Younger people should be rewarded for lockdown via affordable housing

[Ordree]

As others have noted, young people (not just those in frontline roles) are making enormous sacrifices to protect others, mostly but not exclusively from much older age groups. They will be bequeathed a damaged planet, a ruined economy and they will have done further damage to their mental health by staying indoors for months on end. They are the ones paying older people's pensions when they won't have anything like the same financial security to look forward to themselves. Yes I know older people paid their elders pensions during their working lives, bit never has there been such an imbalance. As the economy is likely to be ruined short to medium term anyway, would it not be reasonable to start the biggest givernment-funded housebuilding programme ever, allow younger people who have just bought to write off negative equity losses against tax, and essentially redress some of the appalling imbalance between generations and classes?

Bubbles, no they cant. But many can and many of the justifications you’ve trotted out to do not do so are simply choices. Choices have consequences.

You said people don’t want to live at home, that’s a choice. I’ve also lodged when I’ve had to move with work.

I get not everbody can. I agree. I also don’t disagree the housing market needs a shake up and price correction. But I don’t agree that the youth of today are hugely and disproportionately worse off than previous generations. For the majority, housing yourself comfortably and affordably is possible. Whether that’s a rental or buying.

You’ve assumed I live in a cheap area. It’s above the national average but lower than London. I don’t live up North in a little village, put it that way.

plainsailing01

I would say that £23k at 21 with a degree that you have spent the last 5 years working towards is a pretty poor salary and there is opportunities out there to earn a lot more starting earlier without a degree so by the time you are 21 you have already started to save and you don’t have any debt

I know as Dd will definitely out earn that at 21 and she only just scraped through a handful of GCSEs .

She has been offered jobs managing offices on £40k that she refused as it would do her head in working at the same place 9-5 Monday to Friday 48 weeks out of 52 and she knows it would limit her earning potential

She prefers to work very long shifts 3 days per week in 3 different places at the very least and pick and choose what jobs she does.

It certainly pays a lot better than a £23k salary for a job that takes over your life.

We know a lot in the 18-25 age group. Some have gone to university and a lot didn’t.

All I can see is of the ones who didn’t and chose work at 16 or do a year or 2 at college to learn a practical skill instead of A levels are a lot further on and a lot happier than the ones we know who went to university
They are the ones who are struggling.

I think for a lot of them it is a shock that the world hasn’t stepped back in amazement and showered them with job opportunities they expected or they have found they have had to start at the bottom with a non degree educated person who is younger than them being their manager and doing the job they hoped to do one day and was told you needed a degree to progress to that sort of position.

I think for a lot of them it is the fact the world doesn’t work the way they have been told it does and for a lot of jobs no one gives a flying f**k whether you have a degree or not.

I know one person who worked for 6 weeks a couple of years ago and has severe depression as they realised the massive debt they ran up to work in the career they wanted to has just put them 5 years behind their peers and they were starting at the bottom with 16 year olds and they were 22 and they just couldn’t handle it.

I think if you look at the issues young people face the biggest problem is with those that went to university without any idea of what they wanted to do in their lives and if they did know what they wanted to do hadn’t explored the career path well enough to know you didn’t need a degree in the first place.
I think going back to the classroom there is a certain looking down on those who weren’t going to uni and being swept along with the idea that university is the ultimate goal with no thought to what comes after.

We need a huge rethink of education in this country.
We need really good careers advisors and a propers lesson in schools exploring different careers and really just to show children exactly what they could do with their lives.

We also need to stop making everything about academia.

So if you want to work with your hands you don’t have to pass umpteen academic exams to just get on a course.

Yes the ones you know might not be doing so well with their degrees but.... it very much depends on the degree and the university. A decent degree from RG will outperform other institutions and degree holders. There is excellent evidence for this and you may not know a very wide group of students and probably no medics or city financiers or economists if you think degree holders don’t have any advantage. But not from blog university in a not in demand subject. STEM from RG will set you up to earn more than non degree holders. Maybe you don’t know any high flyers at all.

Anyone who is a solicitor and living at home is hugely advantaged. Anyone not paying London prices or SE hot spot prices is advantaged. Everyone is better off earning well in a professional job in a cheaper housing area. You can get a 1 bed flat in a commuter town near me for £125,000 but it’s 315 sq ft. So just about doable but only for highly paid professional grads. Otherwise couples only!

@Oliversmumsarmy You and I, clearly, live in different worlds. I'm NOT saying one is better than the other, but it's obvious you and I simply cannot understand what the other is on about because of these differences.

That £23k a year job, that requires a degree (because those subjects aren't taught in schools/elsewhere), WILL eventually pay a heck of a lot more than £23k and will definitely pay more that 99% of jobs that don't require a degree in 10 - 15 years time while they pay for those "degree not required" jobs will have hit a ceiling. There are several examples of this (medicine, banking, consulting, software etc.).

"start at the bottom with a non degree educated person who is younger than them being their manager"
So what? My advice to them would be: Set aside your ego and work! I'm willing to bet that if their "boss" is a non degree educated person, they will be earning more than them in a couple of years time. Look at the senior management team in the top 1000 companies in the world - what % of them do you think don't have degrees?

