https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/49129-life-was-better-in-the-nineties-and-noughties-say-most-britons
Nostalgia for past decades has increased significantly in the last five years
Yea, strange how a government actually investing money in infrastructure and public services improves the lives of people overall.
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.
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)
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
Also the peak of contracting (before IR35) - there were plenty of tech workers on insane "salaries" just doing normal jobs.
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.
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.
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.
[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!
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:
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.
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.
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.
Houses got more expensive and wages stayed low. Immigration from the third world was a mistake. We should have reinvested in ourselves for the benefit of the people insead of the benefit of businesses and land owners, and also stop being so concerned about a lowing population.
I don't think the immigrants are to blame. They make a really easy target for politicians to blame, but... I mean, we both saw Boris Johnson campaigning for his fucking life on 'SAVE THE NHS SAVE THE NHS, JUST LET ME BAN ALL IMMIGRANTS AND RESTRICT HEALTHCARE SO I CAN SAVE THE NHS' and then he didn't give the NHS any money or support or investment, he just slipped a an absolutely fat bonus to all his tory friends and big businesses.
We should have invested in ourselves, yes. Just, please don't be fooled into thinking we invested into immigrants. 'We' (the Tories) invested into the offshore bank accounts of the 0.1%.
I don’t think the immigrants are to blame.
They're easy to blame though. No government is going to say "you are suffering because of our policies" and the Tories will always point fingers at some group to spread the blame.
I didn't say we invested in immigrants. We didn't invest at all.
It's a cost saving exercise at the expense of the everday person.
immigrants are almost universally good for economies: they disproportionately start small businesses which leads to jobs and employment. they work hard because they’re thankful to be in the country they chose to be in
The metrics they just for immigrants are intentionally misleading. They fill jobs that no one else will do because they work for less, that's not a good thing that is bad for the locals as wages are suppressed. They say we need immigrants because we don't have people with the skills to do that job, the reason people don't have those skills is because we don't invest in people and we don't need to with immigrants. So locals now don't get the higher trained job because it's cheaper to give it to someone else. Population is going down so things like houses will get cheaper but that bad for government numbers so immigrant get brought in to keep house prices high. That's bad for locals.
Immigration is good for GDP yes. But the everday person get less jobs, less training less pay and then has to pay more for rent. Who gives a shit about GDP is disposable income goes down?
Then there is a lot non financial issues also. But they are more subjective and people want to talk about then even less, but that doesn't mean it isn't important.
That's not it at all.
I love travelling and I love going to see other cultures. But I also love my own country and I love how other countries are also their own.
The question is what do you want for your country. Do you care more about big business, increasing GDP growth, lower wages for more competitive industry? Or do you want that's best for the people of that country. I care more about the people.
Immigrations isn't and hasn't been good for the UK. If you actually travel if you actually move around the country or move around other countries it becomes blindly apparent there are some really unfortunate truths about immigration. I don't want a Muslim influence in cities I've live in, that's not my culture, I am atheist anyway so I don't like anything like that. And I have done that. Lived in places where people look at your like you don't belong because you are white. But if other people want to have that culture they can feel free, but why should I be happy about them coming to my country and changing things about my country that isn't my country? That's not to say I'm against immigration but the reason is why? We need to talk clearly about the type of immigration that is good and they type that is bad. Similar cultures like the EU with the back and forth good. Third world immigration where wages are kept low, population increasing and isolated communities that don't integrate? Not good.
I got nothing against these people I wish them all the best. But I think we should be making a better country for the people, they should work on the same. We haven't got to set ourselves on fire to keep others warm.
i care about people… countries are a construct that we created, and often we use them as a bludgeon to make ourselves feel superior
you’re not superior to an eastern european fleeing russian aggression
you’re not superior to a mexican fleeing gang violence
you’re not superior to an african fleeing civil war
you’re not superior to a palestinian fleeing bombing
these people are all people. the fact that you live in a country where you do is luck; not superiority
heck, immigrants are what FORM local culture… without infusions of new ideas, culture stagnates
mexican immigration brought us tex mex; italian immigration brought us pizza… there are countless examples of how immigration has formed the local culture of a country. in the colonial world, outside of europe, we are entirely built from the culture of immigrants
also
Lived in places where people look at your like you don't belong because you are white. But if other people want to have that culture they can feel free, but why should I be happy about them coming to my country and changing things about my country that isn't my country?
that’s basically replacement theory right there, which is just plain horrific
I didn't say I was superior.
Of course countries are constructed. By people with shared views and common goals. Countries have been formed over a long period of time with a lot of struggle.
It's not luck that I live in my country. I was born from my parents, there was no chance I could have been born elsewhere. I came into a country hard won by my ancestors, some fought and some died making my country what it is. So don't shit on their legacy. They worked hard for a better country for me to live in. Show some respect.
Immigrants don't form countries, the countries were always there. Sure if you think America is the world you might believe that. But short of thinking America is the whole world that is obviously not true.
that’s basically replacement theory right there, which is just plain horrific
What? Lol. What are you actually saying here? Because it sounds like you are saying areas that were previously entirely white now still are? Like you don't accept that non white people live in areas where whites used to live?
That's a new level of woke if you believe that. That's arguing with basic census statistics.