To feel depressed for the future for 'treadmill families'?

[user1478265589]

A report on the BBC website today says more and more people are having to run, just to stay still, and that's the experience of many people I know. I don't even know what can be done about it, it's just really depressing...

• Millions of workers - particularly women - are trapped in low pay

• Only one in eight children from low-income backgrounds is likely to become a high-income earner as an adult

• From the early years through to universities and the workplace, there is an entrenched and unbroken correlation between social class and success

• Despite some efforts to change the social make-up of the professions, only 4% of doctors, 6% of barristers and 11% of journalists are from working-class backgrounds.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-37987166

I think those who support more "Right Wing" policies often have a more optimistic (but in my view completely unrealistic) view of human nature

I think they either think that they are successful because of hard work and good choices OR they don't really care about some people being poor, outside their own bubble OR they are protecting their own interests and current success in the system as it is.

The thing is that some people do make bad choices, but being born into an affluent family is enormously helpful. I never understand the objection to inheritance tax personally why should I inherit say 500K and someone else gets nothing? It just protects the wealth from generation to generation. OK there is the case where some 18-year old's parents die and they have to sell their house, but they are surely still better off than if the parents had nothing?

I agree with many of the points made and I think there's a major issue with relative salaries e.g. the CEO relative to the cleaner. Also many essential jobs are undervalued.

I do think that overpopulation is going to make this worse though and yet hardly anyone seems to be worried about it. I know the government are worried about AI etc but with increasing automated work that can be done by robots, there still seem to be people who don't wonder how their several children will get work.

Shove mentioned robot lawyers - we haven't actually got those in use yet, it's being worked on and I think it's a long way from actually happening. But many other jobs will be easily automated. That said, I'm surprised voice recognition software isn't better - five years ago, I thought audio typing would have gone completely by now.

I agree with a very early poster here (userbignumber) about creating a beautiful life. We can do this through literature, music, film etc Life is becoming more difficult and the way through is having an active inner life and imagination- that's where the arts come in. The problem is the powers that be see no value to the arts in mainstream education reading a book it doesn't earn money, but it can keep you sane in hard times.

Completely agree with you Op. I don't earn enough to cover nursery fees so haven't returned to work. My husband can't afford to drop days to share childcare because we wouldn't be able to pay our bills.
I'm instead doing a degree when my baby is asleep, but I wanted to use my experience to teach, yet that career is being torn apart.
Success has nothing to do with "hard work". I have never not worked hard.

It's hard to create a 'beautiful life' when yours does not include stable housing. The rental industry in this country is a joke.

Right leaning people realise that other people say altruistic things, but realise that humans are primarily selfish and look after their own and their families needs first.
Left leaning people don't realise this and are upset when others let them down.

Those that have want to keep it that way. So the systems created by them are designed to keep the majority of people working away and not sharing the wealth.

We're slipping back to pre-war Britain that was based on a Victorian economy. The politicians that changed that did so because 1. They realised the people were healthier if they were able to access healthcare and a good standard of living and 2. that people deserved it and weren't lazy layabouts. Working alongside different classes in the 2ww taught them that.

What has happened is that we are a couple of generations on. The rich no longer rub shoulders with the lower classes. They no longer see how the rest of us live and work. They just see numbers and want us to work longer, harder.

Sadly, it takes a disaster like the black death (where serfs were in short supply) or a major revolution like France's (where the working class were encouraged to riot by the middle class) or a major war to equalize people again and for the system to work for all and not just those with property and power.

I don't want any of that to happen. I think the tories have been very clever making those working hard blame those who can't rather than those who are forcing them to do it. Very clever. Divide and conquer. That's the only reason I can understand working people ever voting tory, because they don't want equality as they don't want a level playing field for all.

councilsspend£3.5bnontemphousing

Teaandkitkat:
We have a lad at our work just now who is on a placement with us, a charity pay us to pay him to work for us.

He's 20, he's not even working class because none of his family work. His parents don't work, his siblings don't work, his friends don't work. His grandfather worked in the pits till he was injured in his 30s, he has no other example of a working person to look up to.

I am so depressed for his future, and that of his peers. He hardly turns up to work on time- his alarm didn't go off, the bus was late, his cat was sick. He's almost sick with nerves about office small talk and we're a really small, friendly bunch, he'd never survive in a call centre or a bank. I had to show him how to make the tea when it was his turn on the rota, he just has absolutely no idea at all.

