Given its provenance (and prominence) as a marxist tool, class analysis is something which both conservatives and classical liberals tend to ignore. To the extent that people whose politics fall within those groupings understand it at all, they respond to the mere mention of the term with an understandable degree of horror.
But that’s a shame because the examination of class interests can be a very useful means for analysing problems and even discovering possible solutions. I believe it can every bit as useful for individualists as it has been for collectivists.
In his latest Telegraph editorial, George Trefgarne, wields a bit of class analysis in formidable fashion:
I can’t help thinking we need an English Poujade, to speak up for the little person and take on our own Left-Bankers. You know the type. Self-satisfied and pleased with themselves, they are the new Establishment who have deposed the old, traditional elite.
It is they, rather than your stereotypical Tory squires, who thrive in such institutions as universities, the Church, Whitehall and the BBC. Only the Armed Forces seem to be holding out against them. They are hung-up about class, contemptuous of tradition and love petty gestures such as refusing to curtsy to the Queen or abolishing the Lord Chancellor because he wears tights.
If you question their beliefs, they will express disdain, mock you for being old-fashioned, suggest you are immoral or dim, and – their trump card – racist. But the truth is they are, for the most part, members of the government salariat, who live off taxpayers’ money.
It sounds as if Mr.Trefgarne may have read about the Enemy Class. If he hasn’t, he should. In any event he has made a worthy stab at identifying a potential counter-class:
But the real economic pain is being shouldered by the generation I like to call the Baby Busters – those in their twenties and thirties who are the children of the Baby Boomers born after the war.
Unlike some previous generations, Baby Busters find it easy to get a job. But they are an assetless group, groaning with debts. Baby Busters graduate from university with thousands of pounds of loans to pay off; they cannot afford to get on to the housing ladder as prices have soared to their highest ever level (when measured as a multiple of incomes); they are not saving for a pension because the stakeholder wheezes that the Government invented for them are a flop; and they are not earning enough to progress in life.
The ‘busters’ are groaning under the weight of supporting a monstrously overgrown state; the result of their parents endless demands for interventions and government largesse.
Everywhere, their opportunities are restricted by the growth of government, bureaucracy and rising taxation. Yet no political party seems to care about the Baby Busters. They are a rabble, waiting for a rouser.
We’re trying, Mr.Trefgarne, we’re trying.
“The ‘busters’ are groaning under the weight of supporting a monstrously overgrown state; the result of their parents endless demands for interventions and government largesse.”
Can’t speak for Brfitain of course but statement above quite inaccurate for USA.
Busters’ — what an endearing term: I had “Buster Brown” shoes as a boy — major burden in USA is buying into housing; middle-class ones will get into it via parents. But in any case, increase of housing values over last 30 years not due to welfare state but due to societal change in perception of limits to growth.
Overall, Busters have it easy.
Um, what you wrote made no sense, David.
As someone who’s just graduated from Oxford University with about £10,000 debt (and that’s _with_ parental support), I’m having great difficulty getting a job in the UK. And my degree’s in Engineering. Only one of my friends has got a job (none of the Engineers have), and this is in a country that’s “crying out for engineers”…
So, I agree with the article!
David may be on to something. As an American, I never cease to be amazed at the twety-somethings that I encounter with relatively posh lifestyles – ranging from nice cars and houses to hobby-jobs that can’t possibly pay enough to support anyone. The answer invariably is that Mom and Dad are footing the bill -sometimes for a house worth more than $250,000, sometimes for $40,000 cars, etc.
Naturally, only a relatively small fraction of the Busters are born into sufficient wealth for a subsidized lifestyle. The term for these lucky(?) few is “trustafarian.” Still, it is not unusual for even blue-collar high school kids to be given a car for graduation, for example.
Housing prices are increasingly disconnected from any reality other than the size of the monthly mortgage payment that a given buyer can afford.
I do agree with the notion that there will be a terrible generational conflict at some point, as the massive transfer of wealth from the young and relatively poor wage-earners to the old and relatively wealthy (as a class, of course) retirees accelerates.
I have two sons who would qualify as Busters as defined by the writer.
The older one is very independent, started working at 16, and moved out at 19 after a year of college. He is more work oriented than school oriented, so doesn’t have the “student loan” problem. Runs a computer network for a national bank, but recently has been toying with the idea of being an EMT or Paramedic.
2nd son is 20 and away at school in another state. He is working his way through, with some minor assistance about cars and co-signings and all. He was into computers, but now says he wants to teach and coach hockey at the high school level.
My other 2 kids are part of the boom echo, and this is the group, still in jr. high and high school, which is going to catch the worst of the boomers old age. The bill for the upkeep and storage on us as we enter our medical problems and nursing home phase is going to be staggering. They will be where the busters are now, still young adults trying to establish themselves.
I had a conversation with my wife at a restaurant several years ago about what the kids were going to do with all of us in a few decades. I made the comment that a lot of parents were going to be so shocked and hurt when they were stashed in a home somewhere if they got to be too much trouble. But, I remarked, they did it with the kids because their “self-fulfillment” came first, so why be surprized when the kids do it right back.
My wife got a funny look on her face and leaned in to tell me that there was a couple at a table behind me who were obviously listening in, and when I said that, the mom almost dropped her glass of wine, and the husband started patting her hand.
What goes around comes around.
What goes around comes around.
That is very nearly the total of all wisdom. Your analysis in on the mark.
“The answer invariably is that Mom and Dad are footing the bill -sometimes for a house worth more than $250,000,”
Around where I live, you can barely get a decent two-bedroom house in a good neighborhood for that much. And the Bay Area is twice or three times as bad.
