Anyone who thinks the current state of the economy is ok, healthy or sustainable is being extraordinarily naive. Emergency low interest rates set in 2009 to try and prevent collapse of the financial system have stayed that way until a couple of months ago, when they were lowered again... it's hardly a good sign is it? If anything it suggests we're even weaker... We're essentially on life support whilst the central banks and governments try and think up a way out of the mess, which clearly they haven't yet.
As said above, we may be materially wealthy but the essentials are historically unaffordable, hence we've killed our economy with an overload of debt.
To be honest I think we'd be in a better place if we'd had a bigger bust in 2008, instead we've largely been saved from the results of our short term consumerism and appetite to debt and so have learned nothing, not changed our behaviour and just dug an even deeper hole for ourselves...
Whilst not everyone shares this bearish view, if you read the financial media (Bloomberg, FT, Economist) you'll recognise there are very serious problems underlying our current period of calm. Not just UK, but Australia, Canada (also facing housing crises and they're not 'small crowded islands'), US, and across Europe... Russia, Brazil, China also in either major recession or have a huge bubble of debt...
The rise of Trump, Front Nationale, UKIP, Brexit vote suggest that even if the strict financial dynamics aren't understood by the population at large, they are increasingly angry and wanting major change.
It may end without some kind of major upset (economic bust or war) but right now I don't think central banks or governments know how to find a route out of the mess. Let's hope they do...
It's pretty nasty IMO to blame the younger generation for buying shiny toys, getting depressed and not voting - they hardly had a part to play in creating the situation did they? It's been building ever since we started bingeing on debt and shopping in the late 80s... the world they face is the one we (I'm aged 43) and our parents created for them...
The baby boomers are the ones that have had it best - benefiting from the biggest house price increases and enjoying pensions that we'll never see. They did have to put up with a difficult post-war period with rationing and bomb sites though.
Some of us middle-aged lot are doing well enough as got into housing in the mid-90s, so benefited from more recent house price boom, but won't be getting nice pensions. As for the young of today? Those that have parents who will/can help them then they should start of adult life OK but student debts for many.
I do find it difficult discussing pensions with those that are retired as they seem to have the attitude that they deserve their decent pension for having worked for 40 years or whatever - maybe they do but we're paying for it and won't have the benefit later.
The baby boomers are the ones that have had it best - benefiting from the biggest house price increases and enjoying pensions that we'll never see. They did have to put up with a difficult post-war period with rationing and bomb sites though.Some of us middle-aged lot are doing well enough as got into housing in the mid-90s, so benefited from more recent house price boom, but won't be getting nice pensions. As for the young of today? Those that have parents who will/can help them then they should start of adult life OK but student debts for many.
Yep
Can I also point by out that we've had a massive transfer of wealth to the 1% since the crash. As public borrowing and business investment has declined individuals debt has increased to fill the gap. Non of these things are necessarily natural rebalancings they have been political decisions. Yes the baby boomers won out but fighting between age bands doesn't help. They will still eventually spaff all their gains on their children and grand children. Privatising public services, marketisation of the NHS, flexible labour markets, £9k tuition fees for what is now in effect the bare minimum entry level qualification, unregulated rents. All ways for big money to get richer and mr or miss ordinary to face life with one hand tied behind their back.
Some even handed responses and unfortunately the usual tabloid style mud slinging.
This aggressive poor people are not poor enough and need to be punished view pushed in the media interests me. Is confiscating their shiny toys, forcing them to live in the gutter with begging as their only source of income the kind of progress that people are after? I don't know but there's definitely some who would see the reintroduction of workhouses and shoe shine boys as a boon, nice to have shiny shoes and all.
TBH I've always felt a bit sorry for those that show off trinket wealth. It's usually an overcompensating tell-tale sign they are poor and is a somewhat class and cultural thing. You know, loads of gold jewellery, designer cloths, bling motors and excessive consumer electronics yet living in relative squalor. Certainly frowned upon in polite society 😆
Any criticism of the rich is usually batted away as politics of envy. Should there be any intervention in their lifestyle or should we live and let live?
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
And perhaps their greater life experience gives them a different perspective that has merit?
The main thing that recent votes have shown is that older demographics vote and younger ones don't. It is the younger age groups we should look down on because they can't be bothered to cast their vote.
Removing universal suffrage, as you suggest, is a slippery slope. Why limit discrimination just to age (aside from it identifying a group you don't agree with)?
But begging ain't thier only source of income if driven to penury.
Social Security is an insurance, but not only in the way that is portrayed by society, pay in while the going is good, and in times of need the state can step in.
No.
Social Security is an insurance that saves the middle classes being turfed out of their estates and avenues by torch wielding angry mobs
And workhouses have returned, some time back.
Different name, same thing. Work for the roof over your head and meals. Profits for the provider
Some of us middle-aged lot are doing well enough as got into housing in the mid-90s, so benefited from more recent house price boom, but won't be getting nice pensions. As for the young of today? Those that have parents who will/can help them then they should start of adult life OK but student debts for many.
