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The issue is that everyone wants to see forward progression in society, whatever country you are born in. People of my generation are worse off than my parents because of housing and wage depression, there are fewer opportunities and chances of owning a home less likely, it's been demonstrated through wage comparisons and other measures that at the same age, our parents were more affluent.

So while I don't quite agree with everything KTG is saying here, I question what alternative is being offered. Not 'pulling on bootstraps', calling the situation hopeless and giving up?

Everyone that came before Millennials didn't have everything just given to them. If the situation is worse for Millennials, it's only by degree and doesn't represent a revolutionary change. Like I said earlier, young people are kinda expected to struggle some early in their careers. My parents (Silent Generation, i.e. one before Boomers) didn't own a house until their 30s. I didn't own a house until my mid-30s. It's not like we were plopping down deposits right out of college.

I can't really speak to the real estate situation those of you in the UK have described, because it's not taking place here in the US. While I'm no expert on real estate, it doesn't seem like a sustainable situation if prices are beyond what most potential home buyers can afford.

 gorgon wrote:
So while I don't quite agree with everything KTG is saying here, I question what alternative is being offered. Not 'pulling on bootstraps', calling the situation hopeless and giving up?

The problem is that KTG is not saying don't give up, he is saying don't complain.

Complaining and getting angry is part of the answer. Challenging the status quo, questioning why we are where we are. Saying "well others have it worse" is basically saying "give up"

Everyone that came before Millennials didn't have everything just given to them. If the situation is worse for Millennials, it's only by degree and doesn't represent a revolutionary change. Like I said earlier, young people are kinda expected to struggle some early in their careers. My parents (Silent Generation, i.e. one before Boomers) didn't own a house until their 30s. I didn't own a house until my mid-30s. It's not like we were plopping down deposits right out of college.

I can't really speak to the real estate situation those of you in the UK have described, because it's not taking place here in the US. While I'm no expert on real estate, it doesn't seem like a sustainable situation if prices are beyond what most potential home buyers can afford.

It's not, and that's why people are upset. The baby boomers have the highest levels of home ownership, and are also the ones who campaign against new development and changes to green belt, which restricts new house building. Lots of "I'm alright" going on.

It's not just that which upset people. My employers pension schema has a large deficit, meaning that they did not take enough funds to cover the liabilities they had built up. i.e. What they had taken could not cover what they needed to pay out to those people. The solution? To keep benefits for those who had already paid in and increase future payments in whilst reducing benefits. Same with the state pension. Pensioners have seen their state pension go up and up, whilst those in work have wages reduced and national insurance increased. The major benefactors from these? Baby boomers. The major looser? Under 40's.

Whilst I don't think the university system is right (we should be funding key professions, especially those who's main employer will be the state), I accept that the cost of things changes. That is not a major issue of inter-generational unfairness to me. Pensions and housing is.

 gorgon wrote:
While I'm no expert on real estate, it doesn't seem like a sustainable situation if prices are beyond what most potential home buyers can afford.

High prices are sustainable if you accept that people are going to rent instead of owning. What it means is that ownership is in the hands of a wealthy few, while everyone else is locked into making rent payments forever without ever building up any value in assets from their home. It's a massive wealth inequality, but it can continue indefinitely.

 obsidianaura wrote:
What are peoples thoughts about inheritance?

My personal view is to leave my children enough that they won't need to worry, and instill in them a culture of maintaining that money so they can pass it on to their children. I'm not talking vast, mega-millions estates, but enough so that rent and dividends provides enough to live on well, to free them up to work how they want.

Part of this comes from me worrying about exactly what the future of work might hold. I can't take it for granted that my kids, let alone their kids, will be able to find well paying white collar work in future economies. Throughout history having some wealth behind you has been a helpful fallback.

But there's another part that's come from direct life experiences. I know a lot of people who are third or fourth generation middle class, with nothing to show for it. Savings and investment is easier now, but past generations still left houses to their kids. But that money is spent and lost.

 gorgon wrote:
It's also important to note that Boomers aren't all sitting pretty in retirement, no matter how broad of a brush people in this thread choose to paint with. In fact, many don't have enough saved. This is partly because that generation tends to spend more than save, but also because many were affected when pensions started disappearing a couple *decades* ago and never really made up the difference.

No generation has ever had enough saved up. The boomers have saved more, in large part because they have expectations of a longer retirement, but like every generation as a whole they're a long way short of what would be needed for full retirement.

