Brexit, The Economy and House Prices (Part 2)

Rusty_Shackleton

cogito wrote: »

What is wrong with you? All you ever post is relentless negativity about the economy and how bad things are, that the baby boomers are taking everything and leaving you nothing.

I'm a boomer. I was dragged up in a back to back terrace house in Bradford with an outside toilet. The house was pulled down in the late 60s as being unfit for human habitation. My father was a textile worker in a declining industry and my mother a seamstress. We didn't have a phone, a car, a fridge or even a TV until I was 13.

I didn't sit on my butt moaning about my lot like you do. I picked myself up, made a good career for myself and gerally improved my lot. I also paid a hell of a lot of tax so that the next generation could have a better life than I had when I was a kid.

You really need to get a grip on yourself and perhaps start thinking about what YOU will do for the next generation.

This thread is a discussion on brexit, which has inevitably spilled over into related issues.

If you think my life is spent moaning about baby boomers rather than just in the context of this discusdion.... You know what, im going to save my breath. Youe posting the same 'back in my day' bol**cks, talking about paying tax in absolute terms rather than rate (and about you individually which is meaningless, in these discussions all of society is clearly the only relevant figure).,how boring. Its amazing how many people on here try to shut own discussion they dont like,i'd suggest its you that needs to get a grip...or possibly just visit a different area of the forum?!

Oh and one last point, you suggest i should think about what i'll do for the next generation... Its hard to take you seriously when youve clearly not read much of what Ive said, and that suggess you just want to have a dig, because (whether you agree with me on how i think goals should be achieved aside) ive talked a lot about addressing homelessness and poverty, improving opportunities etc. (also, alongside pointing out that i think im in a good position personally, but feel for those who havent been so lucky), so clearly I am thinking an awful lot about others, arent i?

Sapphire

cogito wrote: »

What is wrong with you? All you ever post is relentless negativity about the economy and how bad things are, that the baby boomers are taking everything and leaving you nothing.

I was dragged up in a back to back terrace house in Bradford with an outside toilet. The house was pulled down in the late 60s as being unfit for human habitation. My father was a textile worker in a declining industry and my mother a seamstress. We didn't have a phone, a car, a fridge or even a TV until I was 13.

I didn't sit on my butt moaning about my lot like you do. I picked myself up, made a good career for myself and gerally improved my lot. I also paid a hell of a lot of tax so that the next generation could have a better life than I had when I was a kid.

You really need to get a grip on yourself and perhaps start thinking about what YOU will do for the next generation.

Agree with this and same here. My parents will leave me nothing. They never owned property. Though they came from prosperous backgrounds, they and my grandparents lost everything during the war (including many of their family). When they came here they lived in (by today's standards) incredibly hard conditions, which prevailed from the 50s to the late 70s for very many people, including indigenous Brits (e.g. three kids sharing one small room; paraffin heaters and no central heating; no hot water for quite a while; certainly no fridge, let alone a washing machine or dishwasher). (Though these conditions were, of course, better than those in previous decades to the 1950s, and stretching back into history.) Unlike many today, they didn't moan and bewail their lot, but got on with life and worked hard, generally in jobs that paid very little, and at a time when only a very small proportion of the population went to 'uni'.

Methinks that education is sadly lacking in some people – or perhaps they've just been brainwashed/refuse to check the evidence that is freely available to anyone with just a cursory check into social history, because this wouldn't chime with their own manufactured world view supporting their sense of entitlement. :cool:

economic

Rusty_Shackleton wrote: »

so clearly I am thinking an awful lot about others, arent i?

aawwww does poor little rusty wanna pat on his back for thinking about others?

give me a break. you sound like a deluded fool.

economic

Sapphire wrote: »

Agree with this and same here. My parents will leave me nothing. They never owned property. Though they came from prosperous backgrounds, they and my grandparents lost everything during the war (including many of their family). When they came here they lived in (by today's standards) incredibly hard conditions, which prevailed from the 50s to the late 70s for very many people, including indigenous Brits (e.g. three kids sharing one small room; paraffin heaters and no central heating; no hot water for quite a while; certainly no fridge, let alone a washing machine or dishwasher). Unlike many today, they didn't moan and bewail their lot, but got on with life and worked hard, generally in jobs that paid very little, and at a time when only a very small proportion of the population went to 'uni'.

Methinks that education is sadly lacking in some people – or perhaps they've just been brainwashed/refuse to check the evidence that is freely available to anyone with just a cursory check into social history, because this wouldn't chime with their own manufactured world view and 'me first' attitude. :cool:

im willing to bet a lot of it is due to becoming indoctrinated by the university system with social science/humanaties/"waste of time" type courses.

Rusty_Shackleton

ukcarper wrote: »

Trying to blame one generation for the present state is very misguided, what do you suggest that previous governments should have done that they didn't. The thing that has had the biggest impact on the general public is globalisation which is a double edged sword on one side it produces the cheap goods we know have while on the other means many manufacturing jobs have been lost.

Im not saying the baby boomers have taken personal decisions to screw over their own children. But consecutive governments, both lab and con, have failed to invest in future generations. This has happened when the baby boomers are the largest bloc of votes, and they're pandered to by governments and have been for decades. Theyve voted for people offering short term gain, and haven't demanded the same social investment that their own parents did, as evidenced by creation of the NHS, building council housing and clearing slums, the welfare state etc.

