The ‘citizens inheritance’: should we give £10,000 to every 25-year old?

As a secondary teacher who is in his mid-thirties, the idea of 25-year olds getting a £10K handout is exasperating. Let me try to concisely outline my reasons: To start with, I understand and empathise with the fact the millennials are facing an expensive future with regards to house prices and are suffering at the hands of an elitist government who favour the ultra-rich minority and big business. I, too, have suffered because of this, as do countless others, but I digress. I took the step of going to university in my late-20s and completed a degree and teaching qualification that I knew would lead to a job immediately thereafter. The irony of this is that I am now saddled with substantial student loan repayments to a government who have an abject shortage of people just like me, who are willing to teach future generations. In essence, I am giving them money to fill a chronic shortage that is rapidly becoming catastrophic. With that in mind, the concept of 25-year olds receiving £10K seems to me grossly unfair on ALL generations who don’t fit into that bracket. I am literally paying to help the government fill teacher shortages and much like other generations have paid through their toil and thus deserve a rewarding retirement (albeit, in the case of teachers, the age for which is now 67!), it feels like a slap in the face to see that the younger generation could stand to get a handout. My wife and I have just bought our first house; we are both in our thirties. The only way we could afford this was by being incredibly disciplined and foregoing designer clothes, designer phones, brand new cars and various other lifestyle trappings. My point is, if millennials are likewise disciplined, they too can afford a house and a relatively comfortable lifestyle, provided they understand and appreciate it can only be achieved through hard work, patience and sacrifice. A free £10K handout seems to encourage the complete opposite. Logically, I understand that this is easy for me to say as I am not a millennial, thus here are my views as to how to improve chances for millennials, without slapping the rest of us in the chops. I'm in total agreement with previous comments outlining the need to overhaul the university system and massively increase the amount of genuine apprenticeships available to those 'non-academics' who leave school without 'university entrance' qualifications. I work with teenagers who are simply not academic: not through laziness or apathy, but their skill-set lies within trade, which is every bit as, if not more, valuable to our society as many of the degrees (complete with £30K+ student loans) on offer, which have no guarantee of a job at their conclusion. We need a government who see beyond GDP and rigid, outdated views, and who will implement system of education that works for all, regardless of skillset or background. Having taught in the Netherlands, whose education system caters for all abilities fairly (and subsequently views all working people as important, rather than just corporation bigwigs, magnates and bankers), I can only point to said system and hope our government is willing to adopt changes that have the potential to improve chances for young people in the long term, thus eradicating the need to consider knee-jerk concepts such as ‘citizen’s inheritance’. We may also find this results in greater harmony in what is currently a somewhat divided society, as each generation will feel its best interests are being considered.

5050vision, you are so right! I speak as someone who spent the vast majority of my 40 year career working in a University. The way to fix this is to go back 40 years and look at what we used to do then. Only 10% of our young people went to University then and it was the most academicaly gifted 10% rather than the richest 10%. If we stuck to that figure, we could afford to let them learn without saddling them with huge loans for their education. Most of the other 90% should have a real apprenticeship. There is no such thing as an apprenticeship in Poundland or a coffee shop. Those are just scams used by companies to get cheap unskilled labour. An apprenticeship should last no less than three years and allow day release for that period to gain professional and later on, academic qualifications. Believe me, it worked in the past, but we need a full reboot of the system and many will fight turning the system off because they have vested interests in mantaining the status quo. If we followed that policy, young people would be better off and have a more rounded education and skill set. Market forces would dictate that they got a decent job or they would simply move abroad because they were in such demand around the world. It is largely government policy that has inflated house prices to ridicoulous levels and quite rightly made the younger generation so miffed about it, but that is not the fault of the older generation.

Maybe they need to look at why our younger generation is unable to earn as much as their equivalent from 50 years ago. Maybe its because they have conned the younger generation into believing that getting a degree will enable them to get a good job, but in doing so they rack up serious debts and because everyone now has a degree they have no educational advantage. So they must rack up even more debt to get a masters degree. The academic world is rubbing its hands as the young cash cows are happy to be conned out of money they don't have. Result - you have a lot of disillusioned younger people who don't see debt as a problem, as that is what the government has encouraged them to do. Of course when they decide to get a mortgage the student debt is used against them under the 'affordability calculations' so they are even less likely to get a mortgage even if they are earning reasonable money.