To think our quality of life can’t keep going up forever?

[Wildflowers99]

I saw a post on a thread which said if you have 3 children (for example) you NEED 4 bedrooms, because children sharing a room is unacceptable in terms of their quality of life. And another saying being able to eat things like peppers out of season is essentially a right, and therefore they should have a price cap.

It got me thinking because what we expect as a basic quality of life seems very very different to even 50 years ago. But the problem is with the advent of climate change, cost of living, ageing population and so on, is it realistic for expectations to keep going up? Have we now reached a point where our quality of life will have to plateau or even reverse a bit because the economy and world cannot support what we have come to expect?

Hope that makes sense, I’m a bit zombified after a 5am start with my toddler…

This is true but also consider most things aren't made to last long these days. Manufacturers know they'll make more profit if people have to replace every few years so may appliances/tech gadgets etc don't last beyond a few years even if you take care of them. Phones are the worst example.
I don't think most people change their furniture until it really needs it.. do they?! We still have a crappy horrid coffee table we inherited when we bought our flat and it was awful then.. now 10 years on we still have it! Maybe we are unusual...!

35 years ago I graduated and moved to London, where I was able to rent a lovely one bedroom flat in Zone 1 for £400 a month. Now my two dds are paying nearly three times that to live in cramped flatshares in Zone 4 - and my son is choosing to live at home to save money, with all the sacrifices in terms of social life and independence that that entails.

30 years ago I was able to buy my first home, a two bed terrace in a desirable Home Counties commuter town, for £100,000, twice my income at the time. That house sold last year for nearly £600,000.

Housing costs have drastically increased in the last 20-30 years, and the more money people are having to spend on their rent/mortgage, the less they have to spend on everything else. That is a real quality of life decline, however much the frugal denizens of Mumsnet who bought their houses two decades ago pretend otherwise.

And the worst thing is - it could all have been avoided, if policymakers had taken the strong decisions needed to keep housing stocks in pace with population growth.

I've got three brothers. We grew up in a 3 bedroom house. I got the box room. They had to share the largest room) and gradually moved out when they went to university. Were they deprived?!!

As arw pretty much 50 percent of their whole road of 300 huge houses! I really don't know what the answer is but surely there should be incentives to downsizing and enabling social mobility for the families struggling to find housing. Noone should have to give up their hard earned property but incentives could be an attractive option to many.

I think expensive houses will stagnate, I posted a thread earlier because I'm seeing alot of that in parts of London I know. There aren't enough buyers who can afford all the overpriced homes particularly not when building equity has become much harder in recent years.

Yep - as mentioned, we (and many many other similar families) had UK camping and caravanning holidays until we were mid-teens.

As a PP said, people are confusing luxuries with essentials.

People expect to eat out and get takeaways multiple times per month. We had special trips to the Harvester for birthdays and I don't think had a takeaway until we were teens.

Beauty treatment involved my DM cutting mine and my sister's hair and my DM having hers done by a mobile hairdresser.

Tech consisted of one television and one telephone...

Housing costs have drastically increased in the last 20-30 years, and the more money people are having to spend on their rent/mortgage, the less they have to spend on everything else. That is a real quality of life decline, however much the frugal denizens of Mumsnet who bought their houses two decades ago pretend otherwise.

This

We had neither a TV nor a landline in the early 80s .we did have a bedroom each as kids though

There seems to be a creeping narrative, from the older generations, that people can’t expect to have the same standard of living that they have been afforded. The next generations can’t have the cheap housing, triple locked pensions, single income families with multiple children. All while there are more and more billionaires and the abolition of the middle classes. People need to stop accepting inequality and realise that the social contract is breaking down. Hope the next few generations aren’t so placid and accommodating in accepting it.

Tech consisted of one television and one telephone..

@Alittlegreenwhale does your household still only have one phone?

Things aren’t made to last any more because manufacturers assume consumers want to keep up with trends and will get rid of stuff when it becomes “dated”. Which is true in a lot of cases.

There seems to be a creeping narrative, from the older generations, that people can’t expect to have the same standard of living that they have been afforded. The next generations can’t have the cheap housing, triple locked pensions, single income families with multiple children. All while there are more and more billionaires and the abolition of the middle classes. People need to stop accepting inequality and realise that the social contract is breaking down. Hope the next few generations aren’t so placid and accommodating in accepting it.

I find it a very odd way of thinking as presumably many of these people have dc or is it because they expect only other dc's quality of life to decline. We don't exist in a vacuum

Things aren’t made to last any more because manufacturers assume consumers want to keep up with trends and will get rid of stuff when it becomes “dated”. Which is true in a lot of cases.

