Is Society getting too difficult for the young?

02-01-2019 03:39PM #1

Myself and my wife have been talking about starting a family soon and it really got me thinking about society in general and how hard it is for young people currently, and how much harder it might get.

1) Getting a job - Can't get a job without experience, can't get experience without a job. This really sucks for young people and there is no easy way around it. Take an internship and deal with low wages until you have a few years behind you.

2) Getting a driving licence - You need to do a theory test, at least 12 lessons and pass a driving test. Sounds easy enough but the laws around unaccompanied learners mean you will probably need to pay for way more lessons to get practice in. Then you have the insurance. Its not too uncommon to be quoted 3 or 4K for third party insurance in your first year. You won't get insured any kind of reasonable price for an older starter car.

3) Property - Lets face it, most young people don't want to live at home well into their adult lives. The only option they really have is to rent. But eventually they'll want to buy their own place and realize how tough it is to buy while paying a large percentage of your salary towards rent. More and more are left moving back home with their parents or getting a lend from parents if possible. Single people have no hope unless they have a very very good job.

4) Having a wedding - Most young couples want to have a wedding, its a traditional thing to do. Unfortunately a very expensive thing to do also. Average wedding is probably somewhere between 10 and 20K these days.

5) Savings / Investment / Pensions - Most young people have too many things to pay for now and can't even get any of these going until much later in life.

In previous generations for example, it seems like 2 minimum wage workers could be married, have a house, have some kids and a family car all by the age of 25. Thats closer to 35 now.

Anyways, I don't really want this thread to turn into a who had it harder debate... but more what do you think it will like for the next generation?

Do they stand a chance without major changes in society? What do you think society will look like for a young person 10 or 20 years from now?

whiskeyman · 02-01-2019 03:50PM

All those things have always been hard for young folk.
I'd be more concerned about the state we're leaving the world to them (environmentally and huge wealth inequality) and the over reliance on technology and its impact on basic social function.

One eyed Jack · 02-01-2019 04:01PM

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Do they stand a chance without major changes in society? What do you think society will look like for a young person 10 or 20 years from now?

I think those young people who are prepared for their future stand a better chance than those young people who aren’t prepared for their future. That’s one thing that won’t change over time, is preparing young people to adapt to changes in society around them, and being able to change fast so that they’re not left so unprepared as some of the scenarios you presented in your opening post.

02-01-2019 04:01PM

whiskeyman wrote: »

All those things have always been hard for young folk.
I'd be more concerned about the state we're leaving the world to them (environmentally and huge wealth inequality) and the over reliance on technology and its impact on basic social function.

I have a feeling that always been hard will eventually change to unattainable. Particularly in relation to property. I don't see any steps been taken that will help to improve the crisis.

I do also agree on the points you raised though.

Del2005 · 02-01-2019 04:05PM

Every other country manages to learn to drive with similar or stricter restrictions. So if they can manage so can we.

Property goes in cycles. So by the time your children are old enough to buy it could be easily affordable.

For work we don't know what type of jobs there will be so experience will be for nothing.

BattleCorp · 02-01-2019 04:08PM

Deleted User wrote: »

Myself and my wife have been talking about starting a family soon and it really got me thinking about society in general and how hard it is for young people currently, and how much harder it might get.

Some things easier, some things more difficult.

1) Getting a job - Can't get a job without experience, can't get experience without a job. This really sucks for young people and there is no easy way around it. Take an internship and deal with low wages until you have a few years behind you.

It's not that difficult to get a job, especially if you have skills. And I don't mean the Liam Neeson type of skills. If you have a good standard of education or are willing to work hard, then you'll get a start somewhere. The problem is that kids want to start at the top and don't want to put in the hard yards to get there. That's not much different from when I was a kid.

2) Getting a driving licence - You need to do a theory test, at least 12 lessons and pass a driving test. Sounds easy enough but the laws around unaccompanied learners mean you will probably need to pay for way more lessons to get practice in. Then you have the insurance. Its not too uncommon to be quoted 3 or 4K for third party insurance in your first year. You won't get insured any kind of reasonable price for an older starter car.

Took me four attempts to pass my driving test. And that wasn't today or yesterday. Insurance was a bstard for my generation too.

3) Property - Lets face it, most young people don't want to live at home well into their adult lives. The only option they really have is to rent. But eventually they'll want to buy their own place and realize how tough it is to buy while paying a large percentage of your salary towards rent. More and more are left moving back home with their parents or getting a lend from parents if possible. Single people have no hope unless they have a very very good job.

I was 37 when I bought my first house. But yeah, I'll give you that point. It's more difficult now to rent/buy a house in certain areas. Good value outside of Dublin or main commuter towns but rent in most places is a lot higher than I faced years ago.

