Young people in the UK have it tough

I googled it and got this.

https://taxjustice.net/2025/07/24/the-myth-busters-guide-to-the-millionaire-exodus-scare-story/

Such a low bar for the people who are the future of our nation.

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I think it could be much easier if there was a gov looking at tax barriers etc rather than hammering SMEs as this one does. And start ups do happen but we have higher barriers to growing them, getting bigger and taking on more employees is a plus not a bad thing.

Especially as AI, marketing and SM make reach easier. We’ve really got to get on this as soon just under 1 in 5 young people will be out of work.

You're ageist little rant has been reported.

Exactly! Anyone can start a business!

(Of course, it would be far easier to get a SME going if there was more investment available and less hoarding of cash in assets such as property, and also if multinational corporations didn't hold such a monopoly in some areas).

Is it really necessary to be so rude? The vast majority of economists agree that the UK economy is around 8% smaller than it would be if we hadn’t left our closest and largest trading partner. And I frankly don’t believe any job applicant offers to work for half the wage on offer.

Of course undercutting wages is possible. I recruited engineering jobs paying anything form £30k to £75k and Europeans (Spain, Portugal, Poland etc) all offered to do those jobs at half the going rate. This depressed wages and still does.

Yet it's the young that complain about low wages but then are most likely t o support uncontrolled immigration that suppresses their wages and pushes up housing demand/cost. It's really very simple but the young complain about wage levels and house pricing costs whilst voting for parties (Greens for example) that want uncontrolled immigration that will makie these costs worse for them.

Poor peoples wages have only ever increased signifiucantly when labour is in short supply (look at history). Yet all left leaning parties welcome mass immigration as it keeps the poor poor so it retains their voter base. The young love it too but then whinge when their wages are suppressed and housing expensive and in short supply. Basic economics that they have zero grasp of.

Well you'd think so. But lots just can't see it.

Its so depressing seeing young people graduate then years down the line, still not being able to get a proper first job.
The pub just doesn't count.

Young people who can't get on the career ladder then can't be making any in roads onto the housing ladder either.

And the next step is children.
Young people, who don't have a proper job, who don't have a house, can't seriously consider having a family of their own.

The knock on effect is crazy.
We tell kids to stick in at school, go to uni, get a good job, but the jobs just aren't there for them.

This feels like our reality.
It’s ok where we are for young employment and transport connections.
Which makes it feel like we can’t move, as we want to, until the teens are established.

It’s just another layer of consideration that we as parents have to take into account nowadays (along with education costs and decent house deposits).

There’s a benefit cap and it’s slightly more than the cost of two state pensions.

It’s not a waiting room. If you want to have a go you can. Start something new, create jobs.

The increased costs in paying to support pensioners certainly seem to be more palatable to the British electorate. Which is (checks notes)....disproportionately made up of pensioners. Funny that.

I wonder if the increased costs to paying to support pensioners might be more palatable to the population that paying to keep younger people in an extended adolescence. Surely most people want to see the young growing up and working and building their lives. I think after being in an unemployed rut for multiple years it's hard to snap out of even if the economy does improve.

It's weird that you see "wealth creators" as a discrete class.

If the global super rich do leave (and as far as I know, there's no evidence of the kind of mass exodus that was predicted), maybe that will open the field up for a few more people to have a go.

It's actually not.

Basic rate of pension credits for a couple: £346 weekly.

Basic rate of UC for a single mum + 2 DC: £238.

Because obviously pensioners eat more than teenagers, I suppose.

I think it depends on the area.
In some areas of the country it seems extremely rough for young people with horrendous house prices, hard to get work after graduation, not being able to leave home due to life circumstances etc.

Other areas a lot of young people are doing OK.

Well they'd be savings to be made by not paying whole families benefits and top up benefits.
Cheaper to have 2 folk on pension than families on benefits.

No they don't because they were far removed from the reality of it and instead spent too much time developing conspiracy theories.

Maybe those still ranting about it now should look at how the UK government approached it right at the beginning, letting people travel far and wide then bringing the illness into the country. Those countries who locked down earlier in the pandemic seemed to have fared better. Also other countries have moved on and don't appear to be mired in the "but lockdown ......" mindset. I haven't heard anyone here mention it for a long time.

I don’t completely deny lockdown might have been needed. But it could have been much shorter, and much less damaging. One problem was that the government had frightened the public so much, so it was politically impossible to say “prolonging lockdown will cause much more harm than good. We will end lockdown now (summer 2020) and protect the vulnerable.” But the public were much too frightened for that.

Hmm. Easy with hindsight to rant on but early covid it was a serious situation. My bil was a doctor on the wards Jan 2021 his hospital came very close to not able to cope. I’m not sure some of these passionate anti lockdown types appreciate how serious it got.

One reason I am extremely vociferous about the damage caused by lockdowns is precisely because every time anyone tried to point out the harms, it was immediately shut down with “shut up and stop murdering grannies”. Debate and discussion simply wasn’t allowed. Anyone who tried to express concern online was swiftly cancelled. Mob hysteria took over, especially on mumsnet. Absolutely nothing mattered apart from “saving lives”; and I think many people died as as direct result of lockdown (those who missed checks for other illnesses, but we weren’t allowed to talk about that). And the government saw fit to communicate with the public by “frightening the pants off them” - their words, not mine. I feel that we have a duty to resist being governed in this way, otherwise it will become a new normal. That is what I intend to fight. The way that the government deliberately frightened the public into compliance, without a shred of public resistance worries me much more than the virus ever did. Even now, the harms of lockdowns are still being minimised. There is a tacit agreement between all the parties of “sssssh… we don’t talk about lockdown, all the harms were caused by the pandemic, and Partygate was a useful distraction from the real scandal of lockdown”.

If the government had expressed more regret about the harms of lockdown while it was happening, and vowed to restore normalcy as soon as possible, I wouldn’t have minded so much. But it felt as if we were being conditioned to accept it as permanent, with phrases such as “new normal”.

Now that the precedent of lockdown and frightening the public has been set, I am concerned it may become the “default” strategy, once the horror has been largely forgotten, and that a future government might decide that frightening the public “works”, and this could be done again. By some accounts, even the government didn’t expect so much compliance, and I feel that we must fight the idea of lockdown and fear mongering being a “winning” strategy.

So, I intend to fight it tooth and nail, and I will keep shouting about the harms of lockdowns, until lockdown’s cheerleaders admit that it caused great harm, and there’s more of a sense of “never again”. Right now, it feels as if the lockdown and fear strategy is shelved and kept warm, ready to be used again.

And before anyone says “we won’t be able to afford it again”: we couldn’t afford it then, either. Look at where we are now.

Brexiteer, Economics Fellow at the IEA and one of the very few economists who thinks Brexit is a success.