So how much did it cost...

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Graham_Devon wrote: »

A 20 something today can't do anything to match the benefit or pension entitlements boomers enjoy....no matter how hard they try. It's gone.

Only if you ignore demographics. Let's start with the fact that 40% go to university, when it used to be 5%. So now, if you're a third or more down the academic pecking order, you'll start working life with a degree. In boomer days, you'd have been doing well to stay on at school till you were 16.

Now tell me how today's graduate is worse off than his counterpart leaving school at 15-16 in 1962. The middle class was so much smaller then. The working class, which was most people, worked in dead-end jobs, lived in council houses, and got nowhere. In the middle band of the population, you were unlikely to have a car, a phone or even a fridge. How much did they cost? Too much.

Trouble is, we've now got three-quarters of the population wanting to be in the top half of the pyramid. (Geometrical note - the top half of a pyramid accounts for 1/8 of the volume).

We need more people to know their place.

RenovationMan

Graham_Devon wrote: »

In the 1970s/80s to:

- Rent a TV
- Rent a VCR
- Rent a washing machine
- Have a landline telephone

Then how much would that be in today's money?

Anyone?

It's just all kicking off on a guardian article between the boomers and the 20/30 somethings. You know the score, every 20/30 something just see's "ipod, iphone, trainers, fags, booze" and nothing else. Apparnely we use said iphones to book our 3 foreign holidays a year.

Though many will admit to "only" having a rented TV, washing machine and VCR, and had to make do. Apparently no one in that age smoked if they owned a house either...yer...really!

So wondering how many iphone contracts you could get compared to the VCR, TV and BT landline payments.

What point are you trying to prove now, Devon?

ukcarper

Graham_Devon wrote: »

It's factually documented that the younger generation today will not be able to match the lifestyle of the boomer today. It's not just some kind of myth. A 20 something today can't do anything to match the benefit or pension entitlements boomers enjoy....no matter how hard they try. It's gone. Maybe that's why it's in papers and articles, rather than a movement by the younger generation to simply whinge?

I keep reading about boomers pension entitlements and I'm very fortunate and have a final salary pension. But the vast majority of my friends do not.

ukcarper

I don’t think you can dispute that most boomers were better of than their parents especially working class I was the first person to buy a house in my family. I also think that many people in their 30s are better off than their boomer parents mine are. I do worry for people in their teens and early 20s.

Thrugelmir

In the 70'/80's many products were still made in the UK (and Europe).

Prices are now cheaper thanks to manufacturing cost in the Far East being a fraction of those here.

Imported products that I import have risen dramatically in price in the past 2 years. So I wonder if the days of cheap imports are drawing to a close.

Even Mexico is now on a par for manufacturing cost with China. With US multinationals switching production there.

GeorgeHowell

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Did the parents of boomers actually have more than boomers did?

All the evidence appears to fly in the face of this theory. They didn't even have the NHS!

What items did the parents of boomers have that bomers aspired to? Even owning the house wasn't common. No benefits either. I'd be interested to know how boomers parents were better off than boomers?

It's factually documented that the younger generation today will not be able to match the lifestyle of the boomer today. It's not just some kind of myth. A 20 something today can't do anything to match the benefit or pension entitlements boomers enjoy....no matter how hard they try. It's gone. Maybe that's why it's in papers and articles, rather than a movement by the younger generation to simply whinge?

Perhaps we are at cross purposes.

What I am referring to is when baby boomers were in their 20s. This was roughly in the period 1965-1990. Their parents at that time were middle aged. Many owned their own homes, albeit with a mortgage still being paid off. Many had cars, especially towards the latter part of that period. Many had most of what they could reasonably expect in terms of a decently furnished and decorated home, consumer durables, at least one nice annual holiday (perhaps abroad from the 70s onwards), ability to afford the pub, restaurant, cinema. theatre from time to time. they were mostly better off than their own parents (boomers' grandparents) had been at the same age.

The boomers in their 20s however were generally getting married and setting up home. By saving for 2-3 years many could muster the 10% deposit required for a mortgage on a small house (3 bed semi or terraced) or a flat. They would furnish it partly with hand me downs -- couldn't afford all new. They would run one car, almost certainly small and second hand. Holidays might have to go by the board for the first few years at least, or be limited to self-catering in the UK maybe. The one TV in the home would be rented because it was difficult to find the capital to buy one. Credit cards were just coming in, not everyone had one, and most used it as a charge card fr fear of running up too much debt.

The boomers in their 20s typically did not have what their parents had, but they accepted that they would have to build up their standard of living, as their parents had done. They did not expect, or mostly get, bail outs by their parents. And they did not resent their parents for being better off in middle age or in some cases in retirement than they were in their 20s.

The problem now is that some young people do not see themselves ever being better off than their parents are now, coupled with a new-found impatience to have everything that their parents have got .. now .. rather than accepting the reality of building up to it.

It remains to be seen whether they will be the first generation to be worse off then their parents were in middle age. But if that does happen it will not be because the baby boomers have operated a giant conspiracy to rip of the next generation/s. It's more because of the gradual process of the undeveloped world demanding and obtaining a bigger share of the global cake and the west struggling to maintain its competitive edge against that trend.

ruggedtoast

GeorgeHowell wrote: »

However one thing I have found gains almost universal agreement among the boomers is that, unlike them, today's youth expect and demand to have everything they want now

I imagine they are going to be quite disappointed then, what with all the youth unemployment, intergenerational inequality, scarcity of housing, and boomer retirements they have to fund.

StevieJ

grizzly1911 wrote: »

One reason TVs and VCRs were rented, apart from the purchase price, was that they were more unreliable certainly in the 70s early 80s and needed fixing more.

The TV repairman had the status of something like a formula 1 driver today

vivatifosi

StevieJ wrote: »

The TV repairman had the status of something like a formula 1 driver today

A friend of mine's dad was a TV repairman. I can remember him going out of business at the point that TVs became too reliable. It was around 1986. I still have a small portable that I use in one of the bedrooms from back then and the bl**dy thing still won't die to enable me to replace it with a LED one. I was gutted when I had to by it a freeview box because the box was worth more than the TV.

StevieJ

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Heres a couple of select comments from the guardian article, for reference as to what I'm talking about...

Theres a lot of comments, and it's got to the point where some are very offended by the young people having a go...and while they may have supported the young people, as they have no respect for the older generation, they won't!

Nothing changes, reads a lot like this 70's MP sketch

Four well-dressed men sitting together at a vacation resort.
Michael Palin: Ahh.. Very passable, this, very passable.
Graham Chapman: Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chassilier wine, ay Gessiah?
Terry Gilliam: You're right there Obediah.
Eric Idle: Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Chateau de Chassilier wine?
MP: Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.
GC: A cup ' COLD tea.
EI: Without milk or sugar.
TG: OR tea!
MP: In a filthy, cracked cup.
EI: We never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.
GC: The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.
TG: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.
MP: Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness."
EI: 'E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'. We used to live in this tiiiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof.
GC: House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!
TG: You were lucky to have a ROOM! *We* used to have to live in a corridor!
MP: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor! Woulda' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph.
EI: Well when I say "house" it was only a hole in the ground covered by a piece of tarpolin, but it was a house to US.
GC: We were evicted from *our* hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake!
TG: You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road.
MP: Cardboard box?
TG: Aye.
MP: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!
GC: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!
TG: Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.
EI: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, (pause for laughter), eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah."
MP: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.
ALL: Nope, nope..