😆 Nothing to do with companies wanting to continuously increase profits. You can't do that unless you have things to sell...

It has two (because of the advent of mobile telephones and decline in landlines)... What's your point?

Fair enough, they're probably essentials now, but iPads, air pods, MacBooks, multiple televisions, expensive beauty tech etc are not.

I agree with everything apart from the last paragraph. There is actually enough housing but its ownership is increasingly inequitable.

If I think about the last month and compare to my parents there’s loads of discretionary spending they simply wouldn’t have done.

My friend got married, she lives 300 miles away. I travelled to her wedding and spent two nights accommodation plus wedding outfit, spray tan (I’m literally blue otherwise), manicure to attend the wedding. I had a vet bill for the dog, took my daughter shopping for new underwear, we had lunch while out, a cinema trip with my son, snacks for the cinema, met a friend for coffee and had the dog groomed.

The only expense my parents would have made is the vet bill and possibly buying underwear, though it would have been two serviceable bras rather than the better quality I bought my girl. Everything else would be high days and holidays and the wedding just wouldn’t have been a consideration due to cost and convenience.

I’m fortunate I can easily afford everything we did, but it’s easy to see how lifestyle creep sets in and ends up costing much more. I don’t think I’m particularly extravagant but I certainly spend more on none essentials than my parents ever did.

I also think people are confusing standard of living with quality of life. Standard of living is about material things, quality of life more about health, the environment and social things.

It has two (because of the advent of mobile telephones and decline in landlines)... What's your point?

That's my point 😆

Fair enough, they're probably essentials now, but iPads, air pods, MacBooks, multiple televisions, expensive beauty tech etc are not.

A mobile phone & internet access is definitely an essential not probably. A laptop too for students. I don't think anyone has argued that botox & ipads are essential though. But some of this stuff isn't expensive, headphones and tablets can be cheap

Things aren’t made to last any more because manufacturers assume consumers want to keep up with trends and will get rid of stuff when it becomes “dated”. Which is true in a lot of cases.

And then manufacturers create an environment where people want the latest, up to date whatever from sofas to kitchens to phones. Has always been thus but social media absolutely drives consumerism.

At what cost though? Cheap clothes HAVE to be made by people who are earning peanuts per item, then there's the cost of shipping/distribution etc. Buy cheap- buy twice. We must get away from the concept of fast fashion, renewable every year. Same with food - buy seasonal locally grown. Why do we have to have strawberries in winter. A relative decorates their home throughout every 5 years! Why?

@Iloveanicegarden I've not argued it's a good thing just that those things are cheaper now.

People don't want to pay made in Britain prices, they want cheap.

Not true in the slightest. There is nowhere near enough housing in the UK.

England has 434 dwellings per 1000 people, compared to 590 in France, 587 in Italy, and 547 in Austria - none of these countries have comparable housing crises to ours.

The Netherlands has 457 dwellings per 1000 people - much more similar to ours, and surprise, surprise, they also have a major housing crisis with young people increasingly unable to find rental accommodation in cities.

High rents and house prices are a symptom of a shortage of supply. The same laws of supply and demand apply to housing as they do to everything else - in regions/cities where housing is being built in increased quantities (e.g. Austin in Texas and surprisingly, Croydon in London), we see rents and house prices falling.

Besides, even if we did have enough houses for our existing population, we’re adding over 700,000 to our population yearly through immigration. That’s the population of Cardiff and Nottingham combined. Our population is projected to pass 70 million in the early 2030s. You cannot seriously believe we are building enough houses to keep up with that rate of growth - it’s inevitably going to lead to the existing housing stock becoming more and more cramped, with family homes converted into HMOs. And landlords will be able to demand higher and higher rents, because there will be an endless supply of people desperate to secure housing.

What do you mean by years ago? tech is much cheaper now than it was in the past so are clothes..,

Some tech is, but buying the latest iPhone certainly isn’t, some clothes are but if you want something to last more than one season you’ll pay more for not much better quality. There are countless ways to spend on stuff that no one really needs, wants and needs have become very confused for a lot of people which just drives dissatisfaction.

I think about this quite a bit "I want you to tell it to me in cars and fridges"
m.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZYgozCTfKc&pp=ygUaRW52aXJvbm1lbnQgbWl0Y2hlbGwgd2ViYiA%3D

Yes clothes are cheaper these days but the quality is so bad in comparison to clothes years ago.

The point is that several decades ago there was no frivolous money to be spent.