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The Baby Boomers ruin everything

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Housing in Canada appears to be the same. With wages stagnant for the last 2 to 3 decades, the cost of living in Canada has sky-rocketed. Toronto and Montreal are apparently in the top 10 in the world, which means cities like Vancouver and Calgary can't be far behind.

Homes that used to be bought on a single wage earners income eventually required dual-incomes, and now is reaching a point where triple-income households may be needed if one doesn't want to retire having 'just' finished of their mortgage. This isn't even to stay on the same footing, you'd be lucky to pay twice as much as they did for half as much in terms of area.
 
Can't blame them for being self interested, especially when younger people can't be assed out to do something as simple and painless as voting based on the terrible turnout for the youth vote last election cycle.
 
entrement said:
Can't blame them for being self interested, especially when younger people can't be assed out to do something as simple and painless as voting based on the terrible turnout for the youth vote last election cycle.
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Which shows they are useless when they can't even think past their own lives.

Such a fucking stupid attitude to have.

"We'll I'll be dead so what does it matter?"
 
viciouskillersquirrel said:
I know that the economic conditions in other countries are different (in the US, for instance, the housing market is nearly the opposite)
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All depends on location. Where I live, my sister and her fiance bought a practically new (5 year old) detached 2000 sq ft 2 story house with garage that had been repossessed for a little over 100k ! Their mortgage payment is like $900 a month. A nice 1 bedroom apartment rents for at least $650-700 a month in this city. So yeah they're getting a screaming deal. My problem is there is no way I'd buy a house here. I'd much rather move back to California or Oregon, but housing prices there are much higher. The same house in San Diego would rent for at least 3,000-4,000 a month.

Yeah I do resent the baby boomers. I was born towards the very end of Gen X. My grandparents were not rich but well off enough to afford a nice house and take vacations every year, all while working no more than 40 hours a week and they've got big fat pensions now that they're retired, on top of social security. My mom got a new mustang when she got her driver's license etc. I have to compete against Chinese slave labor making 20 cents an hour. I've already resigned myself to the fact that I won't have the same kind of economic opportunities they had. I'll be lucky if I own a house before I'm 40, unless I marry a doctor.

This thread has made me want to read Stauss and Howe's book on generational cycles.
 
Atrus said:
Housing in Canada appears to be the same. With wages stagnant for the last 2 to 3 decades, the cost of living in Canada has sky-rocketed. Toronto and Montreal are apparently in the top 10 in the world, which means cities like Vancouver and Calgary can't be far behind.
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Vancouver is worse than Toronto and Montreal.
 
viciouskillersquirrel said:
Seriously though, Krypt0nian, what in my OP or posting history brought about that granny sex comment?
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Squirrel, I was joking. No one here knows about your granny sex porn stash.
 
krypt0nian said:
Squirrel, I was joking. No one here knows about your granny sex porn stash.
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Whether or not I have an inclination toward elderly women is neither here nor there (I think Helen Mirren is smoking hot, for instance). I'm just asking why you thought the joke was relevant.
 
viciouskillersquirrel said:
Whether or not I have an inclination toward elderly women is neither here nor there (I think Helen Mirren is smoking hot, for instance). I'm just asking why you thought the joke was relevant.
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Why would a joke be relevant? You are taking this far too seriously and it's starting to make me think there's something more to it.
 
legend166 said:
He's in Australia. Your problem is social security. Our problem is no one under 30 can afford to buy property unless they get a lot of help from their parents.
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I'm 21 in Tassie, and when most people ask me how much money I have (my money, that I've earned, not my parent's money), the reaction is usually "holy shit you're loaded". (I don't actually have that much money - about 20 grand)

There is no fucking way I'll be able to afford to move out within the next half a decade, and even then it looks slim. It doesn't help that I'm no longer working and will be spending the next 3 years going to Uni.