4) Having a wedding - Most young couples want to have a wedding, its a traditional thing to do. Unfortunately a very expensive thing to do also. Average wedding is probably somewhere between 10 and 20K these days.

Cut your cloth according to your measure. If you don't have €10k - €20k, have a cheaper wedding. Or go to a registry office. A big wedding is an optional extra, not a necessity.

5) Savings / Investment / Pensions - Most young people have too many things to pay for now and can't even get any of these going until much later in life.

I'd safely say most of our parents had none of those things either.

In previous generations for example, it seems like 2 minimum wage workers could be married, have a house, have some kids and a family car all by the age of 25. Thats closer to 35 now.

People are living longer, therefore they are starting families later. I certainly wouldn't have been mature enough for a wife and family at 25 years of age.

Anyways, I don't really want this thread to turn into a who had it harder debate... but more what do you think it will like for the next generation?

Do they stand a chance without major changes in society? What do you think society will look like for a young person 10 or 20 years from now?

Some things are better.

Years ago people lived in damp poxy houses with fcukall heating. That's changed mostly now. And yes, there are homeless but I'm talking about houses in general.

My generation had were forced to emigrate in huge numbers. That doesn't happen as much now.

Road deaths are lower.

It's not all doom and gloom.

ELM327 · 02-01-2019 04:09PM

This has always been the way, nothing new here.
Arguably things are better now than 20 years ago not worse.

BattleCorp · 02-01-2019 04:10PM

Del2005 wrote: »

Property goes in cycles. So by the time your children are old enough to buy it could be easily affordable.

I'm in my late 40's and apart from the most recent recession, property has never really dropped in price.

And if property is very cheap due to a recession, then finance will be hard to come by.

I can't ever see a time where housing will be easily affordable.

Dr_serious2 · 02-01-2019 04:12PM

My grandfather left school at 12 and was in England at 14 working on the building sites sending money home to his parents. He moved home to avoid ww2 and raised six children in a two bedroom house, the first few years with no electricity.

Life was always hard.

02-01-2019 04:14PM

Like the older generation, the younger generation have to "cut their cloth to measure". Being early middle aged myself, I feel there is a growing sense of entitlement amongst the young.

super_furry · 02-01-2019 04:14PM

Internships are such a horrible scam and should be outlawed - pay people money for their work. The only people who can afford to work for free are those from a rich background, with parents that will cover their costs.

It's why there are so few working class voices in the media.

BattleCorp · 02-01-2019 04:15PM

Dr_serious2 wrote: »

My grandfather left school at 12 and was in England at 14 working on the building sites sending money home to his parents. He moved home to avoid ww2 and raised six children in a two bedroom house, the first few years with no electricity.

Life was always hard.

I'll trump your grandfather leaving school at 12 with my Dad leaving school at 10 to learn the ropes as a butcher. And he worked on the buildings in England too.

I've had it infinitely handier than he had.

average_runner · 02-01-2019 04:15PM

Deleted User wrote: »

I have a feeling that always been hard will eventually change to unattainable. Particularly in relation to property. I don't see any steps been taken that will help to improve the crisis.

I do also agree on the points you raised though.

Property was always bad for people. Alot of people got burnt in the last crash and they were in there 20's/30's.

I don't think property prices are higher than they were in 2008 at its peak!!

Trigger Happy · 02-01-2019 04:15PM

I think kids born today are the luckiest.

Yes, they will have challenges that previous generations never had but they will be a lot more comfortable, more healthy and with a wealth of opportunities that were never available to us.

Potential-Monke · 02-01-2019 04:15PM

I personally think you shouldn't be allowed to even apply for a mortgage until you're 30. Get out, live a little, then think about settling down. Actually, having owned a house, I personally would never recommend getting a mortgage. It's like a 30 year cloud hanging over you, with no idea if it will rain or shine, and it could change at any moment. I also think we, as a nation, are too over-reliant on being part of the normal adulthood, family, kids, pets, mortgage, etc. It's a trap, it's what the rich want, to keep the common folk in a cycle.

Jobs, it's only natural to have experience before getting a better position. No one should start off on the employment ladder near the top. Working your way up teaches responsibility, ensures you're actually able to do the job (if internal processes are correct that is). Too many kids had their heads filled with 'You can be whatever you want to be'. No, you can't. You can look for something you're interested in, but only a small % of people get to be what they want to be.

I think schools should teach less religion and more social skills/adult skills. Everyone coming out of school today should be thought how to cook, clean, provide for yourself. They should be thought how to manage money, save, do taxes, etc. Life skills. Make a language a choice, not a requirement. I did French for 6 years, and have never used it since I left secondary school. Waste of time.

Driving licence, yeah, it's a pain to get these days. So more planning should be required. Or schools should start teaching how to drive, so some may be able to leave school with a licence. More life skills! Insurance is a joke, hopefully if you do have a family by the time they get to insurance age this country will have it properly regulated and make it more affordable.

