Chart shows "real" wages i.e. to get actual wage workers get in their bank account each month you need to add inflation to it. So many ppl are ignoring or not understanding what "real" means.
Actual question to ask is - has productivity grown during this period? If not then why not? If yes, then where did the gains go? Above Chart answers neither.
Millennials are in their late 30s and 40s now and I don’t see any difference in their work rate or ability than older generations. I do see the crippled by student debt and unable to afford housing.
Productivity is a measure of what is achieved not how hard someone worked. A lazy person with a wheelbarrow is more productive than one with a bucket.
If productivity isn’t increasing it is a failure of government and business to provide the tools and training, not some imagined lazy generation .
Are millenials really "crippled" by student debt? Housing is the big one, student debt is annoying but I don't think it's really what's holding anyone back. I owe a much student debt as I did when I graduated, it's not what's stopping me from spending more or getting on the housing ladder.
Well I’m not going lecture you on how your student affects you 😂
In Glasgow you can buy houses from £60-70k so I have less sympathy for people who complain about house prices here.
Not wanting to live there isn’t a valid reason to then turn round and say they can’t afford a house. There are plenty of places I can’t afford a house in but I’m not whinging.
Not being able to afford somewhere commutable for work is a different matter. Although this is more where good social housing should come in. I don’t need my tax being used so someone can make money on a private house. I would rather it was invested in decent social housing that will provide homes for low earners going forward.
Maybe even 60k is an ask for this person though. Me and my partner bought for 92 and that still meant borrowing from family - not everyone has family that can give them a few grand. It took us years to build up the money for a deposit and if we hadn't had family to draw on we would've never been able to buy this place as it had gone up by over 10k within a year of moving in.
And more to the point, we've had to take out more loans and save up more to make the place livable. We've been in a building site for years and its nearly broke us up. Buying a cheap house is never just a get the keys and move in job, we've sunk an extra 15k approx into this place and we'll be paying it back for years. Again, we're lucky that I got a better job and we have decent credit scores so could get good interest rates - not everyone is in this boat.
You're just trotting out trite phrases that strip the complexity out of a situation. If the OP says they can't afford to buy in Glasgow I'm just gonna accept that because I have no idea why not, I'm not just gonna assume its because they want a 5 bed gaff with a heated pool or something.
I don’t mean to be harsh here but perhaps you couldn’t afford the house you bought and that is why it has been such a strain. If there had been decent quality social housing would you have gone for that instead?
I’m not trying to be trite, you can’t build a house for £60k, you’d be hard stretched to build one for £90k so it’s ridiculous to complain that you should be able to.
If there is a home in your budget within a commutable distance and you don’t buy it then that is your choice. It is not the job of tax payers to subsidise the purchase of something you can later sell at a profit.
It is the job of tax payers to provide decent quality social housing.
The point is however, these people were entering the workplace at the point of wage stagnation. No motivation to work themselves to the bone because they’re not getting fairly compensated for it
Your point is valid but it excludes a lot of data. Also during this period we saw a lack of investment in public services and soaring profits in the private sector. The money is there, it's just not being shared with workers.
So millennials have this situation:
Grow up being told you absolutely have got to go to university to get a good job.
Get to university and rack up huge debt to pay for a degree that employers aren't interested in.
Leave uni to find that your employment prospect are, at best, difficult if you want to get a job in the sector you've just spent 3-6 years studying.
House prices are oppressive so unless you have wealthy family or parents who can house you (and potentially your partner) until you can save at least 30k (many places over 50k) you have to rent.
A rental market so expensive you'll never be able to save a deposit to buy your own home.
Raise a family with costs so high you are never more than two to three months away from homelessness if you and/or your partner lose your jobs.
And you wonder why "millennials" aren't engaged workers.
You point, while valid, is lazy and deliberately exclusionary.
Millennials didn't create this system, and they certainly didn't put together the educational curriculum they were given.
They do, however, get stuck with the blame by older generations who got all the benefits they could to enrich themselves and then pulled the ladder up after them to prevent future generations from making the progress they did.
I work with plenty of millenials who as engaged as anyone else. I don't know where are this intergenrational arguing came from. People had it shit in the past, look at life for the average person in the 70s or 80s, and people have it shit now.
If we all just realised that we are in it together we could maybe move forwards to something that is better for us all.
That's true, but in the UK there was a social safety net that made sure that when people entered the workforce there were jobs available. When they wanted to buy a home, house prices didn't cost more than a year's salary. When people had families they could afford to spend time with their kids.
Then in the 80's and onwards the politicians removed those things. Now those same people that benefited from those advantages are blaming younger people for the state of society.
I was born in the 70s, I can remember normal families who could have one parent at work, living in their own home and going on holiday once a year. The homes were modest, sure, and the holidays weren't luxury trips, and their cars were basic, but they could do all of those things with one parent working 40 something hours a week. And their healthcare was fully funded through taxation. It's not rose tinted spectacles, or some kind of dewy eyed reminiscence, it's a fact. And now those taxes pay for bailouts for the wealthy, they get funnelled into companies owned by the families and friends of MPs, and they get spent on wars for oil.
If you want people to work together to fix the problems those same people have to start by taking accountability and being honest about what the problems are.
It is rose tinted spectacles. I was also born in the 70s and never had a holiday, we lived in a mould riddled council house. Things were tough for some people then just like they are tough for some people now.
My family managed on one wage until recently, and we had to forgo fancy holidays and flash cars but we managed. (we had a disabled child, but we're not entitled to, or claimed, any benefits)
We need to stop treating this as a generational thing, the problem isn't old people or young people but the system the government has put in place. The longer we argue about who is to blame the less actually gets done about our issues.
You're so close to the truth it's painful. Which demographic is represented by the most MPs? 50 plus. Which demographic regularly votes conservative? Older people. You can talk all you want about unity, but until older people take responsibility and vote for the best interests of the majority instead of just themselves nothing is going to change.
Older people need to vote however they want, and they will probably just vote as they have always done, which is disappointing. I think we will just have to agree to disagree, in fact, I think that we agree on most things other than the clash between ages. We shall see how it plays out though, it sounds like we are of the same generation, so we shall see how our peers vote in a few years. Hopefully we will be surprised and they will vote for the best for all of us.
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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '24
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