...the increase in want, in times of increase in wealth, has been best analyzed by Henry George, in his 1879 book "Poverty and Progress". There is an excellent recent review of it-the 19th century language is otherwise a bit tiring-at Scott Alexander's substack, Astral Codex 10.
The solution is a proper land tax, to address the unearned value of the land, (but not the improvements). But after 143 years, getting "there" has proved impossible politically. Turkey's simply refuse to vote for early Christmas.
As a child, I rode a bike or walked two miles to school and then back every day weather permitted. This is not a great distance or achievement but to a depressing number of young people, I find it is both unintelligible and incredible, an anachronism, the Olden Days before SUV culture arrived in force.
When I was young, we used to make fun of old people who talked about the distances they walked to school, in all weather conditions. I at least had a car ride to school if it was raining. Is it our fate as we age to become the guy who says "it was enough for us"?
Just want to take issue with one factual claim. Is it really true that Britain didn't have a Baby Boom? Of course, it didn't have one on the scale of the US. But as I mentioned in a reply to another of your posts, the UK birth rate had been below 2 every year between 1929 and 1942; it was above 2 every year from 1943 to 1973. Surely that's a boom of a kind. Yes, the early postwar bump was relatively modest and short (peaking at 2.69 in 1947, and falling to around replacement for a few years in the early 1950s). And yes, the years of highest fertility, when we came close to 3 children per women, were in the early to mid-1960s.
But actually the picture in the US isn't very different - except that all the numbers (pre-Boom as well) are somewhat higher. US fertility reached what was at that time its lowest low in 1936, but that year still saw a fertility rate of a little above 2.1 (i.e., roughly replacement nowadays, though I guess, due to higher infant mortality, below replacement then). The early postwar boom in the States, as in the UK, peaked in 1947, then fell a little around 1950, then started rising again. It peaked a little earlier (1956-61) than in the UK, but similarly, the later peak saw higher fertility rates than the earlier one (which means Americans in their sixties, not their seventies, are the largest Boomer cohort).
And the numbers in terms of the difference between lows and highs are strikingly similar. The peak early postwar fertility rate was about one child per woman higher than the 1930s lowest low in both countries (UK: 1.72 in 1933 versus 2.69 in 1947; US: 2.15 in 1936 versus 3.27 in 1947). The late 1950s / early 1960s peak fertility rate was about 15% higher than the 1947 rate in the US and about 10% higher in the UK. The patterns are different, but they're not that different.
It would be interesting to do a fuller comparison of the postwar experience across Western Europe and the Anglosphere; and I'd love to read some in-depth research on the assumed reasons for different fertility patterns in different countries. For instance, France has quite a similar demographic pattern to the US (an fairly dramatic early postwar boom, a slight dip, and another boom in the late 1950s / early 1960s); but there, unlike in the US, the late 1940s peak is higher than the c.1960 one. Why? Denmark had a dramatic postwar jump (TFR between 2.1 and 2.2 through the 1930s; hitting 3 in 1946); but fertility quickly levelled off and hovered around 2.5 to 2.65 every year between 1949 and 1966. Why was there no Danish equivalent of the later boom experienced elsewhere? Canada's TFR never fell below 2.65 even in the 1930s; it was higher than 3 every year between 1943 and 1965; it came close to 4 in 1959. Were economic conditions simply better there than elsewhere? Did Canadian governments pursue specific pro-natalist policies? How much did Quebec's then devout Catholicism skew the statistics?
Speaking of Catholicism, if you're really looking for a country that didn't have a postwar baby boom at all, there's Italy. TFR was actually higher in 1937/38 (2.9-3.0) than it was in 1947/48 (2.8-2.9), and it settled at 2.5 or below for the whole of the 1950s. Even the mid-1960s jump, which Italy had in common with most Western countries, was a decidedly modest one.
The first large Anglophone nation- ANZACSs or USA to offer a house for say 10 k down payment to anyone under 30- remainder to be worked out over time Is going to have a productivity surge that will be visible from space.
Living in an old country is depressing. Lima and Lima Norte has a buzz. There are always kids about playing football- Having dance or gym classes in the parks. Eating in restaurants Here there is just damp and sickness
Also the Irish are less nucleated then their neighbors. Ditto the Slavs. Neither suffer teetotalers
I’m a child of Boomers but it saddens me quite a bit that Old People aren’t the same anymore. It saddens me to think kids today won’t know what Old People were like before the Boomers and they’ll have a completely different perception of the elderly. The well mannered generation that put pants and a collar on to go the supermarket has been replaced by the me first rocker kids, the generation who’s men cut their hair short and went to war en masse and never forgot they were the lucky ones replaced by the long haired “me me me” expressives.
Maybe when I’m old I’ll be telling kids that “back in my day old people weren’t all selfish rude people like me”
I am in my early thirties. I do not own a house. I am nowhere close to owning a house.
