[Closed] Economic Adjustment

Yet we have more of everything compared to our parents and their parents. Weird eh?

@ 5thElefant - Hmmmmm depends on generation and appears to be in decline.

You only have to look at the improvements in health and technology to see anyone of any age is better off than they would have been 25,50,75 years ago.

You'd think the opposite from the amount of whinging. The sense of entitlement increases too fast for technology to keep up.

Yet we have more of everything compared to our parents and their parents. Weird eh?

Deoends what things - iphones sure - a house to let or buy that isn't a two our drive from work, not so much. We have a lot of extra crap and seemingly a lack of basics.

5thElefant - Member
Yet we have more of everything compared to our parents and their parents. Weird eh?

I'd also like to make the point that unless your household is earning 100k a year, life in places like London is actually of a lower quality in many respects than getting by on a graduate wage in the Philippines - a third world country. You'd have to be in the bottom 20ish percent (ie those living in slums) in the Philippines for it to be worse.

I'm "really" looking forward to my extra ten years of life dribbling in a piss soaked armchair in front of a TV with a smashed screen and single flickering candle in its empty husk in the confines of a rotting portakabin staffed by abusive illiterate trafficked slaves. Not sure I'm going to blame my parents for it though. It was all my fault for not working hard enough. Luckily a capitalist will pay my family enough for my remaining functioning organs so they won't have to flytip me in the grounds of the PFI labour compound.

5thElefant - Member
Yet we have more of everything compared to our parents and their parents. Weird eh?

Apart from:

Houses, pensions and job security. Plus more debt.

The sense of entitlement increases too fast for technology to keep up.

A bit harsh but we have massively better life chances than 90% of the world's population. A sense of perspective is important.

My parents generation were very fortunate with opportunity and economic breaks. It's too late for my generation to catch up to the level they have enjoyed/squandered.

Are our generation prepared to engage in proper political activity to make the changes needed to give our kids the chance to have better opportunities? Or are we just going to get bitter and rant on the interweb?

You get the politicians and society you deserve.

Yet we have more of everything compared to our parents and their parents. Weird eh?

Oh well, that's alright then, I've a astonishingly powerful pocket computer...Can't afford a house, but you k'now, who am I to grumble?

You get the politicians and society you deserve.

Unfortunately, the "lucky" generation can still vote - and as the EU vote and the Scottish Independence vote showed, they use their vote to go against the wishes of the people who will be around the longest to see the results.

It's been proposed that votes should be inversely weighted by age, and I can see a lot of merit in that.

Yet we have more of everything compared to our parents and their parents. Weird eh?

We do - and young folk today want even more, want foreign holidays, want the latest tech, want to get hammered every weekend, want, want, want.

Then moan that they haven't been able to save a deposit for a house.

want to get hammered every weekend

Can you blame them when, after leaving Uni with a massive debt, they can only get a zero-hours contract job and all the housing available is completely unaffordable?

Houses, pensions and job security. Plus more debt.

Really? At my age now my parents were working 4 jobs between them, had an 18% mortgage, my nan looked after us under school age, and were borrowing money for a car. They now have a 1 x public sector basic pension and 2 X state pensions between them. Saturday lunch was beans on toast, my non school time was spent playing in the local fields with mates.

Maybe I'm lucky, but I have a house, 2.35% mortgage, my wife works 3 days per week, we have two cars eat well, drink wine rum and gin, the kids get sports clubs & activities, and the only debt I currently have is for a pair of Rebas I bought yesterday. I'm no high achiever either, just an average guy working no harder than most with 5 c grade GCSEs to my name.

I'd say I'm pretty close to the demographic 75% of stwers.

Can you blame them when, after leaving Uni with a massive debt, they can only get a zero-hours contract job and all the housing available is completely unaffordable?

What - all of them?

My niece managed to go through Uni, get a job in social care and buy her own flat near Exeter. (She's now 27).

The "lucky" generation can still be outvoted by those of us coming up behind if we could be bothered to understand issues and to vote

What we haven't got are parties to vote for the changes we need, which needs more grass roots political engagement.