 Ketara wrote:
Okay? Appeal to your own authority is less strong a piece of evidence when discussing things online then you seem to believe it is? You worked at one university in one country, and did some benchmarking against whatever data you could get your hands on. Which is great, and totally relevant (no sarcasm). But it's not the be-all and end all that lets you proclaim from the heavens that all humanities courses worldwide are losing money hand over fist. So again, do you have any data comparing humanities departments in different positions across the world? Because if so, I would genuinely be interested to see it.

It’s pretty telling that you write ‘whatever data you could get your hands on’. Absent clear knowledge as to the quality of the data you assume it must be a slipshod process. You’re trying to make things up to solidify your own position.

For what it’s worth, the process involved large amounts of data sharing and a lot of work to make the data as consistent as possible.

The minute that switched around and Australian Universities came up, I qualified that if academics there were not earning substantially more, it should be the same. I'd be open to being shown Australian specific factors that make running a humanities course there more difficult though, in the same way that when German institutions came up as a variation, I got quite interested in trying to figure out how they do it more cheaply.

I already explained the driving factors. It was the first sentence in my response to you that started this conversation. Teacher ratios are really bad in arts. Research is hard to come by, and pays crap when it comes. These are constants across the developed world. There is no place in the world where suddenly there’s mountains of money for sociological studies, no place in the world where graduate year arts courses can be taught to commercially profitable class numbers – the courses become too specialised.

No.

Actually the process you just described is exactly what I speculated.

You've also contributed absolutely nothing in support of your very sweeping statement, despite me very politely asking what you think might have been missed in previous discussion. Instead, it feels like you've taken a somewhat aggressive and patronising tone whilst avoiding my queries for specifics.

I have become fairly annoyed, as anyone would when they spend a few years doing something, comment on line about how that works, and then get a response from someone that they’d actually rather carry on making up their own numbers.

I can’t give the exact numbers, because I don’t actually keep reports and analysis from places I left in 2012. Nor will the report tell you exactly what’s being debated here – it’s purpose wasn’t to assess the profitability of various faculties, that was merely a side product and needed to be interpreted from the raw data. So even if I contacted my old work, found someone who still had the work, or subsequent years and got them to agree to send it to me for the sake of an internet debate, you could still find ways to look past the figures.

You are right that this conversation is now non-productive. If there was ever going to be any real exchange of information coming out of this, the opportunity is gone now. It’s become an ego thing, as you say.

So probably best to stop. But maybe in a day or two think back, and think about next time you’re on the internet. There’s a whole lot of junk opinions out there. We read them all the time, we give them all the time, myself included. But just sometimes someone will chip in and say ‘actually this is a thing in which I have direct professional experience’… maybe next time just listen to that person.

 Peregrine wrote:

 gorgon wrote:
While I'm no expert on real estate, it doesn't seem like a sustainable situation if prices are beyond what most potential home buyers can afford.

High prices are sustainable if you accept that people are going to rent instead of owning. What it means is that ownership is in the hands of a wealthy few, while everyone else is locked into making rent payments forever without ever building up any value in assets from their home. It's a massive wealth inequality, but it can continue indefinitely.

Wealth and power.

I don't know about other countries, but the UK has a growing problem of what are effectively Slum Landlords. People who are so intent on profit, they'll rent out homes clearly unfit for human habitation.

And because of their wealth, they feel the can bully their tenants with relative impunity. Especially when our current sadsack of a Government voted down a resolution to ensure all rental properties were indeed fit for human habitation. All that does is reinforce the 'oh you're poor? Well that'll learn you not to be poor' my generation has come to expect.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
And because of their wealth, they feel the can bully their tenants with relative impunity. Especially when our current sadsack of a Government voted down a resolution to ensure all rental properties were indeed fit for human habitation. All that does is reinforce the 'oh you're poor? Well that'll learn you not to be poor' my generation has come to expect.

It's that good old 'have you tried just not being poor?' attitude that goes hand in hand with 'Depressed? Why not just get up and get on with it?' and, indeed, 'I worked to support myself at university, why don't you?'.

Yup.

And the lack of appreciation we likely work just as hard as their generation did, but now do so for far less of a reward.

Rent controls and house selling controls. I'm aware there's more of a culture towards renting in Europe but they have a different culture with strong tennant's rights and long term or life time rentals. That's not how it is in the UK, your rental is only as secure as your contract, often six months to a year, and you can be pushed out sooner with a notice period. Renting is not a secure life, renewing contracts and having the prices screwed up or being asked to leave. No wonder people wait later and later in life to start a family.

They need to stop the wealthy and businesses in and outside the UK hoovering up the housing stock and keeping everyone under the thumb of renting, forever paying every penny into a property they have no stake in. All you're doing is paying someone else's mortgage and never able to save for your own.

