Modern life doesn’t work

If you want to improve productivity you need to get more people working and those people working more efficiently and effectively.

You need investment, something we haven’t had for years.

I was comparing to the European countries you mentioned originally eg Germany & France. I would argue lifestyle wise we are closer to those countries than Kenya but you can disagree.

I haven’t read the full thread yet so I might be repeating things I know

The problem is when people complain about how busy and chaotic life is, they want to be the ones taking it slower and relaxing more, but they’ll want everyone else to be doing the hard work. They might not even think they think this but they do.

So let’s say a woman wants to be a SAHM. The father I’m sure doesn’t want to be working himself to death to support them all so maybe he wants to do 3 days a week 9-5. So a nice balance for him as well as he can be home a lot for his kids. Now the couple has three children, two of whom have a disability/SEN. Those children need doctors and specialists. Maybe even emergency ones at times. One might have a restricted diet. Mum will also I’m sure like to shop regularly to get the freshest food to cook from scratch. The children go to school 9-2 during the week. The parents would like to take their children occasionally at weekends to enriching activities like softplay, music lessons, swimming etc. One of them is sensory seeking so loves rollercoasters and rides etc. Sometimes the children need to relax with screens/TV as it’s what regulates them after a tiring day out.

So in order to facilitate this lovely life, someone needs to be farming and producing foods. The supermarkets and shops need to be open daily. Teachers need to be in 5 days a week. As well as any TAs and support staff. Someone needs to be opening and staffing the softplays and swimming baths and theme parks. Doctors and specialists need to be available 24 hours a day at A&E and walk in places. People need to be running the electric and water and power places 24 hours a day. People need to be producing the screens and TV shows the kids watch.

You could say that they all could just work part time right? But where are we getting double or triple the doctors from to cover 24 hours a day 7 days a week if they all want to work 3 days a week maximum? And loads of women are now SAHMs? Who is running swimming lessons at weekends if no one wants to work weekends as it’s “family time” or whatever? Some people are having to work harder than this family in order to facilitate this family’s nice relaxing lifestyle.

The family also need money to pay the bills and the nice activities. But that’s all just on dads 3 day a week wage. But he doesn’t want to become a doctor and work 12 hour shifts over the weekend. So he just wants a chilled office job that’s paid enough to support his family. So everything needs to be cheaper to be affordable on his wage. Meaning the staff at those places get paid even less.

Most people aged 60 are still working. I'm sorry if you won't be able to work beyond that, because it does make a difference. I think retirement age does need to increase because people (generally) are living longer and are more healthy. As you say, otherwise it's just not sustainable.

Yes I've always found it strange how people work all hours of the day away from home to afford a house they never have time to be in. Have children they barely see or spend time with. Devote their lives to working for a company that doesn't value them or even know they exist half the time. It's a sad reflection of our society that it generally now takes two full time salaries to be able to afford a home and the average lifestyle. In previous times, you could own a home and raise a family on one salary, and life was a lot simpler. As a family, personally we have chosen to make sacrifices to income in order to live the old fashioned way. I just don't see the point otherwise. I grew up in a 'modern' household where both parents worked. I don't want that chaotic, detached life for my kids.

yep op i agree

sent my 4 year old daughter to breakfast club this morning and shes crying on the way because she wants to eat with me and she says she doesn't get enough time to play when she gets in from after school club at 6.25 (she goes to bed at 7.30) I just constantly feel guilty :(

I often think this when I read wedding threads on here. There was one about a "destination" wedding which was going to cost the guests a fortune, but was a "dream location".
There was another one where a woman planned a reception that was an afternoon tea. She got horrified responses! How can a wedding end at 6pm! Everyone has an evening do! It has to be fully catered! etc etc.
People get themselves into debt with weddings, which is crazy.

Pensions were initially set for a few years payment before death. So not onerous to the tax payer

The reality is we live too long for that system. I dont know the way around it because although we live longer, many of those years may not be healthy years, so theoretically I might live to my mid 80s but be unable to work from around 60.

