Britain's Fake Recovery: Middle Class Young Worse Off Than Parents

ruggedtoast

John1993 wrote: »

I live a life undreamed of by my parents, and most of my relatives (senior investment banker, with all that brings, as is the wife). My children will see none of it. They'll grow up not realising how very wealthy their parents were, because I think that this will make them happier on the long run.

I could make them rich enough that they never have to work, nor their children. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Oh well, as long as it doesn't cut into your tedious bragging on message boards eh.

John1993_2

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Oh well, as long as it doesn't cut into your tedious bragging on message boards eh.

Someone has to act as the counterweight to your tedious whinging.

You seem to really hate the fact that some people have done well in life, and need to hit out at those who have. Have you any idea why this is?

System

I think a lot of people focus too narrowly on the apparent changes in circumstances between particular individuals, and fail to appreciate that the whole thing is actually a 3-dimensional structure in a state of flux down the centuries.

Anyone who has ever dabled in researching family history will be aware of the immense disparity in fortunes between quite closely-related branches of the same family, and seen how these fortunes rise and fall over generations.
Simply the difference between someone having one child or two, let alone larger numbers, totally alters the picture. But that can easily reverse again, or decline further, dependant on marriage choices, or chances.

That's just within one family. It is impossible, and futile, to try and make generalisations from that regarding an entire generation.

ash28

John1993 wrote: »

I live a life undreamed of by my parents, and most of my relatives (senior investment banker, with all that brings, as is the wife). My children will see none of it. They'll grow up not realising how very wealthy their parents were, because I think that this will make them happier on the long run.

I could make them rich enough that they never have to work, nor their children. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

I ended up living a life undreamed of by my parents but didn't start out like that.......we started out worse off than they were. We aren't very wealthy but are fairly comfortable.

Our children are currently worse off than we are, but that's currently....who knows what the future holds.....in 20 to 30 years time they may be living a life undreamed of by us.

It would be nice to think so.

Maz

K-erist toastie, give it a bleedin' rest eh? If you're so eaten up with resentment about the perceived advantages that your own parents supposedly had, why don't you get off your' arris and do something to improve your own future, like your parents and countless other generations did? We all have what everyone else has to work with to varying degrees. Some make it good, some don't but ultimately if you succceed it's your own fault and if you fail, it's your own fault, you are the only variable.

NOBODY is responsbile for when they were born and the situations they were born into, geddit?? So stop trying to beat up a generation who 'maybe' had more advantages than you think you haven't got, just shut up, stop moaning and get a life! Don't be so bluddy soft and grow a backbone.

Stop bluddy whingeing about what's fair and what isn't and accept what just is!

John_Pierpoint

ruggedtoast wrote: »

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/12/middle-class-young-people-future-worse-parents



Well that's just the lefty Guardian isn't it?

Oh.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10171591/10-Baby-Boomer-entitlements-todays-youth-wont-have.html




A young person lookes forward to not having any of the ten things listed above


Some boomers display the characteristic amount of gratitude we have come to expect from them after enjoying the ten things above

Woopie let us skate or ski it.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/9893655#Comment_9893655

For those who don't understand the subtle difference between capital and income, many Chinese do and the majority of our politicians and electorate don't.

My kids are enjoying the sort of life I could have dreamt about, but my dad was a generation ahead of his time.

John_Pierpoint

makeyourdaddyproud wrote: »

There is a significant "old money" theme running through some families, where little or no effort needs be spent staying disgustingly rich. The owners of these firms and their descendants will often stay permanently rich.

So being disgustingly rich in 1946 affords ALL descendents the same luxury, usually.

Dream on, it is a pity that some fairy story like "Downton Abbey" has not got to WW2 and post war socialism yet.

Have a look through some of these and ask yourself why they were abandoned.

Yes we have had a problem with remittance men and trusterfarians whose parents sort to protect their children from the risks and the facts of life, thus making them infantile well past their puberty.

There is no such thing as "easy" old money, just clever existing wealth. The biggest threat to the wealth of this country is mindless consumerism and debt.
The highest value added in most large companies is the tax avoidance specialist able to advise on gaming the systems internationally.
Is that the fault of the company or the fault of the politicians?
.
It was the boomer generation that, encouraged by deficit politicians, pi33ed away our oil wealth and sold off the national silver.
The country will stagger on, but if your children end up struggling with debt working for and paying rent to the foreign owners of Britain; look in the mirror.

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

Ten Advantages today's young people have over 'Baby Boomers'

1. Rich parents. For the vast majority of boomers, the concept of inheriting much from their parents was zero. Parents of boomers didn't accumulate as much property wealth.
2. Some boomers had parents with successful businesses after "assisting with the war effort". [My late relative worked in an office where young Harold Wilson had been sent along to try to prevent profiteering.]
3. Cheap gadgets. If boomers wanted 'hi tech', the real cost was very prohibitive. Colour televisions £300 in the 70's. Video Recorders £700 in the 80's. Equivalent (better) things are, today, a fraction of the cost.
4. Cheap Holidays. In the 70's, reasonably priced 'package tours' to Spain were just becoming a reality. These days, young people can get to almost any city in Europe for far less than a week's wages.[but at 5 gallons for a pound a group of you could drive to the Costa Brava in a mini van and have a memorable 2 week holiday;)]
5. Broad Benefits. The overall safety net is now far wider. Boomers got a bit of unemployment benefit for a while, and child benefit, but not massive amounst of child tax credit or housing benefit.
6. The 'right' not to be homeless. Boomers were forced to stay at home, even if married with child, while they waited 3, 4 or more years for a 'council house'. Fall out with your parents, or have a child, and you have a 'right' to be instantly housed.
7. [Pull the latter trick and your could have found yourself in a "mother and baby home" while an adopter was found for your b.....child] Fortunately some organisations such as this one created a more humane social revolution
8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Stopes
9. 1964: The first comprehensive survey of sexual behaviour in United Kingdom amongst unmarried teenagers revealed that a third of boys and almost one in six girls were sexually experienced by the age of 18. Plus one in twenty girls under 16 were sexually active.[12] It also estimated that around one in three teenage girls who engaged in premarital sexual intercourse fell pregnant.[13] Also revealed in the survey was that one in five of sexually experienced girls and two fifths of sexually experienced boys always used birth control. The most common form of birth control being the condom used by around 80% of the sexually active teenagers.[14][15]Helen Brook set-up the Brook Advisory Centres offering contraceptive advice to young single people under the age of 25
10. http://andsomeplyers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/helen-brook-poster-shape-and-situate.html
    
