No country for young men — UK generation gap widens

dunroving

wotsthat wrote: »

Younger people are much more likely to attend university these days. It delays the age at which peak earnings are reached.

Also reaching retirement age guaranteed poverty not so long ago and it's good to see this has been addressed.

Not a single sane person would swap their living standards today for that of their equivalent of 50 years ago.

Interestingly, I read an article on retirement a week or two ago that indicated the opposite - that the current younger generation do/will reach peak salary earlier in life compared to the current older generation.


I'm pretty sure it was in the Telegraph - will see if I can find it.


I was surprised, TBH.


ETA: Found it


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/investing/11185104/The-basic-investing-plan-I-would-hand-to-my-21-year-old-self.html

thorsoak

Cyberman60 wrote: »

Rubbish really as many youngsters nowadays are going to get bequeathed loadsamoney. My neighbour died last year and his 20 something son who never visited him (he told me he would have preferred a daughter) now has his own paid-for house worth 400K.

Toasty is bitter because his parents in law just won't fall off their bloated perch and leave him all their dosh and houses!

Sad really - to waste so much of your life on bitterness (he's been ranting about this for at least five years!)

Loughton_Monkey

Graham_Devon wrote: »

You always fail to mention wage inflation when this tale comes along.

There's a very good reason why this is potentially a red herring. I don't expect you to understand it, but for the more discerning readers......

Inflation

When looking at RPI for any long period, it is a fairly 'solid' indicator of the cost of household outgoings. Yes, we all have a slightly different shopping basket, and yes the cost of petrol has small regional variations, but when we see RPI was 74% for the period 19XX to 20YY we can be pretty sure that most people over that period would have seen a "in the order of" 74% rise in costs.

Wage Inflation

This is a totally different concept. It is a reasonably reliable indicator of what "Joe Median" earns. However, it takes no account whatsoever of "real life" that over any individual's actual working life, his income increases much more (on average) in the medium longer term because of experience, increments, promotions, headhunting, career progression etc.

Thousands of people, one year, will look at Joe Median's salary and say "lucky sod. I wish I earned that much". Almost certainly, a few years later that same person is looking at Joe Median saying "huh! I'm glad I can enjoy a better lifestyle than him".

Average (or median) salary changes for a whole host of economic reasons, a lot of which is irrelevant to most people at any one time. Conditions such as we have now can have significant effect on average wage in very perverse ways. The shedding of 100's of thousands of relatively highly paid civil service jobs at the same time as the creation of 2 million Private Sector jobs (most of which are burger flipping or minimum wage) is certainly better than those people being on the dole, and all the others in work are still earning their salaries with a modicum of progression or increment, or promotion etc.

If any idiots want to say that I am promulgating the idea that we've never had it so good, please have the intelligence to understand that's not what I'm saying. Times are tough right now. They have been for 7 or 8 years. For all of us. So hanker down, do what you can, and before long things will get much, much, better.

I thought that the research I quoted took a far more intelligent approach than compare average wages and rpi for the population. Instead, it took cohorts of different generations and showed in as convincing a way as it can, that every generation has started off their working life with massive 'real' incomes compared to the generation before them.

As time has gone on, however, the younger generations have squandered it rather than build up their welth. A behavioural issue and nothing to do with the economy, opportunities, or any direct government action.

All I hope is that the really younger generation just having started work since, say, 2007, who have maybe temporarily bucked the trend and not had real income growth above the previous generation will learn from this. When things improve, I would like to think they understand the value of saving/investing, living within their means, managing their life choices around what they can afford rather than what they jealously 'want', and that they become far more wealthy than my generation.

purch

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

most people over that period would have seen a "in the order of" 74% rise in costs.

Mine was 73.8 % cos we took the decision to stop buying Robertsons Golden Shred and replaced it with a generic supermarket brand.

chucknorris

ruggedtoast wrote: »

A clear solution is to build more housing. But getting a house built in the Boomer Belt is like pushing a pea up a mountain whilst blowing through a straw.

Nimbyism is rife. Landlords cling jealously to their prized investments. Planning applications are denied.

Surely jealousy is experienced by those who do not have, rather than those that do. For the record, I would love to build my own house, but I have not been able to find a suitable plot, I'm still looking though.

purch

chucknorris wrote: »

I have not been able to find a suitable plot, I'm still looking though.

Here is a nice one....

http://www.michaelsaunders.com/properties/property-detail/7722-sanderling-rd-sarasota-fl-34242/A4109830/#.VO7ewPmsVTI

chucknorris

purch wrote: »

Here is a nice one....

http://www.michaelsaunders.com/properties/property-detail/7722-sanderling-rd-sarasota-fl-34242/A4109830/#.VO7ewPmsVTI

and a snip at only $5.7m.

I did actually find a plot last year that I really liked (incl. the price), but then I realised that finding a suitable plot was going to be even harder now that I'm married. My wife thought that it was too near a noisy road, I didn't agree (it wasn't really a noisy road and it was about a 60m away) but obviously we would both have to be happy with it.

pollypenny

ruggedtoast wrote: »

While it's true that many boomers started out hungry, they are now on their third helping of the pie and they are lining up for fourths.
]

Rubbish. If you are around on weekdays, open your eyes. See the grandparents pushing prams and pushchairs, in the park, waiting outside primary schools, taking grandchildren to play and toddler groups. We have to travel,to the USA to help out, but we do it, at vast cost.

Many of us who could have help our adult children with deposits, passed on cars, paid for or done work in their older houses?

We are sharing the pie!

fed_up_and_stressed

pollypenny wrote: »

Rubbish. If you are around on weekdays, open your eyes. See the grandparents pushing prams and pushchairs, in the park, waiting outside primary schools, taking grandchildren to play and toddler groups. We have to travel,to the USA to help out, but we do it, at vast cost.

Many of us who could have help our adult children with deposits, passed on cars, paid for or done work in their older houses?

We are sharing the pie!

Really ? I don't see many benefits cuts affecting pensioners compared to working age claimants. We are NOT all in this economic mess together !

Graham_Devon

Anyone see Newsnight last night? Their opening issue was the generation gap and how it could stat skewing the country if party politics only goes for a certain vote.

It was a classic case of Baby Boomer generation against the world. Not sure if these things are setup that way... it always seems to be those babyboomers with the greatest entitlement attitude they wheel on!

They had David Willets on, the author of "How the babyboomers took their children's future - and why they should give it back". Alongside him was Esther Rantzen (I paid in) and someone in their 20's but cannot remember where they were from.

Once again, the point that "you have the internet" was put to the young person by Ewan Davies....as if the young person should therefore be eternally grateful and never utter a word about government policy again.

No real conclusion was found, other than everyone seemed to except that a specific generation did get a fantastic (relatively) serving compared to today's younger generation and that all policy was now focusing on them, being a larger group.

Hence why it could be dangerous for parties to target specific generations only and start altering the landscape to suit that generation. We risk not only backlash, but we also risk a move to hard left or right as the youth are not heard, but crucially, find they are the ones being sanctioned.