As it stands, I am looking at having to collect a deposit at the very least well over £100,000 to make a mortgage affordable without leaving behind family, friends, and decent paying work. If house prices were to stay where they are now, then, with a significant amount of belt-tightening, no holidays, luxuries, or other such things, I could perhaps afford to do so in ten years. That is obviously not going to happen.
I'd still be paying off the mortgage into my seventies at the least, too. My pension, even before recent turmoil hammering it down to the tune of a thousand pounds a month, was likely never to allow me to actually live, especially assuming rents as they are now. Without a paid off mortgage I am unsure how I would expect to survive without working, so retiring doesn't seem much of an option regardless.
I may yet get lucky. Perhaps a relative will leave behind enough money to set me up. Perhaps a secret house somewhere coming my way through inheritence. Who knows? I'm at least playing the lottery, I think the statistical chances of winning that feel higher than anything I could achieve through simple hard work and saving!
I tend to try and be optimistic, but unless wages go up 10x without house prices rising, or house prices come down 10x, I cannot see how it is remotely plausible to get by without access to intergenerational wealth, which for the most part is disappearing into care. At at this point I just try not to think too hard about it.
"They’re rich because the entire British economy is geared around house price inflation, a bubble which has enriched the post-war generation and immerserated their grandchildren."
Mr. West, I like the way you almost always use "house," as in "house price inflation," instead of the smarmy "home." Also, Google does not recognize "immerserated" as a word. It thinks you mean "mercerized," like thread.
Finally, it's understandable that housing cost and availability would turn younger voters against the party in power. Do you have any thoughts on what these voters think the other party (Labour, I guess) would do to solve the problem? My Daughter C recently floated rent control as a solution to high rents here. I explained (again) that this ever and always destroys supply for all but the rich.
immerserated is one of my favourite words, I would hate to lose it.
I think rent controls are generally a bad idea although can see why they are popular. as you say, they reduce supply and the solution to this is more supply (and restrict demand where possible)
the best idea so far is street votes, which would allow densification.
Is the word not "immiserated"? Forgive me if I am missing a joke!
A +1 for street votes, though. It seems a practical solution to getting at least some house building done, with those buildings being at least potentially attractive, long lasting, and desirable.
I live in the States, so while the problems here are not quite as acute they are definitely recognizable. I don't have an ounce of rebellion in me, and am playing by the bourgeois playbook as my parents would understand it. My fiancée and I both have good jobs, save diligently, and hope to buy our own home soon after we're married. I could not afford to move to any sort of town like the suburb of Boston I grew up in. Adjusting for inflation, we should be doing better than our parents ever did in their twenties, but in the housing market their buying power blows us away. A generation of people not being able to afford the lifestyle their parents did is a recipe for radicalization. I want the cliched version of the American Dream, but it sure seems the incentive structure here points to me being just a well-off renter spending his income on takeout and not diapers. That's definitely a champagne (or maybe prosecco) problem, but scale it up to everyone like me its a big problem nonetheless.
Boston is practically a museum piece of a city that nobody who’s not an heir will ever be able to afford. I had a job offer with seemingly great money but had to turn it down because I just can’t make the math work, because it doesn’t. Being in California the only affordable places to buy are places no one would want to live, much less raise a family in. I’ve been trying to convince the gal of the beauty in the Rust Belt, where we can potentially get in on the ground floor with our relatively decent incomes but it’ll take a bit of a pioneering attitude.
I seem to be one of the few people who doesn't mind the idea of a sharp drop in living standards. When things are too easy it's like 'playing tennis with the net down', as Robert Frost said about blank verse. I actually LIKE mending things, never going clothes shopping and living off scraps. After all, where's the skill in living in luxury? Any old fool can do that. And I've always enjoyed post-Apocalypse fiction. The only bit that scares me is the thought of a return to 1950's dentistry and medicine. And truth is I really wouldn't want to be trying to get on the housing ladder now. I want post-Apocalypse but in my own house.
Hmm, I'm not exactly sure how I feel about that. One or two things didn't ring quite true to me. Like when Alan, on hearing that his brother Gary might be coming to live near him, said, 'I wish I'd known that'. So once he did know it, why didn't either he or Gary go to the medical team and say, 'The situation has changed and so I've changed my mind'? It would be nice to hear a version of events that wasn't Gary's.
And though 'not enjoying life' probably isn't a good enough reason for medical staff to end a life, from my non-medical standpoint ending Alan's joy-free existence struck me as neither shocking nor worrying. However, once doctors start kicking down doors and hauling out unwilling people who would rather continue their miserable lives, that's when I'll start to worry.
The one thing I was sure about is that Child in Time by Deep Purple is not the song I would choose to serenade me out of this world.
'my abiding memory of childhood being Elton Welsby presenting Coventry City v Everton every Sunday.'
