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?

@plainsailing01: you appear to know a lot about my employment history and personal financial status. I knew Cambridge offered Theology, Religion and Philosophy of Religion, but couldn’t find Clairvoyance anywhere. What grade did you get?

YANBU. The young have been asked to make yet another huge sacrifice for the older generation who are most at risk from coronavirus. This after having to deal with the legacy of huge pension debt, a ruined environment, lack of infrastructure investment for decades etc. It's so sad

We can do a lot of things to help but in no way will next there be money to spread around. Most people of all income levels will either have lower pay because of more taxes or lower benefits because of what we have done to preserve largely the old and weak and sick and ill.

We can merge tax and NI perhaps and apply 20% tax plus 13% NI to all income earned or otherwise including pensions for those pensioners rich enough to pay tax. perhaps we could even go for a 33% flat tax, 33% (after allowance for inflation) CGT rate, 33% IHT rate, 33% corporation tax rate etc but I won't hold my breath for that.

We could give people a legal right to work from home where they can prove the work be done at home and then set up a scheme so they can move to areas like Northumberland, Sunderland etc where housing is very cheap and they can have lovely houses for very little cost. If we are going to go all socialist then we could allow 100% of your cost of childcare to be deducted from your salary for tax purposes which would help small families and I have wanted since 1984 when I began paying for full time childcare or provide all nurseries and childminders free of charge.

We can do a lot of things to help but in no way will next there be money to spread around. Most people of all income levels will either have lower pay because of more taxes or lower benefits because of what we have done to preserve largely the old and weak and sick and ill

What was the alternative?

Every one for themselves and sod everyone else?

As this virus doesn’t only affect the old weak and sick but also the young and healthy including children.
Are you saying it should have been business as usual and the ones that died whether young, healthy, old or ill they would just be collateral damage

Wouldn't an influx of people moving to the North East just drive up prices there and price the young local population out of the opportunity to buy a place?

Where would they go to?

@BurgerOnTheOrientExpress unless you had won a lottery, you had given me all the data required to make a well educated guess

It’s @plainsailing01 btw :) changed alias

The young have been asked to make yet another huge sacrifice for the older generation who are most at risk from coronavirus.

I still don't understand what this huge sacrifice is that younger people are making that is different from the older generationS.

Note the plural of generations - there isn't just "old" and "young", there are various life stages involved; a generation is currently considered to be around 30 years (used to be less). All the arguments on here seem to be how Millenniums are paying for rich Boomers, what about Generation X. In fact according to the definitions a few of the older Millenniums are older than the definition further up the thread of who is considered "young" (e.g. those born in the early 80's).

So - what are these additional sacrifices that a 34 year old (oldest defined as "young" on this thread) is making compared to a 60 year old (late Boomer generation)? and what about the people in their late 30's, 40's and 50's - are they making no sacrifices or additional ones?

Young people in government research organisations are up to and including 34 years old and throughout their working lives will pay more tax, have less access to affordable housing, work longer, get their pension later, probably have a lower pension and possibly be severely compromised with regard to saving for a pension. Not to mention the calling for higher wages for state employees which would require massive tax rises. Never mind all the unemployment benefits we are now going to have to pay. If you have 35 years ahead of you paying taxes, this is a far bigger cost to an individual than the tax levied from pensions of older people.

Greater taxes on wealth always cause older people to scream that it’s not fair. Yet the wealth is held by them and not redistributed unless they choose to do it up to 7 years before death.

Obviously Middle aged people will pay a lot too but for less time and have possibly inherited from parents so might have some cushion. Of course some people don’t have any wealth at all and that’s hard for them. However, overall, under 34s will pay the most as they will pay for longer.

this virus doesn’t only affect the old weak and sick but also the young and healthy including children

Not to anywhere near the same extent
Death rate for young children is now below 0.1%

So to keep the economy going would you risk your child being the 0.1%

Or your mum and dads life or your uncle and aunts or grandmothers or grandfathers life.

Just saying old and ill makes it sound like they don’t count but they are your family they are other people’s much loved children, parents and grandparents

Or because people are over a certain age, or ill whatever their age don’t they matter if they die

The older people either redistribute early, or they get taxed on it with IHT anyway. And then what they are left with allows the next generation to buy their homes.

And then what they are left with allows the next generation to buy their homes
Rubbish. Average age in the UK to receive an inheritance is 61. Too late to give a start in life as implied in this post. Plus do we really think it's right that your best chance to buy a house depends on whether you parents owned their house.

