Young people are doomed and it's all our fault!

by Harvey Jones on 16 July 2009  |  53 comments
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Harvey Jones explains why the younger generation will have to unlearn everything they have been taught about their finances in the past 15 years.

What's wrong with the younger generation? The older generation.

Before you read this article, you should know one thing about me. I'm 43 years old. That makes me middle-aged. I've even outgrown the briefly trendy "middle youth" label.

I'm on the way down.

Which means I'm entitled to grumble endlessly about "the youth of today", how they're a bunch of binge drinking, semi-literate, hoody-wearing yobs who pause from robbing pensioners just long enough to impregnate the nearest truant girl.

But I'm not going to do that.

That's because my generation, and the one before, have no right to condemn the young. In fact, it should be the other way around.

Good times

Being 43, the economic bubble came at a good time for me. Since 1996, I have bought two flats and one house (to live in), and although they were in dodgy parts of south-east London, I made money on all three.

Which was nice.

I always had work, and most of my friends could find jobs as well. They weren't always very good jobs, but there was work out there.

We didn't need to worry about getting credit either, the banks were hosing us with the stuff.

And we could earn reasonable salaries and still claim state benefits, with that nice Mr Brown sprinkling tax credits over people earning up to £60,000 a year.

And how could we complain about paying too much tax, since we were promised the money would go on schools and hospitals?

So we had it all, rising private wealth and well-funded public services, and clean consciences to boot.

Yes, I know, plenty of people didn't have it so good, especially outside London. But those will look like good times compared with what is coming.

Hard times

Younger people won't enjoy a tax-free, six-figure profit simply because they bought a property at the right time. According to a new report from PWC, house prices could take until 2020 to return to their pre-peak levels.

That's if they can afford to buy a property. Prices are still far too high for first-time buyers, without parental help.

And first they have to get a job. That won't be easy, with unemployment spiralling. Those who struggle to get on the career ladder in the recession could find their prospects hobbled for life.

Even if they do get a job, many will have to clear a heap of student debt. Tens of thousands of pounds of the stuff.

When I graduated in 1987, I vividly remember one graduate friend getting horribly depressed because she owed the equivalent of £3,000 today. Now the average student owes £15,700, more than five times that sum.

Graduates won't just have to repay their own debts, they will have to pay ours as well.

It will take a generation - the younger generation - to clear the national debt acquired in bailing out the banks.

And when they've paid for all that, they had better pay into a pension, because the state coffers will be drained by the time they retire.

Golden age?

Of course, retired people in particular may disagree with me. They didn't all make a killing in property.

The crunch has also ravaged their pensions. The number of pensioners going bankrupt has risen 160% in the past five years.

But at least they have got to retire. The younger generation will be working on to 70 and beyond.

That's because the state pension is a giant Ponzi scheme, with the young bailing out the old, and without radical restructuring, it will eventually collapse.

But the Government won't admit that. It would rather sign a blank cheque and ask the younger generation to pay.

Bad example

Again and again, politicians have done everything to avoid presenting hard truths to older people.

They poured billions into the state pension and the NHS, while demanding younger people pay tens of thousands for their own education.

North Sea oil and the financial services bubble has also allowed them to postpone desperately-needed solutions to the ageing population, rising healthcare costs and public service reform.

Instead, they have dumped these problems in the lap of the younger generation.

And yes, I know younger people are partly to blame. If more of them voted, politicians might pay them some attention.

Many also have a slack attitude to old-fashioned virtues such as thrift, saving, and planning for the future. Of course they do, because who did they learn from?

Us.

Young is the new old

Younger people now have to unlearn everything they have been taught in the past 15 years.

Somebody has to teach them that finding work is hard, credit is bad, saving is good, property isn't a pension, taxes are going up, and the state won't provide.

But who is qualified to do that?

Not us.

So next time you hear some chap my age or older grumbling about the youth of today, fire some ammunition back in their direction. You've got plenty.

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