No country for young men — UK generation gap widens

lisyloo

And what was school like for most kids between 1945 and 1960?!

My mum (born 45) didn't get to go to uni, her brother did.
My dad (born 43) had polio.
The got married at 19 (needed parental permission).

Things were certainly different particularly for women like me who went to uni and now work on an equal footing.
My FIL (born 28) can remember when there wasn't enough food to go round.
It was a different world to what we have today.

setmefree2

ruggedtoast wrote: »

The reality is, ignoring hyperbole about tin baths and iPhones for now, that for many boomers the passage of their lives is progressing like this.

Go to school.
Leave school without qualifications.
Get an apprenticeship
Show up to work regularly
Buy a house on one salary
Keep showing up for work
Become a millionaire, half millionaire or quarter millionaire due to rampant house price inflation
Retire with a raft of non means tested state benefits the like of which no generation before them has known and no generation after them will get.

The fact that its the two generations immediately below them who are having to fund their benefits , as well as deal with the realities of boomer housing policies, is the cause of the acrimony we keep reading about.

There had been a war and a blitz, don't you know?

London in 1945



How long do you think it took to rebuild Britain?

But hey those baby boomers born in 1945 they were soooooo lucky!

setmefree2

Polio Victims 1950s

westernpromise

posh*spice wrote: »

So you're a communist.....

Inheritance Tax is a Communist Tax. Marx and Engels stated in The Communist Manifesto that number 3 or their 10 measures which "in the most advanced countries" would be "pretty generally applicable" was "Abolition of all right of inheritance."


I've paid tax on everything I've earned all my life. Why do I have to pay tax again on my death? People should be able to pass on the fruits of their lifetime's endeavours to whomever they want.


If the threshold had kept in line with house-price inflation, it would be £425,000. It is deliberately being kept low to entrap more people -- a stealth tax to clobber the lower middle class!.

In 1988 the IHT rate was levied at 40% on estates worth more than £110,000 (itself an increase from the £90,000 level the year before).

If you figure 3/4 of the estate to be the family home (I don't know what it actually is but it seems like a fair guess), then I suppose about £85,000 of that was the house. An £85,000 house would today be worth about £350,000 so arguably the equivalent rate today would be around the £400k mark. What is different today is that married couples get two allowances totalling £650k.

I disagree fundamentally with IHT because I do not accept that the state can have any claim on property acquired out of taxed income and that you paid tax to buy and occupy. It has not, however, got more burdensome.

westernpromise

Physics wrote: »

You don't. The inheritor does, because it's income.

Inheritance is a/ not income and b/ not levied on the recipients, but on the estate.

westernpromise

stator wrote: »

Why on earth would it keep track with house price inflation?

Because the majority of taxable estates is likely to be the house. This was expressly what Nigel Lawson had in mind when he rationalised it ("I propose to raise the threshold from £90,000 to £110,000. The increase in the threshold will reduce the number of estates liable to tax by a quarter, allowing many more people to inherit the family home free of tax. - http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/1114490 )

Loughton_Monkey

ruggedtoast wrote: »

The reality is, ignoring hyperbole about tin baths and iPhones for now, that for many boomers the passage of their lives is progressing like this.

Go to school.
Leave school without qualifications.
Get an apprenticeship
Show up to work regularly
Buy a house on one salary
Keep showing up for work
Become a millionaire, half millionaire or quarter millionaire due to rampant house price inflation
Retire with a raft of non means tested state benefits the like of which no generation before them has known and no generation after them will get.

The fact that its the two generations immediately below them who are having to fund their benefits , as well as deal with the realities of boomer housing policies, is the cause of the [STRIKE]acrimony[/STRIKE] chip on my shoulder [STRIKE]we keep reading[/STRIKE] I keep ranting about.

I have corrected that for you.

It never fails to amaze me (and I expect the majority of my age group) that you have the most distorted, innacurate, wildly idyllic perception of the UK during the period boomers grew up.

Whilst growing up, I used to listen to the generation above me about 'life' in the 30's and 40's. With your attitude, I strongly suspect you would not have listened (or believed). All you would have done is droned on about how easy they had it between 1939 to 1945 lazing about in a trench all day, with free food and housing, free travel, and the excitement of being able to drive tanks, fly aeroplanes and enjoy parachuting.....

stator

westernpromise wrote: »

Because the majority of taxable estates is likely to be the house. This was expressly what Nigel Lawson had in mind when he rationalised it ("I propose to raise the threshold from £90,000 to £110,000. The increase in the threshold will reduce the number of estates liable to tax by a quarter, allowing many more people to inherit the family home free of tax. - http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/1114490 )

Still can't think why inheriting the 'family home' is a good thing. Perhaps on a farm where the young farmer takes over from his father and keeps working the farm that might be relevant (I think there are other exemptions for farmers anyway). But in today's world I can't think of any reason why the value of a specific house should be exempted.

westernpromise

stator wrote: »

Still can't think why inheriting the 'family home' is a good thing. Perhaps on a farm where the young farmer takes over from his father and keeps working the farm that might be relevant (I think there are other exemptions for farmers anyway). But in today's world I can't think of any reason why the value of a specific house should be exempted.

Whether it is or it isn't, there is no reason why it should be possible in some parts of the country but denied to others.

If you are in Macclesfield you can inherit the house you grew up, in you're in Marylebone you can't.

The simplest fix would be to remove the main residence from IHT.

pollypenny

I don't feel smug about being 'a quarter millionaire' as if I wanted to move, I'd have to pay the same for a house.

That's unless I down-sized and/or moved to a rough area.

It's all relative.