I was once cycling round England and happened to pass Coventry City's training ground so I cycled in, parked my bike and watched the players being put through their paces by Gordon Strachan. I later told my friend about this but confessed I wasn't sure that it really was Coventry's first team because I didn't recognise any of the players. 'No no, that would have been Coventry's first team' my friend assured me.
My own abiding memory is of Star Soccer with Derek Dugan and Roger Davies missing sitters on alternate Sundays. In truth though, nothing was a sitter on pitches that looked like Month 4 of the Somme. Oh God, and the cheap, unsophisticated half-time adverts for local shopping centres: 'Come to Darley Dale and buy a carpet!'
If your child’s generation thinks and acts like a generation then the solutions are clear- they will inherit all of this expensive property, after all.
They can vote for a government that takes 50 percent of the property inheritance off the top and redistributes it. They can vote for a government that builds new housing and develops green belts and brownfield sites.
Or they can act as individuals with the lucky property/inheritance lottery winners being as selfish and self-interested as the last generation, in which case there will be voters for a party that preserves wealth and property rights.
In the end I expect the new generations to be little different than the last, except amongst the immigrant community, whose children won’t be inheriting expensive property.
Even if people end up inheriting property, it won't be until they're too old to start families. Mom and dad had you in their 20s. They live into their 80s. You inherit property in your 60s. If the house is nice enough, maybe you can get a nice little puppy at that point.
No problem- vote for a party that will seize their house now and covert it to half a dozen bedsits.
Or encourage your parents to pay off their mortgage on schedule rather than spending on vacations and cars and then they can re-borrow from their home to front you cash.
A final idea is to have them sell it and retire in Bulgaria when they turn 65
Lots of options.
Or perhaps you should live as my grandparents lived - no holidays, no car, no hired help, state schools for children, a dinner out perhaps four times a year and two sets of clothes. If you adopt that lifestyle your savings will be immense.
I do have sympathy for a kids that won’t be able to afford homes, and none at all for policy makers that inflated a multi-decade asset bubble, for residents and voters that opted to preserve twee landscapes rather than build housing, for political parties that allowed the state school system to become the last possible resort in much of the country, etc. But let’s also remember that our ancestors scrimped and saved, owned nothing and inherited nothing. Horses for courses.
> Or perhaps you should live as my grandparents lived - no holidays, no car, no hired help, state schools for children, a dinner out perhaps four times a year and two sets of clothes.
> But let’s also remember that our ancestors scrimped and saved, owned nothing and inherited nothing.
This is true, but the issue right now is simply that no amount of scrimping and saving will buy the majority of young people a home to live in. If they do manage it, many will never pay it off before their death, and they will die without retiring because they cannot afford to.
> Or encourage your parents to pay off their mortgage on schedule rather than spending on vacations and cars and then they can re-borrow from their home to front you cash.
Ignoring the weirdly rude assumption about ones parents to begin with, it is precisely the problem that you need parents with a paid off mortgage to get on the property ladder yourself (assuming their funds aren't needed to pay for their staggeringly expensive care). That is what will keep narrowing the availability of housing further and further.
"and they will die without retiring because they cannot afford to"
Here's the thing about retirement. Unless you die suddenly (accident, sudden cardiac arrest...), you eventually become too weak (old and/or sick) to work. You may want to work, but simply cannot. Or no-one will hire you. And then... Call yourself retired or unemployed, whichever suits you better. Either way, poverty seems to be in the cards. But hey, at least they're legalizing euthanasia all over the place, so there's a way out! Actually, I suspect many of us will end up making our exit that way. Too expensive to remain alive, even if we don't need anything like round-the-clock care.
Actually, I don't live in the UK (though I did work there for a couple of years on a temporary contract; I never expected to stay permanently). I was speaking in general terms. But if you really need to know, it's been years since I last went on a vacation (that vacation was to visit family, and it cost the price of a round trip bus ticket, plus gifts for the family), I have no car and no hired help, and counting out a work trip (all expenses covered by the employer), I ate out exactly once this year, after two years of zero times. True, I have more than two sets of clothes (and I even treat myself to an avocado every once in a while - just imagine), but no children. I save a lot, too, but a year's worth of income (I make an above-average salary) is nowhere near enough for a down payment on a studio (yes, studio; I'm obviously not thinking about anything so luxurious as a three-bedroom). Sure, I could move, but then my income would drop like a rock. Anyway, I don't live in the UK, but it seems that lots of young and no-longer-so-young Brits live more or less as I do.
Sounds like you live very prudently. Well done. Hope your situation improves/ Keep working and saving. Find a partner someday and move to a cheaper suburb or outlying town with a longer commute if owning property is important.
Yeah, I live prudently. But now that TPTB are annihilating my savings (which was meant to go on a down payment, formerly hard-to-reach and now just about unreachable) via escalating inflation, I'm not too sure about what's prudent. Cut expenses even further to cope with the rising prices? Or spend what I've saved on things that might be useful later on before my savings turn into worthless 1's and 0's on some computer? To be honest, I'm not sure. I do have to be careful about how much stuff I buy since I have nowhere to put it, and I may need to move yet again. The more stuff you need to move, the more expensive it gets.