And whilst it is harder now than 30 years ago, I went without holidays, cars, a degree, computer games and drunken nights out to save a deposit for a house. That choice still exists. Choosing to have all of that and then moaning you can't have the other so why try is self defeating, hypocritical, and part of the problem rather than a result of it.

And I say this as a parent of a teenager soon to be facing these kind of choices.

"Then moan that they haven't been able to save a deposit for a house"
That would be valid if the cost of a house had remained in proportion to wages . Has it ?
No point trying to save pennies to buy something worth thousands that you will never atain may as well spend it on a bit of escapism

But we're the 4th or 5th biggest economy in the world. We're all rolling in it aren't we?

That would be valid if the cost of a house had remained in proportion to wages . Has it ?

Depends were you live - in the South East may be not.

In Derbyshire there are loads of terraced houses for under 100k and not just in dodgy areas.

No, some of us are rolling in it.

Some of us are whining because we aren't rolling in it.

Most of us have our heads down to try and at least catch up with it.

You need to take a longer term view.

For us proles, good housing, pensions, healthcare and higher education are all post war phenomena.

Things are shitter now than in the past couple of decades. It may be a blip, it may not.

The task for the current generation is to make sure we don't loose [u]everything[/u] we gained from WWII.

Don't forget that ~50 years ago a mortgage would be funded by the man's wages while the woman stayed at home. Now that it's normal for both to work, there's more money available to pay a larger mortgage, and houses cost more. A big dollop of chicken/egg in there for sure but they're not unconnected.

On top of that deregulation of lending in the eighties made more money available, also pushing prices up.

The baby boomers were a very lucky demographic. It's not their *fault* that the distribution of age in the general population got so skewed by the war. But it did, and it's simply not possible for things to be just like the sixties again in terms of housing etc.

Also agree about the degree of entitlement when you see people with new cars and flashy gadgets complaining they can't afford to buy in the area they insist they absolutely [i]must[/i] live in [1]. Spend less money and/or move somewhere else. It won't kill you.

[1] Around ten years ago on a car forum I used to frequent there was a young guy who lived with his parents in MK and drove a Ferrari, while complaining that he wanted to live in <posh London borough> but the houses were too expensive and just continued to piss all his money away on expensive toys while living for free with his Mum rather than accepting reality and moving somewhere affordable.

In the 30's you were lucky if you had more than one pair of shoes.

Now poverty is 'not having your own garden' or more likley, having the wrong mobile phone.

Victorians were not fat, they had barely enough food to live. The rich were fat. These days, the poorest westerners are fat, the rich are lean and fit.

Weird innit?

Yet we have more of everything compared to our parents and their parents. Weird eh?

except 'Happiness'.

Over the last century we've been gradually having 'more of everything' and having more has resulted in changes in people's live that make them happier - indoor plumbing, a national health service, paid holidays, a social safety net, greater mobility, improved housing, tackling pollution and environmental issues, improved workplace safety, more access to entertainment and leisure. Year on year, generation on generation those things made people happier as well as wealthier.

Those improvements in wealth became discontented from measurable happiness around the 1980s and being a wealthier nation hasn't been better for us since then.

[quote=Sundayjumper ]Don't forget that ~50 years ago a mortgage would be funded by the man's wages while the woman stayed at home. Now that it's normal for both to work, there's more money available to pay a larger mortgage, and houses cost more. A big dollop of chicken/egg in there for sure but they're not unconnected.

Yes absolutely. Problem is that having a family then cuts you back to either one salary or two salaries minus childcare (something like £16K for 5 days a week).

Personally, I we have an 18 month old and we're coping reasonably but that's largely down to being lucky enough to have inlaws available for childcare 2 days a week. Without that things would be pretty tight.

"[i]Now poverty is 'not having your own garden' or more likley, having the wrong mobile phone.[/i]"

The definition of "poverty" is an interesting one. In some places it's having less than $1/day, but that's clearly not universal. So it's usually taken as meaning you don't have what everyone else does. For example:

"Poverty is defined relative to the standards of living in a society at a specific time. People live in poverty when they are denied an income sufficient for their material needs and when these circumstances exclude them from taking part in activities which are an accepted part of daily life in that society."
(Scottish Poverty Information Unit)

The "accepted part of daily life" bit means that yes, poverty in the UK is not having a mobile phone.

