To not want to raise a child into this vicious, dog-eat-dog, cut-throat country?

[summergal250]

Really I'm pretty close to giving up on the idea of one day having kids.

Why?

Unless you're rich, everything in the country is just an endless, ceaseless, dog-eat-dog fight over scraps. Day after day, month after month, year after year. I don't want my child to have to deal with this crap.

Examples:
. I'm currently having issues with the landlord over various repairs he's dragging his feet on. His attitude is, if you don't like it move. I pay £700 for this crappy shoebox. I could just move - again - or threaten court action, which as empty as any money I'd get from that would be wiped out by legal fees.

. This is like my 10th rental in 12 years. EVERY single one them had at least one serious issue with it - mice, damp, noise issues, no washing machine, landlords entering property etc. Out all of them only one landlord was actually a decent person - all the rest having been lying, cheating, two-faced money-grubbers. Of course, not a problem if mummy and daddy can give you a deposit. In my 30s yet feel as I'm trapped in a permanent state of being 21.

. I work full time and do freelance in my spare time. I constantly look for new, better paying roles and I have been saving for a deposit for years and as house prices just rise and rise it feels I'm getting nowhere. I'm almost at the point of saying, why bother? How is it fair to raise a kid in some crummy tiny flat? The housing issue has been a problem for 20 years and NOTHING has been done - every year it just gets worse and worse. Meanwhile smug boomers who bought their semi for £80K in 1979 bang on about avocados.

. I got conned into doing a degree which every adult in my teens said would be a ticket to a great future. Instead, all it represents is a massive pile of debt and a waste of three years. Yet, even a receptionist job now insists on a degree, so you have to do it, even though only a degree from Oxbridge or a top redbrick is worth anything these days.

. Jobs - graduated into the recession. I've had jobs where I've been bullied, others with psycho bosses, others with vicious backstabbing 'colleagues'. Constantly the implicit threat of - if you don't like it we'll fire you. Felt I was finally getting somewhere in my old job and then was made redundant during covid. Cue several months of soul-destroying unemployment. The job I have now is ok but less well paid then my old one - so, more struggle, more jostling for favour, wasting more of my free time looking for a better paid jobs, more endless rounds of interviews. I feel like I've been going up the down escalator the entire time. Every year it seems the jobs market gets fiercer, more competitive, more brutal and cut-throat.

. The low pay means I spend large chunks of my free time freelancing. I enjoy it but it can be exhausting. Atm I'm embroiled in a dispute with a client who is refusing to pay for some completed work (with £700) - turns out he's con man with a dodgy past. I'm having to take him to a small claims court - yet more of my time and energy wasted.

. Similar to an occasion a few months back where a hotel Cornwall was nothing like the pics when I got there - it was in a disgusting state. I cancelled and went elsewhere, and then was embroiled in a 3 month battle to get my money back, with the owner only relenting when I got the local council involved.

Spotting a pattern?

If you're not rich in this country everything's just a pointless, exhausting fight to keep your head above water. Every economic interaction is just a vicious bare-knuckle fight, with people out to shaft you for what they can. Honestly, if it wasn't for my family and friends I really would have just given up on the human race.

I won't go into the this country's general lack of manners, the yobbish behaviour of many people here, the rows of homeless tents in out high streets, the crappy education system, the utterly broken and corrupt political system, and the general utter madness society seems to fall further into with every passing year. The quality of life here just deteriorates every year.

So, basically, I don't want to inflict this on a child. My life is worse than my parents - fact. I'm doubt I'll ever reach their level. If you're not rich, children have no future in this country - just an endless treadmill of debt and exploitation. And every trend I've discussed above is getting worse - I just dread to think how things will be when they grew up.

And before people start saying, 'maybe it's you' - believe you me, I've fought coming to these conclusions tooth and nail. Grew up in a firm Old Labour home - solidarity and all that. I used to be the classic caring, sharing, naive people-pleaser - after years of being taken advantage of and shafted I've bit by bit given up. Now all I care about is myself, my family and my immediate friends.

I've also rented in Germany. Its hardly the case that all leases are for a lifetime. Perfectly normal to move somewhere for a few years and take your kitchen with you. People move around a lot. It was really difficult to find a rental property, at the time I was there it was a matter of looking in the local newspaper on the day the adverts for rentals appeared, I think it was a Thursday, and phoning up immediately, along with hundreds of other people. Ended up in a high rise block in a suburb of Munchen which was surprisingly ok and next to an S Bahn station.

But the currently fashionable idea that Britain is the shittiest place in Shittonia is the sign of a narrow mind and narrower experiences

How shit should it be before people are allowed to complain legitimately as opposed to because of narrow experiences?

I agree with this so much. People on this thread moaning about their freedom and opportunity - you sound unbelievably entitled.