I'm not sure there will be anything for the majority to inherit. Many families are selling homes to put the elderly parents (or grandparents) into staggeringly expensive care. Those that don't are still likely to have to sell the house to split the proceeds between siblings.
In the end that will just end up as it is now, with a minority of already wealthy people owning all the housing stock and getting to charge exorbitant rents.
The only solution is to increase the supply of housing so people can own their own homes at the same time as their parents or grandparents.
You don’t need to speculate- you can look at ONS stats. Remember that London is not the UK and that 60-70 percent of -all people over aged 35 in the UK own their own homes (50-60 pct for ages 35-44 and obviously higher in older age groups). That is tens of millions of homeowners - not a few wealthy landlords.
I think this is misleading. Looking at the ONS statistics I can find these numbers only from 2015, actually profiling up to 2011 (which seems to match the numbers you're saying) and even there the trend is quite obvious. Compared to previous generations the numbers are sharply down. Taking 25-34 for example, in 2001 60% owned a home, and for 2011 it was just over 40%. The trend is similar but less pronounced moving up into 35-44. It's even worse if you compare to 1991.
If those trends continued the situation now, ten years later, is likely to be much worse still.
Looking at a slightly more recent government study, https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7706/, it indicates that between 1996 and 2016, home ownership for 16-34 has dropped a lot (it's a bit of a rubbish chart), while for over 65s it has increased.
That is fair. I exaggerated the present state in my comment on a blog post.
However, I think the trends support my assertion that a minority will own the majority of the housing. Given that rents are _already_ extremely high in the present situation, the housing supply being squeezed further like this is guaranteed to push up rents even more, or at least keep them where they are. Why wouldn't they?
As someone who grew up in the U.S., we were and are extremely fortunate, and I’m very grateful to have been born in 1952. But, please remember that each generation goes through difficult times, and not everything was rosy for Boomers. A lot of us were lost during the Vietnam War, and it has impacted many of those who survived, just as it did for our parents’ generation.
We also dealt with high inflation, much higher interest rates than we have now, gas shortages, and it wasn’t exactly a cakewalk when Jimmy Carter had government offices turn down the heat and turn off the hot water. It was probably easier for me, in that I was in my early 20s than the older folks, but it still sucked.
We had riots (and, yes, that was my stupid generation causing most of it) throughout the country, but mostly cities and college campuses. Anyone remember Kent State? And, crime rates were certainly up there, as well. (I believe it was during the 70s and 80s when we had some of the worst serial killers prowling our streets.) We had bombings, and kidnappings!
I’m not trying to diminish what’s happing now. However, I do think it’s awfully easy to look at the times we’re living in, and when it’s not looking so good, tell the previous generation how much better they had it. Don’t forget, that even though my parents went through WWII, which was truly awful, they also enjoyed some of the best times, too. Again, this is from a U.S. perspective, but I honestly get tired of the complaints from our younger generations here, so forgive me if I seem to be ignoring your concerns.
Your explanation is a good one. I'm mentally lazy when it comes to getting my head around things like equity release and such things and would rather die of cold or hunger than have to read about it. However, I do see that on points 1 and 2 I'm probably in a small minority and that they do explain why the majority would be, or at least feel, better off. Thanks.
I love hearing the stories of good family friends who bought houses (entire houses, not just a dingy lower ground flat) in up and coming parts of London like, oh, say, Islington, for pennies in the 1970s because that's all museum curators and archivists and young solicitors could afford, and flash forward a few days is now worth millions of pounds.
I was at a conference yesterday where a speaker said that by 2053, the entire population will have to work in care. I imagine them driving from house to house, showering Generation X and never being able to afford a place of their own, fed up of stories about New Labour and Liz Hurley.
Yeah, that's not gonna happen. Care costs are unsustainable, and one way or another, they will go down. I imagine euthanasia will be legalized across the Western (and not only Western) world and will be used liberally. No-one will technically force you, but if you cannot get the care that you need in order to live a minimally dignified life, you'll ask for it yourself. Plus, they may put some hard limits on the amount of money that may be used on an individual's care. If you use it up, then no hospital bed for you next time you catch pneumonia.
...the increase in want, in times of increase in wealth, has been best analyzed by Henry George, in his 1879 book "Poverty and Progress". There is an excellent recent review of it-the 19th century language is otherwise a bit tiring-at Scott Alexander's substack, Astral Codex 10.
The solution is a proper land tax, to address the unearned value of the land, (but not the improvements). But after 143 years, getting "there" has proved impossible politically. Turkey's simply refuse to vote for early Christmas.
As a child, I rode a bike or walked two miles to school and then back every day weather permitted. This is not a great distance or achievement but to a depressing number of young people, I find it is both unintelligible and incredible, an anachronism, the Olden Days before SUV culture arrived in force.
