As the FT notes today, in another excellent article by John Burns-Murdoch:
In the UK [the number of] ... young people who are increasingly disengaged from not only the economy but the rest of society has doubled in just over a decade from 4.5 to 9 per cent of the population aged 20-24.
Rates have also climbed several percentage points over recent years in the US, Canada and Germany, virtually doubling in the latter two cases. In almost all cases these are record highs stretching back over several decades.
The data looks like this:
The real question to ask is, why wouldn't this happen? Many young people know:
- Their chance of living independently is low and declining.
- Housing affordability for those without parental support is declining.
- Even with increasing minimum wages, the chance of making ends meet in an economy that extracts 50% or more of wages through rents is low.
- Hard work is no longer a way to escape any of these traps, nor are qualifications.
- Children are unaffordable.
- The planet is being destroyed around them, and with it, their future.
So, why wouldn't they despair?
Unless and until we stop extracting much of the wages of young people (and others) through rents —whether actual rents, excessive interest charges, or prices inflated by monopoly power bizarrely backed by state regulation in too many cases — none of this is going to change.
The alienation of young people can be blamed on Covid, phones and much else. But those are exacerbations. The real cause is much more systemic. The real issue is rent exploitation in all its forms. It is neoliberalism that is destroying the lives of young people. And that is why it has to go.
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Housing affordability.
I live in a light suburban/rural environment (lucky me). Within walking distance there are two substantive developments. One is being touted as “luxury” dwellings. Dunno what the other is – probably the same. & yet there is a severe shortage of affordable housing in the Brussels – Leuven conurbation (& it needs to be seen as such). Plenty of BTL commentators on this blog suggest that the situatiuon is the same in the UK. The point: systemic problem and a total failure of governments (= markets always right) to do something/anything that goes beyond tokenism. (Oh & around here public transport – with one exception – is shit and largely a function of how crowded or uncrowded the roads are).
I was reading a long piece in Kyla’s newsletter (https://kyla.substack.com/p/30-days-9-cities-1-question-where), where she distinguishes between Wealth and Prosperity. She argues Wealth is mostly invisible; it does nothing to improve people’s lives. Then I thought of a bizarre analogy, comparing Wealth to Putin, and looking at Westminster and New York. Reeves and Starmer have adopted the Belarus approach, acting as a puppet government for Wealth. New York has adopted the Ukraine approach, with Mamdami offering a realistic path to improving people’s lives. Sadly, we know that Wealth will fight back with every weapon at its disposal to stop Prosperity from happening – a financial Ukraine. Will New York fight back like Ukraine, or will it revert to a puppet Government?
In the decades after the second World War, a single wage earner in a family could afford to buy a house, car, and go on holiday.
Energy was affordable. Rail fares were affordable. Rivers were not polluted with sewage.
Relative rates of poverty were lower.
Fig 5. https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/improving-our-understanding-of-uk-poverty-will-require-better-data/
We now have better technology and economies of scale, yet we are worse off because prices did not go down, but profits for the few went up.
Are you familiar with Dr Tim Morgan’s “Surplus Energy Economics”?
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/professional-area/
The prosperity seen in the post-war era was essentially due to fossil fuel abundance, with the highest rates of extraction observed in the 1950s, which is the time period most US boomers see as the “good times” to which they would like to return.
Although plenty of oil is still available it costs more energy to extract it now because all the major reserves have been drained, and it is this energy cost that is causing a decrease in prosperity over time.
Renewables cannot match the early ECoE/ERoEI figures for fossil fuels so we cannot expect them to restore prosperity to the post-war levels. The only answer to that problem is wealth redistribution to ensure everybody has enough and nobody is able to hoard to the extent we see today.
I feel strongly that your analysis is correct. Despite the existential threats in the world when I was in my 20s, work paid and most could rent or buy a house, so we did, and I’m sure material things padded our sense of normality. De-industrialisation left many communities in a bad way, but it wasn’t universal and many young people moved. Now the lack of opportunity and hope is much wider, life chances depend much more on family wealth.
I believe this applies widely, especially to those born in the 80s who have no access to assets or parental wealth. It feels like living a dream of hope, only to see that reality is a nightmare of trying to survive.
Agree with the sentiment but do young people know it is Neo-liberalism they are fed up with?
That’s the problem.
We live in an age of choice – including whom we choose to blame. I mean, they’re even having a go at their parents over this. Did their parents have any real choice? I didn’t – at the ballot box or elsewhere and I rumbled Blair not because of Iraq but when he presided over the end of final salary pensions in the public sector, moves to privatise the post office and the tube in London even back then. I’ve heard young people blame Europe, immigration, the Germans, teachers etc., but I’ve never heard the term ‘Neo-liberalism’ used ever.
Good question. To think about – and I will
To add to your point about qualifications no longer delivering, there’s also the requirement for young people outwith the devolved nations to bury themselves in debt to get them in the first place.
Agreed