please empty your brain below
Desperately broad generalisations.
But hey.
PS - Hope there was something nice in those carrier bags you took home tonight!
Because it's ALL about personal responsibility isn't it? ALL of it.
Britain, land of opportunity, land of the strong.
No self starter left behind.
CF
I'm a Boomer, born 1948.
I retired when I was 57. My 4 bedroom is paid for. Income from my finial/salary pension is after tax, is greater than when I was working.
Plus I have all the time, to do anything I chose.
Yes I can tell Life is Great.
But: the new generation have opportunities for travel and learning that we could only dream of. New forms communication mean they are more truly connected to the world around them. New opportunities will be open to them around the world for new types of career.
I think DG's post makes a very good point. I am 35, and I have a house, and a career. If I'm incredibly, incredibly lucky, I'll be taking steps towards sorting out the pension soon. But the cost of living just spirals ever upward, and yes, in another 20 years time I will own my house, but if I've died of starvation (rising food prices) or pneumonia (rising gas prices) what will have been the point? I'd like to feel like life isn't a constant slog, a constant grind to find the money to pay the bills. If this is how I feel, how are those people in their teens or twenties, for whom there are no jobs, no mortgages and no final salary pensions suppossed to feel?
One of the commentators makes a good point - not only are we the first generation that will earn less than our parents, we are the first that is likely to have a shorter life as well - work till you drop eh? What a gloriously progressive society we live in!
However, the quandry we're in now is that we are so committed financially, I can't afford to have a baby. We couldn't maintain the (frugal) lifestyle we have if both of us aren't working full time. I suspect there are a lot of people like me, who have sacrificed one thing for another....
From everything to nothing by the swing of an axe! Such is life these days.
It's unfortunate that many have no option but to hand their hard-earned cash over to a landlord each month, effectively flushing it down the drain.
You made three assertions ... that we earn less than our parents did (I assume you mean when at the same age), that we are the first generation to be in such a position, and that we are likely to have shorter lives than our parents.
Do you have sources for any of these?
[For what it's worth (and that is not very much, I grant you), I suspect that none of them is correct.]
The over 55s enjoying their retirement on the bottom left, would have had a much harder childhood tha we are used too, most wouldn't have gone to university, and many suffered from the unemployment of the 80s.
Their parents would have had a job for life with the local factory (when Britain ruled the waves). Probably more social harmony, certainly more community spirit with everyone knowing their neighbours etc On the other hand there was more disease and WWII...
Living outside London and the South East gives you another decade in the left column thanks to more affordable property.
What's your solution then DG?
should have stopped there, as now i've read this (_very good_) post and feel despondent and crumpled. ugh.
it's broadly true. and it's not going to change in our lifetimes.
however, think of those even older than 55 -- not just the extremely lucky generation or two who hit the house price rises right and the early expansion of free university funding right and the free medical care right and the retirement glory days right -- but those who were children in WW2 who suffered the bombing, fear, and the news of their fathers' deaths, or those who were children in the Great Depression era whose bodies were permanently stunted by the poor nutrition, poor living standards, poor healthcare, or those who were in their teens and 20s (and 30s) during the two World Wars and were forced to give up their dreams and expectations and family members and, often, their own lives to fight or otherwise support the wars, or those who lived in earlier decades and centuries - various times of workhouses, widespread poverty, crime, bad health, terrible pollution, plagues, persecution, legal slavery, etc.
Compared not with the folks who are 46-76 or so now (who owe their forebears a debt for designing the good things in mid-20th-century society that gave their few generations such a nice chance at life), but with the hundreds of generations before them, there are many things these days to be grateful for, deeply grateful for.
Of course it's a difficult adjustment to have less, expect less, and be personally harmed by the general contraction going on now, because none of us grew up expecting things to stop getting progressively better.
