You know the Bank of Mum and Dad when you see it: it’s your friend who seems broke, but always has a safety net, or who suddenly (but discreetly) acquires the deposit for a home. It’s those who stayed with their parents while they saved for a flat, or stuck it out in a profession they were passionate about even though the wages are chronically low. It’s those who do not need to consider the financial costs of having children. It’s those whose grandparents are covering nursery or university fees, with the Bank of Grandma and Grandad already driving an economic wedge between different cohorts in generations Alpha (born between 2010 and 2024) and Z (born in the late 1990s and early 2000s).
This is the picture we know, but the Bank of Mum and Dad is not just a luxury confined to the 1% – it is also evident in families like mine. I grew up in a working-class household and was the first person in my family to get a degree, but it was the fact my parents had scrimped in the 1980s to purchase properties in London (and allowed me to crash in one throughout my 20s) that has arguably been the true source of opportunities in my life.
In recent years, we have rightly widened the conversation about privilege in society. And yet how honest are we about one of the most obvious forces shaping anyone under 45: the presence or absence of a parental safety net? The truth is that we live in an inheritocracy. If you’ve grown up in the 21st century, your opportunities are increasingly determined by your access to the Bank of Mum and Dad, rather than by what you earn or learn. The economic roots of this story go back to the 1980s, but it accelerated after the 2008 financial crisis, as private wealth soared and wage growth stalled. In the 2020s, rather than a meritocracy – where hard work pays off – we have evolved into an inheritocracy, based on family wealth.
People should always have access to essentials, and I count an affordable reliable roof over their head as one of those things. But are we ever going to be able to change the fact that someone on the receiving end of three generations of doing moderately well in life is going to be massively more advantaged that someone whose parents were 4th and 5th in large poor families?
Someone's parents having even a modest home with a spare room in London puts them at a massive advantage over their peers who have to privately rent. But aside from ensuring the fundamentals are in place of affordable accessible homes, is there really any realistic way of nullifying that advantage and is it even right to do so?
I don't think that's an aside, I think that's the key to solving a lot of problems with our current society. Give everyone a roof and enough nutritious food, and most people can figure out how to live their lives from there. The problem is that the lack of housing and food options forces people into low paying jobs with no upward mobility, and continues the cycle of poverty.
I didn't write that as "an aside", I wrote "aside from". You need to read it as "besides". In the sense of "obviously this needs to be done fundamentally and as a priority, but besides that... etc".
Why shouldn't everyone have access to housing, food, education, tutoring, and transportation like those people who inherit from their parents?
The social impact of engaged parents can't be missed, but there's no reason why there should be a material aspect.
Because, fundamentally, most people work because it makes their life better than if they weren't working.
It we so heavily correct the system so that you get the same house whether your working or not, your kid goes to the same school whether your working or not, they get the same homework tutors whether your working or not, you have access to the same transport or car whether you work or not.. you get the point.
How many people would even turn up to work if it made no material difference to their life?
But as soon as you allow people's effort and choice to create an actual difference in the quality of their and their kids lives then you inevitably end up with inequality, because people make different choices, are motivated to work hard to different degrees. This gets compounded when some families simply build on the moderate success of the parents.
Rather, isn't the better option to just make sure that the "bottom" option is not inhumane and is actually basically alright. In fact, it should be as good as we can possibly make it. BUT then you have to allow that choice, hard work, sacrifice can possibly make a difference and people can improve their lot.
Counterpoint: there are so many things a person could be doing that are far far more valuable to society than bullshit “profitable” work, and those things don’t pay, or pay very poorly. You think being required to earn basic existence in life is better, even though the vast majority of jobs are entirely pointless and/or could easily be automated? Such a shameful waste of human potential.
If people had all the time in the world to do what they wanted, most people would still work at least part time, but it probably wouldn’t be for shitty megacorps that treat employees like trash (and those companies deserve to die). Some people would choose to only do community improvement stuff, though, like beautification, guerrilla gardening, or helping to build/remodel community spaces. And that’s actually awesome. We need way way more of that, and less of developers/companies coming in and doing whatever they can to extract money from the community.
They do it now, when they have time or it’s directly beneficial to them, but volunteering is an inherently privileged activity. Poor people don’t have time or energy because they have other shit to do to be able to afford to survive.
None of that is relevant to the idea of affordable housing for college students because 18 year olds going to college haven't had the chance to start working yet.
I don't think I was particularly lazy as a student just because I got free college and $1k a month student loans from the Swedish welfare state, and a free apartment from my parents, all without working a single hour for pay.
