To think the 90's/early 2000's was when we peaked and everything has gone downhill since due to technology

[SonnyHoney]

To think the 90s/early 2000s was when we peaked and everything has gone downhill since due to technology.

Bear in mind I was only a child/teen then (mid 30s now).
There was just the right amount of technology.
People just seemed happier.

I wish I could have raised my children in a similar environment to what my mother raised me in.

Yep. I was recently looking at my childhood homes on Rightmove. Parents bought them all for under £300k, they’ve all sold in the last 5 years for 600k+

The quality of life you could give a family back then was incredible compared to now

I am from a solidly 'middle middle' background and I remember a lot of my peers being privately educated, you would need to have serious money to educate not just one but 2 or 3 kids privately these days but back then it seemed something within reach of 'normal' people. And before anyone says am I self selecting by only remembering kids from school no this was the local neighbourhood kids too and I wasn't living on millionaire's row!

@IDontHateRainbows agree

@IDontHateRainbows - the data suggests not in terms of percentage - which did slightly surprise me. It does show the massive increase in fees though which completely aligns with your points. The data is taken from a couple of years ago so the latest position, post addition of VAT on fees, may well show a different picture.

https://www.civitas.org.uk/2023/02/24/private-schooling-in-britain-a-snapshot/

I still use my film camera, however film is quite expensive now.

To me it was 2020 since COVID lockdown, all gone downhill...

Since Brexit because it has made us as a country a whole lot poorer.

Mmmm not sure, my poor Polish mum was treat horribly for being "a foreigner" at a factory she worked at in the 70s and 80s....and my friends mum was actually spat at in the 60s for being Irish....I think we've moved on for the better since then

Well both things can be true here.

Probably Polish and Irish are more accepted now -assuming they’re white- because the common narrative of the extreme right is to spotlight brown and Black people as the enemy. They see white immigrants as the right type of immigrants and would favour a “foreign white” above say a British Muslim of Asian heritage .

I’m a POC and I rarely had racial abuse in the 90s. I have childhood friends still in my hometown who have mixed race kids that have been subjected to a lot of racial abuse growing up in the 2010-2025 period which I think is very telling. A party like reform that ran on a platform of “us and them” would hardly have got any votes when I was growing up in my area anyway, whereas it’s now a major party people are voting for.

Like many things it depends on your perspective. The share of the global population in extreme poverty has fallen from about 40% in 1990 to around 8% today. In absolute terms, the number of people in extreme poverty dropped from about 2.3 billion in 1990 to roughly 700 million now, despite large population growth. It was technology that significantly boosted poverty reduction by driving agricultural productivity (e.g., better seeds/irrigation doubling yields, lifting rural millions), digital finance (e.g., mobile money like M-PESA raising consumption 8–44% and cutting poverty 2%), and broader ICT growth enhancing GDP, jobs, and trade. In the UK poverty hasn't improved as much. Relative poverty (below 60% median income after housing costs) peaked at 25% in 1996/97, fell to ~20% by 2010, but hovered around 21% recently, mostly due to the effect of Covid undoing some gains. Look at the world, and things have gotten much better, and technology has been the enabler. Why does it seem worse to you? Age I expect.

Kids aren’t arseholes??

Are you absolutely sure about that one?

To me 1982 to 2007.

I do look back at the mid to late 1990s as a golden age.

• Still had lots of nice, smart shops. There was a beautiful, shiny, three storey Debenhams in my town, a smart two storey Next, and a lovely big Waterstones. All shut down now.
• Smaller population. So many fields and woods have been destroyed and replaced with new houses since the ‘90s.
• Less traffic. The roads are now a living hell.
• More of a sense of national identity, shared history and shared culture. No identity politics. We hadn’t been taught to hate and reject our identity yet.
• No social media. People actually held conversations instead of staring at their phones.
• Britain still in the EU, and, much as I hate Blair and hate the Left, I did like Blair’s positive attitude to Europe and to being European.
• Less sense that we were heading towards disaster. I can see several things looming up at us in the near future. In the ‘90s there wasn’t the dread of AI taking everyone’s jobs. And though people were aware of climate change, it still felt distant. Now it feels more real. The world’s population is going to peak at ten billion just as climate change is causing havoc. And that is coming in a decade or two.

