Do people understand that many of us have lived through high periods of unemployment?

[marymarkle]

There are major issues for young people today with zero hour contracts and high housing costs. But I do get a bit fed up with comments that state that life is much harder for young people now that ever before.

I left school during the Thatcher year. Unemployment was very high and outside London whole communities were decimated by this, I still remember a classmate just before we left coming into school excited because they had secured a job in a factory. Jobs were very hard to get, reaching a peak of 10.8% unemployed in the early 1980's, and that was with them fidding the unemployment figures. And there was no MW, wages were often very very low. Yes house prices were cheaper, but that only benefited those already doing well.

I remember it as a very grim time in our country. While the City was booming and people earned massive bonuses, street homelessness soared, use of illegal drugs soared, as did crime. And many adults in their 50s who lost jobs during this time, never worked again. It was a grim time economically to be young.

I agree tax credits helped keep wages low. We are now competing with Eastern Europe to make stuff so obviously wages will drop. Tax credits didn’t help at all but at the same time salaries may not have caught up either.
I think apprenticeship at 16-18 should be widespread and subsidised.

I think that certain second tier public sector professions have been undermined and hollowed out in recent years. Nursing, for instance, made the mistake of moving to an academic model of professional assessment without questioning the class-based assumptions that underlay the rejection of on-the-job training. They have never quite regained their credibility. Teachers and GPs are suffering from a toxic combination of impossible front-line expectations, diminishing funding and constant political goalpost shifting. The library and information profession spent too long looking inwards trying to justify itself to itself, and failed to keep up with the huge changes brought by digital technology. All this means that the 'proper' job market for graduates is much trickier to navigate than it was in the 70s.

I still think its harder now. There was less of the dog eat dog feeling in work, there was more kinship and community, as that was what was being broken down by Thatcher.
I also went to Uni on a full grant...!
For heavens' sakes you have a debt round your neck the rest of your life now.! I also remember benefitting from the Enterprise Allowance Scheme and vouchers that helped me train, courses for young business people and so on. There was free business training in Croydon, very good too and they gave you a nice lunch to boot.
There is NOTHING like that now.
Never mind young people, I am finding it appallingly tough. There are lots of houses and flats built but only the privileged can afford the prices. There are schemes for young people to get on the Housing ladder but i know people in their 30's still at home with parents as well at working.
We are in a burn out pit of Capitalism, but the only way is up. People need more social conscience and vote accordingly.

I think in times past many more “average” people were able to carve successful lives in terms of well paid job and home ownership.

Now so much more required in order to achieve the same.

I got pissed off with some baby boomer demanding an iPad for every pensioner to combat loneliness on Radio 4. Buy your own sodding iPad, you’ve had the best of it! I remember the 80s too. What I really object to though is the current generation of 20sish people being called snowflakes. They don’t have it easy. Jesus. Why is everything a competition?

One of the biggest differences I think is expectations on income. There is a thread ATM about what foods were a treat when we were young and the more frugal existence of many in the (early) 80s would really shock many people now. We always had one or two days where it was soup with swell rather than proper meals and certainly no biscuits crisps and certainly no take outs eating out, never mind things like hair extensions or getting your nails done bring “normal grooming”.

I’m not saying these lifestyle expectations are at all the fault of younger folk now but I think that a lot of what we deem normal these days would have only been available to the very well off back in the day.

I also think that somewhere along the line we stopped valuing jobs like chambermaids, fruit picking bar work etc ( I’d say early 2000s but also when we stopped tipping) and folk aren’t willing to do jobs like this as they feel that it’s beneath them

Oh for goodness sake stroppy women. I was born in 1959 and the idea that it was easier then is ridiculous. I lived in a house without central heating and no bathroom and an outside toilet until I was 16. My mum was setting off for work at 6am and getting in at 8.30pm. My dad was disabled but got a pittance in benefits. My mum had to deal with legal sexism on a daily basis despite working herself up in her company. Very little health and safety and racism was rife. You have no idea.

Thing is the young couldn't for example choose a house with no inside toilet or central heating in order to pay less because virtually all properties have those things.

Talking to people like my DM it's hard to make comparisons with luxuries but my DDad wasn't in a high powered job and he was able to pay a mortgage and support a family. His DDad did the same, living in London and he left school in his teens and worked in a factory.

What sort of life would a London based factory worker have these days?

It is all relevant. In the 80s university education was free and supported by grants yet today it is £9,000 per year plus living costs. There is no secure employment. Mortgages require a 10% deposit yet wages don’t meet that and we still have a gender pay gap. Mix social media in and being a young person today is very difficult. The reasons maybe different but that does not mean that it is not difficult.

@imissgmichael, I was born six years before you and my perception is that my generation - not my parents' - had it a lot easier than millenials do. I really wouldn't want to be young now.

I didn't have student debt. Droppednout of uni' in 1978. By 1985 though I was paying 60% tax and about 12% mortgage interest. Swings and roundabouts.

The bottom is about to fall out of the housing market. Pay will pick up and young people will be buying again.

Read Obama’s ‘The greatest time to be alive’ speech and learn from it. If you are not grateful for every breath you take you are the proverbial serpent’s tooth.

Hooray for being alive.

BTW, I was born in 1956 to poor but aspiring, working class parents and can make a comparison of ‘then and now’ in a way that younger people simply cannot.

Life today is so much better in all material respects it would be difficult to enumerate them. We live like kings live a hundred years ago.

