Boomer life according to the economist

[Mr Whippy]

Steve H said:

Earnings and opportunity are available to the young if they either

1. Get the right university education not just a random unusable degree in something that qualifies them to do absolutely nothing.

Or

2. Avoid the fixation on university education and pick one of the many trades that lead to well above average pay anyway.



Wealth inequality is a different issue, its increase is across the generations and as big for boomers as millennials.

But that was different for the boomers.

I know people who ended up working up to the top jobs in industries by starting as the tea boy.

Or people who just left school, asked for jobs among friends/family, and there were always plenty of good jobs going around, such was the benefit of a real growing economy with real jobs like lorry drivers, construction, etc.

Today you won’t even get a sniff without a degree, AND being crazily motivated, etc.
And that’s before you even know if that specialised industry is for you. All very cart before the horse.
Only half the people I know has this worked, for half it hasn’t, and that’s the 40-50yo generation.

For the younger generation it could be even worse.


Pick one of the many trades. I agree. But not since brexit has that been heavily viable as lots of imported cheap trades labour went home.

Brexit and covid have seen that plan more viable but who knows where it’ll go again…?


Then you have AI and poor legislation/clarity that’ll leave a lot of industry/IT jobs being a less secure career.



The old trope that young people are lazy is just bks.

A few young people I know do not much, but plenty are out working for min wage in hospitality or child care type jobs.

[Steve H]

Not everyone needs to get a top job in a big industry, that’s for the top 0.1% of the population.

For the rest we are at almost full employment rates and employers are crying out for staff who will actually turn up every day and look like it doesn’t hurt their feelings that they have to be there.

Do you think there’s no call for people in HGV driving or construction now?

[turbobloke]

Mr Whippy said:

How do millennials have all the opportunities and more?

This article (below) is over 8 years old, though as AI hasn't yet got far if anywhere on taking more work from humans than it generates, 140 years of data show that over time, technology has created more jobs than it destroyed. Tech has been a job creator rather than making working humans obsolete.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/aug/17/t...

Young boomers didn't have opportunities to sell lots of typed of PCs or mobiles, be an EV mechanic or youtuber or blogger or vlogger, get into SEO, digital marketing, be a social media manager or website creator / manager, app designer, cloud services manager, information security adviser or analyst, drone pilot, webcammer / online pronster / OnlyFans creator, and so on. Going down t'pit was still possible for some, for a while.

[ITR1]

Interesting thread. Whoever said social mobility has got better - I think it has declined. We are a less equal society and for people born in to poverty it is even harder to move out of it and up the social ladder than any point in recent history.

[brickwall]

ITR1 said:

Interesting thread. Whoever said social mobility has got better - I think it has declined. We are a less equal society and for people born in to poverty it is even harder to move out of it and up the social ladder than any point in recent history.

This is undoubtedly true.

For most of the post-war period you could “earn” your way up the socio-economic ladder. Inheritances were for the most part small, and it was your earnings/income that mattered. Now it’s your parents’ ability to pass down wealth. For most - that means “Did your parents own a house in London/the South East in the period 1992-2016”.

The Bank of Mum and Dad supported about half of all property purchases by those aged <55 in 2023. If (for whatever reason) your parents don’t have wealth, you’re at a massive disadvantage.

[havoc]

NickZ24 said:

I think the economist forgot about some classes, i.e. working class.
Or is the UK mainstream really like that???

brickwall said:

The Economist is right.

Each individual’s case will of course be different, and there will always be exceptions that prove the rule.

But at the macro level - essentially all the economic trends have really played into the hands of the boomer generation (especially in comparison to the generations that followed).

- Pensions: DB pensions were far more widely available (and more generous) working in the 80s and 90s, compared to 2010s/2020s. Enormous real growth in the value of the state pension over the last 20 years.
- Housing: Massive real growth in the cost of housing from c1990-2022; that was fine if you owned a property during that period (because the growing value of your asset perfectly compensated)
- Taxes: Creeping ever higher tax rates, driven both by fiscal drift and stealth taxes. 40%+ income tax rates hit 3x as many people now as they did in 1991. Boomers that went to uni largely did so for free, where today A large proportion of those <30 will be paying an extra 9% income tax until retirement.

Each of these shifts is worth a material proportion of an individual’s entire expected lifetime earnings. Together - it amounts to a totemic (negative) change in living standards.

My dad left school after O-levels. My Mum with CSEs. Both were born to (very) working class families post-WW2 in very run-of-the-mill terraced houses in nondescript towns. They were very definitely "typical"/"average". And yet they ended up in good white collar "middle class" public sector jobs, with my Dad ending his career as a HR consultant, squirreling away a decent nest-egg to top-up his very good DB pension scheme.