In short, what the fuuuuuuck :(.
 
krypt0nian said:
Why would a joke be relevant? You are taking this far too seriously and it's starting to make me think there's something more to it.
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Correct me if I'm wrong here, but jokes usually riff on whatever is being talked about at the time. I'm no expert on humour, though.

But yes, now that you mention it, I do plan on having lots of hot, steamy granny sex
from about 2050 onwards
, so I suppose you could say there's more to it.
 
legend166 said:
I don't think Americans understand just how much housing costs in Australia.

Compared to wages, our housing is much more expensive than New York, London, whatever. Sydney is second only to Hong Kong.

The median house price in Sydney is over 9 times the median household income. Screw that right off.

The average price of a unit in Sydney is almost $500k.
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The ratio isn't as bad where I live. Orange County. House prices are 6.3 times income. Although it is the 4th highest ratio of any county in the nation.

The average house here clocks in at $530,000.
 
viciouskillersquirrel said:
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but jokes usually riff on whatever is being talked about at the time. I'm no expert on humour, though.

But yes, now that you mention it, I do plan on having lots of hot, steamy granny sex
from about 2050 onwards
, so I suppose you could say there's more to it.
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but you won't be able to afford a home to have sex in. you can go to the outdoors..... but really now... who wants that?
 
Kritz said:
I'm 21 in Tassie, and when most people ask me how much money I have (my money, that I've earned, not my parent's money), the reaction is usually "holy shit you're loaded". (I don't actually have that much money - about 20 grand)

There is no fucking way I'll be able to afford to move out within the next half a decade, and even then it looks slim. It doesn't help that I'm no longer working and will be spending the next 3 years going to Uni.

In short, what the fuuuuuuck :(.
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Tell me about it. 22yo, 2 years through a 5 year degree. I'm going to be 30 before I even have a deposit I guess. It makes me sad when I remember Mum bought our block of land for $10,000. Now they're worth about $200,000 17 years later (country/coastal WA). Pretty much banking on finding a partner or I'm going to be in struggle town trying to buy my own place. It's depressing when a single person with a tertiary education can hardly afford to buy their own place.
 
legend166 said:
He's in Australia. Your problem is social security. Our problem is no one under 30 can afford to buy property unless they get a lot of help from their parents.
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That's not entirely true

Me and my GF bought a unit 4 years ago after busting my ass for years (I was 25, she was 22). We recently bought a small terrace at Newton and although we are under mortgage stress (approx 48% of our wage goes into the mortgage), it is possible.

I do agree that house prices are ridiculous here though.
 
NZ is in a similar state. I saw the same report, Auckland is also more expensive to buy in than New York. I got lucky and snagged a small 2bdrm place for myself but I can barely afford it and I'm on the upper end of the income scale.
 
Tabris said:
Once again guys, it's not about how greedy a generation is or it's politics or whatever. The issue is how many of them there are that we will have to take care of in 10-20 years.

babyboomers2007.png
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Don't worry about boomers in short term. Worry about this, the major change in population structure which will affect every country.

Within the next 30 years we are going to have a major problem with senior citizen population taking over. They will retire, will need support and care personnell and facilities, and we don't have enough staff to do this.
This is due to poor baby booming rates earlier. Population structures in many, many countries will change soon, first of them will be Japan, that will face a decline in overall population.

My job is to find out if technology can help senior citizen's live longer in their own homes independently. Also mainly focus on senior's with different kinds of memory problems. They alone will take over all of the beds in all of the senior facilities of Finland. This is a HUGE issue compared to some house prices going up. This is going to f*ck sh*t up in the near future.
 
Amen, VKS.

It still took me seven years to save up enough for a home loan deposit, and I only bought my first house 3 years ago. And I'm firmly in Gen X.

The fucked thing is, I had to have my house valued about a year ago and was told the house was worth $90k more than what I bought it for. I was equally delighted and outraged that the price had increased so quickly - there's no way in hell I could afford it now!
and it's a shit hole!
 
I agree wholeheartedly with the OP.