I remember some of my strongest drivers in college were my social life, the opportunity to enter an exchange program, passing 75% of my classes to keep my student loans, and my personal interest in the things I studied. So some monetary/quasi-monetary, but also many social. And none of them based on wage labor.
Also, while social democracy like what I've described doesn't reject your ideology, there are also people who work for other reasons besides money, and there are more forms of unpaid work than there are for paid work.
But social democracy is exactly what I'm describing
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way
So we are both describing social democracy
Coming at the same thing from opposite sides as it were. The political movements I linked to have enjoyed at times broad support in Germany and the UK and elsewhere in Europe. They consciously reject 'hard' socialism as (regrettably) unworkable. They deliberately seek well functioning safety nets for the vulnerable and less able but see a well regulated 'fair" capitalism as being essential to unlocking people's creativity and initiative. And that means allowing people to better themselves through their efforts. Equal opportunity not equal outcomes (but safety nets to prevent excess).
That sounds just like Reagan and his so-called "welfare queen".
I know everyone is reading this in their own political context, so I realise it's open to a lot of misinterpretation. But just try and take the idea on its own, in its essence.
If you really had the free choice in the morning to bake artisan bread or go and wade in sewage and clean a communal sewer, do you not think people would need a little bit of motivation into the maintaince job using something more than kind words?
Once you start using capital (money) to indicate need in society (because human preference is not automatically aligned with human needs) then you end up with a situation where some people can choose to accrue capital if they hold their nose and do the shitty jobs no-one else wants to.
Are you telling me that if the extra the sewer cleaner earned was taken away and given to the bakers kids so that things are "nice and equal", that you're going to find enough people to clean the sewers in the future?
C'mon. I want the world to be fairer too. I think capitalism's excesses are gross. But people have to feel they can personally gain else the way to indicate what really needs doing is completely broken.
Personal gain over what's best for everyone is the reason we're in this shit show.
It's time to remember that no man is an island, and we need each other's ideas and commitment in order to fix the mess caused by unfettered capitalism.
Personal gain (or rather personal security) is how humans work. And personal gain is fine when it's mutual and not exploitative. That's what good trade is. The answer to unfettered capitalism isn't no capitalism, it's fettered capitalism. Or rather social capitalism (also modernised social democracy)
Not because it's pure, but because it's realistic, and works. On the other hand expecting people en masse to suddenly discover they all want to personally sacrifice for the same vision of the greater good without enormous amounts of control and coercion is complete fantasy.
Maybe not the same jobs, but most people would. Human beings are wired to want to feel productive.
I don't think we should be abolishing money or anything, and different jobs should pay different wages. Still, I think all people should have their basic needs met.
Yes I don't disagree. But there is definitely a limit to what people will do voluntarily, especially if they don't feel their effort is respected. Finding volunteers to read to kids is miles easier than volunteers to tidy up someone's littered garden while that person boozily watches telly.
The Tragedy of the Commons is an old concept, very old. It far far far predates modern mega corps ravaging the planet. It is the simple observation that when people have free access to a shared resource they tend to mistreat it compared to their own property.
This is such a fundamental feature of humans that Aristotle was discussing it..
And that's why the best comes from society when people have the freedom to better their lot visa their efforts (despite this causing inequality) so long as people's basic needs are covered in a humane and reasonable way. But there will always be a difference between people. To eradicate that is to destroy the thing that motivates to go beyond merely what we'll do voluntarily. And those (paid) jobs are still very vital to society functioning well. We have more than enough evidence that goodwill and volunteers is not sufficient to run a society at large. People are more nuanced than that.
Like I said, I think we should still have money. I just think the basic necessities should be guaranteed.
Nobody should have to do a job that's horrible to them just because they need shelter and food.
If that horrible job needs someone, they need to offer enough money to be able to incentivize people to do it, and not just because the worker doesn't want to starve or be homeless.
Yup sounds like we're on the same page
Your post points to the answer.
If people’s absolute essentials could be guaranteed: housing, healthcare, education, and food, then all the “advantages” would only affect the bonus region above that where wealth and privilege reside.
The problem is that it’s very possible for those life essentials to be threatened because other people have wealth and privilege.
If there was just a floor on this damn thing we could stop talking about all this. But American culture dictates that that floor must be squarely below the point of dignity and deprivation, so that people don’t get comfortable. Because we can’t have that. Ever. Because it’s a moral hazard to the soul. Unless you’re born rich. Then you can have comfort for free, and there’s magically no moral hazard to your soul somehow.