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.

Well they are right.

If you vote on the basis of your beliefs it is a problem that you do not have an understanding of what it is really like for young people now.

The way younger managers both speak to and treat workers young and old is appalling and very demoralising and then they wonder at the "work ethic" but if you are treated like shit what do you owe them??

Yes I have been talked to in ways in the last few years that have shocked me and made me think - how do you think you have a right to talk to people like that?

fafoutis You are contradicting yourself now?
Intergenerational conflict only helps the rich.

"You are choosing the statistics that suit you. "

Not at all.

Two thirds of baby boomers ( so those that were in their 20s and 30s in the 80s) owned their own property by the time they were 30.

So this means that things are harder for those who do so now.

People who rented in the 80s spent a smaller proportion of their income in rent.

Comparing over all home ownership statistics now forgets that the majority of home owners now did not buy their first properties under current conditions.

I never contradict myself.
'The rich' is a relative concept isn't it.

I don't hear young people complaining about older generations, even though the older generations are 'rich' to them - partly because the young are paying their mortgage on their buy-to-lets. They have a right to complain so fine if they do.

The old complain about the young in order to legitimise the imbalance of wealth in their favour.

I can remember 13% interest and high unemployment, riots, etc
But each generation has it's problems.
Look at housing now, we only needed to pay 1k deposit on our first home, I know that would be about 10/15k now but that's a lot less than my dc were expected to have as a deposit.
We have childcare now so both parents can work, which you'd think was better. However, so many are chasing their tails everyday trying to fit everything in as it takes a double income for most families these days. Unless they have one extremely well paid.
It's just different times, with it's own set of problems.

Two thirds of baby boomers (so those that were in their 20s and 30s in the 80s) owned their own property by the time they were 30

I wonder how many of those did not even have a mortgage.

I have explained why you are skewing statistics by choosing the ones you have. The early 1980s were a very different place to the 1990s. And even you accept that overall home ownership was much lower than today.
And some of those houses bought were council houses. My sister bought a council house with her husband round the corner from my parents council house. They had been on the waiting list for a council house but were told informally they would wait 30 years to get an offer. Twenty years before they would have lived in the same place but rented it as a council house.

What no one has ever commented on was the difference in rental properties between the 70’and 80’s to the 00’s and nowadays.

In the 70s and 80s when you rented a flat it was akin to what you would watch on the Young Ones. (For those that are too young to remember the programme imagine Bad tenant Slum Landlord programme and think about living in some of the slum properties) They were so dreadful you took on extra jobs because firstly it kept you out of the place and secondly it helped you to save to buy your own place and keep you out of places like that.

And when you went for a viewing to see if you could rent a place and you were first in the queue it was really exciting and you celebrated when they handed you the keys to the shit hole because it meant you had a place.

Now the places up for rent are clean, well kept, with kitchens and bathrooms where you would want to cook in and take a bath in.

The difference is huge.

I worked as a teacher in London in the early 1980s and earned £6000 per year. Half my salary each month went on rent. It was not possible to buy a home on what I was earning. There were incredibly high interest rates so mortgages were very expensive

I'm mid 40s. I think my generation had it pretty easy - free university and higher education, low-cost housing, cheap goods, reliable benefits system, plenty of job vacancies etc.

I think younger people have a it a lot harder than we did. However, they do have much better entertainment because of the internet and social media which can create great opportunities for young people. I do wish I'd had that when I was young.

"What no one has ever commented on was the difference in rental properties between the 70’and 80’s to the 00’s and nowadays."

Except there are lots of terrible properties out there now.

You are desperate to be right here.

You aren't.

I can appreciate how you feel, OP. I left school in the Thatcher unemployment era, too. I guess every generation thinks they've had it worse than those before them. My niece laughs when I reminisce about only having had 3 telly channels to choose from!

The middle class young are a lot worse off. Higher house prices and paying for university has had a massive impact on them. The middle class will suffer more with the coming of robotics. Plenty of nice middle class jobs will go and be replaced by robots. Accountants, some lawyers, some Drs, etc etc. The middle class will continue to decline.