Threads like this do show the big disconnect between generations and it's not quite the one people see. It's very easy to say life is better than the 30/40/50/60's etc all the indicators tell us that but the world that people invested in has changed.
The pressure to buy houses will cripple a generation, governments are heavily invested in stopping a drop in house prices because of the levels of debt around. A lot of people are relying on their main asset to fund their retirement as pensions have taken a massive hit.
Somebody pointed out there were plenty of houses for x in y but do those locations line up with any good source of jobs?
A conversation (half joking) with friends was that as my work uses my brain I should be able to keep working rather than rely on retirement savings. When I can't use my brain to work it's probably time to depart. Problem is the amount of truth in that statement.
A lot of people are relying on their main asset to fund their retirement as pensions have taken a massive hit.
That's extremely dangerous thinking. People forget that when they find some 'sure fire easy way to make money' like this, that loads of other people have had the same idea, at around the same time...
So what's going to happen is a whole generation will start selling their houses (whether first homes or their 'BTL portfolio' and expect to get current prices. They're forgetting two things:
1. No buyers at those prices as no-one younger than them will have any equity as they've been renting as buying has been unaffordable for so long
2. Loads of other people will be selling up at the same time - massive reversal of the whole 'supply/demand' thing... and what happens when supply exceeds demand? Prices fall...
I was hoping to buy a house this year but everything I read in the financial papers and thinking about stuff like this and the demographic changes as all the boomers go into care/die off and sell their houses.... well I think I'll be buying at the very peak of the bubble and will spend 25 years paying interest on a massive debt, watching the 'value' of the asset steadily drop year on year - tens of thousands of pounds down the drain...
Having friends who are in their mid to late 20's with degrees, they're in a situation of having to house share to be able to afford to live on their wages, doing things like working at university as members of staff or as ecologists, not exactly flipping burgers, and with the shortage of housing that there currently is, the time when they might be able to buy a home looks a very long way off (if it'll ever happen).
What was that one of two people were saying about us having more than our parents...?
What was that one of two people were saying about us having more than our parents...?
I'll only retire with a decent pension as I don't have kids. Both my brothers have kids and although they are comfortable, they have no pension to speak of. Both of them had help buying their houses....
My parents are retired, having put three kids through University, have more money than they know what to do with, live in a £1m house (which cost them £3.5k in 1970) and have already given away their holiday home as their estate is so large they wanted to reduce inheritance tax. They both started out as teachers....
Kryton57 - MemberReally? At my age now my parents were working 4 jobs between them
OK, but did they each add as much value as 2 of you? Technology is a multiplier, one person can do more work now than several in our parents' time. My first job was in a bank branch, there was me and a computer doing more in a day than the 8 people that used to sit in the back office we used as a cupboard, to do essentially the same job. Was I 8 times better off? No. Nothing new here of course, essentially labour saving devices that make an individual more productive have always been used to lay off staff and pay the one remaining worker pretty much the same. Something something, ownership of the means of production, something.
Nothing new here of course, essentially labour saving devices that make an individual more productive have always been used to lay off staff and pay the one remaining worker pretty much the same.
And where this goes wrong is where industries collapse - there was a famous case in a Clyde shipyard where they used to have three-man teams drilling holes in the steel plates. then they got a fancy drilling machine which only needed one operator. But the unions protested, so the three-man team stayed and they just took turns using the machine 😀
I am part of the lucky generation for whom outcomes largely exceeded expectations - helped in no part by an over-reliance on leveraging our future. Oh and no world wars unlike out parents/grandparents
The Millieniums have been bought up with absurdly high expectations - they are all brilliant, they can all get what they want, no one loses, not one fails, the sky is the limit - which will be way above the likely outcomes. The resulting baggage will be hard for many to bear.
I was hoping to buy a house this year but everything I read in the financial papers and thinking about stuff like this and the demographic changes as all the boomers go into care/die off and sell their houses.... well I think I'll be buying at the very peak of the bubble and will spend 25 years paying interest on a massive debt, watching the 'value' of the asset steadily drop year on year - tens of thousands of pounds down the drain...
You've been voicing that opinion on here for some time now. How much further away from being on the property ladder are you now than when you started?
Even without any immigration the UK's population is going to increase by 2.2 Million by 2024. So no, there is not likely to be a house price crash any time soon. In fact, given the current rate of builidng - it is likely to get much much worse and will become a big political issue as millions of bloated red faced ukip voting nimbys choke on their breakfasts over housing estates being built on their favourite walks and the fact that too many brown people will move into them.
I am part of the lucky generation for whom outcomes largely exceeded expectations - helped in no part by an over-reliance on leveraging our future. Oh and no world wars unlike out parents/grandparentsThe Millieniums have been bought up with absurdly high expectations - they are all brilliant, they can all get what they want, no one loses, not one fails, the sky is the limit - which will be way above the likely outcomes. The resulting baggage will be hard for many to bear.