You get the politicians and society you deserve.

No offence to the person who posted this, but this phrase really irks me.

If the last forty years have taught me anything, it's that the vote can be swung by the political affiliations of the press. Not only that, we've had generations of career politicians who've sat on their hands content to satisfy the demands of corporate lobbyists and ever-frothing media moguls.

We live in an era of lazy politics, politicians have little incentive to actually engage with people - they believe that 'The Market' will sort everything, except when it doesn't. I think Marilyn Manson summed it up beautifully when he observed that an election is like being forced to decide which turd you find the least offensive.

You get the politicians and society you deserve.

No offence to the person who posted this, but this phrase really irks me.

If the last forty years have taught me anything, it's that the vote can be swung by the political affiliations of the press. Not only that, we've had generations of career politicians who've sat on their hands content to satisfy the demands of corporate lobbyists and ever-frothing media moguls.

We live in an era of lazy politics, politicians have little incentive to actually engage with people - they believe that 'The Market' will sort everything, except when it doesn't. I think Marilyn Manson summed it up beautifully when he observed that an election is like being forced to decide which turd you find the least offensive.

Yet people still vote for them, so in that sense it's true. There are alternatives but people can't/don't seem to want to take the leap/get screwed by FPTP (see the 'democracy' of the SNP vs UKIP representation), something that they had the opportunity to change and rejected! People are idiots and voted for this shower so in that sense they certainly get the politicians they deserve.

Are the current economic difficulties just the fault of incompetent/self serving politicians?

Or is it because for the past 30 years we've all put personal short term material gain before long term stability and invested in a system that isn't sustainable?

A trick that politicians always use is to draw on a specific example, say:

Really? At my age now my parents were working 4 jobs between them, had an 18% mortgage, my nan looked after us under school age, and were borrowing money for a car.

And then assume it is a general rule.

These things have to be looked at with a wider lens. Otherwise we just get lost in tit for tat without seeing the bigger picture.

For that bigger picture, a good start would be to read [url= https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pinch-Boomers-Childrens-Future-Should/dp/1848872321/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1474624966&sr=8-1&keywords=the+pinch ]The Pinch by David Willetts[/url] for some more insight into the generational differences.

Are the current economic difficulties just the fault of incompetent/self serving politicians?

Yes is the politicians fault, lets blame someone else.

FFS, we all make our own bed...

Yet people still vote for them

but they're not though are they, more and more people are not voting.

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Importantly; fewer and fewer younger people

Are the current economic difficulties just the fault of incompetent/self serving politicians?

Partly. The deregulation that our modern system encourages has allowed corporates (and I include banks in that definition too) to behave irresponsibly and avoid paying huge sums in tax. Our politicians have become focused on guaranteeing a cushy existence for large corporations at everyone else's expense. It's called Corporate Welfare.

Right now, the economic difficulties that look likely to be on the horizon are absolutely the fault of politicians. I hate to bring up the Referendum again, but there will be economic fallout from this.

Or is it because for the past 30 years we've all put personal short term material gain before long term stability and invested in a system that isn't sustainable?

I agree with the above too. We've been sold debt cheaply as a means of ameliorating low wage growth for a vast swathe of workers. We're more in debt that ever before and a growing portion of the economy is going towards propping that debt up, lest the whole system collapse.

The last few governments have been paralysed into fear at the prospect of an asset price collapse akin to the one experienced back in the late eighties/early nineties when Negative Equity was widespread and as such have wilfully failed to address the housing market, for example. Politicians know that there isn't enough housing...you think the shortage of new properties is purely down to NIMBYism and accident? It's deliberate.

Yes is the politicians fault, lets blame someone else.

FFS, we all make our own bed...

Bit of an unfair quote seeing as the full comment seems to pretty much agree with you 🙂

Personally I'm glad I don't have the same crap to put up with as my parents and grandparents had.

