[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Osem

lol It's not a straw man at all. Just an observation which applies to some and not others.

No, it was nonsensical. Anyone who, if the taxpayer weren't going to subsidise the interest rate on their savings, would spend all their money and live off the taxpayer is a lunatic.

Originally Posted by Osem

Many of the people who're investing their £20k's will have gone without all sorts of things plenty of us younger folks have and still do take for granted.

Well, yeah, we have iPads, etc. How much did TVs cost in real terms way back when? Queen Elizabeth I didn't have running water, sewage, the Internet, etc. Would you say she deserves consideration because she went without all sorts of things plenty of us 'younger folks' take for granted? Standards of living are supposed to increase generation by generation, however we're now at the stage where this has stalled and will reverse. Stuff like this doesn't help.

Originally Posted by Osem

If they'd lived the way many do today and spent every penny they earned they would have been more reliant on the state throughout their working lives and more so their retirements.

That is crap, frankly. 'Many' spend every penny because of high housing costs and high cost of living relative to incomes. This fallacy that suddenly an entire generation came along that were feckless and wasteful is not true. Disposable incomes for the under-30s are dropping rapidly.

Originally Posted by Osem

Having downsized from a 3 bed semi to a shoebox a few years ago my parents have some savings which they use to supplement the miniscule state pension they're entitled to. My mum went to a grammar school but my father didn't even get an education having been forced to leave at the age of 12-13 and like many of their generation, to get the 3 bed house they wound up owning many years later they did things like scrimp and save for years - no new cars, foreign holidays, no meals out, no smoking, no drinking, second hand clothes and cheap food. By doing this they managed to provide for themselves and qualified for nothing other than child benefit. My dad was self employed so there was no such thing as unemployment benefit for him.

This is an easy one. Look at home ownership rates and the manner in which they are falling among younger age groups while rising among the oldest demographic, along with the reliance on the wealth of parents to get onto the housing ladder now. The average first time buyer without parental help is now 36.

Chances are your parents with their equivalent income wouldn't have been on the property ladder full stop today.

Originally Posted by ONS

For those aged 25 to 34, the percentage of owner occupiers declined from 58 per cent in 2001 to 40 per cent in 2011. This suggests a decline in first time home buyers, who would usually be within this age group.

Originally Posted by Osem

Thanks to the artificially low interest rates, their income has dropped significantly and their capital been eroded partly in order to bail out those who borrowed, remortgaged and borrowed some more to fund their relatively lavish lifestyles. If they are now getting some help by way of slightly higher interest rates so be it. There are plenty of things which in my opinion are far more unfair but they're probably best left to other threads.

Also not true on the whole though obviously individual households will vary. Some people have borrowed too much for a long time, this isn't some magnificent new thing. Such things were encouraged when markets were liberalised in the 1980s.

I suspect you're thinking of the under-30s with your comments about incomes, at least disposable ones, dropping significantly.



The largest increase in disposable income was in the 75+ demographic.

Certainly savers have suffered, sadly many of them, such as those under 30 trying to do the right thing and save for a deposit for their first property in the face of ever-increasing rents and decreasing disposable income, they get to subsidise others to buy votes and get nothing themselves.

---------- Post added at 14:57 ---------- Previous post was at 14:52 ----------

Originally Posted by Kursk

Mums and Dads have made big sacrifices for us.

Well, the politicians they elected have certainly left us with one hell of a bill to pick up for, well, pretty much everything for sure, and many of us have and are making sacrifices in return.

What's your point with this, and perhaps more relevantly where's your evidence that this is extraordinary in some way? The largest components of the 'welfare' bill and the health bill are for those over 65, as would be expected. Sacrifices are made both ways.

EDIT: Cue 'They paid into it all their lives' when actually the majority have, even before retirement, drawn more from the system than they put into it. Sorry if I forgot the dogma that when someone retires they automatically paid their way 100% of their life and never drew more in services than they paid in taxes.