Young people in the UK have it tough

[JiIttiIg]

All the news stories are about young people not getting jobs and having to stay with their parents. It used to be they had to stay at home to save for a house, now it's no house and no jobs. Can't see things getting any better in the near future. Is the UK now a country that is failing it's young people. Is it going to be like countries from Eastern or Southern Europe where young people had to outmigrate in order to get a decent life? Can't see any politicians having the right answers.

Ooo the Bible that oracle of good advice along with the other dusty old books as a guide to modern life and still causing mayhem and hatred around the world.

This would cost the country billions in increased state pension payouts.

Perhaps life might be a bit more meaningful if you tried reading it.

We need to pause that now

My life is meaningful as is I don't have much but what I do have money can't buy
I don't need dusty old books to guide me.

Youth unemployment is bad in many countries, reasons are multi faceted but I can tell you that moving overseas won’t necessarily make a better outcome unless they have experience first. There are jobs but they need to be flexible, willing to move and quite frankly look at different sectors they never imagined. We are short or many trades, engineers, defence industry workers, care, agriculture, just off off the top of my head that I personally know about and every pub in my town is hiring

I’m not really saying it’s a definite ticket - it just gives several more options for future employment and allows them the opportunity to look elsewhere before they are tied down with responsibility here and can’t leave.

No, we don’t need to pause it, we need to stop it. There’s no reason to have it any more. Increase the state pension in line with the increase in wages and make it fair for everyone. Unfortunately no party has the courage to do it.

the economy has shrunk

The economy/GDP hasn't shrunk - some people claim GDP would be higher if we had not left the EU.

1.8 million jobs have been lost as a direct result of Brexit

That study was commissioned by Sadiq Khan (at a cost of £55,000) - critiqued here:

As with the growth figures, the only way you get to that number of additional jobs is both heroic extrapolation, and ignoring the pandemic.

https://capx.co/sadiq-khans-brexit-figures-are-straight-out-of-fantasyland

The New Statesman were not impressed either;

Sadiq Khan’s Brexit baloney won’t fix the economy.
Even pro-Remain economists question his conclusions.

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/brexit/2024/01/sadiq-khan-brexit-baloney-wont-fix-economy

Of course the New Statesman wasn’t impressed any more than I suppose The Telegraph would be. This research wasn’t commissioned by Khan yet reached pretty much the same conclusions.

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/new-research-finds-uk-investment-up-to-18-per-cent-lower-as-a-result-of-brexit

Critique of that study published here;

https://julianhjessop.substack.com/p/what-the-nber-gets-wrong-on-the-economic

Yes I think it is extremely tough. The current generation in their 20s will be the first generation where living standards will be worse than the previous generation. Jobs are now scarce, home ownership is impossible without parental support and Government policy favours the middle aged and elderly. Notably via the triple lock. The challenge is to get people to vote in numbers and also for a party which will prioritise their interests. Sadly currently none of the main parties do this.

Who’s Julian Jessop? Just about every economist agrees with it and you come up with some nonentity with a Substack.

I also worked with someone whos memory was gone. It wasn't nice for anyone

BIossomtoes
Of course the New Statesman wasn’t impressed any more than I suppose The Telegraph would be

I thought the New Statesman was left-leaning - were you thinking of the Spectator?

Who’s Julian Jessop?

Ask Meg Hillier - I noticed that Julian Jessop was giving evidence to the Treasury Committee several months ago - discussing the future of the OBR. Meg Hillier was chairing - I imagine she invited him.

Just about every economist agrees with it

That's funny - the research you linked to is a working paper which hasn't been peer reviewed - well apart from the review in my link.

That's your choice, but what do you think you are actually going to achieve? I suspect nothing at all, other than blight the rest of your life railing against something with is over and done with and can't be changed.

As I have already commented, the UK was very far from being the only country which had lockdown.

I don't think even the trades are 'safe' jobs anymore.

As people get poorer and poorer the amount of renovation work going on will collapse. It will either not get done, or people will do a lot more DIY themselves.

It's also widely known as the best option for employment, so people will flood into that sector.

If I were young and healthy now I'd be finding somewhere rural/remote and cheap. Possibly outside the UK. Learn how to be more self sufficient and buy a plot of land large enough to grow my own food and keep some animals. Sort of partially off grid. I'd seek out a partner, and I wouldn't have children. I think there will be a trend towards this sort of lifestyle. We are being taken for a ride by all large organisations so it's time to give them the middle finger and lessen our reliance on them. The model is broken.

Young folk cant move outside the UK to live.
Brexit.

Brexiteer, Economics Fellow at the IEA and one of the very few economists who thinks Brexit is a success.

One reason I am extremely vociferous about the damage caused by lockdowns is precisely because every time anyone tried to point out the harms, it was immediately shut down with “shut up and stop murdering grannies”. Debate and discussion simply wasn’t allowed. Anyone who tried to express concern online was swiftly cancelled. Mob hysteria took over, especially on mumsnet. Absolutely nothing mattered apart from “saving lives”; and I think many people died as as direct result of lockdown (those who missed checks for other illnesses, but we weren’t allowed to talk about that). And the government saw fit to communicate with the public by “frightening the pants off them” - their words, not mine. I feel that we have a duty to resist being governed in this way, otherwise it will become a new normal. That is what I intend to fight. The way that the government deliberately frightened the public into compliance, without a shred of public resistance worries me much more than the virus ever did. Even now, the harms of lockdowns are still being minimised. There is a tacit agreement between all the parties of “sssssh… we don’t talk about lockdown, all the harms were caused by the pandemic, and Partygate was a useful distraction from the real scandal of lockdown”.

If the government had expressed more regret about the harms of lockdown while it was happening, and vowed to restore normalcy as soon as possible, I wouldn’t have minded so much. But it felt as if we were being conditioned to accept it as permanent, with phrases such as “new normal”.

Now that the precedent of lockdown and frightening the public has been set, I am concerned it may become the “default” strategy, once the horror has been largely forgotten, and that a future government might decide that frightening the public “works”, and this could be done again. By some accounts, even the government didn’t expect so much compliance, and I feel that we must fight the idea of lockdown and fear mongering being a “winning” strategy.

So, I intend to fight it tooth and nail, and I will keep shouting about the harms of lockdowns, until lockdown’s cheerleaders admit that it caused great harm, and there’s more of a sense of “never again”. Right now, it feels as if the lockdown and fear strategy is shelved and kept warm, ready to be used again.

And before anyone says “we won’t be able to afford it again”: we couldn’t afford it then, either. Look at where we are now.

Hmm. Easy with hindsight to rant on but early covid it was a serious situation. My bil was a doctor on the wards Jan 2021 his hospital came very close to not able to cope. I’m not sure some of these passionate anti lockdown types appreciate how serious it got.

I don’t completely deny lockdown might have been needed. But it could have been much shorter, and much less damaging. One problem was that the government had frightened the public so much, so it was politically impossible to say “prolonging lockdown will cause much more harm than good. We will end lockdown now (summer 2020) and protect the vulnerable.” But the public were much too frightened for that.

No they don't because they were far removed from the reality of it and instead spent too much time developing conspiracy theories.

Maybe those still ranting about it now should look at how the UK government approached it right at the beginning, letting people travel far and wide then bringing the illness into the country. Those countries who locked down earlier in the pandemic seemed to have fared better. Also other countries have moved on and don't appear to be mired in the "but lockdown ......" mindset. I haven't heard anyone here mention it for a long time.

Well they'd be savings to be made by not paying whole families benefits and top up benefits.
Cheaper to have 2 folk on pension than families on benefits.