Some food for Ruggedtoast's soul

mwpt

Ranty Blog Post Link

Ok, in the interest of disclosure, I don't agree with a lot of this but he does make some pretty good points. I think the answer, as usual, lies somewhere in the middle. I do believe young people today have fewer wealth options than of the previous decades. But equally, I know people in London with no degrees who have worked their way up a chosen industry and doing fairly well. I caveat that with "fairly well" means they aren't living with their parents but are living in shared houses and no chance of buying a place near their jobs. And no, it's not because they buy a new iPhone every year.

Some sound bites:

Virtually all of the social housing has been bought by the people who lived in it under right-to-buy, and are now looking to rent it out to you for profit 

verything your parents and grandparents had has been taken from you and they’re telling you it’s for your own good. You are !!!!ed.

mwpt

Forum is filtering out the naughty word in the URL. Trying to fix.

Weird. You may have to copy paste the link to get it working. Seems to even strip characters out of shortened urls.

TheeMaskedTurnip

I don't think it's important anyway.

Generali

It's a self-serving whinge.

Wages are almost as high as they ever have been, employment rates are at an all-time high, only a bit over 10% of the workforce are on the minimum wage and so few people over the age of 24 are on zero hours contracts they can't be measured with any accuracy.

Yes, house prices are expensive and you have to pay tuition now but almost half of kids go to uni rather than the 15% that did 20 years ago.

wotsthat

Does anyone really believe gen x and y won't be better off than their parents?

I don't and even if it came to pass they'd end up, at worst, being the second richest generation ever to walk the planet - boo hoo.

mwpt

Generali wrote: »

It's a self-serving whinge.

Wages are almost as high as they ever have been, employment rates are at an all-time high, only a bit over 10% of the workforce are on the minimum wage and so few people over the age of 24 are on zero hours contracts they can't be measured with any accuracy.

Yes, house prices are expensive and you have to pay tuition now but almost half of kids go to uni rather than the 15% that did 20 years ago.

Yup, I mostly agree. But then, Generali, I'm not 24 and neither are you. I actually don't know what day to day life is like for people that young. I know the youth are typically always more left wing than older generations (trend) but there probably is a reason for the increasing socialist tendencies. And of course, it all depends on how you define wealth.

I still think you're wrong about wage growth by the way. Last year was a blip, if the figures were even real, in my opinion. We'll see over the next few years.

mwpt

wotsthat wrote: »

Does anyone really believe gen x and y won't be better off than their parents?

I don't and even if it came to pass they'd end up, at worst, being the second richest generation ever to walk the planet - boo hoo.

Agree, life basics has improved massively over the last century. In the interest of debate, would you mind stating some of the ways that gen x and y are better off than the boomers? I was going over this in my head, curious what someone else comes up with.

CLAPTON

mwpt wrote: »

Agree, life basics has improved massively over the last century. In the interest of debate, would you mind stating some of the ways that gen x and y are better off than the boomers? I was going over this in my head, curious what someone else comes up with.

gen x & y are better off than boomers in some ways and worse off in others

better off because
-they have vastly better opportunities to go to Uni and other further education
-they were bought up in nice CH houses with hot and cold running water,
-benefited from parents having cars,
-were taken on holidays (home and abroad)
-had cheap and stylist clothes
-wonderful access to the whole world with cheap travel
-cheap goods of all kinds, mobile phones, pad, computers
-massive amounts of entertainment

added :
-vastly better health care
-vastly greater variety of foods
-massively more restaurants of virtually every nationality
-more coffee bars
-more nail bars



but they are worse off in other ways
-they didn't invent sex
-opportunities for house ownership are limited especially in London and the SE
-have to repay student loans

The largest downside is housing : due to many factors the outlook for under 40s owning a modest family sized home in London and the SE, is much reduced compared to the boomers.
This is largely due to the influx of immigrant : however support of this policy is cross party and probably has more support by the young rather than the old :
we will see in the brexit referendum but I guess that Turkeys will vote for christmas.

ukcarper

Generali wrote: »

It's a self-serving whinge.

Wages are almost as high as they ever have been, employment rates are at an all-time high, only a bit over 10% of the workforce are on the minimum wage and so few people over the age of 24 are on zero hours contracts they can't be measured with any accuracy.

Yes, house prices are expensive and you have to pay tuition now but almost half of kids go to uni rather than the 15% that did 20 years ago.

In the 60s it was only 5% that went to university and the majority of people would have left school at 15.

Generali

mwpt wrote: »

Yup, I mostly agree. But then, Generali, I'm not 24 and neither are you. I actually don't know what day to day life is like for people that young. I know the youth are typically always more left wing than older generations (trend) but there probably is a reason for the increasing socialist tendencies. And of course, it all depends on how you define wealth.

I still think you're wrong about wage growth by the way. Last year was a blip, if the figures were even real, in my opinion. We'll see over the next few years.

I suggest that the article seeks to define the rise of the politicians the writer supports.

If someone wanted to explain the rise of outsider politicians in the Anglosphere and then ignores Mr Trump and Mr Farage then I suggest that they're getting less than half the picture.

zagubov

ukcarper wrote: »

In the 60s it was only 5% that went to university and the majority of people would have left school at 15.

In the 70s when I went to uni it was 10% who went. Most jobs didn't require degrees but sent you to college for day-release training where required.

You could study non-work related degrees at uni and work-related degrees at polytechnics.

If you wanted to study non-work-related degrees you were expected to study at the Open University, which would have been a very cost-effective way of expanding the HE sector while maintaining standards.

The last few decades the totally unnecessary expansion of the university sector was fueled by the adoption of the American model where employers don't educate students but gain cheap graduate employees educated at their own expense.

The government gets massaged unemployment statistics and employers get a older more mature workforce, although not necessarily a better-educated one.