Correction, your generation is the one that gave up on trying to make the world a better place for their children. Millenials aren't spoiled, what they want are places to live and a clean environment - both of which your generation pissed up the wall. It's not millenials that vote for selfish economic policies because they feel entitled, it's your generations - ours would gladly pay higher taxes to have a good state health and education system.
The people I hear using your snearing line of reasoning in real life, are usually fat ****ing red faced alcoholic UKIP voters who resemble Nick Griffin, drive beemers and live in some 500k East Midlands or Essex McMansion - because the real rich - the fund managers that I come into contact with in London are usually further left.
Tom - you havent corrected anything
I am not proud of "my generations" track record far from it
But I worry for the millenials especially as their expectations will not be met - go long anti-depressant manufacturers in your ISAa and pensions, demand will rise rapidly as a result
You're right in that regard THM, it's just that I usually hear that line trotted out by the Mail etc.
If the millenials could actually look up from their mobile phones once every couple of years and make their way to the ballot box maybe they'd see some changes.
"An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
The Mexican replied, “only a little while. The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The American then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?”
The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siestas with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine, and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life.” The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise.”
The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”
To which the American replied, “15 – 20 years.”
“But what then?” Asked the Mexican.
The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions!”
“Millions – then what?”
The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”
scotroutes - Member
If the millenials could actually look up from their mobile phones once every couple of years and make their way to the ballot box maybe they'd see some changes
You actually think that politics is a once every 4 years participation event?
I write to my elected representative at least every week during sessions of parliament.
It's our job to hold them to account
One step at a time!
I write to my elected representative at least every week during sessions of parliament.
About what?
And they're still your MP during the summer. Send them postcards!
About what?
The campaign to have stw banned.
And mumsnet
[i]Anyone who thinks the current state of the economy is ok, healthy or sustainable is being extraordinarily naive.[/i]
Funnily enough I said the same thing back in the mid 80's - life goes on . . .
Any coincidence regarding who was in government in the 80's d'ya think..
Any coincidence regarding who was in government in the 80's d'ya think..
No idea.... how many houses were built from 97 onwards?
If you want to take it to points scoring then your probably one of those that got above the parapet.
Being caught on the edge of generations
I am part of the lucky generation for whom outcomes largely exceeded expectations - helped in no part by an over-reliance on leveraging our future. Oh and no world wars unlike out parents/grandparents
The Millieniums have been bought up with absurdly high expectations - they are all brilliant, they can all get what they want, no one loses, not one fails, the sky is the limit - which will be way above the likely outcomes. The resulting baggage will be hard for many to bear.
Perhaps the unrealistic expectations were sown by a generation who got everything they wanted, bounced up a property market, borrowed against massive equity that they did nothing to acquire, safe in the knowledge that their pensions were protected and their future locked in and so on...
Take most of the older generation out and let them start today and it would be a very different story.
As for voting you way out of trouble the problem is the economy is so loaded towards it's current state that a gentle redirection might be a little tricky.
unrealistic expectations were sown by a generation who got everything they wanted, bounced up a property market, borrowed against massive equity that they did nothing to acquire, safe in the knowledge that their pensions were protected and their future locked in and so on...
They worked hard, it was expected, and rewarded.
They worked hard, it was expected, and rewarded.
and if I work as hard will I get the same reward?
How hard do you have to work to end up with a house worth 10x what you paid for it?
and as for working hard, guess who will be funding the retirement plans as most people in final salary schemes paid in less then they expect to take
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/08/13/retail-pension-black-hole-widens-by-6bn-to-match-annual-profit/
http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/pension-crisis-looming-as-uk-firms-face-800bn-black-hole-1-4084637
See also the post office/RM and British Steel/Corus/Tatta a pension problem with a steel works.
and if I work as hard will I get the same reward?
No, but it ain't their fault.
But I doubt you'll work that hard...
and fault is not what people are looking for, ways forward would be a good one.
But I doubt you'll work that hard...
Got to love the sweeping generalisations, I've worked with plenty who will now be in their early 50's coasting towards a gold plated pension, with a house paid off and a couple of nice cars on the drive to who hard work was coming in 5 days a week and working out when to take their next sickie from their job for life.
If you think the current situation is sustainable then great, trying to be objective it's not.
f you think the current situation is sustainable then great, trying to be objective it's not.
Who the **** said it's sustainable?
Ironic given your previous few posts. 🙂Got to love the sweeping generalisations,
who will be funding the retirement plans as most people in final salary schemes paid in less then they expect to take
Thanks to the financial genius of Nu Labour. One of the first acts of TB and his one-eyed crony was to depthcharge every final salary pension so they'd have more money to piss away on vanity projects.
PJM and Brooess thanks for saving me a lot of typing!
