To think it’s crazy that National Minimum wage is £27k

Oh yes it’s terrible, all we care about now is that despite working 4 times as hard as your generation we cannot live half as well. There are people struggling to live while working full time. Youngsters working all hours who can’t afford rent. Working people are struggling to live. It is not a trivial problem.

Is this going to be the latest new thing your generation comes out with to justify yourselves? I’ve been listening to it endlessly for 30 years, there’s one excuse or whining misdirection after another. It’s tiresome.

Oh yes it’s terrible, all we care about now is that despite working 4 times as hard as your generation we cannot live half as well. There are people struggling to live while working full time. Youngsters working all hours who can’t afford rent. Working people are struggling to live. It is not a trivial problem.

Is this going to be the latest new thing your generation comes out with to justify yourselves? I’ve been listening to it endlessly for 30 years, there’s one excuse or whining misdirection after another. It’s tiresome.

You obviously live in refined circles! I have minimal private pensions (v. small defined contribution), still paying my mortgage until I'm 70 and then will need to release equity or move to a cheaper area (can't downsize as I'm already in a one-bed. There are plenty of us that can't afford any luxuries. The average single pensioner has an income of just over £17k per annum - that is not a great deal to live on, and definitely not enough for three holidays a year on top of utility bills and food!

Edited to say these figures are inclusive of state pension, benefits etc and from the Government website.

Agree ❤

Thank you SO MUCH for explaining this about self employed business owners. As someone who has always been salaried, I have been mystified as to how some of the wealthiest people I know are enabling their children to qualify as pupil premium at school. It must be that they are drawing a 12k salary from their (extremely lucrative) business.

Yeah this!

Hardly worth her posting what he tells HMRC his income is. All of his bills, new cars, holidays are paid how exactly 🙄

No pensioner I know has less than 3 holidays a year. I don’t know anyone wealthy, it’s just that pensioners have no housing costs, and guaranteed income from the state to top up their private pensions.

Some pensioners might be poor, but not most. They also have no mortgage or rent to pay which right now would be more than half of the minimum wage someone earns (if they’re buying a house now).

I really don’t see how pointing out how things are for average people has anything to do with me me me

But all young people care about is house prices.
Not lesbian and gay people thrown out the services for their sexuality and losing their pensions.
Not the extreme racism of the sixties and seventies which is sadly coming back.
Not single mums forced to give up their kids.
Not the many young homeless people in the early eighties sleeping under cardboard homes on the street.
Not lack of safeguarding which saw many children being abused.
Not the literal cages some autistic non verbal teenagers were kept in in mental institutions.
Not lesbians sectioned into mental hospital for being a lesbian.
Or gay men being sent to prison for responding to being chatted up by an undercover policeman.
Not kids in care who were on their own from 16.
Etc etc.
It t was a good time if you were white, straight, able bodied and middle class. Now is a much better time for anyone else.

Yet it’s not really enough to live on 😢

My first job paid £7.5k per year and I thought I was loaded! And I’m not ancient.

Now 2 people on NMW earn over £50k between them yet it’s really not enough these days.

How??There is absolutely no way you could have holidays, kids, new car on 20,000 unless somebody bought you a house. Or is your rent paid with UC? Or somebody bought your house and a car. Or you get PIP mobility and get a car with that.

I cannot believe your reply to this. Do You know something? Your generation deserve all you get. Me, me, me.

Well we get by nicely with kids,pets, new cars, holidays,no credit owed to anyone or anything. And get around £20k a year between us as I'm part time atm dh full..Takes good balancing and communication and we do fine and dandy

On AVERAGE for most people, yes they had it better. Certain groups may not have done but that doesn’t mean that on the whole older people have had and are continuing to have an absolute breeze of an existence

Most posters are in England and speaking from that perspective.

A job for life does not exist in most sectors. Where are these jobs?

Of course right to buy was an abomination - for people now. For people who experienced it, it was a gift from god. In many ways it contributes to the envy that will be felt by younger people - older people had everything and in doing so have totally fucked younger generations over.

People still benefit from final salary pensions if they are the terms the signed up to - many teachers, nhs staff etc who have retired in the last 5-10 years have done so on final salary pensions.

Your endowment mortgage is irrelevant - you had the opportunity to get one. They were an awful idea granted but for many people they allowed them to buy a house they otherwise couldn’t have managed and it worked out fine. At the end of the day they still have it and can now sell it and make hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Why are you so opposed to the idea that the older generation had things better than people do now? They objectively did.

Not for people in the deindustrialised north.

Yeah that's what everyone said in the early eighties. Manufacturing destroyed, very high unemployment and on the brink of nuclear war. Except they were wrong. Yes manufacturing was destroyed, but life still got better.

All arrows point towards worse!