“We paid in all our lives”: AIBU to think, No you didn’t?

[Perlman]

My grandparents are traditional red wall labour voters. Born during WWII to poor families, they live where they grew up. My grandad worked in a factory and my nan worked as a secretary. Like many of their generation, they lived in and bought their council house. Very caring people until it comes to politics. They are hugely racist and advocate for sinking any refugee boats. This is despite the fact that some of their grandparents were refugees from Russia!

They want the triple lock, free bus passes, heating allowance, increased benefits for older people, et cetera. They think anyone who isn’t old who takes benefits is a scrounger and lazy. They say young people can’t afford to buy a house because they are lazy. They have inherited several, but put down their relatively comfortable position in retirement as to their ‘hard work’.

They justify their opinions and entitlement by saying “we paid in all ours lives, it’s our money”. AIBU to think that, well no, not really. You may have paid in money through taxation but clearly they are net beneficiaries of the state. They both had low paid jobs, bought and sold on their council house for a tidy profit, have thankfully lived a long life but with a myriad of expensive to treat health problems. So no, they haven’t paid for what they’re taking!

This. Hope you enjoying reading back nasty comments calling them counts all because you started a nasty little thread about them.
As long as you are happy though ...

You are right.

Young people work harder and have fewer life chances than we did thirty years ago.

Also, we did that to you.

There is a human instinct that can’t bear to be responsible for bad things happening to someone or to see someone suffer without finding a reason to blame the sufferer for it. I think that is why you see so many unreasonable complaints about young people.

Yawn. I hope my family don’t feel so emotionally blackmailed they feel like they can’t ever say anything critical of me, in case they have a moment of regret standing in front of my grave.

I hope instead they act like a normal human with emotions and have a moan when I’ve done something to irritate them, while still loving me as their relative and a fallible person.

Me too.

@PuddlesPityParty apologies if this comes across as patronising, supercilious or entitled. I really don't mean it to sound that way. I went to university (first in family) in 1974 with tuition paid (only 7% of school leavers went), but my parents funded my living overheads in full fot two or three years. I didn't qualify even then for a grant.

But equally, I went to the USA as a nearly 24 year old immigrant in 1979, on Christmas Eve, knowing no one except my BF/turned DH, and found us an apartment, after getting a job, within weeks. My DS is still boinging back home at 24. I know this is a very tough period for most people, but recession USA 1980 wasn't a cakewalk either. It may be harsh, but if I am honest, I think most people born after the 1980s are a bit wet, meaning soppy. Every generation's successes make most of their own luck, and every generation following on only sees the shining stars.

I had $600, education, and some clothes in a suitcase. Not that different to a dinghy migrant nowadays. But I was married to a US citizen, so an IR1.

I think most people born after the 1980s are a bit wet, meaning soppy.

You can't see this is agist? Seriously? It's also bollocks btw.

EffortlessDesmond · Today 22:03

I had $600, education, and some clothes in a suitcase. Not that different to a dinghy migrant nowadays.

I mean it really is very different actually. I certainly won't be engaging with anyone who can honestly think something like this any further

Sorry if you think it's ageist. It is only my personal observation, and a shameless generalisation clearly.

Actually, I still think it's stepping off a cliff into the complete unknown and looking back at younger me, I don't know how/why I was able to do it. I don't see how it's so different to deciding to buy a passage on a small boat to pursue a better future.

@EffortlessDesmond i don’t know what your point is. I’m 24 and bought my own house two years ago, upsizing now. I worked hard for that, I didn’t have mummy or daddy paying for me. I worked full time hours at uni so I could pay for accommodation and living costs and still managed to get a 1st from a Russel Group.

My parents taught me the value of working hard and I do work hard, and I hope I make them proud.

Your son is not a representation of a generation but is a representation of how he was raised.

As with all ages, you are not really paying anything in unless you are paying higher rate income tax for your entire working life. Only 2 in 10 do. The rest is noise

i think one of the biggest problems of the divide between those who will inherit and those who won’t. My DCs are pretty sorted due to assets that were accumulated by my parents (both dead) and grandparents, the latter going on one holiday their entire life and being the thriftiest people I’ve ever met. But no matter how thirty some young people are now, without family help they are very unlikely to be able to achieve anything like the same position. Some people will inherit the £1.2m house above and others will get no help whatsoever.

No generation has had it universally easy. My GPs started working at 14 and my GM definitely didn’t stop working to bring up children. My GP died literally at work aged 72 and my DF died at the same age, also still working so it’s not all early retirement with optional golf.

"Nobody in their right mind wants to see pensioners starve - even horrible racist ones like the OP's grandparent - but they could at least acknowledge that the only reason they are so well off (the wealthiest generation that has ever lived!!!) Is not because they worked harder, but just because they were lucky enough to be born at the right time. "

I am a pensioner and I have acknowledged that what you say is true in an earlier post. Many of my friends realise it too, others of my peers are still suffering from having lived through at least 2 recessions, and do not stand to inherit a bean.

My DM is a pensioner too. I don't know what she thinks. Part of her childhood was spent in South London hearing the doodlebugs go overhead in the latter part of the Second World War. Sometimes one would explode not very far away. When she married in the early 50s, rationing was still in place for some things...

It depends on more factors than the amount you earn. Very few people with children will be net contributors. Birth, childhood healthcare and education are expensive. Obviously taxation also covers more than just income and nearly £200 billion comes from VAT.

It was my misfortune to have to listen to some of these older people today. Saying they worked, young people today don’t work and want too much money. Standing there in the clothes we’ve paid for, going back to comfortable homes I personally have had to pay for as a past private tenant. YADNBU op. They know jackshit, and don’t want to either.

And that oh-so-widely-repeated factoid nowadays is nothing more than an economic artefact created like the rest of a fiat currency system out of a deliberate social choice to run down the value of work. It illustrates nothing more than the current limitations of the knowledge of the spreader. Try reading about different periods when work had either more or less value than it does now, and different work had different value, and you may be on your way to understanding how much of modern economics ‘statistics’ are political choices that could be changed tomorrow. Meanwhile this may be of value. https://equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk

Very few people with children will be net contributors. Birth, childhood healthcare and education are expensive.

Nope. Those costs are for the child not the parent And that's the same as we've all cost society, assuming we've been born with medical assistance and attended school.

Amazing hair splitting there @Sabrinasummersamples. Remind me who chooses to have children.

And nearly half work for the State.

Well no @Blossomtoes actually it's just pointing out that every single person in the country has cost the taxpayer those same charges.

7% don’t cost school.

But those that do are not making a choice because the State has forced out reasonably priced competition.

7% don’t cost school

Quite.

Hats off to you @PuddlesPityParty . I had no intention of insulting you personally, and you are obviously determined to succeed.

But, if I may say, at 24 you are something of an outlier based on my sweeping generalisation, derived largely from MN and on personal observation of my contemporaries' children. It may indeed be indicative of the way they were raised.

The most thought provoking comment of the whole thread.