[Excerpted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusively through VDARE.com]
Last Sunday‘s happy celebration of my grandson’s christening left me reflecting, for the umpteenth time, on my own great good fortune in being born when I was (1945). And worrying that Millennials (the generation born circa 1981-1996) just “don‘t have a chance”—to quote Steve Bannon, currently in the news for other reasons.
In one of my monthly diaries a couple of years ago I noted the fiftieth anniversary of my buying my first house. That was in the context of Bernie Sanders making a strong play for the Democratic Party 2020 nomination, and the support he had among young people.
To be precise, I and my then-girlfriend co-bought it. It was a three- bedroom row-house in a quiet street in London, with a garden out back. We easily got a mortgage.
We were two working-class kids not long out of college. (We‘d both graduated in 1967.) I was twenty-four years old. Our two families had a combined net worth of…zero. And we bought a house—in London! The asking price was three times my annual salary as a young cube jockey.
An equivalent property fifty years later would have set you back about £450,000 (perhaps $540,000). That‘s three times £150,000. Were young data professionals two years out of college making £150,000 a year in London in 2020? In their dreams!
Corresponding figures apply in America. Right there you have an explanation for the radicalism of young adults and the “OK, Boomer“ sourness.
London house prices haven‘t gone down any in the two years since I wrote that. Starting computer programmers are paid around £40,000. So for an equivalent house today a young adult would be paying not three times his annual salary but more than eleven times it.
The same month I first noted this, February 2020, although I didn‘t notice it at the time, Steve Bannon was interviewed by some progressive bimbo on PBS. Here‘s a clip:
Remember, here‘s the thing with millennials: They‘re like 19th-century Russian serfs. They‘re in better shape, they have more information, they‘re better dressed, but they don‘t own anything.
Five thousand years of the Judeo-Christian West was built around the family—built around “save your money, you‘re a good householder.“
We‘ve shattered that. Millennials don‘t have a chance. They‘re twenty percent behind their parents at the same point in life in income …
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