It’s one of those everlasting quandaries, you know damn well what the average income is around here, you know damn well what the average cost of various things from cars and houses to a night out is around here, and you can’t reconcile the two.
but if you look at the work going…
There is quite frankly no fucking way people doing those jobs can afford the lifestyle you see around you…. enter the credit lifestyle, suddenly everything becomes clear, the 500 quid a month to the mortgage, with your house as an ATM, the 300 quid a month to the BMW finance company, etc etc etc.
Unless you’re 25 or under, or a single divorced older man, sure, they may well be in debt, student loans and 4k on the credit card, but the whole credit lifestyle is a step removed from what is attainable, because guess what, the whole credit lifestyle is based on “home ownership”, and the young have zero chance.
This is actually a problem for the credit industry, because frankly speaking 95% of it is based upon “home ownership” as the keystone, take that away and the whole thing collapses, but the reality is the credit industry is like a record shop that only sells Max Bygraves and Frank Sinatra records, the demographic is ageing and dying, and there are no new customers.
If there are 100 houses in my street, and 50 of them are owned by landlords letting them out, then sure, the HOUSING market is doing fine, but the “home ownership” market isn’t, and this is an important differential to notice, because the tenant cannot use that house as an ATM, and then go and get a BMW at 300 quid a month.
You just cut “the economy” by 50%.
The “divide” is in many ways as arbitrary as being catholic in a protestant town or black in a while town, you are excluded because of something you have no control over, but in this case it is primarily your age.
I know someone not 3 miles away who got married in their early 20’s, bought a house on a mortgage for 7,950 pounds, which was quite doable when you were a mechanic at the then Devon General Bus Company, they are still together and now about retired and in the same house, the house next door just sold for 265,000, in effect they have had access to a “free” quarter of a million pounds, using the house as an ATM, but the music has stopped, nobody not already on the bandwagon can afford to join the dance now, and so next door has been bought by a landlord, who is going to split it into two flats and let them out…
There will not be a new BMW and a new Merc on *that* driveway any more.
If you are under 25, it isn’t even a case of waiting until you are 35, the ship in question, the “home ownership” credit economy, has sailed, and it is sailing away faster than you can swim after it.
There is therefore a lifestyle gulf, or chasm, between one generation and the next, with here and there a few trying to bridge the gap with the bank of mom and dad using their home as an ATM to fund the deposit on junior’s home, but junior isn’t joining the same club with the house as an ATM for the next 30 years, junior is just buying steerage on the last ship to leave the dock.
It’s a Ponzi scheme, pure and simple, and in common with all Ponzi schemes, those who are “investing” in it are full of bigging themselves up while it works, and full of shock and anger and vitriol and innocence when it blows up in their faces, meanwhile everyone who was excluded from it screams schadenfreud…. and bigs themselves up for not participating in a party they were never invited to anyway.
Madoff and his attitude to the future is not an exception, he is how the entire credit based economy is, they are all Madoff’s
Hence all the current panic, and desperate measures the guvvmint is introducing to try and keep the ball rolling, but, it doesn’t work, it CANNOT work, because by definition it cannot work, that is what a bubble or a Ponzi scheme is at heart, the very antithesis of anything sustainable.
We do effectively have a two tier society, those who live on credit, and those who do not, and the “standard of living” of those who do not falls *dramatically* short of those who do.
Comparisons are always flawed, but if you look at me and my brother you see me, who had a trade, and who worked hard, periodically, with lots of period interspersed where I just laid back, I was irresponsible and so on and so forth, whereas he kept his nose to the corporate grindstone, he didn’t learn a trade, he learned “management”, in essence, he worked within the Ponzi scheme, most of his working output contributed to it.
Today I am debt free sat in a dive of a flat that is quite warm and comfortable, haven’t got dressed yet even though it is a working day and I am being paid (fuck all…lol) as my diary is empty.
Today he has a small manor house cum farm, he is still working, he has to, and I dread to think what levels of debt he still operates under, but certainly many hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Yes, one was responsible and respectable and put his nose to the corporate grindstone and did the whole get married and buy a house shit, and one was a tosser who picked up a trade or two along the way and enjoyed life.
But I don’t think those are REASONS for the difference in current lifestyle, I think they are just symptoms, I think the reasons are quite simply that he was a loyal member of the ponzi debt/credit club from the day he started work, and the biggest loan or debt of any kind that I ever signed was two or three thousand to buy a fucking motorsickle….
His LIFESTYLE and “standard of living” is much higher than mine, but his security is little if any different, he isn’t working now because he wants to, he simply has no choice, he tried to retire several years ago…
Now that in effect it is too late, it’s all downhill from here bro, he is starting to regret all the time spent working at the corporate coalface, and all the time not spent with family.
But, he and I are the lucky ones, we had the choice, in his case he took it and enjoyed all the benefits, in my case I rejected it and enjoyed all the benefits, if you’re under 25, that ship already sailed.
You must look at us both with envy, and disgust, and contempt.
You are a child of our time, I am not, I, and all the assholes like my brother who worked within the Ponzi scheme, are from a different era.
You’re *right* to envy us, I wouldn’t fucking swap with you.
It’s like a month in Siam in 1952 with a thousand US Dollars in your pocket, it ain’t 1952 any more, it ain’t much money any more, it ain’t Siam any more, and it ain’t all that being the white man any more, the sell by date has passed.
I fucked that bitch when she was sweet and 16, tore that hymen up with my cock and I was the first cock in her cunt and in her ass, and pounded that shit, but those days are gone, now she is in her 30’s and a lying skank ho and anything that was worth having is a distant memory.
4 more days until the end of the tax year here in the UK, and the mortgage laws get even tougher, still not a fraction of what they were when I and that bus mechanic started out, but tough enough even the bank of mom and dad can’t help you.
Now we are in a place where it is literally a valuable/viable strategy to owe money to the guvvmint for things like Council Tax, provided you play it right so you are never their top priority, because there already isn’t enough Court time or Council revenue officer time to chase anything except the easiest to target 75%… the most egregious cases, not the ones who say I am terribly sorry and terribly grateful for all you do, but I do not have the money to pay this bill in full, but I am able to pay 25% of it, and CRUCIALLY, you do pay that 25%… at least they are getting SOMETHING from you.
Crucially for those who drank the cool aid, as a friend of mine discovered to his cost the last time there was a crunch, the mortgage and loan lenders first chase those who CAN pay in full, even if it means wiping the poor bastards out completely.
The guy who bought the house for 10,000 in 1982 who still lives there and now owes 80k and it has a market value of 200 gets foreclosed, the guy who bought the one next door for 10k in ’82 and now owes 180k gets left at the back of the queue, for now….
This is important, because it sets an absolute limit on how much longer this game of musical chairs can keep going, this is the real demographics timebomb.
The kids growing up today will be so used to being refused any and all kinds of credit at every turn, that by the time someone decides that they are worth lending money to, they will no longer be interested in a life of indentured servitude, maybe you’ll talk them into to borrowing the equivalent of two or three thou for a used motorsickle… and that won’t keep this kind of economy going…