It's going to take a superhuman effort by him to pull himself up, above everyone else around him, when his pals are sitting about all day on their playstations. I don't honestly think he really sees the point of turning up to work. He doesn't even have the incentive to get on the treadmill in the first place. Is that more depressing than working your bum off for next to nothing? I don't know.

I so hope he can do it though, we are all trying so hard to help him

^^^
You, my friend, are making a difference. Bloody well done.

Well,I came from a poor background....didnt recive a penny from my parents since I was 18. I put myself through uni,paid back the student loan.now 2 of my 4 kids are about to do the same,put themselves throu uni without our help,it can be done.ther other 2 arnt old enough yet.

*I would not have a problem with state funding for mainly technical degrees such as medicine/nursing and a few others (can't think of examples) that are generally deemed to benefit society.

I have a problem with this - being a big fan of education for education's sake, I believe all educated people are of benefit to society. Everyone should therefore have access to free education to as high a level as they want to go.*

And therein lies the problem...a country can't afford to educate people to the highest level they want to go to, just for the sake of it.

As pps have said There have been too many years of school leavers being shoehorned into higher education without a thought to what that degree might be useful for. A university education is a means, but for too many years has almost been seen as the end. There will never be enough "graduate level" jobs for every single person with a degree simply because it's not what a lot of jobs require. However employers are now faced with a huge number of very educated people going after low level jobs. So of course they're going to take the more educated candidates, leaving the lesser qualified people who would have traditionally taken these jobs, on the scrap heap.
The job I do does not require a degree, it require some skill but not higher education. We're now in the position where the "staff" are more highly qualified than the management! This has happened because of what I've outlined above about jobs not needing qualifications, but employers being faced with more highly
Educated candidates

I think it is great to ask the question but important to be wary of answers that seem too easy. we are consumers, now that is even changing to renters of the simplest things like a software program or Spotify etc. Lots of work is casualised ( or independent contractors) where the expectations from employers is far from what casual used to mean. Globalisation seems like a treadmill but we probably only have our selves to blame for the last few generations of leaders and companies. We probably lived too high compared to other countries that we benefited from.
I think superannuation laws took some choice away from planning for our whole life and helped put decisions in the hands of fund managers, businesses go overseas for better bottom lines for shareholders, but the share holders aren't just some group of funds a few steps lower they are employees who also need to keep a job.
Sorry about the rant.
I think co ops are good, communities should try and create more generalised ones. Not just for food but anything that could help people make ends meet. Imagine if there was no big invisible uber but local based ubers, or something like that.

SheSparkles, I totally see your point.

re the beautiful life thing - fine if you have head space after worrying about paying rent, but I don't want to see govt funding go to that. I would far rather it went to better social housing etc.

Bigger tax breaks for private donors funding the arts - I'd go for that.

I think one reason landlords are not held to higher standards is that government thinks they'll lose a bunch of private landlords and have to - gasp - actually manage housing themselves. So the selfishness of our politicians is a big issue here.

Our council, while cutting arts funding, still spends a hell of a lot and many of the events they fund are very poorly attended. Meanwhile, several years ago now, they put massive cuts across adult education services - for practical courses. Shame.

Do temp agencies still do any kind of free training for temps or has that gone too? I found those really useful at 18/19.

Haven't rtft but I can't help but think that sometimes the expectation of low income families being unable to achieve certain things makes it happen.

My mum was 17 when she had me, single parent on benefits, living in a council house in a economically depressed town. At primary school the focus was getting a job after school, not uni. University was for geniuses, not kids like us.

Luckily I was always told by my mum that I could do anything anyone else could, and despite being "too poor" to go, I managed to get into private school on a scholarship. At this school it was expected that you would go to uni. Everyone that I know from high school went to uni, whereas I don't know of anyone from primary school that did.

Growing up in a low income family doesn't have to limit your whole life... you just have to work that bit harder to even out the playing field

I do think that overpopulation is going to make this worse though and yet hardly anyone seems to be worried about it. I know the government are worried about AI etc but with increasing automated work that can be done by robots, there still seem to be people who don't wonder how their several children will get work

I worry about overpopulation. There's loads of jobs that will be lost to AI (driverless trucks etc).