...and despite my Dad being definitely naff with investments and me already having close to 3 decades doing pretty well in a good profession, my parents still have a LOT more wealth than us, and a lot more disposable income than we do.
Worse, unless some miracle occurs, their retirement will have been substantially longer and better-funded than my wife and I have to look forward to.

...how does that work?!? Is that 'progress'?

markiii said:

which means that generations kids will see the benefit instead

Only if the boomers don't spend it all first. I know of a number of peers/colleagues who are seeing either their parents or grandparents cashing-in a load of their assets (including equity release) to enjoy their retirement to the full, knowing full well that their children/grandchildren won't be left with anything to speak of. A very selfish "I earned (sic) it, I'm going to spend it" mentality.

markiii said:

All the ones I know have no getup and go no enthusiasm no plan and want to spend most of the day in thei parents spare bedroom on the xbox or socials

Maybe you know the wrong ones then.

...but in their defence, if all you've got to look forward to in life is:-
- no clear career path / no "lifetime employment" contract (which was pretty much guaranteed for anyone with half a brain and an ounce of motivation back in the 60s/70s).
- work contracts which are weighted against them, and few jobs offering meaningful training.
- no prospect of moving out of your parents home anytime soon because of the cost of rent.
- no real ability to enjoy the freedom of driving, as insurance costs a fortune, cars are mostly boring and the roads are over-crowded with cameras everywhere*

...then can you blame them for not wanting to grow up? Not wanting to become wage-slaves until they physically can't work anymore or have had enough of the st-show, only to 'retire' into effective poverty, with only the lucky ones having a house paid-off to fall back upon?

For me (slightly different list to brickwall's above), those are the 3 societal changes since the early 1980s:-
- The job market - far more unskilled jobs, fewer career paths open, and worse a much faster rate-of-change of skills-in-demand.
- Ability to afford housing on a single wage / lower wage - massively reduced now, renting- or buying.
- Spending power of the pension pot at the end of it all - DB schemes are gone for 95% of private-sector workers, DC schemes are typically minimum-funded leaving the employee unwittingly heading for genuine poverty.



* Note: South East generalisation!

[Puzzles]

My father isn’t stupid but under performed academically, yet went on to get the jobs only the very best oxbridge candidates can dream of nowadays.

My friends fathers were similar in they had much more power in the job market and it wasn’t anywhere near as competitive.

[GT03ROB]

havoc said:

My dad left school after O-levels. My Mum with CSEs. Both were born to (very) working class families post-WW2 in very run-of-the-mill terraced houses in nondescript towns. They were very definitely "typical"/"average". And yet they ended up in good white collar "middle class" public sector jobs, with my Dad ending his career as a HR consultant, squirreling away a decent nest-egg to top-up his very good DB pension scheme.

...and despite my Dad being definitely naff with investments and me already having close to 3 decades doing pretty well in a good profession, my parents still have a LOT more wealth than us, and a lot more disposable income than we do.
Worse, unless some miracle occurs, their retirement will have been substantially longer and better-funded than my wife and I have to look forward to.

...how does that work?!? Is that 'progress'?

No it's not. But it has to some extent been inevitable. There is a global trend towards levelling up of living standards....globalisation if you like. It has accelerated over the last 25-30 years. During this period traditionally 3rd world economies have seen a massive rise in living standards eg: India. As this happens European & US living standards have tended to stagnate or drop slightly as part of the inevitable equalisation process . During the same period the UK has tried to maintain living standards through cheap credit & frankly living beyond it means. This is one bird that will come home to roost & it is going to mean the shock is going to be a lot worse, than it might have been.

havoc said:

Only if the boomers don't spend it all first. I know of a number of peers/colleagues who are seeing either their parents or grandparents cashing-in a load of their assets (including equity release) to enjoy their retirement to the full, knowing full well that their children/grandchildren won't be left with anything to speak of. A very selfish "I earned (sic) it, I'm going to spend it" mentality.

Not sure what to make of this comment. Not sure when it became selfish to spend money that was yours rather than give it to somebody else? I think most people would not begrudge their parents spending money in retirement rather than giving it to them

havoc said:

markiii said:

All the ones I know have no getup and go no enthusiasm no plan and want to spend most of the day in thei parents spare bedroom on the xbox or socials

Maybe you know the wrong ones then.