A real risk in times of financial strife and weak pound, is foreign investors leaping all over cheap housing and renting it back to us at exorbitant rates. Last thing we need as a country is the population bound to housing stock at the mercy of vast rentals to foreign companies for decades.

Houses should be primarily homes not investments. Build more and protect their sales for people who need homes not people looking to expand their rental portfolio.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:

Houses should be primarily homes not investments. Build more and protect their sales for people who need homes not people looking to expand their rental portfolio.

I concur. We're really going to struggle to get rent controls in the UK, rent-to-buy folks are simply too powerful as a bloc, but I think we should be pushing hard for extreme taxation of unoccupied dwellings.

Added to which a significant portion of MPs are landlords themselves.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Added to which a significant portion of MPs are landlords themselves.

What could possibly go wrong?!

Erm?

The housing market.

Do I win £5?

Why are y'all talking about housing in a thread about Millenials?

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
Why are y'all talking about housing in a thread about Millenials?

Good question. Home ownership is certainly not a subject that applies to us very much.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
Why are y'all talking about housing in a thread about Millenials?

Good question. Home ownership is certainly not a subject that applies to us very much.

The rent is too damn high!

And the mortgage payments are too damn higher!

 feeder wrote:
I feel a lot of hate from Mods upon us Xillenials

We can't help being labeled like a forgettable alien race from a bad episode of ST: Voyager!

Lol

I was born in '83, so right in the middle of this supposed category, and I don't relate to the term at all! I asked a co-worker who is also '83, and they felt the same.

Generation Y, I can give you. But "Xillenial"? A term that couldn't have even existed until a few decades after the generation? Just no

 Peregrine wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
Why are y'all talking about housing in a thread about Millenials?

Good question. Home ownership is certainly not a subject that applies to us very much.

Which is exactly what we're moaning about.

 LordofHats wrote:
And the mortgage payments are too damn higher!

... ya'll need to check the prices in the midwest. (Not near the cities!!).

It's pretty affordable and not assed crazy like you see in DC/Southern Cali/NYC area.

But, again, the government makes it REALLY difficult to get a mortgage because the lender HAS to accurately account all income sources (at the threat of losing their licenses). So, the paperwork is insanely herpity-derpity.

'Tis why you'll see signs everywhere for some folks to outright buy houses with cash, as it bypasses this paperwork insanity.

 whembly wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
And the mortgage payments are too damn higher!

... ya'll need to check the prices in the midwest. (Not near the cities!!).

It's pretty affordable and not assed crazy like you see in DC/Southern Cali/NYC area.

My wife watches that House Hunters show, and I am amazed at how cheap you can get a massive house there. Massive homes on large blocks for a few hundred thousand. Every time I watch it I start thinking about selling everything and moving to the US, buying a midwest McMansion and retiring

But, again, the government makes it REALLY difficult to get a mortgage because the lender HAS to accurately account all income sources (at the threat of losing their licenses). So, the paperwork is insanely herpity-derpity.

Those are not unreasonable requirements.

 sebster wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
And the mortgage payments are too damn higher!

... ya'll need to check the prices in the midwest. (Not near the cities!!).

It's pretty affordable and not assed crazy like you see in DC/Southern Cali/NYC area.

My wife watches that House Hunters show, and I am amazed at how cheap you can get a massive house there. Massive homes on large blocks for a few hundred thousand. Every time I watch it I start thinking about selling everything and moving to the US, buying a midwest McMansion and retiring

Come on over... we don't bite.

[quote

]But, again, the government makes it REALLY difficult to get a mortgage because the lender HAS to accurately account all income sources (at the threat of losing their licenses). So, the paperwork is insanely herpity-derpity.

Gen Z stands poised to quickly eclipse Xillenials Millenials in the workplace?!?

https://www.levo.com/posts/the-gen-z-workforce-is-here-and-their-expectations-are-different-from-millennials?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily_email&utm_term=

 Alpharius wrote:
Gen Z stands poised to quickly eclipse Xillenials Millenials in the workplace?!?

https://www.levo.com/posts/the-gen-z-workforce-is-here-and-their-expectations-are-different-from-millennials?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily_email&utm_term=

Most Millennials (78%) felt college did not adequately prepare them for career, while the Z Generation (68%) were more likely to be satisfied with higher education and the resources it provided upon graduation.

Hmm...

Gen Z is defined as those who were born between the mid-1990s and the second decade of this century, with the oldest of the cohort embarking on their early 20s

Aha! Found it! Give 'em a couple years and they'll turn just as bitter.