Wedding, more and more people are having non-church weddings. One of my close mates got married a couple of years back. Civil ceremony in the registry office. 30 people max. Same group to their favourite restaurant for dinner, onto the penthouse of a hotel for the afterparty. One of the best weddings I've ever been at. Cost them €5k. The big weddings of yesteryear are a pipe dream to most, it's too expensive, especially the church. My brother got married about 8 years ago. Had it on a Wednesday, church, dress, hotel, dinner, usually craic. Cost them €12k, would have been €25k if they had it on a Friday. Weddings can be as expensive or as cheap as you make it.

Graces7 · 02-01-2019 04:17PM

BattleCorp wrote: »

I'll trump your grandfather leaving school at 12 with my Dad leaving school at 10 to learn the ropes as a butcher. And he worked on the buildings in England too.

I've had it infinitely handier than he had.

Harry Palmr · 02-01-2019 04:18PM

My grandfather lived in a puddle

and he was lucky as it wasn't too deep

BattleCorp · 02-01-2019 04:19PM

Graces7 wrote: »

My point was that my Dad had it much tougher than I had seeing as he had to leave school and work at 10 years of age.

I've had a much cushier life than he had.

And I've no reason to believe that our kids will have a harder life than I have had.

seamus · 02-01-2019 04:19PM

1 - Always been the case. It's way easier now to get a job in general because the whole nod-and-wink and "jobs for the boys" culture has been erased. It's a much more level playing field. In the past someone from Finglas who didn't go to a private school had f-all chance of becoming a doctor or getting a decent job in a big firm of solicitors. Now they have a waaay better chance.

2 - Young people don't need cars. They're in fact shunning them more and more as they realise they don't need to sink huge chunks of their money into a vehicle that sits idle for 22 hours a day. By the time anyone born now is in their 20s, vehicles-on-demand via a subscription service will be a feature of their daily lives rather than having a car in the driveway, and short trips will be walked or cycled rather than driven.

3 - Probably the most obvious problem facing younger people, and it's mostly caused by a culture which both looks down on renting and encourages hoarding. A person is considered a success if they own multiple properties. But if you own 3 properties, then two other people can't own. The generation from the 40s-70s have pulled up the ladder behind them in terms of property and we need legislation to rebalance it, and make it so that the profit margins on investment property are very narrow and largely unappealing.

4 - Getting married in Ireland costs €200. Everything else is optional window dressing.

5 - The only difference here is that pensions are much rarer as part of a job package than they used to be. Employers realised that they could stop offering pensions and anyone under 30 wouldn't even care. This again just needs to be rebalanced.

The younger generation will get along just fine. In his 30s, my Dad spent £30000 on a house which for the time was miles out in the middle of nowhere. His own father thought he was out of his mind, having bought his last house for £1000.

The big game changer that will hit Ireland is the roll out of broadband countrywide, which will begin the process of decentralising Dublin as the only place to work, thereby bringing a better level to house prices and more mobility to workers.

Trigger Happy · 02-01-2019 04:19PM

Harry Palmr wrote: »

My grandfather lived in a puddle.

Flash bastard with his daily baths.

Irish Praetorian · 02-01-2019 04:24PM

Trigger Happy wrote: »

Flash bastard with his daily baths.

Pshaw, he was lucky to have a puddle, all we had was a bit of cardboard. Every day we'd wake up two hours before going to bed, march down to pit work twenty hours and then come home and our father would kill us.

But you tell that to the young people today and they don't believe it!

Wanderer78 · 02-01-2019 04:24PM

Increasing worker insecurity is good for the economy, hence good for society, the wealth created trickles down!

02-01-2019 04:32PM

Potential-Monke wrote: »

I think schools should teach less religion and more social skills/adult skills. Everyone coming out of school today should be thought how to cook, clean, provide for yourself. They should be thought how to manage money, save, do taxes, etc. Life skills. Make a language a choice, not a requirement. I did French for 6 years, and have never used it since I left secondary school. Waste of time.

Thats a great point actually. The education system is in need of an overhaul.
I think most people would prefer their kids to learn these kind of things.
Religion doesn't need to be thought in secondary school.
The Irish language is dead, waste of time teaching it.
Basic geography is very useful. Learning about rocks and erosion / deposition... not so much.
A lot of people never even use half of the maths they learn in school.
Maybe advanced maths should be more for college courses for careers that require maths.

BattleCorp · 02-01-2019 04:38PM

Deleted User wrote: »

Thats a great point actually. The education system is in need of an overhaul.
I think most people would prefer their kids to learn these kind of things.
Religion doesn't need to be thought in secondary school.
The Irish language is dead, waste of time teaching it.
Basic geography is very useful. Learning about rocks and erosion / deposition... not so much.
A lot of people never even use half of the maths they learn in school.
Maybe advanced maths should be more for college courses for careers that require maths.