When I was young, we used to make fun of old people who talked about the distances they walked to school, in all weather conditions. I at least had a car ride to school if it was raining. Is it our fate as we age to become the guy who says "it was enough for us"?
Just want to take issue with one factual claim. Is it really true that Britain didn't have a Baby Boom? Of course, it didn't have one on the scale of the US. But as I mentioned in a reply to another of your posts, the UK birth rate had been below 2 every year between 1929 and 1942; it was above 2 every year from 1943 to 1973. Surely that's a boom of a kind. Yes, the early postwar bump was relatively modest and short (peaking at 2.69 in 1947, and falling to around replacement for a few years in the early 1950s). And yes, the years of highest fertility, when we came close to 3 children per women, were in the early to mid-1960s.
But actually the picture in the US isn't very different - except that all the numbers (pre-Boom as well) are somewhat higher. US fertility reached what was at that time its lowest low in 1936, but that year still saw a fertility rate of a little above 2.1 (i.e., roughly replacement nowadays, though I guess, due to higher infant mortality, below replacement then). The early postwar boom in the States, as in the UK, peaked in 1947, then fell a little around 1950, then started rising again. It peaked a little earlier (1956-61) than in the UK, but similarly, the later peak saw higher fertility rates than the earlier one (which means Americans in their sixties, not their seventies, are the largest Boomer cohort).
And the numbers in terms of the difference between lows and highs are strikingly similar. The peak early postwar fertility rate was about one child per woman higher than the 1930s lowest low in both countries (UK: 1.72 in 1933 versus 2.69 in 1947; US: 2.15 in 1936 versus 3.27 in 1947). The late 1950s / early 1960s peak fertility rate was about 15% higher than the 1947 rate in the US and about 10% higher in the UK. The patterns are different, but they're not that different.
It would be interesting to do a fuller comparison of the postwar experience across Western Europe and the Anglosphere; and I'd love to read some in-depth research on the assumed reasons for different fertility patterns in different countries. For instance, France has quite a similar demographic pattern to the US (an fairly dramatic early postwar boom, a slight dip, and another boom in the late 1950s / early 1960s); but there, unlike in the US, the late 1940s peak is higher than the c.1960 one. Why? Denmark had a dramatic postwar jump (TFR between 2.1 and 2.2 through the 1930s; hitting 3 in 1946); but fertility quickly levelled off and hovered around 2.5 to 2.65 every year between 1949 and 1966. Why was there no Danish equivalent of the later boom experienced elsewhere? Canada's TFR never fell below 2.65 even in the 1930s; it was higher than 3 every year between 1943 and 1965; it came close to 4 in 1959. Were economic conditions simply better there than elsewhere? Did Canadian governments pursue specific pro-natalist policies? How much did Quebec's then devout Catholicism skew the statistics?
Speaking of Catholicism, if you're really looking for a country that didn't have a postwar baby boom at all, there's Italy. TFR was actually higher in 1937/38 (2.9-3.0) than it was in 1947/48 (2.8-2.9), and it settled at 2.5 or below for the whole of the 1950s. Even the mid-1960s jump, which Italy had in common with most Western countries, was a decidedly modest one.
The first large Anglophone nation- ANZACSs or USA to offer a house for say 10 k down payment to anyone under 30- remainder to be worked out over time Is going to have a productivity surge that will be visible from space.
Living in an old country is depressing. Lima and Lima Norte has a buzz. There are always kids about playing football- Having dance or gym classes in the parks. Eating in restaurants Here there is just damp and sickness
Also the Irish are less nucleated then their neighbors. Ditto the Slavs. Neither suffer teetotalers
I’m a child of Boomers but it saddens me quite a bit that Old People aren’t the same anymore. It saddens me to think kids today won’t know what Old People were like before the Boomers and they’ll have a completely different perception of the elderly. The well mannered generation that put pants and a collar on to go the supermarket has been replaced by the me first rocker kids, the generation who’s men cut their hair short and went to war en masse and never forgot they were the lucky ones replaced by the long haired “me me me” expressives.
Maybe when I’m old I’ll be telling kids that “back in my day old people weren’t all selfish rude people like me”
I am in my early thirties. I do not own a house. I am nowhere close to owning a house.
As it stands, I am looking at having to collect a deposit at the very least well over £100,000 to make a mortgage affordable without leaving behind family, friends, and decent paying work. If house prices were to stay where they are now, then, with a significant amount of belt-tightening, no holidays, luxuries, or other such things, I could perhaps afford to do so in ten years. That is obviously not going to happen.
I'd still be paying off the mortgage into my seventies at the least, too. My pension, even before recent turmoil hammering it down to the tune of a thousand pounds a month, was likely never to allow me to actually live, especially assuming rents as they are now. Without a paid off mortgage I am unsure how I would expect to survive without working, so retiring doesn't seem much of an option regardless.
