20 years ago: work hard, and get a house
20 years from now: work hard, and maybe you get to live in a house
“If you keep them busy with basic needs, they will forget about the freedoms that they have lost.”
Make things difficult enough and all anyone as any energy for is meeting the most basic needs. Having a place to live, feeding a family, etc. Dire times.
Indeed. I read somewhere that men are no longer wanting to go to university because of the prohibitive cost.
Anyone can go, but there are fees. If you can’t afford the fees or the living costs you can get a means tested student loan. They copied the US model and the costs are slowly getting in that direction. I graduated in the early 90’s when grants were still a thing, but they froze them so they didn’t rise with inflation any longer and you could get ‘top up loans’ to bridge the gap to cost of living. I think I borrowed something like £750. But it was the beginning of the end of free higher education here.
I’m not shocked, I went the apprenticeship route and I was able to get enough money together to buy a home last year after getting a job in my sector.
Meanwhile my partner went to uni and is doing manual labour work while renting out a room, they got their degree but they can’t find any work in their sector.
If I went to uni, I would probably would not have been in any state to be saving any kind of money
Pretty much the same story for me.
Our generation has a problem where you’re told pretty much through the entirety of secondary school that “you need to do well here or you won’t get in to uni”, the underlying message being that you’re a failure if you don’t go to uni.
The result being that every man and his dog now has a degree the value of which is watered down hugely and 30,000 historians, artists, philosophers, , , each year, are left wondering why they can’t land a job role in their chosen line of study.
Good for me, as no one wanting to learn a trade has definitely helped with my value in the job market, bad for people that were missold a dream by a generation of boomers who “worked hard and achieved whatever they wanted”.
Creating a nation wide scarcity mindset across generations is only going to make things even worse. Lack of investment, opportunities, and support means there will be even fewer new businesses and innovations. Levelling up my arse.
This is what happened to southern Italians after 2008. 6 months was a long term plan. Some stayed unemployed living with parents, other emigrated (in UK among others) to take jobs local wouldn’t do and living (surviving…) in crappy places. Luckiers (like me) were able to study to the highest level to stay competitive thanks to scholarships.
The luckiers, with a lot of effort and many miles traveled, now have a family and a decent career (I am one), but it is important not to give up. Keep planning on the 6 months range, and try to resist the anxiety of the long term planning.
Life is a marathon
Life is hard. Sadly, the world needs ditch diggers just as much as scientists and actors but young people are bombarded with the whole “be whatever you want” speeches instead of a bit of realism.
I work 50 hours a week picking boxes in a warehouse for a company who times how long I go for a piss. I don’t see my kids. I don’t see my partner. I barely make enough to make rent each month.
I don’t mind doing a shit job. What I do mind is doing a shit job and at the end of it, being unable to take my kids on a shitty caravan holiday to the south coast because it’s too expensive, or having to constantly move house and take my kids out of school because there’s no affordable houses to live in.
So yes. Life is hard. It doesn’t have to be though. Anyone who tells you it does is telling you that because they’ve either already given up, or because they’re looking to pull the wool over your eyes so that you give up.
I will never understand how people can say bad jobs are necessary and the people working them should just accept a bad life. If the world really NEEDS ditch diggers don’t you think they deserve a decent living? Why should people doing necessary work not be able to afford cost of living?
That’s an unhelpful statement, to say the least. If it’s just as necessary to dig ditches as conduct scientific research, then the diggers would be paid at least enough to sustain themselves. But on top of that, scientists aren’t exactly well compensated, either.
Honestly, I’m surprised that anyone would regurgitate that “life is hard” rhetoric anymore. I understand why Sunak would want people to think that’s the only reason this shit is happening, but if you’re not in the ruling class and have a vested interest in maintaining your privilege, why would you say that?
He’s probably a programmer or something. They’re a sector of workers who still have some bargaining power and ok wages. So when their credulous minds are absolutely flooded with that special brand of libright individualism we all get hosed with daily, there is nothing in their personal experience to tell them it is wrong
Ex software engineer myself, retired do to disability several years ago.
To be honest. It was a field with higher left of center views then most. In my 30 year career. I only knew a few right wing programmers. Most were more left then myself. (Blair was a tory stooge to let you know where I stand)
