Where did it all go wrong?!

01-07-2017 02:42PM #1

The previous generation here, the US, the UK, Australia etc mostly raised families/own their own house on a single income...........around 40 hours of work a week.

Here we are both parents working - so 80 hours of work a week from a family and people are struggling to get the same kind of house despite effectively putting in twice the effort?

Where`d it all go wrong and where is it goin?

OldMrBrennan83 · 01-07-2017 02:43PM

This post has been deleted.

Winterlong · 01-07-2017 02:45PM

And because we simply have more stuff and consume more stuff.
Cars, internet, less durable clothes, mobile phones, data plans, sky/virgin etc etc.

Allinall · 01-07-2017 02:45PM

[Deleted User] wrote: »

The previous generation here, the US, the UK, Australia etc mostly raised families/own their own house on a single income...........around 40 hours of work a week.

Here we are both parents working - so 80 hours of work a week from a family and people are struggling to get the same kind of house despite effectively putting in twice the effort?

Where`d it all go wrong and where is it goin?

Two holidays a year. Two cars. Eating out. Flat screen tv.

People are making different choices these days.

OldMrBrennan83 · 01-07-2017 02:46PM

This post has been deleted.

punisher5112 · 01-07-2017 02:46PM

Stuck commuting and renting so no money at the end of the week to even think of putting towards a deposit.

Something needs to change and fast or more and more will be looking for council housing.

Housing the councils had sold off over the years for buttons now grabbing in 100s of thousands...

Ludicrous.

Ally Dick · 01-07-2017 02:46PM

Bertie and Charlie McGreevy are to blame. They allowed the banks to shift the lending criteria to couples, and did nothing. Gordon Brown was faced with the same problem in the UK with Halifax building society, and he put a stop to it

Harry Palmr · 01-07-2017 02:47PM

What went wrong is that as adjusted for inflation our wages have been stagnant for half a generation if not longer (depending on sector) and the price of a roof over our heads has gone through the roofs.

CeilingFly · 01-07-2017 02:56PM

Mine is classic example. 6 kids in family. Dad senior civil servant. 2-3 kids per room. (eldest got her own room from day one and never gave that up!)

One b+w TV with rte relays. Upgraded in late seventies to colour + cablelink.

Holiday was week in rented house in connemara.

New clothes and shoes for special occasions.

He had 4 cars over his entire driving life.

Take out / McDonald's etc didn't come into it, but we did have annual pass to zoo (we knew every inch of it)

But life was good - we lived in nice house, went to good schools, played loads of games outside, loads of casual friends, loads of sleepovers.

Same scenario today would see 6 mobile phones, a six bed house, 6 tvs all with sky, out to McDonald's or similar every week, foreign holidays, PlayStations, car change every 5 years and convenience foods dominating the diet.

Not saying which is best, but both have their benefits. Probably prefer today's lifestyle.

washman3 · 01-07-2017 03:05PM

Where did it all go wrong..??
Simple enough.!! Its called voter ignorance.
People kept voting FIANNA FAIL into power.
That's it in a nutshell.

Fr_Dougal · 01-07-2017 03:33PM

Houses were €90k in the early '90s, €400k now.

freshpopcorn · 01-07-2017 03:35PM

Daddy worked, mammy stayed at home and minded the kids.
Most of the time their was only one car.
Only one phone. So, less bills.
No internet/computers/sky television/ipads to be paid for.
Not many went on big holiday.
Basically the standard of living was entirely different to now. If some people went back to the way previous generations lived. Some would feel almost like they were living in a third world country.

Dyr · 01-07-2017 03:36PM

Allinall wrote: »

Two holidays a year. Two cars. Eating out. Flat screen tv.

People are making different choices these days.

As opposed to those CRT screens they're selling

Do the mongos even check the sell by date on the guff that they're mindlessly regurgitating?

greencap · 01-07-2017 03:38PM

Deleted User wrote: »

The previous generation here, the US, the UK, Australia etc mostly raised families/own their own house on a single income...........around 40 hours of work a week.

Here we are both parents working - so 80 hours of work a week from a family and people are struggling to get the same kind of house despite effectively putting in twice the effort?

Where`d it all go wrong and where is it goin?

The answer is on the label of your clothes, shoes and electronic goods.

