Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!
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I wonder if ursus feels this as well. The school leaving age was 15 until 1971 so for us Yanks, certainly myself, you're talking working class pensioners as having a 9th grade education. The real old farts have an 8th grade education, if they finished school before Butler raised the leaving age from 14.
To its credit, the trade union movement and some strains of the working class have a real big self-improvement streak the American working class hasn't had for decades. My father-in-law left at 15 but was a voracious reader all his life. Always had a book in his hand, read at least two newspapers a day (usually the Mirror and a broadsheet - usually Times or Guardian). But if you didn't like book learnin', you ended up leaving school with a frighteningly limited toolbox.
I've always wondered about this when you look at the staggering disparity in voting Leave between leavers and university graduates.
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In fairness, a fair number of people had post-secondary education of some kind. College of FE, Teachers Training College, Technical College, Art School (over 200 in England until the early 60s), and other specialised institutions, like Music College, or Drama School. Most of these offered the educational equivalent of a degree today. British Universities, then, were much more selective than nowadays.
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Originally posted by Tubby Isaacs View PostThat's right, Amor.
I think too there's a bit of haziness about buying a house, and what it meant 40-50 years ago. Sure, it was easier, but lots of people lived with parents till getting married, and often afterwards as well. That's very different from my idea of "buying a place", formed in the mid 90s, where lots of single people bought flats with not too much difficulty.
Britpop, it was the best time ever! (etc)
Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View Post
Now we look around, notice how much harder it is, and (some, not everyone) look for somebody to blame. This is the problem, blaming not solving. Past sixty or so, you feel impotent and vulnerable. Pointing a finger (and voting) seems like all you can do, and sadly there plenty of people around to tell who who to point the finger at.
You can't thank yourself for sitting on a gold mine in a big, prosperous city and also wonder why the hell your children can't afford to live there.
(If you haven't noticed, I'm rather speaking to other people besides you)
I think there's also an important side issue which is that for people under the age of 35, all the Red Scare Reaganite Communism Is The Worst Thing Ever bullshit just has no meaning to us.
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Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View PostIn fairness, a fair number of people had post-secondary education of some kind. College of FE, Teachers Training College, Technical College, Art School (over 200 in England until the early 60s), and other specialised institutions, like Music College, or Drama School. Most of these offered the educational equivalent of a degree today. British Universities, then, were much more selective than nowadays.
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You can't thank yourself for sitting on a gold mine in a big, prosperous city and also wonder why the hell your children can't afford to live there.
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The problem comes from the olds seemingly refusing to acknowledge their privileged economic position relative to the rest of society - even if a lot of it is tied up in their house - and not looking to take any concrete solutions to remedy this.
I suppose it depends on what you mean by concrete solutions. In a practical sense I know several couples my age who've effectively passed on their inheritance to their children before they die, so they're able raise a family in this city. That means funding a single family home, and paying for childcare, and holidays, when necessary. Is that what you meant?
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Originally posted by Flynnie View Post
The problem comes from the olds seemingly refusing to acknowledge their privileged economic position relative to the rest of society - even if a lot of it is tied up in their house - and not looking to take any concrete solutions to remedy this.
As I said, it's not malice. It's just a wilful ignorance, and unawareness of how the system has rigged itself so strongly in their favour.
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Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View PostThe problem comes from the olds seemingly refusing to acknowledge their privileged economic position relative to the rest of society - even if a lot of it is tied up in their house - and not looking to take any concrete solutions to remedy this.
I suppose it depends on what you mean by concrete solutions. In a practical sense I know several couples my age who've effectively passed on their inheritance to their children before they die, so they're able raise a family in this city. That means funding a single family home, and paying for childcare, and holidays, when necessary. Is that what you meant?
the thing about this is that it is evidence that the US and canada are becoming gerontocracies like italy, where only the old have weath and with wealth comes power. Hearing people complaining about having to help out their kids as a hardship rather than part of the responsibilities of power doesn't wash well with younger generations.
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I think this is where I stand. There's an almost wilful ignorance of a lot of Boomers of how policies which have benefited them have damaged the prospects of subsequent generations. Obviously there are many exceptions, and I'm pretty sure there's no malice. But - for example - generations who make repeated votes for policies that reinforce and inflate house prices, particularly NIMBYish shutting down of house building, are clearly responsible for how hard it is for the youngs to afford to either rent or buy (which becomes all the more galling if they then tell the youngs how it was when they got on their bikes to buy a house and if they could do it why can't the kids). Or generations who vote repeatedly for Pensions Triple Locks while at the same time driving down income tax and complaining about government borrowing are obviously undercutting all government provisions outside of the pension system.