Although. Since I am from Africa, I have the opportunity to invest pretty heavily in some of the land back home. So I guess I'm safe in that aspect.

I just hope these damn wars end. So I can go back home in style, not having to do shit but chill on the beach and drink coconut juice, while eating precious indian ocean fish.

So its pretty much:

1. work and keep working in crappy jobs.
2. Hope the shit ends so you can go back home and invest.
 
Vernon: These kids turned on me. They think I'm a big fuckin' joke.
Carl: Come on...listen Vern, if you were sixteen, what would you think of you, huh?
Vernon: Hey, Carl, you think I give one rat's ass what these kids think of me?
Carl: Yes, I do.
Vernon: You think about this...when you get old, these kids; when I get old, they're gonna be runnin' the country.
Carl: Yeah?
Vernon: Now this is the thought that wakes me up in the middle of the night; that when I get older, these kids are gonna take care of me.
Carl: I wouldn't count on it.
 
viciouskillersquirrel said:
Every time I read any prognostication regarding future trends, especially how they relate to demographics, I silently rage inside. Each and every one of these articles outlines in great detail how some aspect of my financial future is going to be screwed with by the Baby Boomers, be it the price of housing, the cost of rent, the taxes I'll have to pay, the future of politics and what that means for infrastructure spending (a subject close to my heart) and social issues.

I'm generation Y, which means that I'm pretty much just starting out. So far I've bought myself a little apartment, don't live too extravagantly and have a few investments here and there. I'm probably ahead of the curve compared to most people my age, but even I don't think I'll be able to afford a decent home once it comes time to start a family thanks to the emerging trends that are happening all around me.

The problem is the Baby Boomers - they've jacked up the cost of housing in this country (both the prices of houses themselves and rents) thanks to their obsession with property investment over the last 40 or so years to levels where prices are at six times the annual incomes of the majority of Australians. They've choked supply (they own 95% of the wealth in the country) and made 2 - 3 bedroom houses unaffordable to the people who need them. When the bubble bursts (once they retire and sell off their investments), they won't be the ones taking most of the pain - it'll be the people in the workforce trying to build their own futures.

To make matters worse, when they do retire, it'll be the much smaller generations X, Y and the millenials who will be supporting their retirements and health care, which means a much heavier tax burden on us that we'll never see reciprocated.

Add to that the fact that their narrow-minded, selfish attitudes will never go out of style as long as they're alive, it means that my interests will never be adequately served by politicians since I'm part of a much smaller voting bloc than the one they belong to. That just means that the fixes that need to happen now won't occur for another thirty years, by which point it'll be too late.

I know that the economic conditions in other countries are different (in the US, for instance, the housing market is nearly the opposite), but the end result is still the same - the Boomers got rich off historically unprecedented market conditions and once it all falls apart, it'll be their children and grandchildren that will need to pay for their excesses.

What say you, GAF? Do you think I'm catastrophising? Do you share my sentiments?
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Your generation and mine has just as much to blame for the problems in this country as the baby boomers. We've failed to do anything about it. Blaming the problems on the baby boomers is unproductive and doesn't address your issues at all. A more realistic institution to blame for these problems would be the Federal Reserve, our elected officials and lastly the American people as a whole. Until people figure out what the problem is, it will continue to get worse until it more than likely implodes.
 
Tabris said:
Once again guys, it's not about how greedy a generation is or it's politics or whatever. The issue is how many of them there are that we will have to take care of in 10-20 years.

[/IMG]
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10-20? If only we had that much time to prepare. We are already feeling the crunch in the health care system and in five years it is going to be critical. I guess I can't sleight them for pretty much guaranteeing my employment for many years to come.
 
viciouskillersquirrel said:
What say you, GAF? Do you think I'm catastrophising? Do you share my sentiments?
Click to expand...

