[IshKebab]

> many friends under 30 have bought a house (without parental help)

Wow really? Do you live up north? Or have rich friends?

I mean I think the UK economy is in pretty good shape (especially compared to the rest of the world), but let's not pretend that houses are remotely affordable.

[toyg]

>north east of England

Property market here in the north is nowhere as crazy as in London. Which is why the constant moans about it in national media are extremely grating for us (it's actually hard to flog houses, over here).

[gambiting]

You can buy a house in the North for 100-200k without any problems, and saving 10k for a deposit is not exactly difficult if you have a job. I'm in the same situation as OP, live in UK, everyone I know is quite well off and the economy is doing very well for us(or was until today).

[monk_e_boy]

I think I'm one of those rare people who lurk on hackernews, but who's friends are normal working types. Nurses, janitors, teachers, teaching assistants, plumbers, electricians, carpetenters, fisher men. None of these people are on your facebook feed, or hackernews comment section. These are the people who have had enough of all this crap. We're not stupid. We're just poor.

[wastedhours]

I am honestly struggling to see how people believe leaving will make us richer (as has been the rhetoric from the leave campaign) - taxes will quite likely not change, that money will almost certainly not filter back into the pockets of the workers, and will be used to prop up other sectors of the economy that will suffer as a result of this, or to just pay down other debt (which whilst a benefit, still wont help most individuals over their working lives)...

[ohnomrbill]

I imagine that a lot of leave voters hoped that this will make them richer in the short term (though reality seems to be sinking in). I think the more compelling argument is one that is certainly felt, but harder to put into words - the British want protectionism back.

If you're a factory worker, you might not care that the EU makes the UK richer through free trade. That the EU benefits you overall doesn't matter - you would prefer a system where the pound is weaker, and imports/exports are tough, if it means that the manufacturing needs of British workers are served by British citizens like you. Having a manufacturing job, even if it is less lucrative, is more appealing than having no job and watching the rest of the country enjoy a slightly higher quality of life. Open borders mean you let in foreign doctors and scientists; it also means that you let in cab drivers and factory workers, in greater numbers. The British are pushing back against this. Unskilled workers would rather have a dose of protectionism than the possibility of a vacation in Spain.

For what it's worth, I think that the leave vote will not bring the kind of protectionism the British want.

[evgen]

Well you sure aren't going to get any richer now. This is going to have an unpleasant impact on the UK economy (not as bad as the gloom and doom of this morning's news, but bad) and I can assure you that the pain is not going to be felt much at the top end. Get ready for your grocery bill to go up by 20% in the next few weeks and for a massive wave of redundancies.

[monk_e_boy]

At least something is happening. We didn't do it to get rich, we did it to stop the status quo, the endless rut of being so fucking skint all the time.

Putting petrol and groceries on the credit card is getting boring now. How many maxed out credit cards does one family need?

Rich folk keep saying "Why? Why? Why?" and we say "Why not?"

[tremon]

we did it to stop the status quo, the endless rut of being so fucking skint all the time.

As is (sadly) customary with major elections and campaign promises, I think you'll feel cheated again. There certainly are (were) good arguments to be made for leaving (the inability of the EU to fundamentally change its structure, the EP giving all of Europe the big finger when it happily elected Juncker as president instead of a reformist, the ideal of self-determination); but economics isn't one of those.

[IshKebab]

The vote wasn't to 'stop the status quo'. It was to leave the EU. There's no reason to think that will make you any better off.

"I'm fed up with being poor. I'm going to show those big-wigs that we've had enough! By voting to... leave the EU. Yeah. I'm like, 15% sure it has something to do with the EU."

[gambiting]

Let me put it this way - I make 25k/year. My partner makes 30k. We can afford a house here in the north without having to save up for the deposit for a decade first. Are our salaries extraordinary? Are we rich? 1% of this country? Or maybe I just live in some bubble?

[omurphyevans]

You do.

You're in the top 10% of the country:

http://www.ifs.org.uk/wheredoyoufitin/

[MagnumOpus]

£55k a year household income is well into the top 10%, and probably top 5% for the region. Not extraordinary, but not at all typical.

[corin_]

"The most recent SPI report (2012/13) gave annual median income as £21,000 before tax and £18,700 after tax.[1] The 2013/14 HBAI report gave median household income (2 adults) as £23,556." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_Kingdom#T...

You can be outside the top 1% and still be significantly better off than many.