To think the social contract has completely broken down?

[KenAdams]

It seems as though everything if affected, from parking in disabled spaces when you don't need them to talking loudly in train quiet carriages to not tolerating people that are different or have different views to you or caring if they are drowned or tortured.

I'm not sure if it was COVID that ramped up the every man for himself mentality but everywhere just seems like a cesspit at the moment.

Of course it could just be the places I frequent but I travel a lot and I don't even think its a UK thing, it seems to be everywhere.

I don't think I'm alone in feeling this way.

Totally agree with your last point. I tried to argue on another thread that everyone must take personal responsibility for who they choose to marry and have children with and it was met with “what if you’ve got low self esteem from a poor childhood” or something to that effect. Therapy and self-improvement is recommended for every problem on MN except tendency to date in the gutter and pick shit men - women can’t help that, apparently.

Anyway, I digress.

I honestly think this message about the young being “fucked over” isn’t helping. Mainly because the “young” that first got this message are no longer that young. If you keep telling people they have no future and that everyone fucked them over then they’ll stop caring. And they grow up still not caring. They have children and tell them the same thing. Until eventually the people being blamed for this (normally boomers) will all be dead and you’ll just have an unhappy population where no one is trying to improve things. At work I had a 32 year old tell me that there was no point them trying to study or train as they’d been “fucked over” by the “boomers”. This person has 2 children. Who they will be telling the same thing. Surely, the 32 year old should be encouraging his children to try and do better. And the 32 year old should be trying to improve things for his children. If everyone keeps shrugging and throwing their hands up and saying well look nothing can be done its all the boomers fault nothing will ever improve. You’ll have a 55 year old prime minister in 30 years telling the country it was all the boomers fault.
At some point one generation has to step up and say you know what, I was fucked over, but in order to not fuck over subsequent generations we need to sort it out.

People who are blaming this on 14 years of Tories, have things improved under Labour in the last 15 months?

Serious question / genuinely interested, as I no longer live in the UK. All I seem to read on MN is that it’s the same if not getting worse (I’m aware MN skews negative though!).

@JinnyAwesome your post missed 2 important bits.
The young aren't stupid & I don't think gaslighting will help.
They aren't having dc.

People who are blaming this on 14 years of Tories, have things improved under Labour in the last 15 months?

No i don't think so but the point is we never recovered from the 08 crash. Nearly 2 decades of low growth & productivity. How can that be even turned around? And in a few years?

At some point one generation has to step up and say you know what, I was fucked over, but in order to not fuck over subsequent generations we need to sort it out.

@JinnyAwesome how does one do that with the demographics as they are?

Depending where you go. Not in small Europeans countries or town. Big cities are always full of shite , sometimes, car parks , drivers, or people having gardens in the English terraced houses

Where is the shite? - In bad council estates, big inner cities, where else...not sure

I was reading the other day about how that quote was taken out of context.

Well I guess then we’re all fucked and we may as well give up. The UK (world?) won’t have any population at all in a few decades so what’s the point.

Unfortunately I think that's how younger generations feel.

The first thing we need to do is pause the triple lock but absolutely no government will go near it.

but serious question @JinnyAwesome we already have more over 65s than under 15s so how do younger generations fight for political change?

Yes, but there can be improvements without a party completely ‘turning things around’. If the electorate can see there’s been some improvement in one term they are more likely to vote them in again and give them the timeframe in power needed to turn things around.

Absolutely, - chuck your parents to the care home, exclude quirky people from the school gate for having done nothing, let your sons kick the ball everywhere, have affairs and leave your spouses without any problem, if you are a man and married and you work, just give her money for a weekly food shop and nothing else, she is a gold digger otherwise - just to name the few things I observed about this country and no, it is not like that in the whole wide world

@Crushed23 so what improvements would you have expected in 2 years considering the decline over the past 20 years?
Low interest rates masked a lot of the issues (although QE created more) but with inflation as it is that is not an option.
The electorate doesn't want cuts or higher taxes so there is no leeway for any government.
Reform are popular because they are saying we can have a utopia of low taxes & excellent services, we can't.

We need cross party solutions because if there is a solution it will take years.

As I said the best thing to do short term is scrap the triple lock and put that money into
housing & infrastructure, we need that to boost productivity but the electorate will not have it.

I have no idea! I just asked if things had got worse since Labour came to power because that’s all I seem to read on MN? Or at least that things are not getting better. The recent thread about people shoplifting and walking out with full trolleys of shopping was shocking. Brazen lawlessness of that kind is surely quite recent and can’t be blamed on the 2008 crash?

That was the case 15-20 years ago too, nothing new. People had crappy headphones you could hear music through super loud.

I don’t think intrinsic human nature has ever really changed if you look at back at history. Technology evolves, different governments get voted in, different countries have different cultures but deep down humans have remained the same. We’re a selfish species.

Brazen lawlessness of that kind is surely quite recent and can’t be blamed on the 2008 crash?

Of course it can because we have never recovered & wages have stagnated for years. Due to inflation people are now feeling much poorer & of course austerity means fewer police officers and prisons so where do the criminals go?

You need to understand the impact of low interest rates and what happens when that is stripped away and there is inflation.

Look at the salary equivalent of 30k over the last few decades
2000 30k
2008 35k
2015 41k
2020 45k
2025 57k

So in 20 yrs your salary needed to grow by 15k to keep pace with inflation but in the last 5 yrs alone it needed to increase by 12k.

It might sound a trite point but I'm convinced that it hasn't helped that TV seems to prioritise edgy, snarky and the worst side of human nature drama/comedy as opposed to ones with heart and soul and positive vibes. Which doesn't have to mean cheesy.

And then you need to think of our distorted housing market & the impact that has had on stagnant incomes. It's an absolute shit show.

And don't forget fiscal drag!

Well - perhaps a review of income vs expenditure and some clarity about what we’re willing to spend on and how much.

Health care has no ceiling - but we cannot afford the latest treatments for everybody on the budget we have. It’s very expensive to have 9 million people apparently not very economically active, it’s very expensive to have debt, it’s very expensive to provide free education and free childcare, it’s very expensive to provide social care, it’s very expensive to build infrastructure, clean rivers, run the police and the fire brigade and fund defence.

So it is not about fixing the triple lock alone.

Also, fixing the triple lock will not stop entitled twerps or foolish people ringing an ambulance when they don’t need one (this is an example of problems of unnecessary expenditure, not exhaustive).