The Most Selfish Generation in History and the Debt Trap

PaulW1965

'I am part of the most selfish generation in history and we should be ashamed of our legacy,' says Jeremy Paxman

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2055497/JEREMY-PAXMAN-Baby-Boomers-selfish-generation-history.html#ixzz1cNnkjwjq

The debt trap time bomb

With Britain's households now owing £1.5 trillion in mortgages, overdrafts, loans and credit cards, the day of reckoning nears, warns Jeff Randall.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeffrandall/8859082/The-debt-trap-time-bomb.html


Happy Days!

tescobabe69

Guilty, what do you want me to do ?

Graham_Devon

Keywords for this thread:

1973.

Iphone.

Want it now.

Lazy.

Graham_Devon

Oh and this, just sums up about every argument on here from the boomers:

But how you handle good fortune is surely just as important as how you deal with adversity.

And I love paxman.

Between us, we have been on the first binge known to science in which the hangover was inherited by our children. Take the example of housing. The soaring cost of putting a roof over your head is surely one of the most unattractive — and pernicious — characteristics of the past 40 years. And yet for decades the media have reported a rise in house prices as being somehow a cause for celebration and a fall as a bad thing.

But the consequence of this obsession — and the borrowing that made it possible — was to destroy the relationship between property prices and wages: housing is now so far beyond the reach of many young people that significant numbers doubt whether they will ever be able to buy decent accommodation.

The only explanation for the nation’s obsession with property prices is the Baby-Boomers’ smug conviction that, having entered the market, the only thing they need to do to become wealthy is to sit on their backsides.

PaulW1965

Personally I think that Jeff Randall is giving the current government too much slack, after all it's them that is trying to get the current crop of students into massive amounts of debt before they even have a chance to vote!

dtsazza

PaulW1965 wrote: »

Personally I think that Jeff Randall is giving the current government too much slack, after all it's them that is trying to get the current crop of students into massive amounts of debt before they even have a chance to vote!

On the contrary, I'd say that paying for a very expensive service you use is exactly the sort of unselfish responsibility that's called for in the linked Paxman article.

Previously you could go to university for several years and have the taxpayer foot the bill, at no personal cost to yourself. Now if you want to go, you've got to take on some of the costs, so there's a causal relationship between your actions and the financial consequences which was previously missing. Congratulations are due for removing moral hazard and perverse incentives, which are ultimately what Paxman was complaining about!

(And it's not really a debt; it's very misleading to talk about it as such. It's a tax - simply one with the additional benefit of stopping after a certain amount of time.)

geneer

Uh oh. bring on the posts about how the younger generations are much better off because they have Ipods.

PaulW1965

dtsazza wrote: »

(And it's not really a debt; it's very misleading to talk about it as such. It's a tax - simply one with the additional benefit of stopping after a certain amount of time.)

Yes it is a tax - 9% over the £15k threashold. Which means that a young graduate faces a marginal tax rate of 20% income tax, 12% NI and 9% SL making 41%!!!! At £15k !!!!!!! And as for stopping - it lasts 30 years!!!!!!

Aberdeenangarse

PaulW1965 wrote: »

Yes it is a tax - 9% over the £15k threashold. Which means that a young graduate faces a marginal tax rate of 20% income tax, 12% NI and 9% SL making 41%!!!! At £15k !!!!!!! And as for stopping - it lasts 30 years!!!!!!

So...............?

You'd better sign this.

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/8903

ruggedtoast

Ha. Selfish boomers. They have been skewered by this news, skewered and wriggling as Paxman, their boomer in chief has blown the lid on them.

I'm sure there will be a stampede of self entitled charlatans along any minute to start whining about IPhones and pensions and how hard they've had it.

PaulW1965

Aberdeenangarse wrote: »

So...............?

You'd better sign this.

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/8903

As Jeremy said - a truly selfish generation happy to eat its young

One day you will expect this young generation to pay for your pension, your health care, your bus pass.....I suspect they will tell you to get stuffed?...