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I agree but the level of comfort and entitlement I am watching in the workplace needs to be addressed if we ever intend to carry our weight as a commercial country in the future.

I have been lucky to travel in my worklife (not always enjoy or actually get to see, but travel) and the thing that always strikes me is the differences between cultures.

(probably all terrible generalisations)
I go to Australia and New Zealand to run training or sessions and the people act differently but with focus and interest.
I go to Japan and there is a strict interest and attention, however if they did not understand they would not say or ask.
I go to South Korea and to be blunt there was little I could teach them and they were brilliantly engaged and really intense.

I cannot even get decent attendance for the same sessions with partners in the UK.
It was not just a sales pitch. The session is based on how we designed the largest single WiFi installation in the UK for an NHS Trust and what it had done to improve staff experience. It should have been gold for them.

Samsung/Hyundai wins.

Yet I have a new member of staff that leaves after a week because the role (first job/intern) does not match their life goals or give them enough variety. That's a laugh, be bad at five things instead of one. But they deserve that level of respect apparently.

Where is my soft spot on the wall, I have some banging to do.

Indeed -
It might also be worth noting that by & large the younger end of society didn't vote to take some 4% off the nation's GDP by leaving our closest and largest commercial market, and creating the situation where government says it has no money to pay public servants properly. By 'properly' I think I mean that they should earn a steady income at real prices over a period of years. I've worked with a lot of civil servants over the past decade, and can't help but notice that they're being ground down, and there's people leaving who have hard to replace skills and experience.

There's also the question of what sort of society we want to live in?
I'd like a properly resourced, motivated and rewarded health service, teachers, clean safe streets and so on. (But then I do live in Brighton & Hove, which is a liberal fantasy eco-bubble ;-) )

I'm really not sure our society's values are right. For example, while I admire my younger son for his 1st in Economics and landing a solid econometrics gig targeting media campaigns, and a solid salary package that in his 2nd year of working is as much as a highly experienced nurse earns in the NHS.

Will

Quite a lot of the boomers didn't vote for the Tories or Brexit if you look closely either we certainly didn't.

You forgot the tremendously profitable SAYE schemes that some of us had going too working for a multinational, it's all about commitment though and it's a two way street.

One of my SIL's has recently retired from a full time job at 44 and he and our daughter have attained 4 properties whilst working fulltime and these will support them now and their family whilst they do part time worthwhile work from their standpoint..

I have yet to hear them mention boomers although I have heard final salary pensions mentioned in context, like I said earlier some people get up and do it and are happier for that and others just wait for the bus full of cash to drop into their lap.

Out of interest the split down here on second home ownership is almost equal between the younger successful generation and boomers so it's not a black and white divide by any means.

Tomhez .... my thoughts were more 'global' .... in respect that, as societies, we cannot sustain the current 'continuous year on year growth ' model ... you suggested each successive generation should be 'better off' ... unless we want to sit looking at piles of useless fivers and pound coins then that cash translates into 'stuff' and being better off in terms of stuff than the current generation translates into environmental depletion .... we currently spew out poor quality unimaginative housing in poorly designed developments aimed at a demographic that largely already has a house and want a change ... so, for a start having access to an interesting and sustainable place to live that relates to those around it in a way that promotes a functional and interesting social neighbourhood would interest the 25 year old me far more than getting into lifetime debt for a slightly bigger version of what my parents were conned into getting into hock for life for just at satisfy the need of money-men for a growing GDP. .... Less, but better quality and more satisfying (in a range of ways) perhaps?

How we break the GDP chain without mass starvation and civil strife I haven't a clue

K

Amen to that (and I'd also like to live in Brighton and Hove too, I love our little weekend breaks down there)

Speaking from a teaching perspective, no matter how much experience, time and effort we put in, our salary is capped at a maximum of £43,685. Any progression from there involves moving into management, which means a considerable reduction in teaching which is counter intuitive to the reasons we entered the profession. We're certainly not sitting around on our backsides waiting for a busload of money to turn up.

We have has a 5% payrise this year, but this is unfunded so has had to come out of the existing budget. Budgets are already cut to the bone, so this means a 5% reduction in teaching staff, meaning larger class sizes, and non specialist teachers (I'm teaching four periods of Geography at the moment to fill gaps). When I first started teaching we'd usually get 10 or 15 applicants per job vacancy. Now we are lucky if we get any - we are screaming out for teachers, but it is just not an attractive option any more. Ultimately, it's the education of the kids that suffers.

According to the IFS - "most teachers are likely to see a five per cent real-terms fall in salaries this school year, which comes on top of past real-terms falls dating back to 2010 and the start of ‘austerity’. Real-terms pay for experienced teachers has declined by 13 per cent since 2010, and that over the same period average pay in the whole economy has increased by two per cent in real terms. This adds up to a relative decline in teacher pay of -15 per cent. If the higher inflation calculation of RPI rather than the lower CPI were used, pay would decline even further. RPI shows teachers have lost 23 per cent in real-terms since 2010 and support staff 27 per cent.”

We need to encourage people into the profession, and pay them appropriately. As said above, properly resourced, motivated and rewarded. 30% of new teachers quit within 5 years. It costs an individual around £37,000 to gain the qualifications necessary to enter the profession (3 year degree and PGCE). £37K is around the salary you'd expect to earn after teaching for 6 years.

I imagine the same applies for many other branches of the public sector.

Maybe by using better measures that are less dependent on measuring output at the factory gate?
(I know GDP isn't that simplistic, but it is a measure from a manufacturing era - which isn't particularly relevant or helpful)

The World Economic Forum proposed 5 measures:

Good Jobs Wellbeing Environment Fairness Health

Without resorting to actual data :-) I'd sense the UK is on a downward trend on all of those measures, except Environment, where we're doing a remarkable job of cutting the footprint of our power generation; there's a lot we could be learning from other European & developed economies that could take us even further.
& I'd note that there were moments when the post Brexit rationale was to have Better Jobs, and it's possible we've started a journey towards a higher skill, higher wage economy. I do hope so - though personally I wish we cared more for the Wellbeing, Health of and Fairness to low wage, low skilled people who make our society function.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/04/five-measures-of-growth-that-are-better-than-gdp

We are going to have to pay more tax in order to have the public services we want that - properly resourced and filled with well motivated people. That will include higher basic rate of tax as well as increases in the higher rate and more taxes on spending (that are easy to collect). A succession of governments (of all complexions) seem to have their minds fixed on keeping the basic rate of tax constant. The unintended consequence is more and more complexity in taxation - which only benefits the accountants who spend their lives finding wrinkles around each new peripheral tax.

As I understand it, the guide books to taxation have grown in size substantially since 1997 - can anyone with actual knowledge confirm this?

Spot on Paul and everyone I know would be happy to pay a bit more to restore functionality plus recognition for NHS staff who do an incredible job serving the country.

How about taxation as it is (ok, maybe simplified a bit as Paul says) .... and then a few percent on top that would be discretionary within one of a number of categories (NHS Defence, Education, Homelessness etc) .... for those less keen to shell out more in tax, that approach might make them less resistant ... and with it being a 'top-up' to the existing taxation you wouldn't get nothing spent on necessary, but unpopular, areas. With the proviso that a bumper take for, say, education couldn't trigger a reallocation of existing budgets.

Might make things more palatable for the less civic minded 'well-off' to feel somewhat in control Of where their extra taxation went

K

That could work well if not a nightmare to administer and you get to choose your area of improvement, starting with electric chairs in the HOC with a voting button..