get the politicians and society you deserve.

Unfortunately, the “lucky” generation can still vote – and as the EU vote and the Scottish Independence vote showed, they use their vote to go against the wishes of the people who will be around the longest to see the results.

It’s been proposed that votes should be inversely weighted by age, and I can see a lot of merit in that.

Yet we have more of everything compared to our parents and their parents. Weird eh?

We do – and young folk today want even more, want foreign holidays, want the latest tech, want to get hammered every weekend, want, want, want.

Then moan that they haven’t been able to save a deposit for a house.

want to get hammered every weekend

Can you blame them when, after leaving Uni with a massive debt, they can only get a zero-hours contract job and all the housing available is completely unaffordable?

Houses, pensions and job security. Plus more debt.

Really? At my age now my parents were working 4 jobs between them, had an 18% mortgage, my nan looked after us under school age, and were borrowing money for a car. They now have a 1 x public sector basic pension and 2 X state pensions between them. Saturday lunch was beans on toast, my non school time was spent playing in the local fields with mates.

Maybe I’m lucky, but I have a house, 2.35% mortgage, my wife works 3 days per week, we have two cars eat well, drink wine rum and gin, the kids get sports clubs & activities, and the only debt I currently have is for a pair of Rebas I bought yesterday. I’m no high achiever either, just an average guy working no harder than most with 5 c grade GCSEs to my name.

I’d say I’m pretty close to the demographic 75% of stwers.

Can you blame them when, after leaving Uni with a massive debt, they can only get a zero-hours contract job and all the housing available is completely unaffordable?

What – all of them?

My niece managed to go through Uni, get a job in social care and buy her own flat near Exeter. (She’s now 27).

The “lucky” generation can still be outvoted by those of us coming up behind if we could be bothered to understand issues and to vote

What we haven’t got are parties to vote for the changes we need, which needs more grass roots political engagement.

And whilst it is harder now than 30 years ago, I went without holidays, cars, a degree, computer games and drunken nights out to save a deposit for a house. That choice still exists. Choosing to have all of that and then moaning you can’t have the other so why try is self defeating, hypocritical, and part of the problem rather than a result of it.

And I say this as a parent of a teenager soon to be facing these kind of choices.

“Then moan that they haven’t been able to save a deposit for a house”
That would be valid if the cost of a house had remained in proportion to wages . Has it ?
No point trying to save pennies to buy something worth thousands that you will never atain may as well spend it on a bit of escapism

But we’re the 4th or 5th biggest economy in the world. We’re all rolling in it aren’t we?

That would be valid if the cost of a house had remained in proportion to wages . Has it ?

Depends were you live – in the South East may be not.

In Derbyshire there are loads of terraced houses for under 100k and not just in dodgy areas.

No, some of us are rolling in it.

Some of us are whining because we aren’t rolling in it.

Most of us have our heads down to try and at least catch up with it.

You need to take a longer term view.

For us proles, good housing, pensions, healthcare and higher education are all post war phenomena.

Things are shitter now than in the past couple of decades. It may be a blip, it may not.

The task for the current generation is to make sure we don’t loose everything we gained from WWII.

Don’t forget that ~50 years ago a mortgage would be funded by the man’s wages while the woman stayed at home. Now that it’s normal for both to work, there’s more money available to pay a larger mortgage, and houses cost more. A big dollop of chicken/egg in there for sure but they’re not unconnected.

On top of that deregulation of lending in the eighties made more money available, also pushing prices up.

The baby boomers were a very lucky demographic. It’s not their *fault* that the distribution of age in the general population got so skewed by the war. But it did, and it’s simply not possible for things to be just like the sixties again in terms of housing etc.

Also agree about the degree of entitlement when you see people with new cars and flashy gadgets complaining they can’t afford to buy in the area they insist they absolutely must live in [1]. Spend less money and/or move somewhere else. It won’t kill you.

[1] Around ten years ago on a car forum I used to frequent there was a young guy who lived with his parents in MK and drove a Ferrari, while complaining that he wanted to live in <posh London borough> but the houses were too expensive and just continued to piss all his money away on expensive toys while living for free with his Mum rather than accepting reality and moving somewhere affordable.

In the 30’s you were lucky if you had more than one pair of shoes.

Now poverty is ‘not having your own garden’ or more likley, having the wrong mobile phone.

Victorians were not fat, they had barely enough food to live. The rich were fat. These days, the poorest westerners are fat, the rich are lean and fit.

Weird innit?

Yet we have more of everything compared to our parents and their parents. Weird eh?

except ‘Happiness’.

Over the last century we’ve been gradually having ‘more of everything’ and having more has resulted in changes in people’s live that make them happier – indoor plumbing, a national health service, paid holidays, a social safety net, greater mobility, improved housing, tackling pollution and environmental issues, improved workplace safety, more access to entertainment and leisure. Year on year, generation on generation those things made people happier as well as wealthier.

Those improvements in wealth became discontented from measurable happiness around the 1980s and being a wealthier nation hasn’t been better for us since then.

Yes absolutely. Problem is that having a family then cuts you back to either one salary or two salaries minus childcare (something like £16K for 5 days a week).

Personally, I we have an 18 month old and we’re coping reasonably but that’s largely down to being lucky enough to have inlaws available for childcare 2 days a week. Without that things would be pretty tight.

