To think that despite the economy, 'we've never had it better', broadly speaking?

[ShellyBoobs]

I know things are grim at the moment for a lot of people in certain aspects of life but in the western world, on average, as a people, we spend less of our income on food and fuel than we did 20 years ago. We live longer than anyone could have imagined just a couple of generations ago and we have opportunities that were unimagineable half a century earlier.

It's not that bad, is it?

[lesley33]

mumeeee - If you compare life now,to when we had a boom just 2 or 3 years ago, then lots of people are worse off - benefit cuts, wage cuts, redundancies, etc.

However, recessions will always happen on a cyclical basis. I think if we compare ourselves to people 20, 40,60 years ago,then in general people are better off.

The one exception to that is traditional middle class jobs from 70's and back. The amount of people university educated was small as were the number of traditional middle class jobs. They were better off and their position has been eroded with the growth of university education and middle class jobs.

[lesley33]

Below are historical mortgage interest rates. Even though house prices were lower, mortage payments were very high because of the high interest rate. i bought my terraced house in 1989 when mortgage interest rates were 15.75% making my monthly payments very high.

People forget about the concerns of the past. At the time inflation was a big concern for many people.

1971 7.92% 1988 12.13%
1972 8.08% 1989 15.75%
1973 12.10% 1990 16.63%
1974 13.90% 1991 13.42%
1975 12.77% 1992 11.29%
1976 13.90% 1993 7.79%
1977 10.21% 1994 7.35%
1978 11.25% 1995 8.15%
1979 15.96% 1996 7.89%
1980 18.17% 1997 8.56%
1981 15.23% 1998 9.21%
1982 13.80% 1999 7.33%
1983 11.84% 2000 7.98%
1984 11.64% 2001 7.08%
1985 14.17% 2002 6.00%
1986 12.71% 2003 5.69%
1987 11.50%