The more different types of people a person is exposed to (race, sex, economic background, class), the more empathy a person has to those people. Our leadership, by and large, has mixed with its own which is how we've got here.
Comprehensive education and higher taxes well spent is the key!

Yes, you're quite right to be depressed about it. Ultimately the young have to pay for the excesses of their parents' and grandparents' generation, because politicians dare not take wealth the older generations have accumulated at the expense of the younger ones.

The only realistic way for the younger people to acquire wealth is to inherit it; the rest of us are screwed.

It will only get worse, in a few years people will look back at the 2010s and marvel about how socially mobile we were! It's shit, and will get shitter. The people who have the money want to keep it and to make more of it. It's human nature.

That would explain why our retired parents are a great deal better off than we are.

When I left school with 'O' levels I got a job that required me to attend lessons tailored to the job (taught by lectures also employed in that field)at least one morning and one evening a week. So I earned money and by the time I was 22yrs had passed exams equivalent to a degree. Also I was very experienced in the job.
Nowadays a degree from a University is required to start in that job.
I think this was a much better way of doing it-- there were people from rich and poor backgrounds in the system and we could all 'get on' if we worked at it.

If you want one book on why equality is good for all try "The Spirit Level": the authors set up the equality trust which has loads of info available at www.equalitytrust.org.uk .Daniel Dorling writes on this sort of subject.

I found KickAssAngel's post interesting: "I think that somehow we forget just how much of a treadmill life has always been. Before industrialization the life expectancy of labourers was very low...Since industrialization life has got better"

Not quite. Read up on the early Victorian times, the early years of industrialisation were not an improvement for the vast majority of people. Remember all those kids shoved up chimneys and down the mines? Many people did indeed literally still put their backs into earning their living.

"It is only since WW2 that people have even thought that they could own a house, plan a lengthy retirement, have serious amounts of leisure time and the resources to have hobbies etc to any great extent."

And now those opportunities are regressing. Why? Technology is improving, but the improvements are not being used to make most people's lives easier. Productivity is much higher than it was in those times: GDP per capita is much higher. We could choose to use all those resources to continue to make people's lives easier. We could use it to reduce the working week for all for instance at the same wages. Instead we are allowing a smaller and smaller group of people to grab more and more of the wealth. I'm glad shove mentioned the death of the public sector as this is the key.

The Victorian age was a slow stumbling step away from the upheavals of early industrialization, towards creating a fairer state. It didn't just happen: it was a choice, a choice that the social upheavals of the wartime increased. We chose to create the public sector, the NHS, social housing, schools and education for all, libraries, access to law for all, and as you say everyone was better off for it. It was a compromise, a negotiation against the natural inequality-driven apocalypse that Marx foresaw capitalism causes. Withdraw it, and we regress.

Caring responsibilities call. Shame as this is a fascinating topic for me!

Men came home from WW2, trained to kill, armed in many cases, they expected to have fought for something, they expected change.
They got it, the rich expressed gratitude for their wealth being saved.
The rich don't need the working classes so much anymore.

The way we are heading worries me too. I now see teaching assistants jobs being advertised - and taken with people who have masters degrees.

i think unfortunately children are being given a huge sense of you can be what you want but I think it's more complex than that. Luck plays a huge part in life. I'm not sure more generalist degrees are better though, I have two undergrad degrees. One in a science, one a vocational one. I am by far more employable with the vocational one.

I think it's chiefly the fault the education system, among other things. I'm from a country where all children, rich and poor, go to the same schools. Private schooling gives children a helping hand up the ladder and it's unfair; children from poor inner city communities where schools aren't always as good as they should be are at a disadvantage from the moment they enter the education system.
I also hate the obsession with social class here, and I don't think that helps matters either; but that is probably slightly off topic.

If Labour back in the 70s when they decided to abolish grammar schools had gone the whole hog and got rid of public schools, or at very least their charitable status, things would have been very different today. Now they are just tinkering at the edges and the ruling elite have a stronger hold than ever. Even the arts or sport are nor longer the ladder to success for working-class youngsters as they've been over-run by those that have been privately educated - far better facilities, teachers etc at those schools, giving those kids far more help and confidence,