I may yet get lucky. Perhaps a relative will leave behind enough money to set me up. Perhaps a secret house somewhere coming my way through inheritence. Who knows? I'm at least playing the lottery, I think the statistical chances of winning that feel higher than anything I could achieve through simple hard work and saving!
I tend to try and be optimistic, but unless wages go up 10x without house prices rising, or house prices come down 10x, I cannot see how it is remotely plausible to get by without access to intergenerational wealth, which for the most part is disappearing into care. At at this point I just try not to think too hard about it.
have you tried eating fewer avocados?
(joking obviously. the situation is desperate)
I'd consider cutting down on the wine, but then how would I cope?
"They’re rich because the entire British economy is geared around house price inflation, a bubble which has enriched the post-war generation and immerserated their grandchildren."
Mr. West, I like the way you almost always use "house," as in "house price inflation," instead of the smarmy "home." Also, Google does not recognize "immerserated" as a word. It thinks you mean "mercerized," like thread.
Finally, it's understandable that housing cost and availability would turn younger voters against the party in power. Do you have any thoughts on what these voters think the other party (Labour, I guess) would do to solve the problem? My Daughter C recently floated rent control as a solution to high rents here. I explained (again) that this ever and always destroys supply for all but the rich.
immerserated is one of my favourite words, I would hate to lose it.
I think rent controls are generally a bad idea although can see why they are popular. as you say, they reduce supply and the solution to this is more supply (and restrict demand where possible)
the best idea so far is street votes, which would allow densification.
https://unherd.com/thepost/is-this-the-solution-to-britains-housing-crisis/
Unlike with housing right now, this provides incentives for people to ensure their neighbours build up.
I feel that immerserated is how I would feel at a charity coffee morning with Vera Lynn playing
Is the word not "immiserated"? Forgive me if I am missing a joke!
A +1 for street votes, though. It seems a practical solution to getting at least some house building done, with those buildings being at least potentially attractive, long lasting, and desirable.
Yeah I'm just being illiterate. I'll hire an editor after I hit 15,000 subs, which shouldn't be too long.
I can do it for free if you want as long as I'm not credited for it.
I am available for a very reasonable hourly wage.
Thanks, I'll read that.
I live in the States, so while the problems here are not quite as acute they are definitely recognizable. I don't have an ounce of rebellion in me, and am playing by the bourgeois playbook as my parents would understand it. My fiancée and I both have good jobs, save diligently, and hope to buy our own home soon after we're married. I could not afford to move to any sort of town like the suburb of Boston I grew up in. Adjusting for inflation, we should be doing better than our parents ever did in their twenties, but in the housing market their buying power blows us away. A generation of people not being able to afford the lifestyle their parents did is a recipe for radicalization. I want the cliched version of the American Dream, but it sure seems the incentive structure here points to me being just a well-off renter spending his income on takeout and not diapers. That's definitely a champagne (or maybe prosecco) problem, but scale it up to everyone like me its a big problem nonetheless.
Boston is practically a museum piece of a city that nobody who’s not an heir will ever be able to afford. I had a job offer with seemingly great money but had to turn it down because I just can’t make the math work, because it doesn’t. Being in California the only affordable places to buy are places no one would want to live, much less raise a family in. I’ve been trying to convince the gal of the beauty in the Rust Belt, where we can potentially get in on the ground floor with our relatively decent incomes but it’ll take a bit of a pioneering attitude.
I seem to be one of the few people who doesn't mind the idea of a sharp drop in living standards. When things are too easy it's like 'playing tennis with the net down', as Robert Frost said about blank verse. I actually LIKE mending things, never going clothes shopping and living off scraps. After all, where's the skill in living in luxury? Any old fool can do that. And I've always enjoyed post-Apocalypse fiction. The only bit that scares me is the thought of a return to 1950's dentistry and medicine. And truth is I really wouldn't want to be trying to get on the housing ladder now. I want post-Apocalypse but in my own house.
...beware the euthanasia movement Mr K. They are bound to develop a home service.
You've scared me now. Hopefully they can't trace me by my internet handle alone....[groans as he notices his handle].
...just came across this about Canada. It won't make you feel better: https://unherd.com/thepost/canadas-euthanasia-laws-killed-my-brother/
Hmm, I'm not exactly sure how I feel about that. One or two things didn't ring quite true to me. Like when Alan, on hearing that his brother Gary might be coming to live near him, said, 'I wish I'd known that'. So once he did know it, why didn't either he or Gary go to the medical team and say, 'The situation has changed and so I've changed my mind'? It would be nice to hear a version of events that wasn't Gary's.
And though 'not enjoying life' probably isn't a good enough reason for medical staff to end a life, from my non-medical standpoint ending Alan's joy-free existence struck me as neither shocking nor worrying. However, once doctors start kicking down doors and hauling out unwilling people who would rather continue their miserable lives, that's when I'll start to worry.
The one thing I was sure about is that Child in Time by Deep Purple is not the song I would choose to serenade me out of this world.
