One thing I'll predict (and very seriously) is that attitudes to euthanasia will shift radically as this problem intensifies. (And indeed the groundwork for this is already being put into place). By this I mean that we'll go beyond families taking granny off life support with one eye on the will, and into a sustained campaign of explicit remoralization of euthanasia. Old people will be expected to 'do their duty' to society and shuffle off this mortal coil with a handful of pills. (Perhaps this will be supported by diatribes against the outdated opinions of the past - why should society care for the upkeep of all these elderly racists who only believe in two genders?). We get the morality we can afford, after all.
...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.
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.
Like all right minded people, I hope Boris gets back into number 10 in that it might help anyone who still has faith in the system to realise that their dreams are unattainable and their hopes absurd. But after that, is the SDP the way to go? Their manifesto seems pretty good but I tend to think of them as people who say they're tough on crime but secretly think that mugging should be a misdemeanour
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.
'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.
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.
One thing I'll predict (and very seriously) is that attitudes to euthanasia will shift radically as this problem intensifies. (And indeed the groundwork for this is already being put into place). By this I mean that we'll go beyond families taking granny off life support with one eye on the will, and into a sustained campaign of explicit remoralization of euthanasia. Old people will be expected to 'do their duty' to society and shuffle off this mortal coil with a handful of pills. (Perhaps this will be supported by diatribes against the outdated opinions of the past - why should society care for the upkeep of all these elderly racists who only believe in two genders?). We get the morality we can afford, after all.
...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”
Alternative title: We'll NEET again
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.
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.
Like all right minded people, I hope Boris gets back into number 10 in that it might help anyone who still has faith in the system to realise that their dreams are unattainable and their hopes absurd. But after that, is the SDP the way to go? Their manifesto seems pretty good but I tend to think of them as people who say they're tough on crime but secretly think that mugging should be a misdemeanour
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.
'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.
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.