No country for young men — UK generation gap widens

lisyloo

but there are still plenty of places where you can get a family house for a decent price

Yes sure there are, and there's reasons why people aren't flocking there in droves, usually because they haven't got a job there.
Most people i.e. the majority of working population, want to live somewhere near where they work, so prices are higher near concentrations of jobs e.g. London.

Yes of course there are jobs in Birmingham, but let's say your speciality (e.g. political editor) take you to westminster, then it doesn't really help.

There will be a reason why the price is as it is.

westernpromise

bugslet wrote: »

I didn't really experience much in the way of sexism despite being in male dominated industry, had a mortgage, career....well I made my own.

You've forgotten the sexism of the tax system. Until 1988 your earnings were taxed at your husband's marginal rate!!!

For income tax purposes you weren't a person at all. You were a line item in your husband's tax return - like a BTL, or something.

So in the 1970s, under Denis Healey, a single woman earning under the personal allowance would keep the whole lot. The day she got married to a top rate taxpayer, she had 83% of her money confiscated.

This sexist tax treatment of women did at least three evil things:

• It concealed unemployment by incentivising women (but not men) to chuck in their perfectly good paying jobs on marriage. Unemployment appeared lower because married women were dissuaded from working.
  
• It entrenched workplace inequality. If a married women earned the same as her husband, she took less home than him because her whole salary was taxed at his highest rate. This stripped her of economic power by making her earnings incidental to the family budget. It also meant employers, equally rationally, did not treat women as being equally valuable or worth investing in or developing, because they were likely - rationally - to quit working upon marriage.
  
• Finally, by forcing married women out of the paid workforce or penalising them if they stayed in it, the tax system favoured one-income households. As house prices are a function of household income, and the sexist treatment of women in the tax system removed most of their second income, tax sexism caused house prices to be artificially undervalued.

What would this farcical sexist nonsense look like today? Well, a mother today earning £12,000 a year part time, married to someone on £100,000, would pay £885 in tax and NI. If we still had the 1970s sexist tax rules she'd pay £7,200 tax a year (his marginal rate above £100k is 60%). If we also had those rates she'd lose £10,000 in tax.

If you have ever wondered where that hoary old mortgage lending multiple of "3x the main salary and 1x the other" came from, now you know. After the male chauvinist taxman had done his work, the second (woman's) salary was indeed worth much less than the man's, so lenders multiplied only his by 3, not hers.

I'd be interested if any Generation Rent married women would sign up for 1970s tax sexism in return for 1970s house prices?

westernpromise

lisyloo wrote: »

Yes sure there are, and there's reasons why people aren't flocking there in droves, usually because they haven't got a job there.
Most people i.e. the majority of working population, want to live somewhere near where they work, so prices are higher near concentrations of jobs e.g. London.

Yes of course there are jobs in Birmingham, but let's say your speciality (e.g. political editor) take you to westminster, then it doesn't really help.

There will be a reason why the price is as it is.

This reminds me of those conversations I used to have in the Eighties, when firms were constantly relocating bits of themselves to Milton Keynes.

My bosses would tell me I should jump at the chance to be moved to Milton Keynes "because house prices there are really cheap".

"Why is that, then?" I would wonder aloud. "Does nobody want to live there, or something?"

Deafening silence.

shaggydoo

bugslet wrote: »

I think that highlights one of the flaws in the Boomer label. It seems to cover a huge spread of time, in which there were an awful lot of changes.

I just scrape into Boomerdom with 6 months to spare

You're probably Generation X. Many people now consider Baby Boomers to be from 1945 to 1960. Gen X 1960 to 1980. Gen Y 1980 to 2000.

In the UK - anyone born in the early 60s experienced the 80s recession full on and for this reason are generally regarded as Gen X.

shaggydoo

bugslet wrote: »

By the 80s, the social landscape had started changing incredibly quickly.

Of course, people born in the 80s are Generation Y.

Anybody born in 1980 and after has had a pretty easy life. I think that is a reasonable statement but please correct me if I'm wrong.

Is it Generation Y that are doing all the complaining? Or is it Generation X?

Loughton_Monkey

shaggydoo wrote: »

Of course, people born in the 80s are Generation Y.

Anybody born in 1980 and after has had a pretty easy life. I think that is a reasonable statement but please correct me if I'm wrong.

Is it Generation Y that are doing all the complaining? Or is it Generation X?

I think it's both.



There is an extreme irony here. Consider these factors:

• The boomer generation, generally speaking, are now retiring or already retired.
• We have been forming a relatively larger proportion of the population for years. This 'bulge' will soon peak once the smaller Y-gen starts to age and retire.
• It is true that by comparison to the young, us boomers are "rich". We hold higher per capita wealth. Primarily this is because of a combination of (a) our financial habits throughout life, and (b) the longer time we have had to accrue our wealth.
• Us boomers will be dying off like flies. Our money has to go somewhere. £1 notes and houses do not just melt away into thin air. Either we spend it while we are alive, or we pass it on - primarily to a younger generation.
• Ultimately, the passing of this wealth of the 'many' down to add to the wealth of the 'few' [who themselves will be more wealthy owing to the passage of time] will create an uber-rich generation that will make us boomers look like Oliver Twist.

It follows, therefore, that all this whinging is totally invalid from a 'generational' point of view. So either they don't understand how 'life' works and don't follow the above argument, or they are in fact selfishly whinging about their own personal circumstances. Possibly their boomer parents 'missed the boat' and aren't rich [because not all boomers are]. Possibly they recognise (now things are hard) that they did in fact squander the extra income they had (over and above boomers) in the first half of their careers.

Or maybe they just like whinging.

lisyloo

Or is it Generation X?

Well it's a 20 year period, but I think most of us are pretty happy.
Some of us had a free uni education, good jobs and those that bought property or BTLs are doing well.
The main difference I see between us and the boomers is that most of us are not doing so well in the pension department.
So on the whole I don't think Gen X are complaining.
I think it's younger generations who are a lot worse off than us with jobs and housing.

pollypenny

Excellent post, Western promise! :T


I married in October 1967, to my first real boyfriend. Due a tax rebate, I didn't get it, as my records had gone missing.

When they were found, it was May 1968 and, because it was a new tax year, the rebate was paid to my husband! :mad:

As late as 1979, I wanted to upgrade from a twin tub to an automatic washing machine. I was not allowed HP, in spite of being well able to afford it from my own wages.

seven-day-weekend

shaggydoo wrote: »

You're probably Generation X. Many people now consider Baby Boomers to be from 1945 to 1960. Gen X 1960 to 1980. Gen Y 1980 to 2000.

In the UK - anyone born in the early 60s experienced the 80s recession full on and for this reason are generally regarded as Gen X.

My husband was born in 1949, myself in 1950, so definitely Boomers. Our son was born in January 1980. So is he X or Y ?

setmefree2

bugslet wrote: »

just scrape into Boomerdom with 6 months to spare and I didn't really experience much in the way of sexism despite being in male dominated industry, had a mortgage, career.....

I find it hard to believe that any child born in the 1960s had a hands on Dad or a Dad (or a brother) that did any house work.

My 47 year old sister (Gen X) is married to a Boomer. Even today in 2015 he never lifts a finger in the housework or child care department (though he will take his son to football matches).