is the average (young) worker worse off these days?

It's not just the tangible things that are different. Sure technology is cheaper, but it is also used as a substitute for other things and creates needs we didn't know we had. In the early 80s, I used to have to catch a bus to find a call box phone that worked, for example.

However, I could afford to go out most nights, mainly because there were a lot more places to go and things were a lot cheaper. Most small gigs (and there was a lot of d-i-y things going on, often with no conscious politics) charged £2 waged £1 unwaged. My take home in 86 when I got my first job was about £70 a week. I was squatting at the time, but a private rent at the time was about £25 a week for a room and it was perfectly possible to live OK on £45 a week (as a young person without responsibilities).

There was more of a sense of social solidarity; workers on strike would put up a picket line in the reasonable hope that it would be respected.

It's not that 25 years ago things were better - some things were some weren't. What is different is that society is a lot more atomised and alienated. This is not a good thing, even if some people find solace in technology

Regards,

Martin

Better and cheaper ideological technology for the use of mystifying people.

Well, that and when people are more atomized, as mentioned, they are also more easily deceived and don't have as much collective experience to contrast with the story of the media.

That was awful Martin, I was earning £150-225 at that time.

On a more serious point if a left communist had started this thread, many would posters would be screaming about how it wasn't true.

Devrim

In '91. I was making £11K as an electronics bod at London Bridge. Living in Brixton, £325 a month rent for a 4 room flat, including Poll Tax. Things weren't lavish but I lived better than most nowadays, plus I had "prospects". As they say.

Projecting your own personality problems onto the working class as a whole. They are not the mystified ones, "we" are.

I really doubt it.

What are you dıubting Revol how much I used to earn or the behaviour of people on this board? If it is the latter I have seen it happen here before.
Devrim

that people would disagree with it if a left communist posted it.

if the left communist was in the ICC and then started waxing lyrical about capitals decline and all the rest of the decadence theory shit, then yeah, but merely stating that young workers are worse off now is pretty uncontroversial, even my dad was saying my generation seem to be the first generation of young workers who are less well off than their parents.

Yup, I think it's pretty well-known across the "left" that real wages have declined since the 70s in the UK and US at least.

All the same, I was surprised to see this being discussed seriously until I noticed that Jack was the OP. A left commie would have been slated.

Nah. You’re pulling a whitey comrade. Stop casting them as victims.

I don't think that it is casting us as victims. I don't really care about that at all. It is about the way some anarchist trivialise discussion on what is after all a discussion board.

I think he is wrong. The following sentence would also argue against it:

Yes, maybe you can handle that much. It is not 'just' young workers though. It is much more generalised. Do the bourgoise give people a big bonus that allows them to buy a house and change their lives when the stop being young.

Then you would really start ranting.

Devrim

Well no, but people of our parents generation often own houses (or at least have mortgages) and they usually have better salaries, contract etc and they often have pensions.
Older people who have to enter the job market have no real advantage over the young.

older people lose their jobs too. Then they're fucked, particularly the over 50s. This has been a big problem for a while though. When my dad lost his job in a factory in the 80s, he couldn't get another one so wound up driving a minicab for the next 20 years, with a lot of others in the same situation. At least us young ones are generally better equipped for the new jobs market.

So true. Traditional belief is inclined to cast jobs as a reward for good behavior rather than a little cash on delivery business.

Yes, that's what I meant when I said about entering the job market. Generally worsening conditions are obviously going to impact on young workers more because they are entering the job market and haven't built up any security.

The old ones haven't either Jef, another day older and deeper in debt. As they say. Sold their soul to the company store. Your oldies aren't mobile either, plus they're driven mad by sexual starvation.

Except at the same time live entertainment has got more expensive, and a lot rarer. Going to the cinema is pricier, concerts, anything like that.

Also how many cars do you see bought in the early '90s that still look OK compared to cars bought in the '70s that still look alright? Part of the reason consumer electronics are so cheap is because the build quality is so shit. So you're caught in a cycle of constant replacement (this is also true for most stuff that's got a lot cheaper recently).

Anyway, although I think a lot of new software and electronics is cool, and certainly things are way better than 10 or 20 years ago - I think we should be comparing like with like. Clothes, shoes, food, housing. Things that are constant and are comparable between the '00s, the '80s, the '60s. On that baseline things are certainly less secure than they used to be and housing for example is far, far worse.

edit: I see martinh covered this already.

I doubt ruling class technology is any more mystifying than your sentence structure. Or this workshop you're about to do, advertised with the help of said sentence structure:

Dialectics, The Situationist International And The Revolutionary Power of The Imagination

Synopsis: How does dialectics let us to see history as our fight for a new world? How can we stop being spectators in the world of the integrated spectacle? Why must revolutionaries today call for all power to the imagination or be nothing? Be ready to seriously challenge your preconceived notions!