I think that’s a lie. The thing with extreme poverty is that it comes with extreme powerlessness and usually being ignored. We see it in Britain, land of ‘we’re all middle class now’, all the time.

Is it even counting the climate refugees? Do you know how many there are around?

Try this instead https://www.oxfam.org/en/resisting-rule-rich

Or this, having mentioned climate change. https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/richest-1-have-blown-through-their-fair-share-carbon-emissions-2026-just-10-days

I knew an Oxfam exec for a while. I'm not sure I'd use data from them as a benchmark for anything I'm afraid.

Directionally I'm sure I'm right. I spend a fair bit of time in China and just that one country has seen astonishing success in defeating poverty over the time range we are discussing.

I agree we should be concerned to help climate refugees, but thats ~20 million people, not going to directionally change what is happening when we are talking about poverty reduction at a global scale. Even accounting for them, net, we are seeing tens of millions a year exit poverty now, and over the period in discussion the average was probably 45M+ per year. Yes, it has slowed, but that's a positive - it's indicative of the success already achieved.

We are now in the hard rump, mostly people in Africa now that India and China have done so well. Hopefully Africa is next, though it has a unique set of challenges, in particular driven by the fact its a continent not a country, making co-ordinated action hard, and the worst hit areas are conflict zones. But what we have learned is that poverty is solvable, and technology is a key factor.

Could have chosen another example, like healthcare.

i think the key points that have led to a deterioration in both the economy and the quality of life since the 1990s are:

1. Population increase from 57 million in 1990 to 70 million today. This 13 million increase or an increase by 22% means greater pressure on housing, roads, water supply, etc etc.
2. The 2008 financial crisis- where the debt accumulated by both the Government, Companies and individuals (esp mortgages) that funded the post 9/11 growth.
3. Brexit - firstly the economic uncertainty it created followed by lower growth because of it.
4. Covid and the £500 billion spent on it plus the persistent reduction in productivity.

Agreed. It's all very depressing.... :(

I’ve heard right wingers dismiss stats from the frontline too many times simply for being from that area to pay any credence as well.

In Britain poverty is on the increase. Now let’s start dismissing poverty in Britain as ‘not real’.., it does not matter who says or proves what, as long as those in power and who would be in power have no reason to listen because they do not want to.

I noticed it starting to go downhill, slowly, from 2010, then rapidly from the late ‘10s. COVID was the nail in the coffin. I was lucky in my area that things like healthcare didn’t go to pot as soon as other places though.

MSN messenger was like a challenge, 12 windows open, messages pinging in, trying to type fast enough to keep up with them all…fun times 😂

2016 was the start of the rot. Brexit and the Orange monster in the same year. What was to like?

I agree. I was working as a parent support worker from january 2010 and I saw a rapid almost immediate decline in public services and funding/support available for families and individuals who may be struggling as soon as the Tory/Dem came
into power that spring or summer. It quickly became increasingly difficult to signpost families to services.

The number of youth worker jobs shrank drastically. And various surestarts centres and other initiatives started being rolled back. It was all done very quickly.

It really is :/

I had a childhood friend of mine contact me with an anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-refugee, anti-labour tirade. She was saying “they” have ruined Europe and this country is now communist.

Unbelievably she’s a white immigrant from a EE country who has non-white children and she was never like that growing up. I’ve know her since our teen years when she moved to the Uk.

I was so shocked. She doesn’t realise that while she may not be the main enemy of the far right, she and her multi-racial family would still be considered part of the problem by many who are pushing the same narrative she’s espousing.

We bailed out the banks in 2008 -
from wiki
’During the period 2007-2009, the UK government intervened financially to support the UK banking sector, and four UK banks in particular.
At peak, the cash cost of these interventions was £137 billion, paid to the banks in the form of loans and new capital. Most of this outlay has been recouped over the years.’

Thats what did the damage.