I'm really greatful for health and technology and a small amount of spare income.

Only thing that's worry at the moment is the feeling it's all teetering on the brink of regressing back to the crap with a widening weath gap and an increasing unafordability of homes for the next generation coming along.

Not sure if that's just part of getting older though, maybe that's why old Victorian Industrialists built towns for workers and got all Philanthropic.

Bit like the Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg's of the world are doing today.

Importantly; fewer and fewer younger people

but they're not though are they, more and more people are not voting.

Not sure if that's just part of getting older though, maybe that's why old Victorian Industrialists built towns for workers and got all Philanthropic.

Bit like the Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg's of the world are doing today.

I find that apt, as I sit in a house originally build for a victorian idustrialist supervisor who worked for the now flattened/forgotten major industry player of our town in 1906, battering away on a keyboard...

Those that don't bother to vote are just as culpable. Politicians won't offer them anything to vote for if they don't have to.

Some Victorian industrialists were philanthropists (mostly the Quaker ones, anti-religionists take note), but some, maybe even most were pretty nasty.

Anyway. The voting system is crap. We had a referendum to change that. With the options defined by the people who were voted in by the crap system, who also did the campaigning. Hmmmmmm....

Those that don't bother to vote are just as culpable. Politicians won't offer them anything to vote for if they don't have to.

Agree it's chicken and egg, no idea how you break that circle.

Slightly off topic but a bit relevant:
A brief anecdote about how living standards have changed in living memory.
My father was born in the early 1930's. He was delivered at home and whilst there was no doctor or midwife present his (not very well off) parent's had to pay the doctor for his care immediately afterward. The rented house he was brought up in on the Hampshire/Surrey/West Sussex border had no electricity, no central heating, an outside toilet and no bathroom-when they had a bath it was in the kitchen.

He now lives in a house he paid for, with all the modern conveniences we have all come to expect. He genuinely never takes any of this for granted. One of the most telling conversations I had with him was when I once asked why he installed so many lights around the house, and uses them all. "Because I grew up in the dark, this is one of my luxuries"

Agree it's chicken and egg, no idea how you break that circle.

I don't think the Lib Dems particularly helped on that front.

The absurdity of the situation in the in order to appease the banks by QE has driven down gilt returns, combined with the deregulation of pensions and pensioners investing in buy-to-lets because their pensions are worth less. Result is fewer houses for sale and higher rents - of course no Government isn going to disenfranchise the baby-boomers who are keen to maintain the status quo. Conversely, young people have massive choice in terms of education, travel and opportunity - the fact that some chose to study non-vocational subjects at school, get £50k in debt doing a useless degree and travel the world during their holidays and then moan about having made poor life choices and having no money to buy a house....

Anyone who thinks the current state of the economy is ok, healthy or sustainable is being extraordinarily naive. Emergency low interest rates set in 2009 to try and prevent collapse of the financial system have stayed that way until a couple of months ago, when they were lowered again... it's hardly a good sign is it? If anything it suggests we're even weaker... We're essentially on life support whilst the central banks and governments try and think up a way out of the mess, which clearly they haven't yet.

As said above, we may be materially wealthy but the essentials are historically unaffordable, hence we've killed our economy with an overload of debt.

To be honest I think we'd be in a better place if we'd had a bigger bust in 2008, instead we've largely been saved from the results of our short term consumerism and appetite to debt and so have learned nothing, not changed our behaviour and just dug an even deeper hole for ourselves...

Whilst not everyone shares this bearish view, if you read the financial media (Bloomberg, FT, Economist) you'll recognise there are very serious problems underlying our current period of calm. Not just UK, but Australia, Canada (also facing housing crises and they're not 'small crowded islands'), US, and across Europe... Russia, Brazil, China also in either major recession or have a huge bubble of debt...

The rise of Trump, Front Nationale, UKIP, Brexit vote suggest that even if the strict financial dynamics aren't understood by the population at large, they are increasingly angry and wanting major change.