Though I am insanely jealous about some friends who got an amazingly cool and large house for $208,000 because it’s near a freeway.
Actually, I think the problem in the UK at least has very little to do with the tax rate. It wouldn’t matter if we had 0% tax people would still pile all their money into property – they have to live somewhere.
So, why is property so expensive? Because of the planning laws which make it almost impossible to build anything.
I also can’t help thinking that one of the reasons that the younger generation spends so much of its money on getting drunk (and all the attendant problems with that) is because they know they have little chance of ever doing anything productive with the money, like owning a house or bringing up a family.
As someone who likes blowing my money on booze etc. i would like to point out the arrogance of saying that foisting children onto this crowded corner of the planet is in any way “productive”.
With the rubbish ability of parents these days I think in 18 years time we may both be looking at bars, sadly of different sorts.
Also what is the slightest bit productive about a pile of bricks on some overpriced land?
There’s a vast number of people who are successful who just want to bail out of this overcrowded socialist mess their parents have created.
Mr Carr writes:
We’re trying, Mr.Trefgarne, we’re trying.
But are we, David? I think this is wishful thinking. I don’t think we’re trying. I think we’re just talking. And talk is cheap.
Somone suggests we should get more involved with the Tories. This IDIOT gets shouted down, because the Tories are worse statists than the Labour party. Which is a fair point.
Another even STUPIDER idiot suggests we should form our own party. This even more MORONIC idiot gets shouted down because it is impossible to start a new political party in Britain, because the ruling political parties have made it too difficult (so much for British spunk.)
So it being impossible to form a new party, and it being impossible to infiltrate an existing party, this means we are reduced to being a talking shop, waiting for the future to happen, to see what the future brings.
It’s hardly inspirational, is it?
The estimable Andy Duncan wrote:
So it being impossible to form a new party, and it being impossible to infiltrate an existing party, this means we are reduced to being a talking shop, waiting for the future to happen, to see what the future brings.
In that case, why not become a cancer inside the Grauniad by writing for them and imbuing all your writing with a libertarian bent? 😉
David Sucher: Oh, I don’t know, your middle class parents USED to help you with the down payment on your first house in the US, but I don’t know anyone of my cohort (I’m 32) who’s gotten that help, unless their parents were significantly above middle class.
Boomer parents in the US seem MUCH more interested in the 3rd car, a new home theatre system, and more of such toys for themselves.
I would be amazed to find out that busters have an easy time getting a job. Was this article written in the 90s?
Andy Duncan wrote: “the Tories are worse statists than the Labour party”.
Worse? Almost as bad, I could have accepted…
David Mercer: I’m sorry to hear that your friends have no help from their parents, who want 3 cars etc. That doesn’t fit the pattern in my own family.
My husband & I have modest savings and he will receive a modest pension. Much of the house equity we accumulated, which was our major investment, has been withdrawn first to educate our daughter (now 27) and then to support her (while trying to provide limits/guidance) through a series of bad choices she made. Now that she has been diagnosed with bi-polar disease we know a bit more about why she made those bad choices, but that doesn’t remove the effects of them, out of which she is slowly emerging, with our financial and emotional help and her own courage and creativity.
I’m 53 & expect to work until I’m 70 or so, at which point our current home should be paid for and we will have replenished our other savings a bit. Our livestyle is middle class but not fancy and that’s okay with me.
Sometimes I feel very tired but all in all, we are doing fine. My blue collar parents re-mortgaged their modest home twice to allow me to go to an excellent private college … as a white collar professional, it is the least I can do to support my daughter in turn.
I do worry about the busters, for a lot of reasons. But don’t assume the boomers have had it easy. Everywhere we’ve turned we’ve had to compete with the largest generation ever: for slots in school, for jobs, for mates. I”ve never been fond of the self-absorbtion of my generation, which was fostered by the post-WWII parenting of the 50s. But I see the equivalent trap for your generation to be that of despair and cynicism. Do avoid it if you can.
I should add that I am American … your mileage probably does vary in Britain.
Not bad, not bad at all from Georgie Trefgarne. I always have been a big fan of Torygraph and again my faith in the paper been rewarded with this brilliant article.
Basically, I think our generation (I’m in my late twenties) has about two hopes to achieve the same standard of living that our parent’s generation achieved – that is Bob Hope and No Hope. As Bob has kicked the bucket, that pretty much narrows our chances down to No Hope.
What it boils down is that our generation is income rich, but asset poor – due to the massive asset price bubble (real estate, bonds, stocks, etc) created by cheap credit (interest rates at generational low), the earning power of our income relative to real goods is pretty much dick all. No wonder were guzzling up the good stuff (DEBT that is) and living beyond our means!
To make matters worse, we got this bunch of redistributionist socialist muppets running the show in Western Europe, who are trying to live their heady days of 1968 all over again… and even our friends in US are stuck with this BIG government nonsense, despite electing GOP into power! Oh and Woe.
Unfortunately for all of us, things have to get a whole lotta worse before they will get better. Trying to vote out the free-healthcare-pension-asset rich-enjoying Baby Boomers won’t work either, because there’s so goddamned many of them.
Better to vote with your feet in the end I guess, and weather the storm somewhere where this nonsense has taken up yet. Any ideas, people?
Andy Duncan: […] it is impossible to start a new political party in Britain, because the ruling political parties have made it too difficult (so much for British spunk.)
Not impossible at all, just very hard. One probably needs a charismatic figure, a new Poujade indeed, at some point, and definitely lots of guile and luck. But more than anything else one needs huge amounts of money (preferably now before they make even that illegal) to keep a vaguely adequate research, propaganda and recruitment organization going for long enough to get some momentum. Can anyone spare £50 million?