| Author |
|
James Woodcock
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 September 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 8681
|
| Posted: 23 September 2026 at 4:55am | IP Logged | 1
|
post reply
|
|
To try to counter the vast gulf between house price increase and wage
increase, we now have 35 years + mortgages. That are way above 3 times
wage.
Couple that with the 10% student tax, which is now for life, the lack of
prospect of a state pension for younger people and you have a perfect
storm of doom.
Renting is not a way out either - kids are looking at one room bedsits that
cost as much per month as the mortgage payments on my four bed,
detached house!
How did we let the housing market, how did we let prospects for kids come
to this?
And then we still allow, nay, corporates encourage, the strip mining of
companies to the point that companies that are over a hundred years old
die. And people go, well, they didn’t adapt.
But often, that is not what is happening.
Costs rise, but the extra profits are taken by shareholders - we are seeing a
spectacular example of that in the water sector and the postal service in the
UK.
Rather than using profits to improve things, or even using them to just get
the main job done, shareholders have taken an ever increasing amount from
those earnings, leaving precious little to do the job.
Enshitification has become the accepted business model - remove staff
from front service desks, make things fail, use lower grade materials,
remove services that used to be included.
There are a lot of things that are available now that did not used to be
available, but so much of what was available is no longer available, or is
harder to get, or has to be paid for.
There is a constant drip, drip, drip, of things getting worse
And that is what kids are seeing.
Everything is now a monthly subscription, nothing is a one time buy.
Everything is designed to get a constant slice of what you earn. And
everything is being moved from being included to having to subscribe to
access it - and the internet and AI is making/going to make that worse - and
kids see that!
Yes, let’s have things connected to the internet they are told. And then they
see things being turned off because of that. They see built in obsolescence
all around them, forcing replacements
We live in a world where we can do so much more - it’s amazing!
But the basics of live. They are getting so much harder to do. And the
solution we tell kids, is to stop buying coffee.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
e-mail
|
| |
Bill Collins
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 26 May 2005
Location: England
Posts: 11708
|
| Posted: 23 September 2026 at 6:48am | IP Logged | 2
|
post reply
|
|
My nephew is in his early 30's and has never learned to
drive. My mum was quite upset when she gave him money for
lessons on his 17th and 21st birthday's whilst he was
studying a university telling him it was another
qualification. But he has a job, and travels the world
alone as far as Japan and is quite happy not driving.
Also regarding bad parenting, this is going back 20+
years...i had a work colleague who had two daughters
around 7 and 8 years old and they were a nightmare. Thet
were bought tablets and because they wanted a different
colour, they threw them down the stairs. He asked me and
another colleague what he should do? I am not a parent,
the other colleague was a parent. We both replied that he
shouldn't buy them another tablet, teach them a life
lesson that they can't get their way by breaking things.
Guess what? He and his wife caved in! The girls continued
to be a nightmare.
I agree the disparity between house prices and earnings
nowadays must be daunting to young people. But i do think
that constantly upgrading to the latest, most expensive
phones, and the 3 year PCP new car deals don't help the
young manage their money well.
I changed my last phone after 8 years for one that cost
£130, and my car is 7 years old.
Also it's shocking the amount of people who seem to live
on fast food deliveries, or spend daily on
Starbucks/Costa coffee. A £5 coffee five days a week is
£1,300 a year! I really think schools should teach money
management.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
e-mail
|
| |
Brian Miller
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 July 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 32257
|
| Posted: 23 September 2026 at 12:06pm | IP Logged | 3
|
post reply
|
|
Our local high school actually does require each kid take a money
management class before they graduate. I’m not sure if it’s just our school
or if it’s system-mandated.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Bill Collins
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 26 May 2005
Location: England
Posts: 11708
|
| Posted: 23 September 2026 at 1:20pm | IP Logged | 4
|
post reply
|
|
We had money management, compound interest etc but that was
50 years ago, and there wasn't the plethora of
subscriptions etc in those days.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
e-mail
|
| |
Evan S. Kurtz
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 July 2022
Location: Canada
Posts: 447
|
| Posted: 23 September 2026 at 2:21pm | IP Logged | 5
|
post reply
|
|
I think a lot of schools these days have removed things like "home economics" from the curriculum, not to mention "Civics," both of which are cornerstones of our society.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
James Woodcock
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 September 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 8681
|
| Posted: 23 September 2026 at 2:58pm | IP Logged | 6
|
post reply
|
|
I get the coffee a day thing, I really do. but it's not
just that.
