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

Graham_Devon

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. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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".
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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!

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.

Most of that is just technological advances.

Boomers would, too, have enjoyed far more than their parents.

For example, boomers would have had easier access to cars. They would have had easier access to technology, flights etc.

The fall down point ion your argument is that you only look at what boomers had compared to today and start typing a list. A list of stuff boomers would have had that their parents didn't have, yet you don't seem to recognise the major flaw in your argument.

What about looking at what boomers had compared to their own parents 30 years previously?

You will be able to provide the same list, just with different items.

For example, you suggest bomers had to pay more for technology. Well, that's great, but your parents will have had to pay a hell of a lot more than you did, if the item even existed.

antrobus

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Most of that is just technological advances. .....

Just technological advances?!?

We'd all still be foraging for nuts and berries and bashing monkeys over the head with big sticks if it wasn't for technological advances.:rotfl:

vassa

It appears now that size of house, value of your cars and number of holidays you take is being touted as 'standard of living' or a direct correlation in how 'well off' you are.

We're still drinking dirty water and eating chemicals out of supermarkets, i'd say we're actually no better off.

markharding557

I wish people would drop this middle class nonsense because many who think they are middle class are not.

All this inter generational bickering solves nothing.

What young people need are jobs, jobs so they can make their own way in life.
The government should look at greater financial incentives for employers to encourage recruitment of under 25's.

John_Pierpoint

CLAPTON wrote: »

you actually wrote





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

Yes that is right, I think it was about 2000 that I read an analysis of Britains future balance of payments problems as we were going to pass our "peak oil".
It was in Lloyds List.

Yes in the 1980/90s there was a transfer of ownership off assets from the voters and savers to shareholders and city institutions, so far the new management was able to introduce some changes that would never have happened under public ownership.
However in a global economy there are some nations whose peoples are prepared to save or whose government is prepared to save on their behalf.
They were free in a global economy to buy up these shares and companies that now controlled the nations assets and its savings institutions.
A classic example is the Woolwich building society, in which I was a mutual shareholder. Then I became a Barclay's shareholder, now I feel that a big chunk of a venerable English bank is now Arab [I suppose as Britain was virtually bankrupt there was no point in offering a 10 - 15% rescue deal to me, as I would have accepted and made some British Bank that much nearer going off the cliff]. Something tells me that the risks that brought down the UK banks were 'managed' by complacent boomers, who did not understand the new technology and statistics, and the bets were placed by 30 year olds on massive bonuses and commissions?

andrewf75

I think on the whole we'll never be as well off again as we were during the last boom years. The world is changing more rapidly than ever before, Asia is booming now while Europe struggles. A lot of our historical wealth was ultimately built on exploiting resources in former colonies and cheap wages in Asia. Thats going to change. Add to that the pressures on land for food, fuel etc, population growth, resources running low.

I'm not being pessimistic as its not necessarily a bad thing as long as we accept that we can't carry on as before.

Maybe I've gone a bit deep, but the basic point is that theres going to be less money to go round in future!

vassa

John1993 wrote: »

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

You're a banker, I wouldn't wish that on anyone. (If indeed you ARE, I think someone's telling porkies considering your name is clearly a reference to your age and you seem to post on here all day every day.)

Loughton_Monkey

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Most of that is just technological advances.

Boomers would, too, have enjoyed far more than their parents.

For example, boomers would have had easier access to cars. They would have had easier access to technology, flights etc.

The fall down point ion your argument is that you only look at what boomers had compared to today and start typing a list. A list of stuff boomers would have had that their parents didn't have, yet you don't seem to recognise the major flaw in your argument.

What about looking at what boomers had compared to their own parents 30 years previously?

You will be able to provide the same list, just with different items.

For example, you suggest bomers had to pay more for technology. Well, that's great, but your parents will have had to pay a hell of a lot more than you did, if the item even existed.

It seems, as usual, you're on a different thread.

The original post here was bleating about today's youngsters lack of 'entitlements'. I was merely countering that by listing what I see as entitlements that they do have that us boomers didn't.

Of course I had it better than my parents. But I am arguing that younger people today will still have even better.

I, and just about every other boomer, speaks from a position of fact because we have, by definition, grown up from cradle to adulthood, and we have 'served' our economic life and (generally) retired knowing first hand what opportunities, wealth, and 'entitlements' we had.

Someone of, say, age 30 has had perhaps 10 years only of economic life, half of which have consisted of an exceptional economic crash and a 6 year very slow recovery. These people have yet to experience nigh-on 40 years more activity, more development, involving probably 7 or 8 distinct (but unknown) economic cycles - some good, some bad, some very good.

There are !!!!!!, ne'erdowells, idlers, moaners, whingers, and low life in every generation. But on average each generation tends to do better than the previous one. I can only think of one key reason why this might fail to happen for the current young generation, and that has nothing to do with opportunities, or the economics, but everything to do with them being far more self-seeking, unthinking, 'want-it-now', fragile, and expect that the world owes them a living.

Luckily, I happen to know a fair number of the young generation who are not like that and will likely be far 'richer' than me.

One other thing I notice is that my generation was able to 'listen' to [not necessarily agree with] the older generation and learn what we could. Perhaps selectively. But this seems an alien concept these days.

System

Nobody thinks that the much-vaunted aim of "social mobility" is a one-way street surely?
If there are younger people today who will not automatically achieve the level attained by their parents, but will have to work for it, then that's called equality of opportunity isn't it?

Loughton_Monkey

Clifford_Pope wrote: »

Nobody thinks that the much-vaunted aim of "social mobility" is a one-way street surely?
If there are younger people today who will not automatically achieve the level attained by their parents, but will have to work for it, then that's called equality of opportunity isn't it?

I agree. Of particular note is education. My father had no choice in education, other than to go to the local village school until age 14. It would have been practically impossible for him to have gone on to higher education/university for someone of his class. But he took the 'opportunity' to learn what he could.

By the time I came along, there was universal 11+ and the concept of going to grammar school and university. I noted even then that some of my 6th form peers - who could easily have got into university - took the view that this was a waste of time, and left school to work [one as a bus conductor I recall].

I cringe at the thought that by today's definition, I was very firmly in "poverty". [Something like below 60th percentile income]. My parents would have been insulted by this definition!