“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!

If they are really advocates for sinking boatloads of people then YABU because your problem isn't that they think they paid enough into the system, it's that your real problem is that you're related to total psychos!!!

Absolutely. Feminism definitely gave with one hand and took away with the other.

I don't think you understand the impact of the war
my grandparents lost 5 siblings
my DF lost his father

Yes they did give their lives!

Totally agree

My house sold for £7k in 1970 to a teacher with a non working wife. Male teachers earned more and about 3.5k a year

Today it is £1.2 million. A teacher earns £35K

Genuine question, is feminism just to do with women and work then?

Cause I thought it was general equality, in which case feminism isn't taking anything away from us women! Bosses or companies or husband's or whatever are the ones taking it away I'd have thought, but if we say feminism we're blaming the wrong people.

It's not feminism it's the economy and markets and greed.

Feminism isn’t a person. It’s not unreasonable to acknowledge that it’s brought huge benefits but there has been an inadvertent and unforeseen down side.

But household income increasing by having 2 working adults was a driver for house prices increasing

I've come across such people, they underestimate how much they 'paid in', how much they are 'taking out' (and/or have taken out already), and have no idea that growing up and starting pot now is just as hard as when they were young, albeit in different ways perhaps. Distancing yourself, as much as reasonably possible, is the best option.

To be honest I think often what comes out of people's mouths isn't what they think or would do. Many years ago, my step was ranting about foxes on the banks of his land and how he'd take a gun to them. He woke up one morning to find three dead cubs. He buried them and fashioned a twiggy cross. He sounds always like a pig ignorant bastard, but he's quite soft at heart. He'd say the same about the people on the boats and yet if it was happening off his local beach he'd be one of the first to help drag out rescue boats and life jackets before the RNLI arrived from the harbour along the coast

Similarly, I hear many people arguing for people's and animals rights, and welfare meat, etc. Many of those same young people are not averse to marajuana or coke and arguing for their freedom to use something that should be as legal as alcohol and tobacco but have little thought for the human collateral involved in its provision.

Vis a vis people taking an economics test before voting, I'm not sure. I do think it would be more helpful for the majority of young people to learn about budgeting, tax, bank accounts and compound interest than how to measure the angle of a ladder from a wall by using the position of the sun or about the hypotenuse or pi.

Women have always worked, that is nothing to do with feminism. Certainly the ones in my family have.

What feminism brought about re women and work is the right to be paid the same wages for the same work as a man and the right to become qualified and do any job a man can, and the right to get a bank loan or hire purchase agreement without a man's say so, and eventually the right not to be treated as a chattel, even when they are married. It's just basic freedoms, basic human rights stuff and there is no downside whatsoever to any of that.

@kimonoblues my dd as a 1 year qualified teacher earns £34k. In 6/7 years as a Head of Year or Subject that is likely to be closer to £50k and as a member of SLT another 5/6 years on could easily be £65/£70k.

It was never unusual throughout history for households to have two or more working adults.

You may be referring to a post war blip in history of about 40 years that meant some women didn't work. Mainly as after the war there were a lot of men out of work so most women were discouraged from working once they got married and certainly once they had children. It was economics, employers, societal forces and markets that influenced this not feminism.

i But household income increasing by having 2 working adults was a driver for house prices increasing

Actually what has risen a lot across many countries in the last 50 years is the number of single person households.

Women have always worked, that is nothing to do with feminism

Women frequently couldn’t work if they had preschool children. Feminism gave us maternity rights and benefits and made childcare widely available so the majority of women could continue working with small children. Financial equality meant that women’s wages counted as much as men’s for mortgage purposes when they hadn’t previously. As a result the economics of property ownership underwent radical change.

You really need to look at the bigger picture.

You really need to look at the bigger picture.

You really need to not post what I've just posted and attempt to reframe it.

As a primary headteacher I think that I know about salaries- thanks
MPS 2 is £29,800 having had a significant uplift in past 2 years

MPS 6 is £38,810

In 1970 he was a 3rd year teacher- so I took MPS 4/5 as a comparison

I didn’t.

Women did work when they had pre-school children both pre and post industrial revolution. When the children were big enough they were set to work also.

It's you who need to look at the bigger picture @Blossomtoes and your fairly poor knowledge of the 20th century through misogyny tinted spectacles.

Gosh@kimonoblues, you have got your primary school teacher telling off hat on haven't you. Perhaps I should have said dd teaches at an SEN, independently funded, specialist school, ages 7 to 16. At no point in my post did I say she was a state primary school. Marks off for lack of attention to detail and generalisations Miss.

Women did work when they had pre-school children both pre and post industrial revolution. When the children were big enough they were set to work also.

Not during the period of second wave feminism in the western world which is what we’re discussing here. My knowledge of the 70s and 80s is lived experience as a feminist so I’d venture to suggest it’s rather more accurate than yours.

Yes and when those children were in charge a lot of decisions were made that led to the current mess.

I don’t actually think you can blame all boomers for this, but you can’t have it both ways.

The thing is @RosesAndHellebores whether you take private SEN salary or state salary doesn't really matter when framed against the income to house price ratio which was given above. Either way the house in question was originally approximately 2 X the teacher's salary and now it's AT LEAST 17 times. And that's if we use £70k as the teachers salary. And I don't personally know any teachers earning that much . If you were to compare it to my salary then it's 34 times. Clearly times were easier back then. Even if people do spend £5 on a coffee or whatever now.

I do but it also means your ‘vast majority worked their entire lives’ isn’t true, doesn’t it?

I don’t understand what you don’t understand about that. It is not true that the vast majority of pensioners worked their entire lives, regardless of their reasons for being economically inactive/unemployed.

You said it was true, I’ve proved it isn’t. I haven’t made a value judgement, I’m just pointing out that what you said was incorrect. And for some reason it’s riled you.

It is true. You’re nit picking over 25% of the population who were economically inactive for a small percentage of their working life. Even if it was all their working lives that leaves 75% which was a majority when I was taught maths.