It may end without some kind of major upset (economic bust or war) but right now I don't think central banks or governments know how to find a route out of the mess. Let's hope they do...

It's pretty nasty IMO to blame the younger generation for buying shiny toys, getting depressed and not voting - they hardly had a part to play in creating the situation did they? It's been building ever since we started bingeing on debt and shopping in the late 80s... the world they face is the one we (I'm aged 43) and our parents created for them...

The baby boomers are the ones that have had it best - benefiting from the biggest house price increases and enjoying pensions that we'll never see. They did have to put up with a difficult post-war period with rationing and bomb sites though.

Some of us middle-aged lot are doing well enough as got into housing in the mid-90s, so benefited from more recent house price boom, but won't be getting nice pensions. As for the young of today? Those that have parents who will/can help them then they should start of adult life OK but student debts for many.

I do find it difficult discussing pensions with those that are retired as they seem to have the attitude that they deserve their decent pension for having worked for 40 years or whatever - maybe they do but we're paying for it and won't have the benefit later.

The baby boomers are the ones that have had it best - benefiting from the biggest house price increases and enjoying pensions that we'll never see. They did have to put up with a difficult post-war period with rationing and bomb sites though.

Some of us middle-aged lot are doing well enough as got into housing in the mid-90s, so benefited from more recent house price boom, but won't be getting nice pensions. As for the young of today? Those that have parents who will/can help them then they should start of adult life OK but student debts for many.

Yep

Can I also point by out that we've had a massive transfer of wealth to the 1% since the crash. As public borrowing and business investment has declined individuals debt has increased to fill the gap. Non of these things are necessarily natural rebalancings they have been political decisions. Yes the baby boomers won out but fighting between age bands doesn't help. They will still eventually spaff all their gains on their children and grand children. Privatising public services, marketisation of the NHS, flexible labour markets, £9k tuition fees for what is now in effect the bare minimum entry level qualification, unregulated rents. All ways for big money to get richer and mr or miss ordinary to face life with one hand tied behind their back.

Some even handed responses and unfortunately the usual tabloid style mud slinging.

This aggressive poor people are not poor enough and need to be punished view pushed in the media interests me. Is confiscating their shiny toys, forcing them to live in the gutter with begging as their only source of income the kind of progress that people are after? I don't know but there's definitely some who would see the reintroduction of workhouses and shoe shine boys as a boon, nice to have shiny shoes and all.

TBH I've always felt a bit sorry for those that show off trinket wealth. It's usually an overcompensating tell-tale sign they are poor and is a somewhat class and cultural thing. You know, loads of gold jewellery, designer cloths, bling motors and excessive consumer electronics yet living in relative squalor. Certainly frowned upon in polite society 😆

Any criticism of the rich is usually batted away as politics of envy. Should there be any intervention in their lifestyle or should we live and let live?

Unfortunately, the "lucky" generation can still vote - and as the EU vote and the Scottish Independence vote showed, they use their vote to go against the wishes of the people who will be around the longest to see the results

And perhaps their greater life experience gives them a different perspective that has merit?

The main thing that recent votes have shown is that older demographics vote and younger ones don't. It is the younger age groups we should look down on because they can't be bothered to cast their vote.

Removing universal suffrage, as you suggest, is a slippery slope. Why limit discrimination just to age (aside from it identifying a group you don't agree with)?

But begging ain't thier only source of income if driven to penury.
Social Security is an insurance, but not only in the way that is portrayed by society, pay in while the going is good, and in times of need the state can step in.
No.
Social Security is an insurance that saves the middle classes being turfed out of their estates and avenues by torch wielding angry mobs

And workhouses have returned, some time back.
Different name, same thing. Work for the roof over your head and meals. Profits for the provider

http://m.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/11599309.Former_Blackburn_bus_depot_set_to_house_the_homeless/

Some of us middle-aged lot are doing well enough as got into housing in the mid-90s, so benefited from more recent house price boom, but won't be getting nice pensions. As for the young of today? Those that have parents who will/can help them then they should start of adult life OK but student debts for many.