...but in their defence, if all you've got to look forward to in life is:-
- no clear career path / no "lifetime employment" contract (which was pretty much guaranteed for anyone with half a brain and an ounce of motivation back in the 60s/70s).
- work contracts which are weighted against them, and few jobs offering meaningful training.
- no prospect of moving out of your parents home anytime soon because of the cost of rent.
- no real ability to enjoy the freedom of driving, as insurance costs a fortune, cars are mostly boring and the roads are over-crowded with cameras everywhere*

...then can you blame them for not wanting to grow up? Not wanting to become wage-slaves until they physically can't work anymore or have had enough of the st-show, only to 'retire' into effective poverty, with only the lucky ones having a house paid-off to fall back upon?

My wife has 2 kids, I have 1. All in their 20s. 2 have bough their own houses (with partners); 2 have their own cars. These 2 since leaving school have either been in full time education or in work. The other 1 has decided he doesn;t need to get up & will somehow get rich laying in bed all day. He has no car, no house, no nothing. He left school at 16, dropped out of college; has been sacked from more jobs than I've ever had for bad attitude/not turning up; run up thousands in debts. He's a lazy st who doesn;t want to work & thinks he can get rich with schemes to make passive income. His mates all think the same. Unfortunately his ideas only work if people support him for laying in bed all day. As ever there is a mix of kids out there, the majority do want to work & improve themselves. There is however a growing minority that seem to think they should be provided for.

[Steve H]

havoc said:

My dad left school after O-levels. My Mum with CSEs. Both were born to (very) working class families post-WW2 in very run-of-the-mill terraced houses in nondescript towns. They were very definitely "typical"/"average". And yet they ended up in good white collar "middle class" public sector jobs, with my Dad ending his career as a HR consultant, squirreling away a decent nest-egg to top-up his very good DB pension scheme.

...and despite my Dad being definitely naff with investments and me already having close to 3 decades doing pretty well in a good profession, my parents still have a LOT more wealth than us, and a lot more disposable income than we do.
Worse, unless some miracle occurs, their retirement will have been substantially longer and better-funded than my wife and I have to look forward to.

...how does that work?!? Is that 'progress'?

As brickwall said, there will be examples to prove any point you wish to make.

My Dad’s background was similar to yours, working class and not in any way advantaged but he worked hard and progressed, had a very comfortable retirement with no money worries as my Mum continues to do now.

I have had just over three decades working in a trade with steady but unremarkable success and if we all got hit by the same bus tomorrow would be leaving considerably more for my nephews (I don’t have kids) than Mum would for my brother.

No reason why my nephews can’t outperform me and be in the same position as they approach retirement.

havoc said:

markiii said:

which means that generations kids will see the benefit instead

Only if the boomers don't spend it all first. I know of a number of peers/colleagues who are seeing either their parents or grandparents cashing-in a load of their assets (including equity release) to enjoy their retirement to the full, knowing full well that their children/grandchildren won't be left with anything to speak of. A very selfish "I earned (sic) it, I'm going to spend it" mentality.

So it’s not just millennials that appear entitled nowadays then

[havoc]

GT03ROB said:

havoc said:

Only if the boomers don't spend it all first. I know of a number of peers/colleagues who are seeing either their parents or grandparents cashing-in a load of their assets (including equity release) to enjoy their retirement to the full, knowing full well that their children/grandchildren won't be left with anything to speak of. A very selfish "I earned (sic) it, I'm going to spend it" mentality.

Not sure what to make of this comment. Not sure when it became selfish to spend money that was yours rather than give it to somebody else? I think most people would not begrudge their parents spending money in retirement rather than giving it to them

Steve H said:

havoc said:

markiii said:

which means that generations kids will see the benefit instead

Only if the boomers don't spend it all first. I know of a number of peers/colleagues who are seeing either their parents or grandparents cashing-in a load of their assets (including equity release) to enjoy their retirement to the full, knowing full well that their children/grandchildren won't be left with anything to speak of. A very selfish "I earned (sic) it, I'm going to spend it" mentality.

So it’s not just millennials that appear entitled nowadays then

I was responding to mark iii, specifically in relation to his suggestion that the (unearned!) massive house-price growth would trickle down to descendants when the boomer died to help them get on the (increasingly otherwise-unattainable) property ladder, so these grumpy, hard-done-by millennials only needed to wait until their antecedents popped-off and they'd be fine - see bold above.
My only points were:-
- Not all boomers think they have any obligation to help future generations, or indeed recognise their very-unusual good fortune in such massive passive wealth-growth in their lifetime.
- The property gains they've enjoyed were (for the vast majority) wholly unearned - they just lucked into the situation - my quote was apparently direct from someone's grandmother who was engaging in some stty-deal equity release against the advice of her family.