As I said, it's not malice. It's just a wilful ignorance, and unawareness of how the system has rigged itself so strongly in their favour.
But if those things are true, then they're true because of electoral decision making, when most people — we're told — vote in their own self interest. If the generations that are suffering voted in their self interest, wouldn't things be better for them? However if they don't vote at all then things are likely to stay bad. I mean, when I enter a ballot box, I'm thinking about making the best decisions for my kids and grandkids, but I really hope they're not relying on everyone else doing the same.
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Lots of people walk into a ballot box thinking of what would be good for their kids as the exclusion of everyone else. They see their kids' experience as somehting that is controllable by them, rather than subject to big impersonal forces like housing markets, tax poloicy, landbanking and the rest. They think that what they've got in this world needs to be carefully stewarded because that's all they've got to pass on, so they'll vote to lower inheritence tax, lower taxes on themselves etc etc.
What they've lost, and what we've lost, is a sense of class identity. It's Thatcher's victory; there is no such thing as society, just individuals and families, as far as enough people are concerned. That's why ultimately the Boomers are a dead loss. They grew up in the UK and USA with the fruits of the struggles of generations of their forebears, and grew up not as members of a class who sturggled tiogerher and fought together and built together but as a group of people who made it because they worked hard. Like all people who have acheievd some success, be they billionaires, or people owning a 3-bed semi in Doncaster, they believe it was all about them. Whether that's because they grew up without the sense of struggle that their own parents took for granted, or because of somehting more to do with neuroscience about attrubution bias doesn't matter.
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Because buying a house makes you change sides. The Wealthy old who have paid for their house, and frequently have more than one property, have convinced those who have bought their house on a 35 year mortgage to ally with them against those without a house. If you buy a house, you become intrinsically opposed to any market solution that reduces the value of your house, or taxes you for any increase in the value of your asset. In most countries, the proportion of people with houses is greater than those without them. So the response is Fuck them.
Sharply rising house prices should be seen as a serious and embarrassing governmental failure, yet in many western countries are seen as something to be cheered. The easy, obvious, quick and cheap way to resolve all housing problems everywhere is for the state to build massive numbers of apartments, and tear the floor out from under rents and house prices. It's difficult to imagine any "Homeowning democracy" supporting this, particularly if they had to pay more tax to fund it.
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Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Posty
the thing about this is that it is evidence that the US and canada are becoming gerontocracies like italy, where only the old have weath and with wealth comes power. Hearing people complaining about having to help out their kids as a hardship rather than part of the responsibilities of power doesn't wash well with younger generations.
I can't answer for the US or Italy. In Canada, especially this part of Canada, accrued wealth is almost entirely down the massive increases in property values over the past forty years. For most people, myself included, this has been almost entirely accidental. You buy a small house, two years later you have child and need a bigger one, and surprisingly, find you've made a bunch of money. Rinse and repeat. I don't know if we've become a gerontocracy in the process, I hope not. Immigration, (increasing the population at about 1% per year) heavily favours youth, which should mitigate against it.Last edited by Amor de Cosmos; 01-03-2018, 19:13.
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Sharply rising house prices should be seen as a serious and embarrassing governmental failure, yet in many western countries are seen as something to be cheered. The easy, obvious, quick and cheap way to resolve all housing problems everywhere is for the state to build massive numbers of apartments, and tear the floor out from under rents and house prices. It's difficult to imagine any "Homeowning democracy" supporting this, particularly if they had to pay more tax to fund it.
The NDP/Green Provincial government here in BC is planning to do exactly that.
Details here.Last edited by Amor de Cosmos; 01-03-2018, 19:12.
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Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View PostI suppose it depends on what you mean by concrete solutions. In a practical sense I know several couples my age who've effectively passed on their inheritance to their children before they die, so they're able raise a family in this city. That means funding a single family home, and paying for childcare, and holidays, when necessary. Is that what you meant?
For things to change, they have to change structurally, rather than millennials relying on having rich parents and relying on the fickleness of those parents in passing wealth down.
