- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
You know the Bank of Mum and Dad when you see it: it’s your friend who seems broke, but always has a safety net, or who suddenly (but discreetly) acquires the deposit for a home. It’s those who stayed with their parents while they saved for a flat, or stuck it out in a profession they were passionate about even though the wages are chronically low. It’s those who do not need to consider the financial costs of having children. It’s those whose grandparents are covering nursery or university fees, with the Bank of Grandma and Grandad already driving an economic wedge between different cohorts in generations Alpha (born between 2010 and 2024) and Z (born in the late 1990s and early 2000s).
This is the picture we know, but the Bank of Mum and Dad is not just a luxury confined to the 1% – it is also evident in families like mine. I grew up in a working-class household and was the first person in my family to get a degree, but it was the fact my parents had scrimped in the 1980s to purchase properties in London (and allowed me to crash in one throughout my 20s) that has arguably been the true source of opportunities in my life.
In recent years, we have rightly widened the conversation about privilege in society. And yet how honest are we about one of the most obvious forces shaping anyone under 45: the presence or absence of a parental safety net? The truth is that we live in an inheritocracy. If you’ve grown up in the 21st century, your opportunities are increasingly determined by your access to the Bank of Mum and Dad, rather than by what you earn or learn. The economic roots of this story go back to the 1980s, but it accelerated after the 2008 financial crisis, as private wealth soared and wage growth stalled. In the 2020s, rather than a meritocracy – where hard work pays off – we have evolved into an inheritocracy, based on family wealth.
People should always have access to essentials, and I count an affordable reliable roof over their head as one of those things. But are we ever going to be able to change the fact that someone on the receiving end of three generations of doing moderately well in life is going to be massively more advantaged that someone whose parents were 4th and 5th in large poor families?
Someone’s parents having even a modest home with a spare room in London puts them at a massive advantage over their peers who have to privately rent. But aside from ensuring the fundamentals are in place of affordable accessible homes, is there really any realistic way of nullifying that advantage and is it even right to do so?
I don’t think that’s an aside, I think that’s the key to solving a lot of problems with our current society. Give everyone a roof and enough nutritious food, and most people can figure out how to live their lives from there. The problem is that the lack of housing and food options forces people into low paying jobs with no upward mobility, and continues the cycle of poverty.
I didn’t write that as “an aside”, I wrote “aside from”. You need to read it as “besides”. In the sense of “obviously this needs to be done fundamentally and as a priority, but besides that… etc”.
Why shouldn’t everyone have access to housing, food, education, tutoring, and transportation like those people who inherit from their parents?
The social impact of engaged parents can’t be missed, but there’s no reason why there should be a material aspect.
Because, fundamentally, most people work because it makes their life better than if they weren’t working.
It we so heavily correct the system so that you get the same house whether your working or not, your kid goes to the same school whether your working or not, they get the same homework tutors whether your working or not, you have access to the same transport or car whether you work or not… you get the point.
How many people would even turn up to work if it made no material difference to their life?
But as soon as you allow people’s effort and choice to create an actual difference in the quality of their and their kids lives then you inevitably end up with inequality, because people make different choices, are motivated to work hard to different degrees. This gets compounded when some families simply build on the moderate success of the parents.
Rather, isn’t the better option to just make sure that the “bottom” option is not inhumane and is actually basically alright. In fact, it should be as good as we can possibly make it. BUT then you have to allow that choice, hard work, sacrifice can possibly make a difference and people can improve their lot.
That sounds just like Reagan and his so-called “welfare queen”.
I know everyone is reading this in their own political context, so I realise it’s open to a lot of misinterpretation. But just try and take the idea on its own, in its essence.
If you really had the free choice in the morning to bake artisan bread or go and wade in sewage and clean a communal sewer, do you not think people would need a little bit of motivation into the maintaince job using something more than kind words?
Once you start using capital (money) to indicate need in society (because human preference is not automatically aligned with human needs) then you end up with a situation where some people can choose to accrue capital if they hold their nose and do the shitty jobs no-one else wants to.
