I emigrated from England mostly because housing was just utterly unaffordable compared to wages, even in tech jobs.
I think older people might not be aware of how bad it is, as you are quite insulated from it if you are paying back a mortgage from a 10-20 years ago rather than renting at market rates.
If you have a good job you can get by, but with a significantly lower quality of life than a comparable job would have on much of the Continent, let alone in America.
That said, my experience is mostly limited to London and the South-East where I grew up, so perhaps it's better elsewhere but most of the jobs are in London, and anywhere even within commuting distance is ridiculously expensive. Getting a house like my parents or grandparents had would be impossible, and they weren't rich.
The new government has said they want to sort out the NIMBY stuff and get Britain building again, let's hope they do.
What exactly is the social promise now? One can study hard, get an objectively good qualification, if you're lucky get a decent job and still all you've signed up for is to be a good tenant for a landlord for the rest of your days.
In the seventies social housing programs gave an entire generation a chance, and now that same generation is scalping their own offspring with the very same properties.
That’s what happens when agenda-setting is controlled by a vocal bourgeois minority, basically untouched by money problems, while completely ignoring the struggles of the silent majority.
This is hardly surprising - money was my primary concern in my late teenage years and early 20's - for many young adults in Europe and North America, this is the first time when they are expected to be in full control and really, far too few are prepared - I certainly wasn't. I too was not too worried about culture wars or climate. And I too was majorly concerned about the future of democracy. The one thing I find alarming is that I am magnitudes more concerned about the future of democracy now than I was back then. The 2010's me was far too optimistic it seems. To be clear - I am not from the UK but I spent a long time living among British people and I can relate. I have only one advise for younger people(all people actually) - hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
Pretty much every young person (in their 20's) that I know outside of work (obviously) either can't get a job, or has an "in-between" job (e.g. temp work). All but one of them have college degrees (albiet not necessarily in the most useful subjects), all of them are either living with their parents, or are heavily funded by them.
They all report more or less the same, hundreds of job applications going out, mostly zero, or only 1-2 responses (but for jobs that they have hundreds of candidates for).
Forget buying a house (which is totally unaffordable), even paying their monthly bills is a challenge.
Seems like with AI (for a lot of white collar jobs at least), this isn't going to get better. Governments might have to start thinking about UBI ...
I recently moved to London(been a few years) and love the city, but the cost of living is extremely high—whether it’s dining out, attending concerts, going to the theatre, or especially paying rent.
A large portion of my salary goes toward rent and utilities. Fortunately, I work in tech, but I often wonder how others even manage.
Workplace conversations revolve around how expensive everything is and sharing tips on saving money. It’s definitely a source of anxiety.
I would not assume that what people tell pollsters is the same as the way they will vote.
"Work" and "money" are hard problems. Any meaningful solution is going to be difficult to understand, and I think people know it. The economy fluctuates regardless of who is in office, making past experiences murky. A politician is going to have a hard time convincing them that any of their policies will actually work.
It's easier to find a politician who agrees with you on the culture wars, and then assume that their economic policies will also work.
So I take it with a grain of salt when they say that they're picking based on a sound consideration of a politician's economic policy. They can say it, and maybe even believe it, but I bet you'll find that the correlation to culture is even more predictive of their vote.
Hard to plan for tomorrow when you can barely plan for today. There's nothing out there in the job market.
A dearth of half-promises from startups without any clear mission other than AI salad in the hopes they can entice lost VC or paranoid big corps to buy them out, in the meantime hollowing out their shell as much as they can with the biggest manic grins you could possibly imagine as they dry out from the inside.
It's a shitshow.
It's the economy, stupid.
I mean, leave aside whether today is uniquely bad (I doubt that it is although I'm sure it's worse in some ways and better in others). But, I'm pretty sure young people of most eras have worried about work and money more than cultural conflict or macro global concerns.
I think the problem is largely the enormous wealth extraction from the working class (this includes any working person, including high-tech and finance workers) to the old asset-owning class. Property prices (and rents) and income taxes are setup in such a way to effectively drain you of any potential wealth accrual. You simply cannot reach escape velocity in almost any job.
If you are a high-earning knowledge worker - you will be taxed to the pips, pay some of the highest OECD childcare costs, pay >= 35% of your paycheck in rent alone. The median house to median earnings ratio in even second cities like Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle are comparable to San Francisco. The older generation living an index linked lifestyle are completely immune to seeing these effects.
I've lived in the US too - there is a huge cultural difference in how house prices are treated. Even home owners bemoan high house prices, because they increase their property taxes. This is a huge cultural blind spot in the UK. And a similar system would be enormously helpful (but not exhaustive) in terms of incentives.