Under a labour government shocker
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
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Yea, strange how a government actually investing money in infrastructure and public services improves the lives of people overall.
Even stranger that so many voters seem unable to see this obvious truth.
Would the person who downvoted me please explain why?
I wasn't the person but presumably they thought your point of view was reductionist given that the 90s were a time of widespread global prosperity. Like there was a specific context behind all of the investment.
The government investing in public services was definitely one of the key factors in life being better back then.
I don't think it's that straightforward though. Not saying your point is irrelevant, I can definitely see your point. But I feel like most of the Western world where the British government has no reach would have this same opinion.
American here; I think that's because most of the rest of us have been fucked over by right-wing governments lately, too.
I'd take Major in a heartbeat over these cretins.
There were definitely worse things, but we all had way more money. In the 90's a person on a minimum wage job could get a mortgage, can you imagine?
Nope, can't picture it at all. Still blows my mind that a family of 4 could live on a single wage.
Both my parents have always worked but I had friends as a kid whose dad worked low paid factory jobs, moms didn't work and they weren't really struggling. Not like you see today anyway, no food banks or getting evicted, they might have had the tesco no frills crisps.
It's crazy. I had many friends where only one person worked and they had two children and all bought or build a house. Now i look at my sister and her boyfriend with two kids. He has a good paying job and she works an okay job. There is no way in hell they could just buy a house
In fairness, the minimum wage only started in 1999.
In the UK. Right. (Source)
Well yeah, as opposed to where?
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Also the peak of contracting (before IR35) - there were plenty of tech workers on insane "salaries" just doing normal jobs.
So life was better when e didn't have a tory government absolutely fucking everything up that makes the country worth living in? Colour me shocked. (yes there are international factors at play, and factors beyond the government's control, but they have absolutely exacerbated every single one of those things)
I mean, I was pretty young at the time, but good god even I can see how we've been obliterated by inflation. There's a specific chocolate here in the UK, a tiny little one for children called Freddo the Frog. Just a little cartoon chocolate frog, nothing fancy.
Their price has multiplied by a factor of TWENTY in the past 20 years. And I know pretty damn well that the amount everyone is getting paid has not increased by a factor of 20. Sure this is just a small irrelevant little chocolate bar and other things have inflated less, but like. It's probably the easiest thing to notice.
But yeah also playing in the street or taking a bike ride around town with your friends was a thing when I was a kid. Sure we were all probably a nuisance, but these days... I don't think I've seen anyone playing outside in ten years. The places we'd ride bikes got bought up and removed. And even the idea of allowing children to play outside feels... socially unacceptable.
Also early Youtube and Facebook were COMPLETELY different beasts that just didn't have the millions of hours of design work put into them to suck people in and keep them there. Oh, and flash games were a really big thing too if you wanted to play on the computer. They were amazing. And big-name games were in a really good spot, paid DLC and the pay-to-win blight hadn't really started, and stuff like World of Warcraft, LAN Halo, and other games you could play over at a friend's house were at their peaks from a social point of view.
...I know nostalgia is a trap, but god, it really isn't hard to think of things to be nostalgic for from that time, and I was only born in the very late 90s. At least I've got plenty of friends online these days though.
I thought you were my age but I was early 80s and feel the exact same way about all your points. I guess the decline has been ongoing for a while.
Weren't Freddos 5p and now about 40p? So 8x. Not that your point isn't still valid. Wages have maybe doubled.
They're £1 a piece over where I am, me and my brother literally always joke that they're the number one indicator that the economy is in shambles (Edit: And yes, I remember them being 5p each)
I didn't ache in the morning, hairline was better, skin smoother...
Every boomer comic is about old people saying life was better when they were young, or that they hate their wife.
The difference is that even young people say life was better when boomers were young.
Higher wages, cheaper housing, lower cost of living.
Could support a family on a factory wages. Now there arent factories.
Was better in some regards. I think most minorities in the US would agree that they at least feel safe and more free to exist in 2024 than they would in the 1980s or earlier.
We are talking about the 90s though, not the 60s.
As a bisexual man, the 90s were much different for LGBT folks than today. But yes, for most people, the 90s wouldn't be too much worse than today, aside from economics.
I presume you're an American then.
It wasn't that bad in Europe.
The strapline says "nostalgia" but we are in a cost-of-living crisis, the climate apocalypse is starting to kick in and there are conflicts happening that some have said resemble the precursors to WW1 and WW2.
And while things have been worse since the noughties (what are we calling the 2010s? The Blunder Years? The Enshittening) we seem to have fallen off a cliff half-way through. The Weaselverse was a funny idea thrown out there but it would explain a lot.
I wondered whether it is just some recentist bias, so, being a masochist, I went through every year and came up with a "shit years" list:
- 1997 and 2020
- 2019
- 2021 into 2022
- 2018
- 2017
Now that's part of the 20-25 year (generational) cycle of The Reckoning, so is personal to me, but that weasal fucked me up good and proper.
[X] Member of the EU. [X] One of the wealthiest nations on earth. [X] The best healthcare on earth. [X] One of the strongest higher education sectors on earth.
All sounds good to me.
The first was lost to the old voting for the young. The second fled with austerity - slowly eroding the wealth of a nation. The third succumbed to a slow cancer of underfunding and an unfolding demographic crisis. The fourth is about to fall due to nationalism and massive underfunding.
Edit: corrected nationalisation to nationalism because sleepy hex is slow hex!
In what decade was life best for people? Britons typically say that it was whenever they themselves were young
I seem to recall reading similar material about non-British positions as well.
Life was better
Picture of the Spice Girls
Pic non related
I wonder what might have happened in 2010 to stunt the progress.....
I wonder if some policy changes from the 80's might have had profound systemic effects that slowly eroded the well-being of lower classes
When asked to think about their own lives, Britons are most likely to say that the best years of their life so far have been their twenties. Three in ten Britons aged 20 and older (30%) nominate that decade as their best, a figure which is largely consistent however old they are.
While the 90s was a bit of geopolitical stability, these findings seem to be more influenced by people enjoying the freedom of their youth
Someone said that the ‘90s were probably the best time to be a young adult in the US (with obvious exceptions of course), and having become one after 9/11–I got my first degree literally ten days after that—I am inclined to agree.
2012 was peak britannia in the last few decades