I remember my dad being made redundant when I was 13 or 14 in the 80s and I was scared about us having no money so I was going round the high street trying to find a Saturday job. It definitely made me focused on paying the bills from that age.

The young do have it worse. No jobs for life. Zero hour contracts. Mrs Thatcher began the massive rise in house prices and Tebbits get on your bike mentality was the beginning of the end of good communities and the start of vast swathes of families spread all over.

Oh dont be silly blue lady, we live in an era where people can sit on their arse and not work. I had my 1st child and my husband worked 16 hours a day. No 30 hours per week and WTC.
Oh and uni being free, don’t be stupid.

Bluelady I dont believe you. Are you honestly saying that sending a little girl to the end of the yard in the dark for a wee isnt as bad as what kids have to put up with now?

I was born late 60s and I am fully able to admit that I and those of my generation are the LUCKIEST generation to have walked the earth. Fewest global threats, likelihood of owning your own home by mid to late 20s, jobs for life, free education. Sure there was high inflation but to try to measure that against property prices today is ludicrous. We got lucky and for the vast majority, the relative wealth we have today is down to one thing-property value increase.

Property wealth can only be realised on the sale of the property or with equity release finance. It might give a perception of wealth but even if you sold your house to raise thousands of pounds you would pay either rent or capital (plus swingeing stamp duty and other fees) to live in another dwelling so it isn’t wealth that can be freely spent.

In general, owning property is a great financial burden. On my house I pay a huge council tax per month and another huge sum of money per year on repairs, services, and maintenance, all of which attract VAT. The property has to be insured which is, again, taxed.

When a person dies the asset they paid for out of taxed income and usually on a mortgage which roughly double doubles the purchase cost over 25 years, is then subject to inheritance tax. If they have to go into local authority paid care their equity is siphoned away.

No one ever thinks about this issue but while homeowners should be free and independent they are looked on and treated as cash cows by government and business.

Sometimes the actual benefits of owning a house are outweighed by the burdens that come with it.

Surely we want things to get easier for our kids, not harder?

There were 27 of us living in shoebox in middle of motorway ...

We had education grants and no university fees.
YTS schemes were crap, but you could still get a bit of work and cash if you wanted to leave school at 16.
We could move to look for jobs and still apply for housing benefit (abolished by the Tories for the under 25s

Most didn’t go to university.

How did housing benefit work if you had to pay out for a place to live first before you could claim.

Also I can’t think there was housing benefit till the 80s. Both Dp and I were on tiny wages and my wage was gobbled up paying for the our tiny studio flat and his we lived off and tried to save.

If we weren’t together I have no idea where we would have lived.

Certainly no HB in the 70s

Teacher22 but if you don’t buy your own home you have to rent and all those taxes and maintenance and insurance you are still paying through your rent.

Also rent never stops.

I know 3 people who are sitting tenants. One pays £100 per month for a room and use of a bathroom in a large house that over the years has been carved up into flats, situated in a very nice north London postcode.

He looks down on the fools that went out and bought and how smart he has been not buying into home ownership. He is in his 70s now and has been paying £100 per month. since 1980.

I used to live in the area in 1980 and know the prices that studio flats were. You could buy one for £15000 in 1980.

I pointed out if he had got a mortgage (he was on quite a good wage in 1980) and paid interest on the amount he would have stopped paying anything out in 2005 and would have saved himself a substantial amount of money and wouldn’t be in his 70s schlepping down the hallway in his dressing gown and slippers to use the bathroom.
He probably would have married had children and had a life. Women would break up with him because he wouldnt move. They wanted marriage and children and he didn’t want to pay for a bigger place as he would lose his sitting tenancy.

The thing is I know at least 3 people like this. All so proud of the fact they rent at a tiny amounts and all oblivious to the consequences it has had on their lives.

Short of pitching a tent at the side of the road or living on the streets you have to pay to live somewhere

@imisgmichael, consider the following that our generation had and then tell me I'm "silly":

Free university education
Maintenance grants
Housing benefit as students
Unemployment benefit in vacations
Booming employment market
No zero hours contracts
Houses affordable on one income
100% mortgages
Council housing
Employment stability
Reliable benefits in sickness and unemployment with no sanctions

All that's gone. I'm glad you see being able to sit around on your arsed and not work as virtuous and desirable, it speaks volumes, but kids now have to work far harder than I ever did. And very, very few people born in the 50s had only an outside loo.

As posters keep saying things should be better. It shouldn't be an argument it should be clear.

My grandparents brought up children in the 1930s my parents brought up children in the 1960s. My parents had a significantly, obviously, clearly better quality of life and standard of living. My parents had more rights and benefits. They had free health care and secure jobs.

The difference between me and my children can be disputed. Yes we have a dishwasher and can buy avocados but they have massive debts from uni and limited employment rights.

It shouldn't even be a discussion, we should want more for our children and fight for them to have the rights we took for granted.

There's a simple choice. I went to uni in 1978. (dropped out). Less than 5% went to uni then. V few young people had more than a couple of O'Levels. Either we go back to HE being an elitist preserve or the swathes who no go have to pay, except most of them won't and many of them aren't as well educated as those who got a cpl of O'Levels years ago.

1979 London, rubbish piled high and rats running wild. The nation was beset with strikes. There had to be change. Greece anyone?

Oh yes Maggie destroyed everything alright. She destroyed the most important thing of all. The Wall. Strange how that's so often forgotten.