I think we should be teaching kids how to deal with adversity. We aren't doing kids any favours with the current method of mollycoddling them.

katiek102010 · 02-01-2019 04:38PM

Its always been difficult. I’m in my 40’s and it was that way when I was 18.

I went out and worked for free for 3 months and that’s how I got experience.

I asked family to contribute to my driving lessons for birthday and Christmas

It cost us 500 E to get married

The only issue we have now is home ownership, having moved back from abroad even with a 60% deposit, we cannot get a mortgage

BattleCorp · 02-01-2019 04:40PM

katiek102010 wrote: »

Its always been difficult. I’m in my 40’s and it was that way when I was 18.

I went out and worked for free for 3 months and that’s how I got experience.

I asked family to contribute to my driving lessons for birthday and Christmas

It cost us 500 E to get married

The only issue we have now is home ownership, having moved back from abroad even with a 60% deposit, we cannot get a mortgage

Have you both got jobs?

If so, what area are you trying to buy in if 60% deposit isn't enough?

PuppyMcPupFace · 02-01-2019 04:45PM

I think the problem is that there's no life lessons as a kid. No disappointment to grow from.

I see kids of friends who at 18 or 19 get a bad grade in College or don't get a job they wanted or have a relationship end - it's their first knock back and they can be suicidal.

The best thing parents can do for their kids growing up is let the fail at the small stuff, it'll be beneficial in the long run.

My mother always told me that I could try anything I wanted but unless I was very lucky or prepared to work day and night, I'd likely not make it to the top of whatever I tried. I'm now grounded and sensible and can handle life.

freshpopcorn · 02-01-2019 04:45PM

When my parent finished school some went to college(those who were well off) and others found jobs locally. However the standard of living was different.
There was no phones, smart devices, gym memberships, broadband, etc to pay for. They essentially payed for a place to stay and food when going out on there own first.
I know my parents had a small wedding under 40 people I'd say. Church, flowers, one brides maid dress and bride/grooms stuff, a meal/cake afterwords. A lot of there friends were similar.
There simply wasnt the money there. There were no wedding loans or things such as candy carts, and some who did have big wedding were paid for by there parents. Those people were told exactly what to do, wear, the menu, etc.

BattleCorp · 02-01-2019 04:52PM

freshpopcorn wrote: »

I know my parents had a small wedding under 40 people I'd say. Church, flowers, one brides maid dress and bride/grooms stuff, a meal/cake afterwords. A lot of there friends were similar.
There simply wasnt the money there. There were no wedding loans or things such as candy carts, and some who did have big wedding were paid for by there parents. Those people were told exactly what to do, wear, the menu, etc.

And I'll bet they didn't have a fully furnished Taj Mahal of a house when they started out either. Which seems now to be expected.

Deebles McBeebles · 02-01-2019 04:54PM

BattleCorp wrote: »

And I'll bet they didn't have a fully furnished Taj Mahal of a house when they started out either. Which seems now to be expected.

Jesus you would want to be a space cadet to expect that. I would fully expect to get the necessary rooms habitable and work on the house as I could afford it.

Grayson · 02-01-2019 04:54PM

Potential-Monke wrote: »

I personally think you shouldn't be allowed to even apply for a mortgage until you're 30. Get out, live a little, then think about settling down. Actually, having owned a house, I personally would never recommend getting a mortgage. It's like a 30 year cloud hanging over you, with no idea if it will rain or shine, and it could change at any moment. I also think we, as a nation, are too over-reliant on being part of the normal adulthood, family, kids, pets, mortgage, etc. It's a trap, it's what the rich want, to keep the common folk in a cycle.

To be fair it's the only way to get security. If you want to have a family, with a family home, it's the best way to do it. just make sure the mortgage repayments are repayable. Too many people in the boom tried to get the most expensive property they could rather than the best for their needs. And remember, because of inflation, mortgage payments technically go down every year (assuming it's a fixed rate).

I do agree a bit though. Renting should be an option but unfortunately there's no security.

I kind of partially agree with the trap thing. There are some who get married etc because they believe it's the thing to do. But an awful lot of people do it because they genuinely want to. And if you want to get married and have kids, then buying a house is the most sensible thing to do.

I think schools should teach less religion and more social skills/adult skills. Everyone coming out of school today should be thought how to cook, clean, provide for yourself. They should be thought how to manage money, save, do taxes, etc. Life skills. Make a language a choice, not a requirement. I did French for 6 years, and have never used it since I left secondary school. Waste of time.

isn't that what transition year is for?
BTW, I've always thought that they should have mandatory first aid classes in transition year. It's one of the few skills you can teach people that may mean the difference between life and death.

Is Society getting too difficult for the young?

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