I'm making big bucks and escaping to somewhere terrifying isolated yet peculiarly comfortable in Tassie, Squirrel.
 
viciouskillersquirrel said:
The problem is the Baby Boomers - they've jacked up the cost of housing in this country...
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While we do have a weird culture of property investment in Australia, pinning the blame for inflated housing prices on Boomers is unfair when we have high rates of immigration, limited existing supply, and, most significantly, extremely limited government releases of land for urban development.
 
Chojin said:
Vernon: These kids turned on me. They think I'm a big fuckin' joke.
Carl: Come on...listen Vern, if you were sixteen, what would you think of you, huh?
Vernon: Hey, Carl, you think I give one rat's ass what these kids think of me?
Carl: Yes, I do.
Vernon: You think about this...when you get old, these kids; when I get old, they're gonna be runnin' the country.
Carl: Yeah?
Vernon: Now this is the thought that wakes me up in the middle of the night; that when I get older, these kids are gonna take care of me.
Carl: I wouldn't count on it.
Click to expand...
Fucking perfect.

I'm pretty much teetering on the X/Y border (just hit 30 in August last year) and houses really are beginning to look out of reach. My folks are baby boomers (born in '44 and '47) and they're not property investors or anything (just living off of super and pension afaik).

I've almost resigned myself to the fact that the advice my folks and some other BB folk give me about buying a house as a good investment is really only for their generation and not valid for us young whipper-snappers.

Strange thing is, as a single guy I honestly don't have a problem renting (it's in Geelong so prices are still moderate compared to the capital cities) but if I was to shack up with some hot broad, who knows?
 
There are two reasons the government will never do anything about baby boomer housing investment.

1. They'd be voted out as soon as they tried to fix it.

2. The baby boomers have no super. Their retirement package is their property and if the government adjusts prices to be more affordable then the tax burden on the younger generations would be even worse.

However, there's kind of a silver lining here. The baby boomers are all retiring in the next few years, and they're all going to be cashing in on their property for their retirement. As soon as the market is flooded with housing then prices will have to come down.

The best thing the government could do to help the housing affordability problem is to remove negative gearing for existing property. It would trigger investment into building new housing, and would stop people holding on to 2, 3 or 4 investment properties and reaping the tax benefits. Having that many investment properties would not be sustainable without negative gearing.
 
Ahhhhh the baby boomers, only generation ever who's had the chance of retiring at 55 years old.

At least they're retiring alot these days, which for some of us Gen Ys, give us jobs (that excludes me btw).
 
fastford58 said:
10-20? If only we had that much time to prepare. We are already feeling the crunch in the health care system and in five years it is going to be critical. I guess I can't sleight them for pretty much guaranteeing my employment for many years to come.
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Yes, it is going to be bad in 5 years, but it is only going to get worse. For us finns, in 30 years, there should be half a million employees for social services (in a country of 5 million people). That is almost double the current amount of 300 000. In addition, there will be four times the amount of elderly. That is crazy stuff. You will feel the crunch in five years, and you will die of work in ten. Good luck. ;)
 
viciouskillersquirrel said:
At best, what will happen is that prices will stagnate for a very long time until incomes catch up. I'd be down for that because it means that prices will correct without there being a corresponding collapse in the economy. Still sucks, though.

The embarrassing thing about all this is that Australia has a LOT of land that could be used for housing and there's no reason not to build up housing density close to major cities. Couple that with the fact that public transport infrastructure in every major city is crap and you have a recipe for disaster - you have substantially fewer areas people are actually willing to live in.
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I have to disagree with your statement about public transport being crap. Perth has an acceptable system. Im not saying its perfect (trains don't run late and incidents on some of the train lines) but its far from being a useless system and is very affordable for transport to most places.
 
MadOdorMachine said:
Your generation and mine has just as much to blame for the problems in this country as the baby boomers. We've failed to do anything about it. Blaming the problems on the baby boomers is unproductive and doesn't address your issues at all. A more realistic institution to blame for these problems would be the Federal Reserve, our elected officials and lastly the American people as a whole. Until people figure out what the problem is, it will continue to get worse until it more than likely implodes.
Click to expand...