Sam Kade · 01-07-2017 03:40PM

Fr_Dougal wrote: »

Houses were €90k in the early '90s, €400k now.

People built houses in the 90's they want to build castles now, keeping up with the Joneses and all that.

Dyr · 01-07-2017 03:42PM

Anyone who tells you that internet access and a phone are luxury items can be safely disregarded as a clueless muppet.

That leaves us with a huge rise in the cost of living..most notably the lifetime of debt required to purchase a house

judeboy101 · 01-07-2017 03:42PM

I blame the foreigners

Sam Kade · 01-07-2017 03:43PM

freshpopcorn wrote: »

Daddy worked, mammy stayed at home and minded the kids.
Most of the time their was only one car.
Only one phone. So, less bills.
No internet/computers/sky television/ipads to be paid for.
Not many went on big holiday.
Basically the standard of living was entirely different to now. If some people went back to the way previous generations lived. Some would feel almost like they were living in a third world country.

Back then flights were expensive compared to nowadays.

freshpopcorn · 01-07-2017 03:44PM

Sam Kade wrote: »

People built houses in the 90's they want to build castles now, keeping up with the Joneses and all that.

Even back then when people were building houses. A lot stayed in mobile homes on the house site and they saved a packet. If you suggested staying in a mobile home Today the looks you'd get of some people.

BlinkingLights · 01-07-2017 03:47PM

Simple really:

Housing market is overpriced and the whole supply chain realised that you can give people larger and larger mortgages, inflating the price of a home, but because demand is inelastic, they will keep buying and borrowing.

The money borrowed to fund this is being extracted from the economy and into the financial markets as mortgage derivatives and so on.

Then you've a notion that a house isn't just something to live in, rather it's an asset to speculate with. So most homeowners are happy enough to get into huge debt, assuming they can sell the property on at an even higher value, and move on.

Relatively speaking more and more of our incomes are going on putting a roof over our heads. We are allowing greed and speculation to literally milk us dry!

It's basically like a pyramid scheme crossed with a vacuum cleaner. Money is being earned and sucked straight our of the economy and is making the owners of capital wealthier and wealthier while impoverishing those generating the wealth in the first place.

The explanation of changing consumer habits doesn't add up as many of those gadgets and technologies are vastly less expensive than they were a couple or decades ago never mind in the 1970s. A lot of aspects of life have become significantly cheaper.

Basically, we have managed to walk ourselves back to the 19th century in many respects when it comes to economics - poor and poorer distribution of wealth and a system stacked in favour of those who already own a lot.

LionelNashe · 01-07-2017 03:47PM

Part of it must be that women understandably want to work in different careers and not be restricted to looking after the home and the kids. Then, once the household has two incomes, the spending habits adjust to use up both incomes instead of one income, on non-essentials.

A lot of must also be down to the price of rent and property.

I think the chains of causality are as follows:

Rents are high and house prices are high because
--> not enough houses are being built

Not enough houses are being built because
-->A lot of developers are out of business
--> and the rest say they can't make money
--> and the banks aren't lending
--> and landowners are hoarding land (?)

A lot of developers are out of business because
--> some of them overstretched and were busted by the recession
--> and Nama put the good ones out of business along with the bad.

Developers say they can't make money because
--> Taxes, VAT and the social housing provision.

The banks aren't lending because
--> they lent too much and were busted by the recession so they have to keep high capital reserves.
--> and maybe it's true that the developer's projects won't make money.

Landowners are hoarding land because
--> I don't know if or why this is true.

Where's it going? The transfer of wealth from those who don't own property to those who do will continue. Maybe we'll end up like back in the days of the landed gentry and absentee landlords, and the majority of the population working all their lives to send a good portion of their income to somebody else's bank accounts.

I think a good start to fixing the problem would be to put a halt or a moratorium on the social housing provision. At the moment I think it's 10%, but 10% of nothing is nothing, so it's of very little benefit. If it were removed, and developers had that little bit more profit margin, they could build more. More supply means the prices don't inflate so fast.

However, I don't know if there was any benefit when the requirement was dropped from 20% to 10% two years ago. Regardless, it shouldn't be a requirement of the developers, or the small number of people who are buying a new house, to subsidise all of social housing. It should be paid for by government directly, so that it comes from general taxation, and then all taxpayers share the burden.