Are you telling me that if the extra the sewer cleaner earned was taken away and given to the bakers kids so that things are “nice and equal”, that you’re going to find enough people to clean the sewers in the future?
C’mon. I want the world to be fairer too. I think capitalism’s excesses are gross. But people have to feel they can personally gain else the way to indicate what really needs doing is completely broken.
Counterpoint: there are so many things a person could be doing that are far far more valuable to society than bullshit “profitable” work, and those things don’t pay, or pay very poorly. You think being required to earn basic existence in life is better, even though the vast majority of jobs are entirely pointless and/or could easily be automated? Such a shameful waste of human potential.
If people had all the time in the world to do what they wanted, most people would still work at least part time, but it probably wouldn’t be for shitty megacorps that treat employees like trash (and those companies deserve to die). Some people would choose to only do community improvement stuff, though, like beautification, guerrilla gardening, or helping to build/remodel community spaces. And that’s actually awesome. We need way way more of that, and less of developers/companies coming in and doing whatever they can to extract money from the community.
They do it now, when they have time or it’s directly beneficial to them, but volunteering is an inherently privileged activity. Poor people don’t have time or energy because they have other shit to do to be able to afford to survive.
Maybe not the same jobs, but most people would. Human beings are wired to want to feel productive.
I don’t think we should be abolishing money or anything, and different jobs should pay different wages. Still, I think all people should have their basic needs met.
Such a rubbish stance. People want to be usefull. So if the basics are met companies will need to make sure they are not exploitative shitholes like they are now.
Absolutely there is a risk, but this risk is created not by inherent lazyness of people but the shitty/dangerous/ unfulfilling/soul crushing jobs, shitty middle management, asshole atmosphere and the hustle required. You have the effect right but the cause wrong.
This would in practice mean that shitty jobs need to pay a hell of a lot more… which is good. Then the MBAs can figure out if making the job less of a hellish place can cause them to pay less and where break-even is.
Bear in mind the person I was replying to was advocating equal outcomes. I was questioning the practically of seeing it that way.
The idea that the economy would still remotely function if you make people’s material outcome absolutely the same irrespective of what they’ve worked on is insane.
So in some ideal world people just all do whatever they feel inwardly motivated to do? How in that world do you signal that maybe the village doesn’t need another artisan baker, what it could really do with is someone to fix the sewers all day.
How do you do that other than compensate the sewer worker more for a job?
“Pay them a higher (fair) wage?”. Well, ok. But that means they’re paid more than the bakers are. And now you’ve sowed the seeds for inequality and we’ve barely started.
While 2/3rds of the town occupy themselves with art (and good enriching art by the way, art is essential), the “Smith” family decide for three generations to take on the sewer work and for that they’re paid more.
But by the time we get to grandson Smith, he had about 30% more savings than his baker friends and although everyone has a house, Smith is able to pay more for that house by the nice trees with a particularly nice view.
Etc. You get the idea. There is too much of human existence that still needs to be motivated by compensation. And as soon as you do that some people will think the sacrifice worth it in order to improve their lot and others won’t be so bothered.
If you took everything Mr Smith earned extra from spending all day in sewage and gave it to the bakers children instead so that there isn’t any kind of generational inequality. You don’t see how that’s fundamentally never going to work with humans? Maybe you’ll get one or two people who see the social need of cleaning the sewers. But the whole point of compensating some jobs more is that the needs of human society don’t neatly line up with what humans are inclined to do, so some sort of personal enrichment is needed to motivate the essential task of wading in shit all day rather than inhaling the amazing aroma of freshly baked bread.
And part of that compensation, what people value, is being able to give some of your sacrifice to your children.
(Although I make it clear at the top what I’m responding to let me also be clear that I in no way think the current exploitative model of capitalism seen in the West is the “best” or “inevitable”. No way, it’s awful. There are millions of ways it can be improved and the disadvantaged helped. But this idea of current human society being able to function with enforced equal outcomes is delusional)
Wealth accumulates sure, that’s why at a certain point taxes should put a brake on that and above an even higher point it should be predominantly taxed. Inheritance tax should allow for some generational transfer but capped at a sane point. And fuckery using foundations etc etc should result in all of it being forfeit.