Presenter: Red Hughs

But more seriously, the anti-technology stuff sounds like a bunch of pro-situ self-righteousness. And then pro-situs act as if there were something more to what they say than run of the mill criticism of consumer culture? You're not fooling anybody... (or at least I hope not).

what's wrong with the sentence structure, just out of interest?

how does it mystify?

Not only is it poorly formed it's content is shite as well, as if there is some mystical para knowledge bestowed by some mysterious entity called the 'dialectic'.

If I didn't know better I'd take it as a parody of pro situ bullshit.

Working at my customer service job i'd say that maybe 1/5 of the people who come in to place an order are on their cell-phone and don't look at me or say anything if they can help it. That wouldn't have happened 20 years ago.

Do I need another reason to be "anti-technology"?

i thought you were smarter than this.

yeah me too

I was making fun of Red's claim that technology is "mystifying." I have no idea what he means by this, and suspect that he doesn't either. That has nothing to do with whether or not you like customers on their cell phones. (I didn't like them either when I used to work in customer service. At my new job, which is still sort of customer service in a sense, I'm annoyed when clients don't have cell phones because it makes my job significantly harder.)

I had the "anti-technology" in scare quotes for a reason.

After all sending text messages is one of my favorite ways of skiving off at work.

There shouldn't be a 'to' in this sentence. Let takes a base infinitive.

Generally we don't make questions with 'must' We prefer 'have to'. I don't think that this should even be a question though. It would sound much better as a statement.

Devrim

Well I grew up out of London, and now live in London. I was thinking £4-5 compared to £8-12 (with a couple of exceptions).

Well I know for a fact that the cost of putting on gigs in London has gone up way over inflation the past 6 years or so - many venues have more than doubled hiring fees for promoters (or more than doubled). If you play as a musician, the fees haven't gone up of course.

Well no. I think you need to compare necessities first - particularly housing and transport costs. You can compare stuff after that - but for example even if electronics are really cheap - I might be using all my disposable income to buy something and have to continually replace it. You can't just say 'this is new, so it must be better' without a wider context.

How much primark stuff is going to make it into vintage clothing shops in 20 years though? Or even last more than a year?

There are cinemas you can go to for £6-7, but you have to know where you're going. There's also one for about £3.50 where you can buy beer and drink it while watching the film. However if you were to just find your nearest or most convenient cinema, it starts about £8.50 (not I've not been to the cinema in London for two years, but not because of the cost of cinema tickets...).

Well squeezes on wages are 'things getting worse' no?

I've gone through three cordless phones in the past 4-5 years because they just died. I've had various computer components die up on me, which if I wasn't building it myself would mean a new computer every 18 months or at least very expensive service fees. Mobile phones last maybe a year or two, and you can easily spend as much on a phone as on a TV. Nearly all my clothes purchases are to replace stuff with holes in. I spoke to a Mercedes engineer the other week who said no-one sensible will buy one built in the past few years because the software is buggy and it costs hundreds of pounds to fix something that's a few minutes' work on an older car.

Built in obsolescence isn't quite buy a new thing every year, my laptop is 5 years old and my phone is three, but it is definitely a factor. (With phones the companies are trying to get away from replacing phones yearly as they lose too much money on upgrades.)
With a lot of things though quality is quality. IT's just there's a lot more cheap shit available now. If you buy a pair of tesco jeans you'll be lucky if they last a year but I've found my levis and quiksilver jeans to be well hard wearing.
It's hard to make direct comparisons because the way we spend our money has changed so much. For example food price inflation. I remember read a few years back (with regard to organic food) that food as a percentage of household expenditure had dropped from something like 60% down to 10%
I'd be interested to see how much the rise in basics has been due to the fact that as workers have been squeezed they've cut back on non-essentials.

Here's something else that's changed. When I was at school, it was quite a common thing for a kid who'd just passed his driving test to buy a cheap, beat-up old banger as a fixer-upper and spend their spare time getting it working (and then repeating the process endlessly). A lot of the stuff we buy nowadays isn't self-repairable in this way -- on new cars, for instance, most of the internal workings are in sealed units that you would hesitate to mess with.

Another example is musical instruments -- I have a vintage musical instrument, the internal workings of which are fearsomely complex, and which does have quite a capacity to go wrong in small ways. However, I also have a book which takes me through routine maintenance tasks and simple repairs, and if it goes wrong I can either do it myself, or take it to a more experienced player who'll do it for me for the price of a pint. Can you do the same thing with a modern electronic keyboard, or if you can, is the level of expertise required comparable?