Under-45s in the UK are experiencing significantly more despair than 10 years ago

However, there’s a silver lining to all of this, sort of: “Whereas happiness was once considered to follow a U-shape – with a relatively carefree youth, a tougher middle age and a more comfortable later life – the experts in wellbeing say our satisfaction now rises steadily with age instead.”

At 31, it feels like I never really got a half way fair shot at life. I think dying as an infant in a serfdom era would’ve felt more fair than watching society be deliberately eroded away by generations of people that hoarded well from well before I was even born.

To the shock of absolutely no one.

Costs are high, wages are low. The world’s in shambles. In the last few years, we’ve watched the older generation vote us out of the EU, and now we’re left to deal with the consequences. Not to mention the ever-growing right-wing presence, fueled by people who still can’t realize that the average immigrant isn’t the source of their problems.

And they say ‘life is too short’. What a load of bollocks.

Don’t worry though, a really really small percentage of people on the planet are very very very very very very rich, to the point they could literally burn millions of ${currency_unit} with a flamethrower each day and have absolutely no effect on their life

I feel like this is true for most countries. The world is just fucked right now.

When many of our leaders are prioritising WW3 over all else, what’s there to not despair about as a young person?

I can’t afford to save for a deposit.

Even if I could, I can’t afford a mortgage.

I can’t afford to pay someone else’s mortgage.

I’m judged for spending my money on me, instead of scrimping and saving every penny into the never a deposit fund.

I want kids, can’t afford them.

Can’t find a partner because everyone on online dating is a raging misogynist, the other half match with me just to call me a pig.

Can’t get NHS treatment for a painful condition, can’t afford private healthcare.

Can’t even afford to move abroad. What’s the point?

When I was 10 years old, I kept on trying to tinker with the cable network so I could watch or hear some porno sounds on the pay per view forbidden adult networks.

Lots of days out cycling, cinema with friends, Saturday daytime cartoons, films – Arnold, Sly, Van damme and Willis, transformers and those damn channels kept me busy throughout my youthful years.

Luckily I had excellent financial acumen and am loving the middle ages.

However, can understand completely that the world has changed on it’s head.

We need to support the younger generation and restrict the darker side of the internet. It is incredibly addictive and shouldn’t be given to children and young developing people at all or at least with restrictions on certain dark content, addictive algorithms, and screen time. We need reduced cost for our youth. Housing and bills are at an all time high.

Maybe higher means tested personal allowance for a certain young age group. However, not a fiscal expert. But, we require novel and drastic suggestions and actions.

We shouldn’t leave our youth to rot while those who have it better sit idle.

Shit wages, shit jobs, shit weather, shit country, shit housing, shit everything tbh…..

The only that ever increases in the UK is the COL.

My levels of despair decreased when I left the UK funnily enough.

Yes, no fucking shit! Our pensions are almost none existent, we can’t save due to the prices of *insert every fucking service/asset/food etc*, the world is fucked, we’re all fucked, fucking fucked. Fuckidy fuck fuck.

I mean… we all feel it right? 🤣

Quite frankly, I bet more than 50% of us are waiting to see what the fall out from that asteroid will be if it hits!

The only respite I get from despair, is standing in a field in the British countryside, cursing loudly to myself, whilst watching red kites hunting their prey, hoping that I might be the next target. Then I go home and eat biscuits whilst watching bbc comedy.

When I was reading this article earlier I got another email from another company telling me a bill’s going up. Lovely.

As a 33 year old, I’ve lived through 9/11, Iraq, War in Georgia, War in Ukraine, the deepest recession since the Great Depression, a pandemic, several disease outbreaks, squandered opportunities by the Baby Boomer generation, and increased levels of information warfare, all while living standards seem to be stagnating, and wage growth has been outstripped by inflation, exacerbated by a property marketed that is now designed to stopped younger people getting on the property ladder.

I’ve tried to be less cynical, but every bright bit of news seems to be accompanied by 3-5x more shit.

Despair?

Why on earth would we feel despair. The knowledge that a house, which was £50k 35 years ago, is now £350k and we will never own our own homes like every generation before had the luxury of doing?

Why would we feel despair about our bills increasing by up to 50%, but ~2% on salary, if you are fortunate.

It couldn’t be the rising cost of food, while quantities get smaller, or the cost of public transport while services get worse. The increasing cost of petrol and insurance.

It definitely isn’t because you have to sublet a room in the home you rent if you want to have a night out with a couple of beers to forget your depression.

It isn’t the increasing cost in rent and people feeling more and more like they are on the breadline, even when they earn a relatively decent salary.

People are fine with not having seen a doctor face to face after years of discussing ongoing health issues over phone appointments that never reach resolution, despite paying for the service.

Who needs to worry that you can’t afford to pay into a pension when you probably won’t live much past 60 anyway… and even if you do, global warming will make it nice and warm, so no real worries about being homeless… it can be renamed to urban camping

No Shit.

Consistently, since I turned voting age, young people in the UK have born the brunt of one crisis after another whilst having the costs of poor politics also disproportionately placed on them. Honestly, when you look at the loosers from lease holds, zero hours contracts, Brexit, the financial crash, cost of living, it’s always disproportionately the same demographics.

Britain has seen a grotesque wealth transfer from lower and middle income brackets to the wealthy. A quick google search reveals that “The ONS said the income inequality gap as measured by the Gini coefficient had “steadily increased to 36.3%”, which was “the highest level of income inequality since 2010”. Britain is not a country that lacks the means to improve the lives of its citizens. Britain is a country that consistently choses to trade the wealth and opportunity of young people and poor people for the benefit of those with money.

The sad part is that it does not have to get worse for subsequent generations but it will because we are fed fear mongering propaganda by an increasingly politically partisan and extreme press. Have career politicians who are bound by tight cycles so never actually achieve any meaningful reform. Have once again underregulated our financial sector setting us up for the next big crash. Have not invested in skills so cant build or manufactur anything. Have crumbling healthcare and education systems. Let social media and tech companies run wild becoming ever more subservient and reliant on our new feudal technogarchy. Sometimes I look at the country my children call home and I’m ashamed to be part of it all. I’m not even 40 yet.