If you think having a university degree is the real disadvantage then, like I said earlier, you and I live in different worlds.

I don’t really want my gas boiler serviced by someone with poor English though.

Anyone who is a solicitor and living at home is hugely advantaged.

You make it sound like being a solicitor is a birth right. I’m a state educated woman, the first in my family to go into law. It wasn’t advantage allowed me to qualify it was hard bloody work.

I totally agree plainsailing01. Non degree holders are less likely to progress and in many companies degree apprentices or grad scheme employees take precedence for top jobs. I do agree that we need craft type people and trades. But they are not future leaders of industry and services.

The attitude of someone doing well and that being perceived as an advantage perpetuates the idea that hard work won’t equal reward. Some people work bloody hard and never succeed but that’s not to say it isn’t possible.

I hope you haven’t written your children off in the same way Bubbles. It’s harder to be driven when you’re told it’s all luck.

Well done you. The job is provoked he’d though. I assume you also have a degree and your parents nurtured you to achieve this. My DD is a barrister and I’m aware of the work it takes but no one gets to be a solicitor or barrister and then thinks that’s not a privileged job! It truly is!

The job is privileged though - should have proof read. We have no lawyers in our family either. So what?

So it’s much harder to get into law and there’s no element of “advantage” over any other candidate. If anything you’re at a disadvantage.

Not everyone can be a lawyer, but there’s many, many professions and jobs out there that allow people a decent standard of living that haven’t been left in the last generation.

Hard work really doesn’t equal reward. How can you even think that at the moment? Are you not seeing hard dangerous work in care homes? What about ambulance staff? Or what about supermarket staff working all hours to keep food available? Hard work - definitely. Good income - no. You are clever, as my DD is, and that’s a massive advantage. You have a degree and you are in an elite profession, as my DD is. That is privilege. Use it well. Never think you are just there because of hard work. You are not.

Or alternatively we can perpetuate the idea young people are doomed and we allow a generation of people believing that to be true sat on their arses watching Netflix expecting a prize in the form of housing.

Thank you for the distraction from lockdown.

I wonder who's paying for this scheme...

What scheme?

I work in a bloody city bubbles. You seem to think I’m in the outback and beyond I’m not.

I don’t agree with the whole notion that the young need rewarding for lockdown, covid19 or that they have “generational unfairness”.

I’ve lived a privileged life, but the opportunities afforded to me are not unique in comparison to the rest of the “young”.

If my opinion and take on this post makes me “smug” so be it.

OP said it, it’s the discussion from which this whole thread has derived 🤦‍♀️

I don’t really want my gas boiler serviced by someone with poor English though

Why not? Our boiler doesn’t speak any language, it responds best to technical expertise.

How old is the OP?

@oliversmumsarmy

I don't know where you live but where I live LOADS of the jobs that you wouldn't necessarily think need a degree have one as their requirements - at the very least 'preferred'. So I find it hard to believe that many places take on graduates to be managed by 20 year olds without a degree - they certainly don't round here. If they are managed by someone without a degree, then that person has years of experience on their side and are thus much older than the graduate.

There are advantages to both going to uni and not going. Indeed, many people go to university for reasons other than pursuing a high salary. Don't demonise the university path. because it isn't your experience.

I don’t really want my gas boiler serviced by someone with poor English though

Ds speaks excellent English. He was top of his class at college with either near perfect or perfect scores on his tests and assessments.

He can’t actually qualify to be a plumber or anything else as he doesn’t have an English GCSE.
(Really bad Dyslexia and dysgraphia. Taken the exam a few times and got U every time.)

The last couple of times we have had our boiler repaired (4 year old boiler that keeps going wrong)
The people sent round don’t speak any English at all.

Yes, most lawyers have worked very hard to get to where they are as much as any other people who are successful. I deliberately chose law aged 14 because I wanted things like being able to buy a house and to have a lot of children etc.

On the whole if you can get qualifications for something then you will tend to have a more stable life and probably earn more although my graduate son's only used qualification currently is his driving licence (he delivers groceries and before that was a post man for 3 years) and I suppose his ability to read and write. He is very happy too particularly now the roads re so clear to enable him to drive the van more easily. (He is full time on PAYE on I think about £22k before tax)

*The younger generation have grown up on a diet of get what you want pay later/never. They dont know the value of hard work. They want to be youtube 'influencers', instagramers, footballers, X factor, celebrities & 'reality' tv stars. Saving is not a word they understand, they want to self identify as rich.

This virus will melt a lot of snowflakes and hopefully teach the next generation how to knuckle down, value education & not expect something for nothing.*

What a load of ageist shite.

@xenia we know your son is a delivery driver, you mention it on practically every thread. Along with how many taxes you pay and the fact that you're a lawyer. We know.

I don’t really want my gas boiler serviced by someone with poor English though

I couldn’t care less aslong as we can communicate effectively enough for the issue at hand and they do a good job.