In the old days perhaps you stopped work at 65 but were dead by 68 (for a male perhaps).

I enjoyed the early days of my working life, when computers were very new, much more than the later years. Staring at a screen all day, rarely having to actually use my brain - it was mind numbingly boring.

Kenya is relevant because it shows how things we take for granted can be radically different. Obviously lots of people are referencing the past and how things have changed but it's also true that people on this planet right now are living much harder lives than us where basic essentials are a much larger percentage of their income.

Your comparison to other European countries is interesting. We know that the countries we are most similar to are experiencing very similar issues so I wonder who you are referring to? If it's the Scandinavian countries then we are simply not comparable to most of them. Denmark has a 34% higher GDP per capita than us and Norway has a 79% higher GDP per capita. They are far richer than us and therefore can afford to do things that we simply can't afford to do. They also have fundamentally different cultures and attitudes to important values such as trust that enables them to adopt policies that simply wouldn't work here.

Nobody said abandon pensioners. It's simply a fact though that the more you incentivise people to work the more they are likely to do it. Lots of people, like OP, find work difficult and stressful. Most would choose not to work if there were no financial implications. If you want to improve productivity you need to get more people working and those people working more efficiently and effectively. This isn't really what most people would consider fun. This is why expectations management is often at the heart of everything. We should expect to work difficult jobs for long hours to pay our way. This should be the norm. Yes, it's disappointing and we all wish we could somehow enjoy all the nice things without doing this but it simply isn't realistic for the vast majority of us.

This narrative is part of the problem though. Pensioners do receive a lot of benefits, it’s not a question of whether they deserve it or not, it’s affording it. And most haven’t paid enough tax for a state pension & the NHS, you would have to be a high earner for decades (the majority aren’t). The ponzi payment model is the problem as we are no longer a pyramid. We already have more over 65s than under 15s, it is not sustainable.

Or do we wish to go back to pre-WWI ,when old people worked till they dropped and ended up in the work house?

What do you think will happen to today’s young when they are old?!

Something that I think has impacted our generation is the age when we start a family. We tend to have children later on in life because of the high cost of buying a house and establishing a career meaning we are often in your 30s when children come along, it then means as women we are raising teens in our 40/50s as well as working fulltime to cover bills and we’re knackered. Then our children have their own children, and they too have children later on in life due to the cost of living, and we are probably in our 60s by now and we look after our grandchildren as a way to help with childcare costs and we’re still knackered then. And we may have our own parents to look after too.

I think also the onset of technology means it is harder to switch off. When I started working many moons ago, I would finish work, commute home and forget about work because there wasn’t a way for me to work remotely. If my boss needed me he would ring me on my house phone (and in all the years I worked then, he contacted me at home once!). Now we get home and still check emails and Teams messages meaning it is harder to just focus on home matters.

Well I bought mine 5 years ago, not in the 90s. I was in my early 40s. Like many people, I rented for years, the time to slowly build a deposit, and increase my income. I'm not saying its easy though, just that expecting to be able to buy a house in central London at 22 is ludicrous.

We decided to simplfy our lives when we got married and started trying for a child.

We're fortunate, don't get me wrong. We both worked in full time jobs and bought a small house we knew we could afford on one salary.

We wanted me to stay at home during pre school years. We cut our cloth accordingly, no holidays, no new cars, very few meals out and takeaways. The carefree life we had as a couple, both earning a good salary, changed enormously.

But it's been so rewarding. We really appreciate things a lot more now, our child had 5 years at home, we spend lots of time together and honestly, we're very relaxed and happy.

I know it's not as simple as I'm making it sound and our situation is unique and not possible for many. But from my experience, living a simpler life has been more than worth it.

Life has only been 'nice' for a small proportion of people, those with enough money from inherited wealth or those lucky enough to go into professions i.e. the middle-classes; everyone else has always struggled

Aren’t the middle classes shrinking though?