£100k houses? Er, no. There's a development of an old office block behind my house. 2 bed flat in main building is £300k, converted 2 bed cottage on the grounds is £325k. My own house has increased £150k in 8 years so you can bet FTB here are struggling. I'm 6 miles from Bath! I know I mentioned my Middlebrough friend's flat price to show the ratio of flat price to service charge, but I'm from near Leeds, again, costs an absolute fortune. All I am saying is, there are areas where flats have too many downsides and "People should just be happy with a flat" doesn't apply. I don't dispute I'd have to buy a flat in London.

What's wrong with expecting a nice house and good job?
The OP works full time and more and even has a university degree.

Ffs 12 years of Tory rule and this is what we've become.

She sounds like she has a good job and her own business. If she had a partner, she could probably afford a house, too. Society is set up for couples and families, so if she's single it's going to take a bit more effort to get what she wants. But lots of single women do own their own property. It's hardly impossible.

I think it’s tough for the younger generation now in the UK. I left uni in the late 90’s, walked into a job, bought a London flat, met my husband, sold flat bought a house etc. We have really benefited from a decent job market and affordable housing 2000-2010. I can recognise how much harder it is for people born a decade after me.

The living standard has gone down in the UK over the last 12 years. I thought the UK was a great place to be around the time of the 2012 olympics. I wish I could find the exact statistic, but each UK household is around £5000 pa less well off than an equivalent one in the EU.

We have just sold our UK house and are moving to an EU country, mostly to benefit our dc and give them access to better healthcare, housing and lower childcare costs, really important to me as I have two dd’s. Also I’ve had enough of Brexit and this Tory Gov have made clear that ‘protecting Brexit’ is priority number one. I can’t be arsed with it anymore.

We tax lower and middle-income workers less here than in our neighbouring countries. Higher earners in the UK pay comparable amounts.

My husband and I each pay around 45% of our total wage in income tax and NI. Households in the bottom three quintiles, as a cohort, don’t pay anything at all on a net basis, as they receive more back in tax credits and benefits than is taken from them in tax.

Its apparently £8800 per year.

www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/13/average-uk-household-8800-a-year-worse-off-than-those-in-france-or-germany

"The UK’s failure to get serious about inequality and weak growth over the past 15 years has left the average British household £8,800 poorer than its equivalent in five comparable countries, research has found"

"A “toxic combination” of poor productivity and a failure to narrow the divide between rich and poor had resulted in a widening prosperity gap with France, Germany, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands, the report from the Resolution Foundation said."

So: high student debt, low productivity, poor management practices, low salaries and highest taxation burden in decades?

It’s the expectation that it comes early, with no additional planning or effort that’s unreasonable.

Just imagine how the OP could have planned to have been born into a wealthier family, or maybe more talented in maths and science, so she could have been a doctor. Instead of being degree educated and working in addition to her full time job!

I'm just imagining all those teenagers out there successfully making economic predictions to have included covid redundancies, the effect of austerity, tax changes and so on. I mean I'm a lawyer and I find planning around the constant battle in Scotland, not just due to legislation but due to constant legislative changes affecting everyday life to be a challenge, so goodness knows how a teenager needing a student loan is supposed to do it!

I cannot believe that you are describing a person in full time employment who works in her spare time to make more money as lacking additional effort.

We really do live in troubled times. Admitted its not wartime but times are unsettled. One of the reasons that the Swiss economy is so successful is not due to foreign labour but because its government acts very conservatively with a small "c". Changes are well thought out and not introduced on the whim of a new minister and then changed again a couple of years later. The UK is characterised by short term and disruptive governmental decision making which is actually quite harmful to both its population and the economy. Outwith the City of London, which is hardly ever affected by legislative changes, the goalposts are constantly moving and it is increasingly difficult to plan ahead.

It’s the expectation that it comes early, with no additional planning or effort that’s unreasonable.

Expectation that what comes early?

I think younger generations have lost hope, people generally expect to struggle but there is hope that at some point things get easier. I'm older & have a home but I don't see things improving.

China is going to eat our lunch.

What's wrong with expecting a nice house and good job?
The OP works full time and more and even has a university degree.

Ffs 12 years of Tory rule and this is what we've become.

Whats wrong? Those things are not a given, as the OP can attest to.

University degrees aren’t all the same. Some, many, aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. They’re money spinners for the university in question. If you don’t know that by the time you’re 17/18/19, well you haven’t learned much about the society you live in.

It’s not 12 years of Tory rule. Labour isn’t better, Blair has much to answer for. The UK hitched it’s wagon to America after WW2 and the rest is history. It IS dog eat dog, because all that matters is money, in the end.

If you want a different society, make it happen. Don’t - as the OP gives strong signs of doing - expect others to bring about what you need to work for yourself. Either join them, or beat them. Those are your options.

While people like the OP and some others are having a bit of a tantrum at how terribly unfair life is there are millions of people framing the issue very differently.

They see that there’s no-one mandating fairness, understand that there’s no reason that there should be, and so are setting out to plan their way towards doing well in the world as it is, not in the world as they’d like it to be.