From my perspective, it would be reassuring to see some wider awareness of this among the Boomers - we might not see actual political or structural change, but it would be nice to see my parents' generation admit that they were inordinately lucky: life almost entirely in peacetime, jobs for life, affordable housing, nailed on state pensions, nailed on final salary pensions, no student debt, and so on.
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If you buy a house, you become intrinsically opposed to any market solution that reduces the value of your house, or taxes you for any increase in the value of your asset.
Sure, Labour wanted to increase inheritance tax and the Tories attacked them, but nobody is looking at this stuff in the round.
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From my perspective, it would be reassuring to see some wider awareness of this among the Boomers - we might not see actual political or structural change, but it would be nice to see my parents' generation admit that they were inordinately lucky: life almost entirely in peacetime, jobs for life, affordable housing, nailed on state pensions, nailed on final salary pensions, no student debt, and so on.
But we* do that constantly! Really, I have that conversation with my kids, my students, the twenty-year-olds in the local coffee shop all the time. I mean, I could walk down the street in sackcloth and ashes with a sign around my neck but that isn't going to solve anything is it?
* When I say we, I don't just mean me and my family. The opening student forum of my program begins with, an acknowledgement and mea culpa that skills based jobs are both harder to get, and harder to define than they were when we we were in their shoes. Chatting to AdeC jr at the weekend. His career prep instructor began his first class with a "We have seriously let you down" speech, in regard specifically to tuition fees.
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Some interesting figures on median age.
Italy is indeed a very old country, but younger than Germany (pre-refugees, I think).
The UK is younger than lots of developed countries, including Canada.
Italy's demographics seem to explain quite a lot. The other day there was an appalling BTL fest on the Guardian, where "what's wrong with the left in Italy?" was explained about 50% "too much identity politics" and 50% "too much neoliberalism".
Lots of people who might be voting for the PD simply haven't been born.
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From my perspective, it would be reassuring to see some wider awareness of this among the Boomers - we might not see actual political or structural change, but it would be nice to see my parents' generation admit that they were inordinately lucky: life almost entirely in peacetime, jobs for life, affordable housing, nailed on state pensions, nailed on final salary pensions, no student debt, and so on.
1970 8.4%
1990 19.3%
Somebody born going to university in 1990 (when I did) isn't even close to being a boomer.
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Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View PostSharply rising house prices should be seen as a serious and embarrassing governmental failure, yet in many western countries are seen as something to be cheered. The easy, obvious, quick and cheap way to resolve all housing problems everywhere is for the state to build massive numbers of apartments, and tear the floor out from under rents and house prices. It's difficult to imagine any "Homeowning democracy" supporting this, particularly if they had to pay more tax to fund it.
The NDP/Green Provincial government here in BC is planning to do exactly that.
Details here.
point six is making Air Bnb people collect VAT, and point seven seems to be about doing away with assistance to buy homes, or transferring some of that money to renters. It's pretty unclear.
As to the amounts of money and the number of houses they're planning on building, I can't help but noticing that though it is 10 times as big as the republic of Ireland, BC has exactly the same population, and seems to have many of the same problems with housing. $6.6 billion to help housing partnerships over 10 years quite frankly is nothing, and 114,000 houses would barely be a drop in the ocean over a decade in Ireland. I can't imagine it would be very different in BC. They want to build 14,000 apartments, which would be a decent start for the first year, but they plan to do it over a decade.
There's some good but desperately timid looking stuff about renters, and the situation in Ireland would be substantially improved if we were even to adopt these timid methods. But that document is so overwhelmingly inadequate that I'm not sure that they should really have bothered.
"This is what a progressive Tax system looks like" my hole.
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Well, for a coalition government with a majority of two seats you're unlikely to get Clem Atlee. After being run by a government that was beholden to the Provincial real estate industry for fifteen years it's revolutionary.Last edited by Amor de Cosmos; 01-03-2018, 20:12.
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I'm not sure that that should really enter into it. An overheating property market is a fucking existential nightmare for any economy. This is not a time for half measures. Theresa May is ramming through an ultra extreme barking mad brexit on a slimmer margin than that. For a nominally Social democratic party, in coalition with the fucking Greens, that is a desperately timid document. I only wish our govt were even that timid.
Our minister for housing is an obvious empathy free sociopath, who represents the richest constituency in the country, where the primary property concern was returning housing prices to the values they had reached before the celtic tiger. No wonder we are building no more than 10,000 houses a year.Last edited by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!; 01-03-2018, 20:17.
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Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View PostI'm not sure that that should really enter into it.
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