11. Wider Educational Opportunities. Boomers needed to be in the top 5% to get to University. An echelon of roughly 25% could go to a local technical college provided they lived at home. Today, 50% of youngsters go to "University".
12. Health and Longevity. Massive improvements and techniques in health treatment, including cancer, mean that young people today continue to expect to live longer than their boomer parents will.
13. they lived at home. Today, 50% of youngsters go to "University". 2 - 3% or was that before the first wave of "techs" became universities in the early 1960s.? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_Report
14. Health and Longevity. Massive improvements and techniques in health treatment, including cancer, mean that young people today continue to expect to live longer than their boomer parents will. Not unless we get back to the muscular bit of "muscular christianity"
15. Cars. A tiny proportion of boomers had cars in their teens or even early twenties. A few had rich parents who bought them one, and a few bought really old 'bangers' and 'did them up' before they could get on the road. Most boomers had to wait perhaps until late 20's before they could get wheels. My first car when aged 21 cost £15 about a weeks wages, (I had a one evening a week part time job enough to pay the costs of running a car) & it was a lot easier to get through the MOT then; the insurance was £5.
16. Prior to that I had a Honda 50 motorbike as the insurance on a car was "difficult".
17. Quality of housing. No central heating for boomers. Only lucky boomers had carpets instead of cold lino to get up onto on a frosty morening. Draughty windows and no insulation meant really uncomfortabel winters. A school friend bought a flat with his massive manual earnings from a new industry. It had almost nothing to do with his few school cert/O level/GCSE passes. It was an all electric two bedroom flat built to rubbish 1960s standards and I moved in as the rent-a-room lodger. The flat cost £4,000
18. Here is the modern equivalent built on the other side of the road. £235k asking price
    
19. Global Career Opportunities. Boomers sometimes struggled to get job opportunities in another town, let alone internationally. Neither the practical ability to travel, nor the communications network to find and be interviewed for jobs existed until much later. Today, the world is your lobster!
20. But if you have got no qualifications, no capital, no hard nosed experience, and are aged over 35 you are most probably stuck in the EU. The world economy now has a massive oversupply of people like you. In the 1960s I knew two young people who exported themselves to Australia on a "cruise" for £10.

That's even leaving out facts like £1,000 salary in 1975 would require £6,880 today to buy the same goods. Inflated by Average Earnings, that salary worth £10,500 today. That's 52% more spending power!

What we have here is a further indication of what we know from elsewhere (lower basic skills for today's younger generations compared to the older, despite all the educational 'opportunities'). Young people today are looking at the 'Boomer' generation - who by definition are a generation or two older - and look at booners' salaries and house equity, and compare them to that of today's 30 year old!

Get real! Today's 30 year old will retire far, far richer than we did. If they don't, it's entirely their own fault.

Of these changes I think the most significant is the "double income" and the delayed spacing of children to that they are 5 years apart to be eligible for school based nursery education.

CLAPTON

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

Dream on, it is a pity that some fairy story like "Downton Abbey" has not got to WW2 and post war socialism yet.

Have a look through some of these and ask yourself why they were abandoned.

Yes we have had a problem with remittance men and trusterfarians whose parents sort to protect their children from the risks and the facts of life, thus making them infantile well past their puberty.

There is no such thing as "easy" old money, just clever existing wealth. The biggest threat to the wealth of this country is mindless consumerism and debt.
The highest value added in most large companies is the tax avoidance specialist able to advise on gaming the systems internationally.
Is that the fault of the company or the fault of the politicians?
.
It was the boomer generation that, encouraged by deficit politicians, pi33ed away our oil wealth and sold off the national silver.
The country will stagger on, but if your children end up struggling with debt working for and paying rent to the foreign owners of Britain; look in the mirror.

interesting comment that the boomer spent our oil wealth and sold the national silver

much of it was used in the period 1980 - 2000 after which production started to fall and tha major privatisations ceased

so let take 1990 as mid point : boomers were between 24 and 44 years old.

clearly they were not the government of the day
clearly they were not the majority of the electorate
clearly they were not the golden oldies who 'always' vote

so if they had such enormous power why doesn't the current generation of 24-46 hold equal sway?

worth thinking about.

John_Pierpoint

I would say the mad boom occurred from 1997 onwards. 1990 was "John Majors" recession, following the minor panic over the financial market melt down, overnight in 1987 and Lawson's subsequent pump in money exercise, that got him sacked.

CLAPTON

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

I would say the mad boom occurred from 1997 onwards. 1990 was "John Majors" recession, following the minor panic over the financial market melt down, overnight in 1987 and Lawson's subsequent pump in money exercise, that got him sacked.

you actually wrote

It was the boomer generation that, encouraged by deficit politicians, pi33ed away our oil wealth and sold off the national silver.
The country will stagger on, but if your children end up struggling with debt working for and paying rent to the foreign owners of Britain; look in the mirror.

this seemed to mention 'oil wealth ' and 'national silver' but you really meant some different?