'my abiding memory of childhood being Elton Welsby presenting Coventry City v Everton every Sunday.'
I was once cycling round England and happened to pass Coventry City's training ground so I cycled in, parked my bike and watched the players being put through their paces by Gordon Strachan. I later told my friend about this but confessed I wasn't sure that it really was Coventry's first team because I didn't recognise any of the players. 'No no, that would have been Coventry's first team' my friend assured me.
My own abiding memory is of Star Soccer with Derek Dugan and Roger Davies missing sitters on alternate Sundays. In truth though, nothing was a sitter on pitches that looked like Month 4 of the Somme. Oh God, and the cheap, unsophisticated half-time adverts for local shopping centres: 'Come to Darley Dale and buy a carpet!'
If your child’s generation thinks and acts like a generation then the solutions are clear- they will inherit all of this expensive property, after all.
They can vote for a government that takes 50 percent of the property inheritance off the top and redistributes it. They can vote for a government that builds new housing and develops green belts and brownfield sites.
Or they can act as individuals with the lucky property/inheritance lottery winners being as selfish and self-interested as the last generation, in which case there will be voters for a party that preserves wealth and property rights.
In the end I expect the new generations to be little different than the last, except amongst the immigrant community, whose children won’t be inheriting expensive property.
Even if people end up inheriting property, it won't be until they're too old to start families. Mom and dad had you in their 20s. They live into their 80s. You inherit property in your 60s. If the house is nice enough, maybe you can get a nice little puppy at that point.
No problem- vote for a party that will seize their house now and covert it to half a dozen bedsits.
Or encourage your parents to pay off their mortgage on schedule rather than spending on vacations and cars and then they can re-borrow from their home to front you cash.
A final idea is to have them sell it and retire in Bulgaria when they turn 65
Lots of options.
Or perhaps you should live as my grandparents lived - no holidays, no car, no hired help, state schools for children, a dinner out perhaps four times a year and two sets of clothes. If you adopt that lifestyle your savings will be immense.
I do have sympathy for a kids that won’t be able to afford homes, and none at all for policy makers that inflated a multi-decade asset bubble, for residents and voters that opted to preserve twee landscapes rather than build housing, for political parties that allowed the state school system to become the last possible resort in much of the country, etc. But let’s also remember that our ancestors scrimped and saved, owned nothing and inherited nothing. Horses for courses.
> Or perhaps you should live as my grandparents lived - no holidays, no car, no hired help, state schools for children, a dinner out perhaps four times a year and two sets of clothes.
> But let’s also remember that our ancestors scrimped and saved, owned nothing and inherited nothing.
This is true, but the issue right now is simply that no amount of scrimping and saving will buy the majority of young people a home to live in. If they do manage it, many will never pay it off before their death, and they will die without retiring because they cannot afford to.
> Or encourage your parents to pay off their mortgage on schedule rather than spending on vacations and cars and then they can re-borrow from their home to front you cash.
Ignoring the weirdly rude assumption about ones parents to begin with, it is precisely the problem that you need parents with a paid off mortgage to get on the property ladder yourself (assuming their funds aren't needed to pay for their staggeringly expensive care). That is what will keep narrowing the availability of housing further and further.
"and they will die without retiring because they cannot afford to"
Here's the thing about retirement. Unless you die suddenly (accident, sudden cardiac arrest...), you eventually become too weak (old and/or sick) to work. You may want to work, but simply cannot. Or no-one will hire you. And then... Call yourself retired or unemployed, whichever suits you better. Either way, poverty seems to be in the cards. But hey, at least they're legalizing euthanasia all over the place, so there's a way out! Actually, I suspect many of us will end up making our exit that way. Too expensive to remain alive, even if we don't need anything like round-the-clock care.
Actually, I don't live in the UK (though I did work there for a couple of years on a temporary contract; I never expected to stay permanently). I was speaking in general terms. But if you really need to know, it's been years since I last went on a vacation (that vacation was to visit family, and it cost the price of a round trip bus ticket, plus gifts for the family), I have no car and no hired help, and counting out a work trip (all expenses covered by the employer), I ate out exactly once this year, after two years of zero times. True, I have more than two sets of clothes (and I even treat myself to an avocado every once in a while - just imagine), but no children. I save a lot, too, but a year's worth of income (I make an above-average salary) is nowhere near enough for a down payment on a studio (yes, studio; I'm obviously not thinking about anything so luxurious as a three-bedroom). Sure, I could move, but then my income would drop like a rock. Anyway, I don't live in the UK, but it seems that lots of young and no-longer-so-young Brits live more or less as I do.
Sounds like you live very prudently. Well done. Hope your situation improves/ Keep working and saving. Find a partner someday and move to a cheaper suburb or outlying town with a longer commute if owning property is important.