I've been trying to get my parents to spend their (cash) nest-egg for well over a decade, as neither me nor my brother need it - I've been very happily self-sufficient since about 22, and plan to stay that way - any of my inheritance left over after care-home fees* is going straight to my kids' property- or pension-funds.


PS - GT03ROB - agree with the rest of your post. I understand the reasons probably almost as well as you, I'm just trying to frame the lie that current generations "have it just as good" / "are only moaning", as economically that's very clearly utter bks. I'm also worried our eldest is falling into the "waiting for others to help him" category, but hopefully that's just adolescence.



* There's another lottery - how much of this property windfall will never see descendants but will go to pay for over-priced end of life care?

[turbobloke]

People in any generation surely need to make the most of the environment which the previous two or three decades of political policies produced. We're all accidents of birth, spectating in a context we didn't create. Putting effort into positive steps for future economic well being seems like a much better idea for expending personal ebergy than comparing (whining about) other accidental spectator contexts than tthe one you/we are in.

As to giving money away or spending it, we all have choices over whatever we have.

[Crudeoink]

brickwall said:

The Economist is right.

Each individual’s case will of course be different, and there will always be exceptions that prove the rule.

But at the macro level - essentially all the economic trends have really played into the hands of the boomer generation (especially in comparison to the generations that followed).

- Pensions: DB pensions were far more widely available (and more generous) working in the 80s and 90s, compared to 2010s/2020s. Enormous real growth in the value of the state pension over the last 20 years.
- Housing: Massive real growth in the cost of housing from c1990-2022; that was fine if you owned a property during that period (because the growing value of your asset perfectly compensated)
- Taxes: Creeping ever higher tax rates, driven both by fiscal drift and stealth taxes. 40%+ income tax rates hit 3x as many people now as they did in 1991. Boomers that went to uni largely did so for free, where today A large proportion of those <30 will be paying an extra 9% income tax until retirement.

Each of these shifts is worth a material proportion of an individual’s entire expected lifetime earnings. Together - it amounts to a totemic (negative) change in living standards.

The 9% student loan is a killer. Paying back the loan is fair enough, we chose to get a degree (have to really to get any form of proper employment nowadays) but the interest rates have been savage. Straight out of university, when BOE rates were at 0.5% I'd have had to earn £58k to just pay break even on the interest payments each month. My older siblings, who went to university 2 years before me, on the old scheme, paid his student debts of much quicker on a much lower salary. As it stands at the moment I'll be paying off about 3x my final student loan sum at graduation and paying it off for about 22 more years. The amount myself and my Mrs pay in student loan is higher than any of our siblings mortgages at around £600/month between us, on top of that our own mortgage is at least double what any of our siblings pay at around £1100/month. As a couple, if we were born a few years earlier and followed the exact same path, we'd likely be around £1000/month better off

[GT03ROB]

Crudeoink said:

The 9% student loan is a killer. Paying back the loan is fair enough, we chose to get a degree (have to really to get any form of proper employment nowadays) but the interest rates have been savage. Straight out of university, when BOE rates were at 0.5% I'd have had to earn £58k to just pay break even on the interest payments each month. My older siblings, who went to university 2 years before me, on the old scheme, paid his student debts of much quicker on a much lower salary. As it stands at the moment I'll be paying off about 3x my final student loan sum at graduation and paying it off for about 22 more years. The amount myself and my Mrs pay in student loan is higher than any of our siblings mortgages at around £600/month between us, on top of that our own mortgage is at least double what any of our siblings pay at around £1100/month. As a couple, if we were born a few years earlier and followed the exact same path, we'd likely be around £1000/month better off

So knowing what yo know now was a university education worth it?

[okgo]

Can be.

Lad at work is 28 and paid his off in full at the end of last year after having had a very good year. If you get into well paid work, 50k entry ticket is a bargain!

[havoc]

turbobloke said:

People in any generation surely need to make the most of the environment which the previous two or three decades of political policies produced. We're all accidents of birth, spectating in a context we didn't create. Putting effort into positive steps for future economic well being seems like a much better idea for expending personal ebergy than comparing (whining about) other accidental spectator contexts than tthe one you/we are in.

As a pragmatic statement that's eminently true, if unnecessarily vague and woolly.

As a commentary on the Economist article or the one-off benefits that boomers have enjoyed (and continue to enjoy thanks to policies THEIR generation put in place), it's entirely irrlevant to the thread.

