A Generational Screw Job
British Millenials and Gen Z have been royally screwed over by the economic transition that has changed the British economy from one based on industry to one based on Landlordism, rentierism and capital extraction.
This article inspired this post - Millennials costs EU highest but pay lags behind - the Guardian
Worth reading even though it uses "millennial" in the title, it certainly sums up the situation well.
Reading the article does give you food for thought and makes you realise why so many highly skilled Europeans are heading home.
It also begs a few critical questions.
Why is everything so expensive in the UK when wages and economic growth are so flat?
Could our poorly performing economy be because too much of everyone's wages ate up the basics (housing, food, transport) which have the least competition in them?
My answer would be yes, there is little competition in key sectors that we have in a sense created a rentier economy. Now Rentier (Landlord) economy does not refer only to rental properties, it refers to an economy where productive value is replaced by rent extraction from owned assets.
E.g., Buy-2-Let properties or owning shares in oligopoly utilities like SSE or Centrica through to simple things like the numerous ways banks and the financial services sector have found to extract money from transactions. The move to mobile payments and app-based gig working is fueling this rise further.
The British economy has over the last 40 years moved from one that produces stuff to one that finds ever ingenious ways of extracting wealth from the lower middle class and working classes.
As a generation, few are going to suffer as much as those at the sharp end of Britain's Landlord economy.