But not everyone is in that situation OP

I chose not to marry, to maintain my career, to have one child when I knew I could support us on my own, because relying on others is just too much of a risk.
Now my ds is forecast good a'levels, my mortgage ends in the summer, my job is a 10 minute drive, and while not stunning, my pension should feed me and keep me warm

I've worked full time right the way through apart from one maternity leave. We all make choices and luck also plays a huge part.

I honestly believe we should teach people not to expect the 'happy ever after' of a nuclear family because it's simply not the reality for most.

Some of the pressure too (and source of being unhappy) is 'keeping up with the Joneses' I think, something made so much worse by social media.

It's kinda like we expect to have what we are supposed to have, sold to us by marketing, or we feel a bit of a failure. I think I preferred it when I was younger, not just because things were a bit cheaper but because we had more of a content with what we have attitude.

I doubt pensioners were in the equation about benefits, because most people don't see the state pension in the same way as they see Universal Credit. But, no we can't abandon pensioners, who have, after all, mostly worked for their pensions all their lives. Or do we wish to go back to pre-WWI ,when old people worked till they dropped and ended up in the work house? (Lloyd-George introduced the first state pensions c.1904).

Agree. And even when you can afford to work part time and be there for your kids, in my experience it's not long before work gets "busy" and people start giving you a full time person's work and making comments about how part time doesn't work

My SIL is 80. She was eldest of 5, the rest were boys. My FIL was considered an outlier in his wider family because his daughter stayed on at school, did A levels and went to university. He was told by his brothers that there was no need to educate a girl.

And on the medieval peasant work hours - in no way would I want to be a medieval peasant but I've read that their hours in the fields varied massively across the year and according to need. One article says they had 5 hours of church-mandated breaks and worked about half the days in the year. Some working days were only a few hours long.
But of course that's on top of caring for their animals, weaving, possibly grinding their own flour, etc...

Oh gawd, this is depressingly true 😫

I'd agree with a pp who said there was an element of choice. I work very pt wfh so I get plenty of time with my dcs and in my house. There's social pressure to develop a career and work more but I've not succumbed to it. DH works locally so is home shortly after the dcs are back from school, because we chose to live in a city centre terrace where he can walk back from the office, rather than buying a big detached house in the suburbs with a 1hr+ commute. We are fine financially because we do without many things that others deem essential (eg car, gym membership, cleaner).

You just have to try and make life work for you, not what others think , or are doing.
I live a very simple way of life and never been happier.
No car, l ride a bike no big posh house, a modest 3 bed semi, no fancy holidays because l live amongst fields and forests and that's where I'm happiest.
No stress, no money worries.
I fought a long hard fight to get to where l am now, but it was worth it.
I let go of people, and old patterns and a mindset that wasnt helping me,
l learnt that subtraction was the answer for me, not breaking myself just to obtain more things l didn't need, that didn't make me happy.
I have two very decent young adult sons, one was home educated early teens, school didn't work for him at that stage so we found another direction that proved much more successful.
it takes a lot of strength, faith and courage to create a way of life that feels right for you. Too many people not willing to move out of so called comfort zone and take the risk.

Life is not a gift, it's an imposition.
Not mine, but spot on.

I think a lot of this is nonsense really.

Back in the days you refer to the things you mention were more expensive so naturally people had to go without and make do. I remember this with clothes before the days of Primark etc where a relatively cheap t-shirt used to be around £10 which would be the equivalent of around £25 now. Through necessity we had far less clothes than a teenager would have now. It wasn't because we were somehow morally superior.

When adjusted for inflation, furniture, foreign holidays, TVs etc are all significantly cheaper than they were in decades gone by. In contrast though, housing is more expensive hence people are going without in this area instead by choosing smaller homes or renting.

Imagine in the future if world cruises became cheaper and therefore more accessible to people. We could all hark back to 2026 where everyone 'went without' a world cruise and just made do with a lesser holiday because we were morally superior beings and not because the economic reality has changed.