What we will see is more and more shit on the poorest and the rise of the wealthy. The real disgrace in this country is the growing inequality.

But if things are going to get better we need old fashioned unions and to unite together. As long as you blame individuals, nothing will change.

Sure, the miners strikes, the teachers strikes, 3 day weeks, things were much better back when the unions had a stronger hold. So much was achieved. Oh, hang on.....

There are places now for rent to the poorest like properties were in the 70s and 80s. They are illegal though, they were not back then. But people often don't take the legal route because they need somewhere they can afford to live. Dreadful.

Yabbers That was the systematic attack and destruction of the unions.

Yet another one of these 'We had it bad in the past, too, but dammit, we got there!' wanky posts. WTF is with this place? Yeah, yeah, the past was . . . the past. Some of us were there, too, thought it sucked but well, so fucking what? It's OVER!

I guess it depends on your perspective.

My brother graduated in the early-mid eighties and he said that everyone on his course had the pick of jobs - he had multiple good job offers and found buying a house easy. No debt from university at all.

Our background was skilled working class/lower middle class - as was all of the neighbours (as far as I know). Mortgaged 3 bed semi - certainly didn't have loads of luxuries but neither did anyone else we knew.

Dad was made redundant in the late eighties and took used the money to buy a business (along with a large mortgage - house was paid before this due to the early death of our mother) to buy a business. Interest rates went up massively, business failed in the early-mid nineties. He lost everything and wasn't able to work after that.

I graduated in the mid nineties, bought a starter home easily and paid of all my student debt off in my late twenties.

Neither my brother and I had any financial help from our parents (well parent by then) after the age of 18 (in my case not even a place to stay in the uni holidays so I had to pay full rent too then) and we were fine.

I definitely think it is much harder now for people in a similar position to us. For my son to have what I had 'for free' (buy a starter home on a fairly average wage by mid twenties and have relatively low student debt, due to no tuition fees and a grant) is going to need a very hefty parental contribution. Big divide there - my son, hopefully, will be on the lucky side of that but I certainly wouldn't have been.

aethel RTFT

Hex Yes you are middle class, the middle class young do have it harder now, I agree. And things are going to get worse for the middle class.

It never ceases to amaze me, people can travel across a continent, or even two or three to come to the UK to work to better their life, but for some, they cant make a 2 hour journey to London from up country to find work

Expectations are different though, aren't they? I know a number of immigrant families who live together, sharing childcare which minimizes outgoings and working shifts in different work places to maximise income. To up sticks to the South East where there is work (and I did it myself and know how much more work there is than where I am now in the North West) for many means never owning a house, leaving family support behind - making it harder to take multiple jobs and manage childcare effectively and thus what would be the point? If you are going to have that kind of upheavel in life, you really need to feel it's going to be worthwhile in the long term. Great if you're single with no children, far more complex if not. Even traditionally solid, professional jobs like teaching or social work or nursing simply don't pay enough for any kind of standard of living in the South East.

Teachers were treated better when they were still allowed to go on strike.

We did need a rebalancing of power but it's gone too far the other way.

The real issue is that we've got a far too aggressive combatant society as a whole - our legal system, politics and the media worships nastiness and conflict above all else - hence threads where people sling insults at each other or each other's beliefs.

It never ceases to amaze me, people can travel across a continent, or even two or three to come to the UK to work to better their life, but for some, they cant make a 2 hour journey to London from up country to find work
I suspect some people in London prefer their menial tasks done by a foreigner rather than someone from the North of England, too.

*What no one has ever commented on was the difference in rental properties between the 70’and 80’s to the 00’s and nowadays."

Except there are lots of terrible properties out there now*

But no one is queueing to rent them.

These were the norm not the exception

And I am right because I lived through all those eras.
I don’t need to look up statistics of average salaries, or average house prices because in reality no one around my age earned an average salary or could afford an xvetsgely priced property.

I was on £960 per year and Dp who had passed his exams and qualified earned £2000 per year. We bought the cheapest place available when we moved to London which was a £17000 studio flat after working and saving like mad for a year.

Don’t tell me what the internet says. I am saying what I experienced