Yes, indeed, the US Federal Reserve should have intervened to stop a housing bubble in Australia!

U S A
U S A
U S A
U S A
 
I was born and raised in London. I'm 32 now and getting on the property ladder for me is still but a pipe dream. Baby boomers and out of towners with their second and third properties that they're renting out helps to keep me where I am.
 
Stumpokapow said:
Yes, indeed, the US Federal Reserve should have intervened to stop a housing bubble in Australia!

U S A
U S A
U S A
U S A
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I gotta say, the visual of a marine invasion of bankers with briefcases is amazing.
 
The worst thing about the Baby Boomers is their parenting skills. Helicopter parenting and the emphasis on self-esteem has led to far too many young people without basic coping skills and with an overblown sense of entitlement and self-worth.
 
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/24/3119722.htm

An international house price survey has found homes in Australia are the most unaffordable in the English-speaking world.

The Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey puts Sydney, Perth, Melbourne and Adelaide in the top 3 per cent of the world's most unaffordable housing markets.

The survey compared affordability by measuring median house prices against average household incomes.

It looked at 325 housing markets in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States and Hong Kong.

Australia has what the report describes as the most intense housing stress, with homes costing six times the average household income.

Report co-author Hugh Pavletich says it is an outrage that Australia's house prices are greater than the world's most populated cities.

"Melbourne and Sydney are far more expensive in relation to wages than what London and New York are, so it's completely absurd. In fact, it's a national disgrace," he said.

Mr Pavletich says the Australian housing market used to be rated as the most efficient market in the world, but Australian homebuyers are now getting the worst value for money.

"There's been a tremendous degradation of the whole Australian residential construction centre by state governments and local governments losing control of their costs and starving land supply," he said.

He says the high prices are mainly due to a lack of available land.

"It is really up to state governments and local governments to deal with this issue and make sure that lots on the fringes of the cities can be provided at $40,000 to $50,000 each, not the stratospheric prices that they are currently being charged," he said.
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Glad I inherited my house when my parents died, I could never afford to buy one. I'm thinking of selling here, and buying 2 in the US. And still having money lefty over.
 
The issue isn't how many boomers are going to retire in the next 20 years. The issue is how long they will live. They'll live way longer than anyone ever imagined when they structured the pension system. That means the boomers will be collecting 3-4 times as much money as expected (retire at 65 and die by 70 was the original idea, but now people live to 80+). It means those extra 15 years will be a particularly burdensome time on the younger generations, as they won't be able to outvote boomers so they'll be paying insane taxes to keep them alive.

After the baby boomer die off, there should be a housing collapse as far more homes empty up than are being bought by the smaller Gen X/Y/Z. While that's good for the people buying homes as the boomers die off, it's bad for the people who had to pay the boomer-inflated housing prices earlier who will end up with homes worth far less than what they had to struggle to pay.
 
British here.

The way my parents talk about their university education makes me sick!!

Free education, 3 free meals a day (plus bread and milk in the dorms), free board, and extra money for books!!!

And now the current government led by a multi-millionaire "baby boomer" (close enough '66 or something) wants this generation to pay a graduate tax!! Only if all the fuckers who have graduated from university pay this tax, that's all the free-loading baby boomers.


Baby boomers are scum (generally speaking)
 
travisbickle said:
British here.

The way my parents talk about their university education makes me sick!!

Free education, 3 free meals a day (plus bread and milk in the dorms), free board, and extra money for books!!!

And now the current government led by a multi-millionaire "baby boomer" (close enough '66 or something) wants this generation to pay a graduate tax!! Only if all the fuckers who have graduated from university pay this tax, that's all the free-loading baby boomers.


Baby boomers are scum (generally speaking)
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Agreed, It's funny that the Greatest Generation gave birth to the Most Selfish Generation. God damn.
 
Technically it's their parents fault.

Also, it's the young people's fault for not rising up to the occasion to vote down the things neo old people want.

Baby boomers, are just trying to get rich and dying in the process.
 
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