Passtheremote · 01-07-2017 03:49PM

Two income households became the norm so prices for a limited resource, i.e. a house in a desired area, rose to meet what people were able or willing to pay.

Then the utility value of property as shelter became less important to it's value as an investment product. So demand rose still further and so does price.

TallGlass · 01-07-2017 04:23PM

Save in Ireland and buy elsewhere in Europe? Is this a good or bad idea. Save 90k euro in Irl. Then buy a decent house in UK or Spain.

Buying the house is the half the ice berg, the rest is tax, bills and maintenance. Even with that, you'd barely make a holiday in Cork without a bank loan.

Government and CCs need to start building simple houses for everyone that are affordable.

What's needed is a not for profit organisation building houses to reduce some of the costs.

Permabear · 01-07-2017 04:25PM

This post has been deleted.

suicide_circus · 01-07-2017 04:28PM

freshpopcorn · 01-07-2017 04:28PM

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

The standard of finish today is so different as well. People spend thousands on fitted kitchens Before people had the kitchen table to work on a press and maybe a dresser to put the plates in.

buried · 01-07-2017 04:33PM

Advertising. The constant smack to the brain that what you already have isn't good enough and you need to purchase yet another more luxurious expensive product until that also becomes defunct and obsolete. You don't want to look like a cheap fool to the neighbours now do'yaaaaaaaaaaaa

fred funk }{ · 01-07-2017 04:42PM

Bambi wrote: »

As opposed to those CRT screens they're selling

Do the mongos even check the sell by date on the guff that they're mindlessly regurgitating?

Reminds me of the great crime reporter (cough cough) Paul Williams. Only recently was blubbering on about the gangsters living the high life buying flat screen TV's and taking cocaine.

It's probably been 10 years since you could buy a CRT tele. Absolute flute.

Chorcai · 01-07-2017 04:52PM

avocados

Richard Hillman · 01-07-2017 04:53PM

Back door socialism. Every social issue needs funding now a days. Every lobby group fighting for tax payers money. The leftist media nit picking at every area that wants more spending.

Eroding middle classes, slowly but surely being captured into being poor after paying stealth tax after stealth tax.

In 10 years time do you reckon you will be paying more tax or less? Do you reckon government will be bigger or smaller? Do you think there will be more regulations or less? Do you think you will have more freedom of speech or less?

We all know the answers to those questions. What about in 20 years time?

Divelment · 01-07-2017 04:59PM

Deleted User wrote: »

The previous generation here, the US, the UK, Australia etc mostly raised families/own their own house on a single income...........around 40 hours of work a week.

Here we are both parents working - so 80 hours of work a week from a family and people are struggling to get the same kind of house despite effectively putting in twice the effort?

Where`d it all go wrong and where is it goin?

40 years ago my parents could raise 4 kids in a decent 4 bed house in a Dublin suburb, on a single income that was by no means high but we lived a comfortable enough family life.

Fast forward 40 years, 2 generations later, 2 adults in a relationship working and even without any kids, the house is pretty much unaffordable, and anyone I know with kids at the moment is stressed to the hilt with bills and just getting by from week to week, month to month.

And the saddest thing of all is that so few people are able to step back and see how much our standard of living has been utterly diluted within such a short timeframe. The political class haven't been made answer for this, we don't seem to be able to see how we were better off in the 1950's than we are today, and the "yeah sure don't we have gay marriage now and the church can't abuse kids anymore and we aren't being sexually suppressed by the church", sorry that just don't cut it in my eyes. Those things are true, and they are welcome, but we have accepted far too much in this country and the world over.

We have the highest tax rates around, yet nothing that can be delivered by the public sector in this country is fit for purpose, except for the tax system, strangely enough, that's super efficient, but if you want housing, a Garda, or a hospital bed, then good luck. Despite all the heavy taxation, nothing works and most services you need have been privatised and you have to pay for them separately out of your net oncome, for example water (only temporarily suspended), health insurance, refuse collection, even security, if you are a shop owner or a business, you have to put on your own security because the justice system in this country can't deal with "petty offenders", hence why you see a private security guard in every single shop you go into these days, because if you didn't have one you'd be fleeced.

Where did it all go wrong?!

Comments