However, overall, under 34s will pay the most as they will pay for longer

And it was ever thus. The debt incurred by WW2 was finally paid off in 2006, I spent most of my working life paying towards an event that ended before I was born, along with every other boomer.

FWIW when I left school and started work I was paying a base rate of 33% on everything I earned.

And I was only earning a very small salary.

I wasn’t able to get a credit card purely because I was a woman and didn’t have a father to pay off the debt because I would probably be a silly girl and not be able to manage my money

I couldn’t get a mortgage on my own because having a female brain I wouldn’t know what to do without a man taking charge.

All those saying us baby boomers are the problem because we had everything handed to us on a plate I wonder how they would have fared as a woman in 1970s Britain and the general unfairness between males and females and rich and poor.

I seemed to have missed out on a lot of things that apparently a lot of you that weren’t around at the time think I would have had which would have made me one if the privileged Baby Boomers.

Also like a lot of my generation I don’t have a pension. It was either something you didn’t think about or because of shady practices of companies using the pension fund to prop up a failing company even if you paid into a pension fund you never saw anything from it.

The young have been asked to make yet another huge sacrifice for the older generation who are most at risk from coronavirus
This hypocritical. If that's the case, why are key worker pregnant women asking to self isolate?

The death rate for young people might be lower but no young people want to be one of the statistics any more than the older generation.

We are all affected in that we don't want to be the unlucky one regardless of the lower risk to be so.

All the young people I know are staying at their parents houses eating then out of house and home and spending all day on social media / gaming.

Those who are out keeping essential services going are mostly Middle aged. My retired neighbours ( Early 60s ) have gone back into the NHS.

My GP is 50s. My bin man is 61. Most of The staff in my local shops are women aged 30 plus.

The people who work in public transport and the utilities are a similar age.

I’m late 50s and I don’t know a single person of my age who has inherited a lot from their parents. I also don’t know anyone whose Parents paid their house deposits - people lived in shared flats / beds / did two jobs and saved up.

I think the OP is believing what she reads in the tabloids / on social media.,

I am nearly 60 and even if I was in contact with my parents or any of my family and they did have something to leave me in their will both my parents are still alive and so is my grandmother who is over 100

@I0NA
"All the young people I know are staying at their parents houses eating then out of house and home and spending all day on social media / gaming" + "Those who are out keeping essential services going are mostly Middle aged"

I'm going to assume by middle aged you mean the standard definition of someone between 45-60? If so, the MAJORITY of the people working in the NHS are YOUNG (

I wonder why the majority are “young” people working in the NHS

Friend used to work as a nurse in the NHS.
She would have been in the middle aged category.
She was made redundant along with many more nurses a few years ago

How many nurses are there today who started straight from school as opposed to now having to have a nursing degree.

Of course there are more young people working on the frontline as opposed to older people. The goal posts were changed and the older ones didn’t fit with the new NHS

We can never solve these issues BUT this is a disease of the old, sick and weak. Very very few children get it - even in my age group 50s it is small as the graph above shows.

The best thing is the obese, vulnerable and old stay at home and the rest of us get back to working very very very hard to keep them.

Friend used to work as a nurse in the NHS.
She would have been in the middle aged category. She was made redundant along with many more nurses a few years ago

This is almost certainly a lie. Nurses aren't made redundant. We have thousands of vacant posts available. She would have been offered redeployment

pocketem

Definitely made redundant. Along with a lot of others in the hospital

She loved being a nurse and loved her patients it was all she had ever wanted to do.

She was devastated.

That is why I get annoyed when they say there is a shortage of nurses.

I think it was because she was on a high pay scale and they could hire 2 cheap younger people to do her job and it wouldn’t cost as much and in hindsight because they were bringing in that you needed a degree.

How many nurses are there today who started straight from school as opposed to now having to have a nursing degree

Loads. The degree entry route was introduced 20 years ago. Nurses aged late 40s upwards started their training straight from school.

I think it was because she was on a high pay scale and they could hire 2 cheap younger people to do her job and it wouldn’t cost as much

Still lies, sorry. That would be completely illegal and no NHS trust would do it

Why don’t you believe my friend was made redundant together with a lot of the other HCP in the hospital she worked?

Why wouldn’t the NHS replace 1 person on a higher wage with 2 “youngsters” on a smaller salary. It happens in lots of businesses and the NHS is a business of sorts.
Google nursing staff made redundant and you will see it isn’t unheard of that nurses can and are made redundant.