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November 14, 2014

Comments

Andreas Paterson

Yep, our innovative capitalist system has managed to come up with Slavery 2.0

Ben

Christ, you reckon Einstein. My theory on boomers: when you are on the wining side of a massive con you don't question it.

Bamber

But isn't staycationing going to become increasingly enjoyable as technological goods because even better and more affordable? £15 to download an entire series of Game of Thrones from Amazon.

Maybe today's young people who dream of an early retirement will simply forgo having children?

Luis Enrique

OK so order of priorities

1. slash housing costs
2. introduce BI

Dave Timoney

I'm not sure it is correct to say that the relationship between house prices and student debt on the one hand and the labour supply on the other is "unintended".

If longevity is increasing, then it makes sense for capital to extend working lives and thus increase its share of the surplus of lifetime labour. Some of the changes this gives rise to, such as the pushing back of the state pension age, are clearly deliberate (regardless of the dubious claims about pension affordability).

Student debt is obviously a claim on future labour (hence the mechanism for repayment), but so too is the cost of housing. The gradual increase in mortgage terms since the 1990s (25-year terms have declined from 70% to 30% of new mortgages, with a quarter now being for 30 years or more), is a key factor in the continued rise in house prices.

Milfs, Gilfs and Jailbait

Having just spent an all inclusive week in the sun this article chimes with me. I am always more miserable after coming back to work after a good holiday. I would certainly want to retire the earlier the better.

I will try to avoid staycationing as it may make me hand my notice in!

Ben

From arse to elbow - you got it. All productivity gains have been soaked up by housing costs paid over a lifetime. By simply allowing unlimited credit plus a "free" market in housing where supply is deliberately capped below demand we have an inevitable rise in prices until they top out at the total income earned by a person over their lifetime.

Forget how much it costs to build - the price of land is where it's at. The price is set at the maximum it's possible to extract from labour. Work harder or be more efficient - it goes up.

There is no point working hard in the UK. Or asking for a minimum wage rise. It all goes to land owners.

NoniMausa

And people's working lives are not longer - or not much longer - than they were 20 years ago. By the time we hit traditional retirement age, ~65, we may have more of a lifespan ahead of us, but like an old used car we also have an increasing number of glitches that need fixing or which limit what we can undertake. In a tight job market, who is going to hire a grumpy senior with arthritis and a variable memory, over a youngster whose energies and hopefully memory are at their peak, but a still too young to have learned the cynicism of the much downsized and lied-to?

Our new manager bounced in last summer with promises of bonuses and special treats if we hit certain sales targets. He is thirty. We, in contrast, range in age from the late fourties to early sixties, and tried our best to humour him, but we knew that shortly he would learn that his bosses would never come through with any of those goodies. But in the meantime, they had induced him to work as hard as if the store was really his own. Poor kid.

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