Somebody pointed out there were plenty of houses for x in y but do those locations line up with any good source of jobs?

A conversation (half joking) with friends was that as my work uses my brain I should be able to keep working rather than rely on retirement savings. When I can't use my brain to work it's probably time to depart. Problem is the amount of truth in that statement.

A lot of people are relying on their main asset to fund their retirement as pensions have taken a massive hit.

That's extremely dangerous thinking. People forget that when they find some 'sure fire easy way to make money' like this, that loads of other people have had the same idea, at around the same time...

So what's going to happen is a whole generation will start selling their houses (whether first homes or their 'BTL portfolio' and expect to get current prices. They're forgetting two things:
1. No buyers at those prices as no-one younger than them will have any equity as they've been renting as buying has been unaffordable for so long
2. Loads of other people will be selling up at the same time - massive reversal of the whole 'supply/demand' thing... and what happens when supply exceeds demand? Prices fall...

I was hoping to buy a house this year but everything I read in the financial papers and thinking about stuff like this and the demographic changes as all the boomers go into care/die off and sell their houses.... well I think I'll be buying at the very peak of the bubble and will spend 25 years paying interest on a massive debt, watching the 'value' of the asset steadily drop year on year - tens of thousands of pounds down the drain...

Having friends who are in their mid to late 20's with degrees, they're in a situation of having to house share to be able to afford to live on their wages, doing things like working at university as members of staff or as ecologists, not exactly flipping burgers, and with the shortage of housing that there currently is, the time when they might be able to buy a home looks a very long way off (if it'll ever happen).

What was that one of two people were saying about us having more than our parents...?

What was that one of two people were saying about us having more than our parents...?

I'll only retire with a decent pension as I don't have kids. Both my brothers have kids and although they are comfortable, they have no pension to speak of. Both of them had help buying their houses....

My parents are retired, having put three kids through University, have more money than they know what to do with, live in a £1m house (which cost them £3.5k in 1970) and have already given away their holiday home as their estate is so large they wanted to reduce inheritance tax. They both started out as teachers....

Kryton57 - Member

Really? At my age now my parents were working 4 jobs between them

OK, but did they each add as much value as 2 of you? Technology is a multiplier, one person can do more work now than several in our parents' time. My first job was in a bank branch, there was me and a computer doing more in a day than the 8 people that used to sit in the back office we used as a cupboard, to do essentially the same job. Was I 8 times better off? No. Nothing new here of course, essentially labour saving devices that make an individual more productive have always been used to lay off staff and pay the one remaining worker pretty much the same. Something something, ownership of the means of production, something.

Nothing new here of course, essentially labour saving devices that make an individual more productive have always been used to lay off staff and pay the one remaining worker pretty much the same.

And where this goes wrong is where industries collapse - there was a famous case in a Clyde shipyard where they used to have three-man teams drilling holes in the steel plates. then they got a fancy drilling machine which only needed one operator. But the unions protested, so the three-man team stayed and they just took turns using the machine 😀

I am part of the lucky generation for whom outcomes largely exceeded expectations - helped in no part by an over-reliance on leveraging our future. Oh and no world wars unlike out parents/grandparents

The Millieniums have been bought up with absurdly high expectations - they are all brilliant, they can all get what they want, no one loses, not one fails, the sky is the limit - which will be way above the likely outcomes. The resulting baggage will be hard for many to bear.

I was hoping to buy a house this year but everything I read in the financial papers and thinking about stuff like this and the demographic changes as all the boomers go into care/die off and sell their houses.... well I think I'll be buying at the very peak of the bubble and will spend 25 years paying interest on a massive debt, watching the 'value' of the asset steadily drop year on year - tens of thousands of pounds down the drain...

You've been voicing that opinion on here for some time now. How much further away from being on the property ladder are you now than when you started?

Even without any immigration the UK's population is going to increase by 2.2 Million by 2024. So no, there is not likely to be a house price crash any time soon. In fact, given the current rate of builidng - it is likely to get much much worse and will become a big political issue as millions of bloated red faced ukip voting nimbys choke on their breakfasts over housing estates being built on their favourite walks and the fact that too many brown people will move into them.

