Thread by @clairegcoleman

Hi Ita and @ABCTV I am not a millenial, I am no longer young, I have worked with the ABC in the past and hope to again but I need to say something.

BITE ME.

Stop being ageist Ita. Things are different to your times, for a start.

smh.com.au/national/buttr… via @smh

If I hear one more boomer saying "young people have it too easy" I will lose my mind completely. I am Gen X, I have seen how boomers have it and how millenials have it and you know what? BOOMERS HAD IT EASIER.

When my parents were 18 permanent jobs were easy to get.

When I was 10 my parents, on working class incomes, with no collateral and a 10% deposit got a mortgage for a house. Houses were then approximately 4 * an annual income to buy.

Now houses are 20* an average income to buy.

Boomers had it easy, Gen X watched it fall, we watched the economy collapse, watched the gap between rich and poor expand constantly, watched the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

I remember the moment when housing got too expensive to buy

I remember when full time work became unusual and part-time permanent became extinct. I remember when company policies of making casual staff permanent after a certain time on the same hours stopped being the norm. I remember penalty rates, and being paid extra for overtime.

Boomers eroded all that in my lifetime. The worst crime was housing, once being able to afford a house was assumed and renting was just what you did while saving a deposit. Then less and less people could buy houses until relentlessly houses became an investment not a home.

In my lifetime it has gone from working class people being able to buy houses to middle class 30 somethings having to live in share houses. It crept up so slowly that boomers don't know it's different and the rest of us don't remember how it used to be.

I can't emphasize this enough. Once upon a time casual wages were so much higher than part time wages that companies tried to force their casuals onto part time to save money

Now, they fire the permanents and replace them with casuals because penalty and casual rates are extinct

I remember when I discovered that "school holiday casual jobs" or the sort of jobs someone did until they could get a better job, casual jobs with no holiday pay or sick leave, had become normal all of a sudden.

I remember when a good job for life became a privilege not a right

Can anybody imagine someone now, in our environment, taking a job at a magazine at 15 and working their way up to the power of Ita without an education?

No, I can't either. It's privilege.

All this has happened in the last 40 years, why have we not noticed it? The Millennials are too young to have seen it all, Boomers want it to be this way and nobody is listening to Gen X, who watched it all helpless.

BTW, in 1995 I had about $1000 in the bank and saw 10 acres in the WA bush about 200kms from Perth for $1000 and thought, "I'm only 21 I can buy some land later".

I am filled with regret.

One last thing, the median house price for Melbourne in January this year was about $900k. Which means that a house deposit of 20% is about $180k. The median income in Australia is about $50K so it would take about 4 years to save a deposit if you saved every c and paid no tax.

Unfortunately house prices in the last year increased by about a median income. Which means deposits went up by about 20% of an income ... your deposit need goes up by about 20% of your income annually and you take 4 years to save up a deposit... then calculate tax

In essence, it's mathematically impossible for someone in Melbourne on a median income to save the deposit for a median house even if they save EVERY cent they earn pay no rent eat nothing and wear rags.

The government know this.

My maths has not been calculated in detail. I could do this but I really can't be bothered. It's integrals and trigonometry and I hate trigonometry.

Now, this year, the state government are changing lease and rental laws. Why? Because for the first time since colonisation over 50% of Victorians are expected to be renting until the day we die and nobody would tolerate retirees being evicted every year for no reason like I was.