this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025
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I personally cringe when I hear a friend js having a kid. All I can think of is how bad theyre going to have it. Hell id definitely have been better off being born 20 years earlier, but these new kids are REALLY screwed unless they have super rich parents.

"Nothing new under the sun" I suppose!

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[–] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I'm old enough and have seen enough to know that I've got it better than a lot of people from the present and past.

I agree. But I also am old enough and have also seen enough to know I have it a lot worse than a lot of people from the present and past. I have known this at 27, at 22, and at 20. These are actually not contradictory statements.

but because they use Lemmy I can assume they are a relatively stable, middle class person

This is a pretty odd assumption. A middle class person to me would be someone who doesn't struggle to pay rent/bills, and is saving up for a property or is already paying a mortgage without extreme sacrifices. They own property, or in (nowadays) rare circumstances a productive business and at least some of their income thus isn't generated from wage labour.

This is of course a very conservative definition, but let's go with that:

An extremely lavish internet connection of half a gigabit down with no caps or limits here in the UK costs about £30 or less a month and a phone or basic PC costs less than £100 even for both, easily.

The council tax alone, before things like electricity, water exceeds that. My rent is 11 times that and is extremely cheap compared to living in the city, which I can only do because I WFH - a rarity.

A median downpayment on a house costs £75,000 for a 30 years long mortgage, this is approximately twice the median, pre-tax income for full-time employees in the UK of £37,430.

Housing price rises, and even rent/bill/cost of living rises have also outpaced both wage growth and even in many cases inflation. Purchasing power is on the whole - down.

Focusing on the only things that have gotten enormously cheap very much contrary to the general trend - like access to social media, internet and electronics is like looking at a really nice tree when the forest is on fire.