It really doesn’t matter that there are some people who don’t bother, who don’t try, and so who end up less well-off. It doesn’t reflect badly on society or our country.

It really doesn’t matter that there are some people who don’t bother, who don’t try, and so who end up less well-off. It doesn’t reflect badly on society or our country.

But I think people are talking about those that do bother & try....

Thank you AchatAVendre that was the article, indeed £8800 less in UK than comparable countries.

I watched things starting to go wrong as a teenager and up to my mid-20s when Labour were in power and it's important to mention this because Starmer & Co will not dare to upset the grey vote in the way they need to in order to give younger people the opportunities that they deserve. Wages stopped growing in around 2002 and young graduates are still starting on the same kind of salary as I did in 2004 (£20k). House prices on the other hand kept rising hand over fist. I remember when I started university it was still plausible to think I could buy by the age of 25. By the time I graduated house prices had gone up so much and were growing faster than I could earn money so that I was 32 before I was eventually able to buy.

The Tories have made things worse though. I can't think of anything more idiotic than Help to Buy as a solution to a supply side problem in housing. Their turning a blind eye to dirty money coming from overseas hasn't helped either, with large amounts of residential property owned but not lived in. On top of that they've trebled tuition fees (so much for a high skilled, high wage economy - there's actually very little point in getting qualified these days because debt repayment swallows up the gains in income); they've increased national insurance (that older people don't have to pay); they've cut public services and means tested benefits so that people who need them cannot access them and they've utterly buggered the British economy with Brexit. All we are now is a great big old people's home with a government who only cares about the grey vote and uses the rest of the people as serfs to give the grey vote what it wants.

Labour won't change any of that though.

The thing is the UK isn't the sort of country which is dog eat dog. It is a bit of a contradiction; we have free healthcare and a welfare state and state pension..but at the same time, we have a housing crisis (many of us do manage to buy property but we also increasingly see that it is only going to get more unattainable; just last week, my rabbi told me she has downsized her family home as her children wanted her to; it is a large house that I estimate is easily worth £2 million which she bought years ago) and expensive childcare and the combination mean that many people are struggling or barely have any disposable income.

I can see society becoming more feudal and I don't think most British people agree with it. For a start, most of them don't have £2 million family homes or parents who own £2 million family homes. And the housing crisis is only beginning for the cheaper areas outside London; more Londoners would get priced out and they would move. I disagree that labour wouldn't make it better. At the very least, they wouldn't introduce 50 year mortgages and prop up the housing market.. I own my property but as it is a flat (and my next property would also be a flat albeit a bigger one), I don't have much to downsize from to allow my future DC to buy his or her property. I could let him or her stay rent free but I don't think that would be enough in the future as most properties would be £1 million minimum.

We already have the tax burden sitting very heavily on quite a small section of society. I think that any move to make it more redistributive could see the loss of a lot of taxes from higher earners who don’t want to see their rate go over 50%.

Top earners have had quite a few hits under this government to make life easier for middle and lower income households, including the loss of the tax-free allowance, loss of child benefit, removal of pension allowance and the loss of the ability to offset mortgage interest against income on rental properties.

This has funded the increase in tax-free allowance for everyone else and the provision of services that higher earners place less demand on.

It’s one thing asking a small group if people to pay so much in. Asking them to do it while stopping them taking anything back out and while insulting them is not a great plan when you rely on them so heavily.

We already have the tax burden sitting very heavily on quite a small section of society.

I think the issue is too much focus on income tax & not enough tax across other areas. I think CGT should be higher etc

I’d like to see a flat income tax rate, starting at zero, and yes, possibly higher inheritance tax.

I’d also like to see stamp duty on houses abolished, it is such a perverse incentive when we want a flexible labour force.

certainly for FTBs I think SD should be abolished.

My DH is a higher rate taxpayer simply because he is an AVP at a bank but of course the vast majority of such jobs are in London, what is a good salary in other areas doesn't go as far here. We don't even have a DC yet but there is no child benefit. By the time we have a child, we probably wouldn't even have tax free childcare as he is likely to earn above 100k esp with inflation (and the government wouldn't raise the thresholds)..

While I do agree top earners (who derive their salaries from being employed by a company) here do pay a lot of tax we do save on tax in other areas. My uncle in America has to pay US$10k per annum on property tax on his 2 bedroom Californian townhouse. There is no borough in the UK where the council tax even comes close to that. In fact it's a bit of a joke how low the council tax is on million pound properties in the UK.. stamp duty is a one off. I think wealth and assets should be taxed, rather than earned income.. yet even with such high property taxes, Americans still aspire to own homes. My uncle told me that the new immigrants like the Indian professionals do aspire to buy a house in San Francisco even though you can barely get anything under a million and you have to pay HOA fees and property tax on top of the municipal tax. I wouldn't worry about places like London not being attractive to investors; a lot of foreign investors really like London and would continue to come here.

I agree that council tax should also be reformed or some kind of property tax should be more introduced.