Remember, we would buy a copy of office and that would be
it for a few years. now? You have to subscribe.
And that's just one thing.
So many things we could buy outright have become
subscriptions - constant money leaving the earnings pot.
That's a deliberate decision by businesses. And as each new
business moves to SAS, less and less money is available for
other things.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
e-mail
|
| |
Bill Collins
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 26 May 2005
Location: England
Posts: 11708
|
| Posted: 24 September 2026 at 6:51am | IP Logged | 7
|
post reply
|
|
I agree James, i see online things like toothpaste and
razor blades even want you to take out a subscription. Me
being an old cynic just scroll on.
Another reason for high house prices is that both
partners usually work nowadays. In our parents day,
usually only the husband worked and the morgages were
based on his wage which i think was 1.5 times his salary.
Then in my day when both partners usually worked there
was the "Gazumping" actively encouraged by the estate
agents (realtors) driving prices of houses beyond their
worth. I know because we were gazumped a fair few times
on houses that needed a LOT of work.
Plus there's the thing where you can be renting and
paying £1000 a month rent but the banks won't give a
mortgage that would only be £800 a month. So young people
can't get on the property ladder.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
e-mail
|
| |
James Woodcock
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 September 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 8681
|
| Posted: 24 September 2026 at 10:13am | IP Logged | 8
|
post reply
|
|
Your last point Bill annoys me to no end.
They clearly have proven they can afford a mortgage, and the mortgage is
less than their rent would be, but no, they aren’t allowed a mortgage.
Crazy
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
e-mail
|
| |
Scott Gray
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 August 2012
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 102
|
| Posted: 24 September 2026 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | 9
|
post reply
|
|
When it comes to my attitude towards parenting, I always remembered this great piece of dialogue from Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, where Sidney Poitier's character confronts his father:
“You say you don't want to tell me how to live my life? What do you think you've been doing? You teIl me what rights I've got or haven't got and what I owe to you for what you've done for me. Let me tell you something. I owe you nothing. If you carried that bag a million miles, you did what you were supposed to do, because you brought me into this worId, and from that day you owed me everything you couId ever do for me, like I will owe my son if I ever have another. But you don't own me.”
Edited by Scott Gray on 24 September 2026 at 2:01pm
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Evan S. Kurtz
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 July 2022
Location: Canada
Posts: 447
|
| Posted: 24 September 2026 at 10:43pm | IP Logged | 10
|
post reply
|
|
I feel like that's generally correct, Scott. Parenting shouldn't be transactional. I've always felt that there were people out there who really didn't want to be parents, but had kids out of some sense of a checkmark in the To-Do List of Life, but the pandemic really opened my eyes to it. And I again apologize if I'm saying anything that hits one of you harshly, because this was common enough that if anyone here had young kids at the time, I might be talking critically about something you relate to.
But a lot of parents seemed to have trouble during the pandemic because their kids were around 24/7. I saw a lot of complaints at the time. But for me, it was an unexpected, precious six months where I got to be around my son every single day, and I'll cherish it forever. I'll never get another experience like it. Sure, I missed going to movies and game nights and, especially, haircuts. I had no idea how badly I'd miss friggin' haircuts. But I LOVED being around my kid all the time.
In fairness to anyone who doesn't share that experience, I did have two months of summer holiday baked in because I'm a teacher. I'm sure that made a difference in my case. But it was really hard for me to hear from people complaining about having to be around their own kids.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Bill Collins
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 26 May 2005
Location: England
Posts: 11708
|
| Posted: 25 September 2026 at 5:52am | IP Logged | 11
|
post reply
|
|
Evan, i'm not sure about the U.S. but recently in the
U.K. there has been a lot of news items regarding
teacher's unions complaining about the rise in children
starting school that are in nappies/diapers and the
union's saying it's not the teacher's job to change them,
which obviously it isn't. They blame lazy parenting for
the lack of potty training. They also complain of kids
who can't use a knife and fork. Again i think a lot of
parents nowadays are too wrapped up in social nedia that
they give the children no attention. Disposable nappies
make it too easy to ignore the basic need of potty
training.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
e-mail
|
| |