What should they have done differently? If you're selling off social housing, replacing it should have been a fairly obvious necessity. Retaining state assets like most advanced economies do, not flogging off to the private sector at every opportunity (i.e. Selling the family silver). Ive mentioned about Norways use of oil revenue to create a sovereign wealth fund while Thatcher spent north sea oil revenue on tax cuts. Speaking of thatcher, back in the 70s and 80s it was clear this country needed to be able to upskill and retrain people, here we are 30 years later and we still don't nvest sufficiently in skills, even with many European neighbours with excellent systems we could have learned from.

Need i go on? Dont get me wrong, hindsight is a great thing, but where are the things the boomers invested in for society that were well intentioned but didnt pan out? I dont see anything like that either. Perhaps it has something to do with the self centred 'no such thing as society' bs of thatcher and her ilk. Lets hope that attitude dies out with the boomers, do we really want to be like the US?!

Rusty_Shackleton

economic wrote: »

aawwww does poor little rusty wanna pat on his back for thinking about others?

give me a break. you sound like a deluded fool.

And yet again someone needs to twist what Im saying to try and score a point, how pathetic.

I was pointing out, to the accusation that i should think about what i can do for future generations, that Ive been discussing things that are things we could do for future generations (and those losing out in the here and now), while acknowledging my own relative privilege.

You need to work on your reading and comprehension skills if you really think Im looking for a pat on the back, based on what i actually said.

cogito

Rusty_Shackleton wrote: »

This thread is a discussion on brexit, which has inevitably spilled over into related issues.

If you think my life is spent moaning about baby boomers rather than just in the context of this discusdion.... You know what, im going to save my breath. Youe posting the same 'back in my day' bol**cks, talking about paying tax in absolute terms rather than rate (and about you individually which is meaningless, in these discussions all of society is clearly the only relevant figure).,how boring. Its amazing how many people on here try to shut own discussion they dont like,i'd suggest its you that needs to get a grip...or possibly just visit a different area of the forum?!

Oh and one last point, you suggest i should think about what i'll do for the next generation... Its hard to take you seriously when youve clearly not read much of what Ive said, and that suggess you just want to have a dig, because (whether you agree with me on how i think goals should be achieved aside) ive talked a lot about addressing homelessness and poverty, improving opportunities etc. (also, alongside pointing out that i think im in a good position personally, but feel for those who havent been so lucky), so clearly I am thinking an awful lot about others, arent i?

Read the title of the thread. Brexit, the Economy and House prices (part 2).

And spare me the bollix about 'back in the day' posts because it seems to me that you were the one that started it. And if you really want to know what tax rates were back then, the history is easy to find. Income Tax actually started around 35% even for the lowest earners and that was under a Labour government.

As you say, you have talked a great deal about homelessness etc. And you think an awful lot about others.

Thinking is one thing. Doing is another. What do you actually do?

Rusty_Shackleton

economic wrote: »

im willing to bet a lot of it is due to becoming indoctrinated by the university system with social science/humanaties/"waste of time" type courses.

Ah, so people with different views have been indoctrinated? How patronising can you get? (thats not a challenge by the way, Ive no desire to see you sink any lower)

Sapphire

More than anything else, blame globalisation (run by giant, all-powerful corporations that don't care about 'little' people), promoting cheap goods/labour from outside the UK. Don't blame baby boomers. Many people thought globalisation was a very bad idea years ago, and their reservations are just starting to be proved accurate now…

In Britain I can well remember when globalisation started to take hold. My profession is in publishing (now freelance), and I worked for several lovely small British publishers (some founded many, many years ago, which generally treated people well and were quite paternalistic/maternalistic, though the pay in publishing was always pretty poor, partly due to the glamour then attached to the profession). All of a sudden, in the 1980s, giant global corporations began to take over the small and successful companies. There are very few left now. Another example: an aunt and uncle who lived in Australia founded a small technology company (they were whizzes at tech, at an academic level). Again, they well remember that in the 1980s large global corporations entered the market; none of the small companies could compete with them, so went to the wall. That sort of thing happened to many small/medium companies from the 1980s onwards.

Even now, if a small, successful company is developed in the UK, it tends to be bought out by a large global corporation. Such corporations care nothing about individuals and are interested only in profits, with the freely available labour pool (from around the world) being kept as cheap as possible. It is ridiculous to use 'baby boomers' (or the elderly, for that matter), who have their own issues to contend with, as scapegoats for this state of affairs, which is what seems to be happening, perhaps deliberately, since the elderly are pretty defenceless, unlike most other groups in society. 'Blame' anyone but the true, untouchable, all-powerful culprits…

I fear things will get even worse for future generations. What can 'ordinary people' (middle and lower classes) do against such all-powerful, self-serving interests? Perhaps Mother Nature will step in with a global pandemic or other such, which will curb the massive unsustainable growth of population worldwide, but especially in the under-developed world, where people often have seven or more children without the means to support them. That's what the plagues and other diseases did historically…

Rusty_Shackleton

cogito wrote: »

Read the title of the thread. Brexit, the Economy and House prices (part 2).

And spare me the bollix about 'back in the day' posts because it seems to me that you were the one that started it. And if you really want to know what tax rates were back then, the history is easy to find. Income Tax actually started around 35% even for the lowest earners and that was under a Labour government.

As you say, you have talked a great deal about homelessness etc. And you think an awful lot about others.

Thinking is one thing. Doing is another. What do you actually do?

Again, if you'd read previous poss you'd know that I vote according to what I think is best for society, rather than what would probably benefit myself more directly and Ive also done charity work for many years in my life. What more would you suggest? I doubt theres anything I could do which you would consider satisfactory. What have you personally ever done/do you do?