As a form of action that Millennials and Gen-Y can take, it's insultingly inaccurate - at the moment they have almost zero input over the economic policies of this country as the Tories are still in thrall to the pre-war and Boomer generations who are their main voting bloc.
Sure they can stop whinging and play with the cards they've been dealt, or they can keep flagging up the hypocrisy of (certain) Boomers who seem overly-keen to pull the drawbridge up behind them AS WELL AS playing the cards they've been dealt - play the cards, but keep trying to change the game, essentially. It's not an either/or decision as you try to portray it. Systems/societies never got changed by sitting quietly and meekly and taking what you were given...


...and frankly I'm disappointed in you TB - you've been an active proponent for change on here when the topic suited you, and yet now you tell others to shut up and get on with it?

[Crudeoink]

GT03ROB said:

So knowing what yo know now was a university education worth it?

Good question. At this current moment in my life, I'd say no, at least from a purely financial point of view. But I'm still relatively young so, my degree (engineering) might tip the scales in the future, especially if a government change decides to adjust student debt in some way.

[Panamax]

havoc said:

Tories are still in thrall to the pre-war and Boomer generations who are their main voting bloc.

This is confusing. "Socialism" surely boomed through the 1960s and well into the 1970s, with the first Thatcher government only arriving in 1979.

With an election later this year anyone born before 2006 will be able to vote - so all the younger people who enjoyed "New Labour" are able to vote as well as their socialist forbears.

The bloc of "true Tories" seems limited to the period between 1979 and 1997.

[havoc]

Panamax said:

This is confusing. "Socialism" surely boomed through the 1960s and well into the 1970s, with the first Thatcher government only arriving in 1979.

With an election later this year anyone born before 2006 will be able to vote - so all the younger people who enjoyed "New Labour" are able to vote as well as their socialist forbears.

The bloc of "true Tories" seems limited to the period between 1979 and 1997.

Statistically people get more 'conservative' (small-c) / right-wing as they get older.

...and there are a lot of people who have very bad memories of British Socialism, particularly the 1970s* - the strikes, the two-day weeks, the brownouts, high inflation etc. For a lot of that generation, Maggie was their saviour.


* Working people in this period were all Boomers or Pre-War.

[brickwall]

havoc said:

Panamax said:

This is confusing. "Socialism" surely boomed through the 1960s and well into the 1970s, with the first Thatcher government only arriving in 1979.

With an election later this year anyone born before 2006 will be able to vote - so all the younger people who enjoyed "New Labour" are able to vote as well as their socialist forbears.

The bloc of "true Tories" seems limited to the period between 1979 and 1997.

Statistically people get more 'conservative' (small-c) / right-wing as they get older.

...and there are a lot of people who have very bad memories of British Socialism, particularly the 1970s* - the strikes, the two-day weeks, the brownouts, high inflation etc. For a lot of that generation, Maggie was their saviour.


* Working people in this period were all Boomers or Pre-War.

The big change is that in the last 10 years the trend of “people vote more conservative as they get older” has stopped being true.

The ‘crossover’ point (where voters become more likely to vote Conservative than Labour) has been getting about 2 years older…every year.

In 2017 the ‘crossover point’ was age 47. Fast forward to 2024 and the latest polls have it about age 65.

The electoral split is basically now “retired” vs “working age”.

The Tories are currently at c20% of vote share among the Under 60s. Labour still have a 20pt lead in the age 50-59 group, parties level-pegging in the 60-69 group, with Tories 20pts ahead among 70+.

[havoc]

brickwall said:

The big change is that in the last 10 years the trend of “people vote more conservative as they get older” has stopped being true.

The ‘crossover’ point (where voters become more likely to vote Conservative than Labour) has been getting about 2 years older…every year.

In 2017 the ‘crossover point’ was age 47. Fast forward to 2024 and the latest polls have it about age 65.

The electoral split is basically now “retired” vs “working age”.

The Tories are currently at c20% of vote share among the Under 60s. Labour still have a 20pt lead in the age 50-59 group, parties level-pegging in the 60-69 group, with Tories 20pts ahead among 70+.

That feels about right, and ties-in well with the age-groups of the people who remember the 70s...people 65 now were born c.1959, so would only have been working for the last few years of the 70s and would have far more "memory" of Thatcher's actions and particularly her legacy.

...but the principle applies - the Tories still seem to care far too much about their core voter base (pensioners, plus anti-immigrant bigots who they're trying to keep from voting Brexit/Reform party). Although bizarrely they appear to be caring less about the traditional "self employed" / small-trader type who used to be a typical Tory voter.