“Now poverty is ‘not having your own garden’ or more likley, having the wrong mobile phone.“

The definition of “poverty” is an interesting one. In some places it’s having less than $1/day, but that’s clearly not universal. So it’s usually taken as meaning you don’t have what everyone else does. For example:

“Poverty is defined relative to the standards of living in a society at a specific time. People live in poverty when they are denied an income sufficient for their material needs and when these circumstances exclude them from taking part in activities which are an accepted part of daily life in that society.”
(Scottish Poverty Information Unit)

The “accepted part of daily life” bit means that yes, poverty in the UK is not having a mobile phone.

You get the politicians and society you deserve.

No offence to the person who posted this, but this phrase really irks me.

If the last forty years have taught me anything, it’s that the vote can be swung by the political affiliations of the press. Not only that, we’ve had generations of career politicians who’ve sat on their hands content to satisfy the demands of corporate lobbyists and ever-frothing media moguls.

We live in an era of lazy politics, politicians have little incentive to actually engage with people – they believe that ‘The Market’ will sort everything, except when it doesn’t. I think Marilyn Manson summed it up beautifully when he observed that an election is like being forced to decide which turd you find the least offensive.

You get the politicians and society you deserve.

No offence to the person who posted this, but this phrase really irks me.

If the last forty years have taught me anything, it’s that the vote can be swung by the political affiliations of the press. Not only that, we’ve had generations of career politicians who’ve sat on their hands content to satisfy the demands of corporate lobbyists and ever-frothing media moguls.

We live in an era of lazy politics, politicians have little incentive to actually engage with people – they believe that ‘The Market’ will sort everything, except when it doesn’t. I think Marilyn Manson summed it up beautifully when he observed that an election is like being forced to decide which turd you find the least offensive.

Yet people still vote for them, so in that sense it’s true. There are alternatives but people can’t/don’t seem to want to take the leap/get screwed by FPTP (see the ‘democracy’ of the SNP vs UKIP representation), something that they had the opportunity to change and rejected! People are idiots and voted for this shower so in that sense they certainly get the politicians they deserve.

Are the current economic difficulties just the fault of incompetent/self serving politicians?

Or is it because for the past 30 years we’ve all put personal short term material gain before long term stability and invested in a system that isn’t sustainable?

A trick that politicians always use is to draw on a specific example, say:

Really? At my age now my parents were working 4 jobs between them, had an 18% mortgage, my nan looked after us under school age, and were borrowing money for a car.

And then assume it is a general rule.

These things have to be looked at with a wider lens. Otherwise we just get lost in tit for tat without seeing the bigger picture.

For that bigger picture, a good start would be to read The Pinch by David Willetts for some more insight into the generational differences.

Are the current economic difficulties just the fault of incompetent/self serving politicians?

Yes is the politicians fault, lets blame someone else.

FFS, we all make our own bed…

Yet people still vote for them

but they’re not though are they, more and more people are not voting.

Importantly; fewer and fewer younger people

Are the current economic difficulties just the fault of incompetent/self serving politicians?

Partly. The deregulation that our modern system encourages has allowed corporates (and I include banks in that definition too) to behave irresponsibly and avoid paying huge sums in tax. Our politicians have become focused on guaranteeing a cushy existence for large corporations at everyone else’s expense. It’s called Corporate Welfare.

Right now, the economic difficulties that look likely to be on the horizon are absolutely the fault of politicians. I hate to bring up the Referendum again, but there will be economic fallout from this.

Or is it because for the past 30 years we’ve all put personal short term material gain before long term stability and invested in a system that isn’t sustainable?

I agree with the above too. We’ve been sold debt cheaply as a means of ameliorating low wage growth for a vast swathe of workers. We’re more in debt that ever before and a growing portion of the economy is going towards propping that debt up, lest the whole system collapse.

The last few governments have been paralysed into fear at the prospect of an asset price collapse akin to the one experienced back in the late eighties/early nineties when Negative Equity was widespread and as such have wilfully failed to address the housing market, for example. Politicians know that there isn’t enough housing…you think the shortage of new properties is purely down to NIMBYism and accident? It’s deliberate.

Yes is the politicians fault, lets blame someone else.

FFS, we all make our own bed…

Bit of an unfair quote seeing as the full comment seems to pretty much agree with you 🙂

Personally I’m glad I don’t have the same crap to put up with as my parents and grandparents had.

I’m really greatful for health and technology and a small amount of spare income.

Only thing that’s worry at the moment is the feeling it’s all teetering on the brink of regressing back to the crap with a widening weath gap and an increasing unafordability of homes for the next generation coming along.

Not sure if that’s just part of getting older though, maybe that’s why old Victorian Industrialists built towns for workers and got all Philanthropic.

Bit like the Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg’s of the world are doing today.

Importantly; fewer and fewer younger people

We’ve had a remarkable period of stability since the late 80s. Compare that to the 30 years prior to the 80s and it’s pretty obvious why voting rates have dropped off. Everything is fine.

but they’re not though are they, more and more people are not voting.

These people are equally as culpable, if not more so.

Not sure if that’s just part of getting older though, maybe that’s why old Victorian Industrialists built towns for workers and got all Philanthropic.

Bit like the Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg’s of the world are doing today.

I find that apt, as I sit in a house originally build for a victorian idustrialist supervisor who worked for the now flattened/forgotten major industry player of our town in 1906, battering away on a keyboard…

Those that don’t bother to vote are just as culpable. Politicians won’t offer them anything to vote for if they don’t have to.

Some Victorian industrialists were philanthropists (mostly the Quaker ones, anti-religionists take note), but some, maybe even most were pretty nasty.

Anyway. The voting system is crap. We had a referendum to change that. With the options defined by the people who were voted in by the crap system, who also did the campaigning. Hmmmmmm….