I'm actually surprised things aren't worse now than they are. I do feel like it's a sinking ship that is sinking more gradually and gracefully than it could be, than I expected it to be, and I think that later the descent will be faster and more destabilizing. I don't think things will get better in my lifetime, or maybe ever again, in our 2 countries at least, because overpopulation, violence, extremism, depleted soils, the idiotic structure and incorrect assumptions of the financial system, dangerous inward-looking stupidity (like with many Americans who are powerful in politics and business (i'm an american)), peak oil (which i think is probably the biggest threat to our "way of life" in the next 15-30 or so years, if there isn't a nuclear war or some other catastrophe, which i'm at least glad my mum probably won't live to suffer through, and which made me a little less sad that i don't have kids of my own because i wouldn't want them to go through it), lack of plentiful drinking water worldwide, environmental pollution and destruction on a grand scale, species extinction, vast nature areas being bought up by scary non-democratic powers -- man, the next century is going to be a doozy. It's really scary stuff. It's so scary that I'm not pissed off at all that I don't own a home (unlike most Brits - who are more obsessed with home ownership than most other nationalities - I never put that too high on my list, preferring freedom), I never once believed that the required retirement funding (in the US it's called Social Security, I forget what it is here - natl insurance I guess) would still be around when I got to retirement age (even in the 1980s I didn't believe I'd ever see any of that money again) so I am not surprised that all pensions are going to he** in a handbasket, I killed myself working hard at outside jobs from the age of 14 and paying many many tens of thousands of pounds for my own education because I had to pay for university the American way, so the education thing isn't a shock to me (you guys still will have it *easy* even with the changes to the funding, believe me), I have always been so grateful for whatever I had because I didn't have much when I was little, and I'm just awfully glad my mum was in the generation that had lifetime factory jobs and a decent union-fought-for retirement package because she is going to be okay, at least for the next few years.
I've been mistrustful of the whole lockstep life progression that society laid out for "us", and I chose not to participate in most of it. I said when I was in my 20s that I wanted to travel and take chances and learn different jobs and study various subjects (learning is a joy for me), because I never knew what would happen later, and it wouldn't be the same being older, maybe married, maybe a parent -- you can't take those risks anymore -- and even if you retire a millionaire at the age of 55 and go travelling and have time to learn what you want, it's just not the same as it is with a backpack and open mind and sturdy legs at 20 or 25 etc. For this, I paid a high price -- lots of "opportunity cost", and I never knew the price would be so high in terms of my present life (no husband, no children but I'd love to have them, etc.) -- but my experiences have been amazing and educational, and life has been so wonderful.
Tonight I am trying to cheer myself up and re-light the fire in my heart (that gets such a thrill from the architecture and history and environment of the UK) that I've always been able to rely on as a constant positive force for motivation before... the flame has dimmed, but I'm perusing the London Open House Weekend site as a kind of to-someone-who-has-that-kind-of-interests nearly-a-p*rn experience -- I'm willing my heart to leap the way it used to, and gosh-darn-it, I'm going to go to as many of these things as I can this weekend and immerse myself in what used to give me such joy.
Obviously, all the pre-booking things are booked, and were booked 3 weeks ago when I first checked them. But guess what! Tonight, I half-heartedly clicked on the 55 Broadway tour link, and there was ONE place free! A tour place for me! And I got it. With that, my heart jumped a bit. It's the right direction, after I went to Red House and Nonsuch Mansion this past weekend for free for the Open Heritage weekend and had lovely visits, and all the elderly guides recognized that I was an old soul like them, just in an early-middle-aged body. :-)
55 Broadway reminds me of Diamond Geezer always, because I've read his posts on it, so I decided to come here to brush up on what to expect from the tour.
When I press the 'publish' button below, I'll probably get a warning box stating that one can only post 40 characters or something, and then all that I've written will be deleted by the program, but if that happens, that's okay. At least I don't feel on the verge of crying myself to sleep now, as I did at the beginning of writing this, after this downer of a (good) post. :-)
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