No country for young men — UK generation gap widens

lisyloo

Us boomers will be dying off like flies

Or outstaying your welcome :-)
We have relatives in their late 80's and early 90's.

Our money has to go somewhere.

Not all are filthy rich.
Living expenses and care homes will be the way for some.
Houses don't melt away but they do get sold to pay for care.
I expect to be at least in my 50's when I get to inherit which means I'll already have bought my house and made up most of my pension. Yes it will be nice to have some extra cash to go on a holiday with, but it's not going to young FTBs.
Your also assuming they have a lot to pass down.
Our parents live in a small flat with meagre savings, so it won't be significant and that's if it's not sold to pay care fees.

So either they don't understand how 'life' works

How does it work then?
Wait til your 70 for a handout and then you can go on that skiing holiday? Oh no wait, you're too old !!

Possibly their boomer parents 'missed the boat'

Not sure what that means. Ours were working class and did manual jobs.
I don't think they missed anything, they simply weren't skilled or highly educated, but that's not an issue for me because I don't expect handouts anyway.

TheBlueHorse

Quote:
Originally Posted by Loughton Monkey
What if one of my sons works hard, earns £50K, claims no benefits, and pays a lot of tax. My other son is an idle 'sob' and claims £15K a year in benefits and tax credits. Wouldn't my first son have a right to the same benefits because everything needs to be 'fair and equal'.
Everyone can claim benefits and they are judged on their circumstances, that's fair. It doesn't require that everyone be granted the same benefits unless their circumstances are the same.

This is the lefty summed up. The one who works gets nothing (except a chunk of his hard earned cash taken from him) and the layabout gets a free house, free food, free education, free health etc etc because that is "fair".

that is the twisted mentality of the lefty. look at care for the old - if you save up your whole life, pay a mortgage etc you get nothing (other than having to fund your own old age) but if you spend all your salary on rent, holidays and whatever else you like, so you have nothing left, it's all on the taxpayer because that is "fair".

lisyloo

and the layabout gets a free house, free food, free education, free health etc etc because that is "fair".

I don't think it's fair, but neither would I want ferral people walking the streets, sleeping under underpasses and nicking stuff because that's what they had to do to survive. Neither would I want their children left with no education or healthcare. Similarly elderly people can't just be left on the streets.

If you don't have a safety net, then you'll have people turning to crime and begging.

Personally I'd have national service for your layabout son and let the army whip him into shape, both carrot and stick i.e. give him some skills.

TheBlueHorse

of course there should be a safety net - but not a lifestyle choice. Your life should not be nice if you are in the safety net.

My preference is that you get a much bigger safety net for a smaller period of time. If someone earning £5k a month suddenly loses their job and has very high expenses - what good is a few hundred pounds to them? They should get 6 months safety at the appropriate level - giving them time to address the issues (find new job, downsize house etc). That is fair. Afterall, the person earning £5k a month pays far more into the fund than the person on £1k a month, so why should they not get more out when/if they ever require it?

westernpromise

TheBlueHorse wrote: »

of course there should be a safety net - but not a lifestyle choice. Your life should not be nice if you are in the safety net.

My preference is that you get a much bigger safety net for a smaller period of time. If someone earning £5k a month suddenly loses their job and has very high expenses - what good is a few hundred pounds to them? They should get 6 months safety at the appropriate level - giving them time to address the issues (find new job, downsize house etc). That is fair. Afterall, the person earning £5k a month pays far more into the fund than the person on £1k a month, so why should they not get more out when/if they ever require it?

Indeed. Someone in a £100k a year job loses £35,000 of that in tax deductions, but if s/he loses that job is then entitled to almost nothing and certainly less than someone who has never worked and who has paid in nothing.

In effect, the benefits system identifies you early on as either a taker-out from it, or a payer-in / funder of it. It is pretty much impossible to move between these categories. There are people on benefits who could not achieve the same disposable income from working. There are likewise people who on the basis of past earnings are judged too rich to deserve any of the benefits they have been funding. You can be long term unemployed and collect benefits equivalent to a £60k salary, but a £60k a year plumber who lost his job would not be able to claim the equivalent benefits.

bugslet

setmefree2 wrote: »

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.

).

Hi set me free

just to clarify, I was responding to this quote:

Boomer women were treated like crap. No career. No mortgage. No bank account. Even joint bank accounts didn't exist.

My parents were born in the 1920s, so my father was not a Boomer, so I was referring to my experience of work and getting bank accounts.

In truth my father did little round the house, but on the other hand, he was rarely at home during the week and worked at the weekends as well.

What he did do though, was to ensure that I never thought there was a job that I couldn't do as a woman, that it was very important that I got an education so that I could make my way in the world. So given the generation he was in, he was pretty progressive in terms of female equality.

ruggedtoast

As discussed before, every generation since the Middle Ages had a tougher time overall than the one that succeeded it in terms of technology and medicine.

That doesnt mean that the boomer generation gets to be the first generation that deducts some double taxation from the generation above and below them.

At the moment they have had all the largesse of their parents generations, have benefitted enormously from the house prices, money which goes straight from the pockets of younger FTB's into boomer bank accounts, and they are absorbing retirement benefits faster than the younger generations can find work to pay for them.

Enough is enough. It is time for Boomers to be independent of the teats of others.

westernpromise

stator wrote: »

Fairness means treating everyone equally. Sharing your estate with just your children is not treating everyone equally. If the state takes your estate then it is essentially shared by everyone in the country and so completely fair.

If your children are poor they will qualify for benefits paid for by the state, that is fair and equal.
If your children inherit money from their parents, that's not fair and equal because many people's children don't inherit money.

That's not fairness. That's collectivism.

seven-day-weekend

[QUOTE=setmefree2;67976109]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).[/QUOTE]

My dad (born in 1904) was 46 when I was born in 1950, took me loads of places and did cooking and housework. He could even mend clothes and do washing

Loughton_Monkey

ruggedtoast wrote: »

As discussed before, every generation since the Middle Ages had a tougher time overall than the one that succeeded it in terms of technology and medicine.

That doesnt mean that the boomer generation gets to be the first generation that deducts some double taxation from the generation above and below them.

At the moment they have had all the largesse of their parents generations, have benefitted enormously from the house prices, money which goes straight from the pockets of younger FTB's into boomer bank accounts, and they are absorbing retirement benefits faster than the younger generations can find work to pay for them.

Enough is enough. It is time for Boomers to be independent of the teats of others.

You've missed out a couple of things.

We also got a free University education, without having to pay for current students. And very generous final salary schemes, which were underfunded at the time, but luckily the youngsters who finally took over from us when we retired have had to pay our bill as well as their own.....

You mustn't forget Gordon Brown's cumulative 13 year legacy of massive overspending which will never be fully paid down in the lifetime of a boomer. So don't forget we are also subsidised by generations as yet unborn......

Boomer women could put their feet up at age 60, and men 65 (although the extra portions of 'life's free milk' delivered to me without working for it allowed me to retire at 56). So we haven't just taken the money out of their pockets (as you put it) we're thoroughly expecting youngsters to slave for another 3 to 8 extra to subsidise us.....

Surely the 'teats' of all these other generations are up to it? And to throw us a nice shiny bus pass, and a modest £200 a year to keep us warm and cosy, and to keep the Champagne fridge ticking over at max.cold throughout the summer?

Surely you should have mentioned all of this? Are you losing your touch? If you want to whinge, then do it properly. Or are you 'toning it down' because you don't want to slate us too much? Perhaps because one day soon you'll need all our money to build workhouses for the young?