I am part of the lucky generation for whom outcomes largely exceeded expectations - helped in no part by an over-reliance on leveraging our future. Oh and no world wars unlike out parents/grandparents

The Millieniums have been bought up with absurdly high expectations - they are all brilliant, they can all get what they want, no one loses, not one fails, the sky is the limit - which will be way above the likely outcomes. The resulting baggage will be hard for many to bear.

Correction, your generation is the one that gave up on trying to make the world a better place for their children. Millenials aren't spoiled, what they want are places to live and a clean environment - both of which your generation pissed up the wall. It's not millenials that vote for selfish economic policies because they feel entitled, it's your generations - ours would gladly pay higher taxes to have a good state health and education system.

The people I hear using your snearing line of reasoning in real life, are usually fat ****ing red faced alcoholic UKIP voters who resemble Nick Griffin, drive beemers and live in some 500k East Midlands or Essex McMansion - because the real rich - the fund managers that I come into contact with in London are usually further left.

Tom - you havent corrected anything

I am not proud of "my generations" track record far from it

But I worry for the millenials especially as their expectations will not be met - go long anti-depressant manufacturers in your ISAa and pensions, demand will rise rapidly as a result

You're right in that regard THM, it's just that I usually hear that line trotted out by the Mail etc.

If the millenials could actually look up from their mobile phones once every couple of years and make their way to the ballot box maybe they'd see some changes.

"An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The Mexican replied, “only a little while. The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The American then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siestas with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine, and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life.” The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”

To which the American replied, “15 – 20 years.”

“But what then?” Asked the Mexican.

The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions!”

“Millions – then what?”

The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”

scotroutes - Member
If the millenials could actually look up from their mobile phones once every couple of years and make their way to the ballot box maybe they'd see some changes

You actually think that politics is a once every 4 years participation event?
I write to my elected representative at least every week during sessions of parliament.
It's our job to hold them to account

One step at a time!

I write to my elected representative at least every week during sessions of parliament.

About what?
And they're still your MP during the summer. Send them postcards!

About what?

The campaign to have stw banned.
And mumsnet

[i]Anyone who thinks the current state of the economy is ok, healthy or sustainable is being extraordinarily naive.[/i]

Funnily enough I said the same thing back in the mid 80's - life goes on . . .

Any coincidence regarding who was in government in the 80's d'ya think..

Any coincidence regarding who was in government in the 80's d'ya think..

If you want to take it to points scoring then your probably one of those that got above the parapet.
Being caught on the edge of generations

I am part of the lucky generation for whom outcomes largely exceeded expectations - helped in no part by an over-reliance on leveraging our future. Oh and no world wars unlike out parents/grandparents
The Millieniums have been bought up with absurdly high expectations - they are all brilliant, they can all get what they want, no one loses, not one fails, the sky is the limit - which will be way above the likely outcomes. The resulting baggage will be hard for many to bear.

Take most of the older generation out and let them start today and it would be a very different story.

As for voting you way out of trouble the problem is the economy is so loaded towards it's current state that a gentle redirection might be a little tricky.

unrealistic expectations were sown by a generation who got everything they wanted, bounced up a property market, borrowed against massive equity that they did nothing to acquire, safe in the knowledge that their pensions were protected and their future locked in and so on...

They worked hard, it was expected, and rewarded.

and as for working hard, guess who will be funding the retirement plans as most people in final salary schemes paid in less then they expect to take
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/08/13/retail-pension-black-hole-widens-by-6bn-to-match-annual-profit/
http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/pension-crisis-looming-as-uk-firms-face-800bn-black-hole-1-4084637
See also the post office/RM and British Steel/Corus/Tatta a pension problem with a steel works.

and if I work as hard will I get the same reward?

No, but it ain't their fault.
But I doubt you'll work that hard...

and fault is not what people are looking for, ways forward would be a good one.

But I doubt you'll work that hard...

f you think the current situation is sustainable then great, trying to be objective it's not.

Got to love the sweeping generalisations,