Yeah, I live prudently. But now that TPTB are annihilating my savings (which was meant to go on a down payment, formerly hard-to-reach and now just about unreachable) via escalating inflation, I'm not too sure about what's prudent. Cut expenses even further to cope with the rising prices? Or spend what I've saved on things that might be useful later on before my savings turn into worthless 1's and 0's on some computer? To be honest, I'm not sure. I do have to be careful about how much stuff I buy since I have nowhere to put it, and I may need to move yet again. The more stuff you need to move, the more expensive it gets.
I'm not sure there will be anything for the majority to inherit. Many families are selling homes to put the elderly parents (or grandparents) into staggeringly expensive care. Those that don't are still likely to have to sell the house to split the proceeds between siblings.
In the end that will just end up as it is now, with a minority of already wealthy people owning all the housing stock and getting to charge exorbitant rents.
The only solution is to increase the supply of housing so people can own their own homes at the same time as their parents or grandparents.
You don’t need to speculate- you can look at ONS stats. Remember that London is not the UK and that 60-70 percent of -all people over aged 35 in the UK own their own homes (50-60 pct for ages 35-44 and obviously higher in older age groups). That is tens of millions of homeowners - not a few wealthy landlords.
I think this is misleading. Looking at the ONS statistics I can find these numbers only from 2015, actually profiling up to 2011 (which seems to match the numbers you're saying) and even there the trend is quite obvious. Compared to previous generations the numbers are sharply down. Taking 25-34 for example, in 2001 60% owned a home, and for 2011 it was just over 40%. The trend is similar but less pronounced moving up into 35-44. It's even worse if you compare to 1991.
If those trends continued the situation now, ten years later, is likely to be much worse still.
Looking at a slightly more recent government study, https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7706/, it indicates that between 1996 and 2016, home ownership for 16-34 has dropped a lot (it's a bit of a rubbish chart), while for over 65s it has increased.
Here is what was misleading in our exchange (in fact, completely false):
“….just as it is now, with a minority of already wealthy people owning all of the housing stock and getting to charge exorbitant rents”
That is fair. I exaggerated the present state in my comment on a blog post.
However, I think the trends support my assertion that a minority will own the majority of the housing. Given that rents are _already_ extremely high in the present situation, the housing supply being squeezed further like this is guaranteed to push up rents even more, or at least keep them where they are. Why wouldn't they?
I share your concern about housing affordability for the young and for future generations
As someone who grew up in the U.S., we were and are extremely fortunate, and I’m very grateful to have been born in 1952. But, please remember that each generation goes through difficult times, and not everything was rosy for Boomers. A lot of us were lost during the Vietnam War, and it has impacted many of those who survived, just as it did for our parents’ generation.
We also dealt with high inflation, much higher interest rates than we have now, gas shortages, and it wasn’t exactly a cakewalk when Jimmy Carter had government offices turn down the heat and turn off the hot water. It was probably easier for me, in that I was in my early 20s than the older folks, but it still sucked.
We had riots (and, yes, that was my stupid generation causing most of it) throughout the country, but mostly cities and college campuses. Anyone remember Kent State? And, crime rates were certainly up there, as well. (I believe it was during the 70s and 80s when we had some of the worst serial killers prowling our streets.) We had bombings, and kidnappings!
I’m not trying to diminish what’s happing now. However, I do think it’s awfully easy to look at the times we’re living in, and when it’s not looking so good, tell the previous generation how much better they had it. Don’t forget, that even though my parents went through WWII, which was truly awful, they also enjoyed some of the best times, too. Again, this is from a U.S. perspective, but I honestly get tired of the complaints from our younger generations here, so forgive me if I seem to be ignoring your concerns.
Your explanation is a good one. I'm mentally lazy when it comes to getting my head around things like equity release and such things and would rather die of cold or hunger than have to read about it. However, I do see that on points 1 and 2 I'm probably in a small minority and that they do explain why the majority would be, or at least feel, better off. Thanks.
So if the new generation is looking to left wing politics, does the left have a policy package that will actually address those concerns?
Restricting housing and spending on pensions might be done by opportunist right-wing governments, but it's usually the left that really means it.
I love hearing the stories of good family friends who bought houses (entire houses, not just a dingy lower ground flat) in up and coming parts of London like, oh, say, Islington, for pennies in the 1970s because that's all museum curators and archivists and young solicitors could afford, and flash forward a few days is now worth millions of pounds.
I was at a conference yesterday where a speaker said that by 2053, the entire population will have to work in care. I imagine them driving from house to house, showering Generation X and never being able to afford a place of their own, fed up of stories about New Labour and Liz Hurley.
Yeah, that's not gonna happen. Care costs are unsustainable, and one way or another, they will go down. I imagine euthanasia will be legalized across the Western (and not only Western) world and will be used liberally. No-one will technically force you, but if you cannot get the care that you need in order to live a minimally dignified life, you'll ask for it yourself. Plus, they may put some hard limits on the amount of money that may be used on an individual's care. If you use it up, then no hospital bed for you next time you catch pneumonia.