Gagaryn Sh!te as we all know the UK is, the reality is that the standard of living in the UK is one of the highest in the world - consistently within the top 10% of countries in the world - higher than that if you calculate by population. The fact that you haven’t been to many of the 90% of countries in the world which have lower standards of living than the UK isn’t really of any relevance
I mean broadly comparable economies, Europe, USA etc.. Not Myanmar etc..
The main thing I get from reading this thread is that many people have been fooled into blaming baby boomers etc. for the problems of today regarding living standard and especially housing costs. This amazing trick to blame the blameless (each other) has been pulled on us by those who caused the problem.
Take a single example, house prices. Then inexorable rise in house prices which swallows up a significant slice of peoples income in rent/mortgage payments and make buying a house relatively unaffordable for most, was caused by the wealthy and powerful banks and politicians with vested interests (or stupidity).
to prevent house prices rising way out of step with salaries would have been quite simple. A law could have been passed limiting the amount that could be lent on a house purchase to 3.5 times a single salary and 3 times a married couples salary. House prices could not have then risen like they have, it would have been self limiting.
Instead the banks (with the politicians blessing, offered people ever more creative ways to borrow for a mortgage. of course this created a virtual auction, if you wanted that house, you could have it just borrow 5, 6, 8, 10, 15 times your salary. Sellers/developers realising housing was limited took advantage of this to keep increasing prices to people they knew the banks would give the ability to pay. The politicians stood by and did nothing. I suppose many had interests before, during or after politics in Banks, Developers, Rental consortiums etc.. I would guess the stamp duty take was an incentive as well.
And they got you all to blame each other for the situation the housing market is now in….just a mechanism to funnel huge amounts of money from average people to the wealthy and powerful institutions and individuals who created this price rise..
P.S Of course the same people who got us into this mess are going to help us even more by lending the very large amounts over 40, 50 60 70 years, with effective lifetime mortgages (sounds like rental doesn’t it). Then they will no doubt come up with the wheeze of a perpetual mortgage. Borrow a huge amount of money and the mortgage might run for 200 year or more….just keeping that money flowing whilst they rinse you out of every penny they can.