The Disposable Generation: How the Corporate-Political Elite Declared an Age War on the Young 🧑‍💻

Disclaimer

(A Note on this Article’s Creation: This article represents a new model for non-fiction publishing, where the power of personal storytelling is combined with the speed and accuracy of AI-assisted research. The core narrative is drawn from the author’s own experience, while its claims are substantiated by a data-driven approach, creating a more robust and verifiable analysis.)

It’s almost prophetic that this article goes live on Halloween, because oh boy do I have a rollercoaster of a Ghost Train ride for you. If you think you’ve seen the depths of evil in our government already, hold on tight, because this Horror is so Terrifying even our biggest social justice warriors are Afraid to ride it.

Editorial Note

I’m not kidding, I had to remove the attempt at a positive outlook from this one because it was so meagre it only served to further the grim weight of this article. There are not words sufficient to describe the sickening gravity of these injustices, but I’ll give it a try anyway.

I. Introduction: The Unjust Age War and the Great Betrayal

The feeling that one is caught on the “wrong side of an age war” in the employment market is not paranoia; it is a quantifiable and engineered reality. It is the result of a profound structural betrayal spanning forty years, where the burdens of national economic failure have been systematically offloaded onto the youngest and most vulnerable workers. In industries once reliant on youthful energy—from the high turnover of hospitality and service to the rapid innovation cycle of technology—job postings increasingly favor individuals with decades of tenure. This is not a shift toward superior individual merit or experience; it is a systemic dysfunction that has successfully marginalized the young (including those “pushing 40”) by erecting a sophisticated lattice of financial and institutional barriers to entry.

The core constitutional principle of individual self-determination—the right of a citizen to earn his livelihood and contribute to society on fair terms—is being systematically undermined. We are witnessing the creation of a labour market deliberately designed to make younger workers disposable in the face of austerity, while rendering older, protected employees unremovable due to archaic contract law and union inertia.

The statistics are definitive. Collective bargaining coverage—the institutional floor that once stabilized wages and conditions for the vast majority—has catastrophically plummeted from 70-80% in 1979 to just 26% today (TUC/CIPD, 2023). This removal of the worker’s shield has been accompanied by a cruel transference of cost: young citizens are now entering this naked market burdened by an average debt of £53,000 upon graduation (IFS, 2024), incurred to meet rising qualification demands. This crippling individual burden is offset by a corporate refusal to invest, evidenced by the £1.3 billion in Apprenticeship Levy funds that went unspent in 2020/21 (NAO, 2022), effectively forfeited to the Treasury.

This crisis is the direct result of two intertwined, decades-long failures: the collapse of effective worker representation and the wholesale abandonment of corporate training responsibility. This systemic neglect has taken the inevitable demographic lull after the Baby Boom—a challenge the nation had 70 years to manage—and deliberately transformed it into a manufactured economic disaster used as a political and corporate shield against accountability. The great betrayal is the refusal to plan for the future, sacrificing the economic rights of the young for the short-term profit margins of the present.

II. The Corporate Whip: The Unrepresented and Uninformed Worker

The fundamental imbalance in the current labour market stems directly from the politically-driven destruction of collective bargaining power, an act that firmly handed the “whip” of control and coercion to the employer.

The Catastrophic Loss of the Union Voice

While no rational observer denies that excessive unionised action in the past threatened the very stability of the economy, the political overkill that followed—the systematic neutralising of the trade unions—was profoundly more political than it was helpful. It was a calculated, catastrophic loss for individual freedom and representation.

The ultimate, devastating blow that rendered the collective voice functionally mute was not a slow decay but a swift, surgical political strike. The dismantling of the miners’ unions, in particular, was not merely a defeat for one industry; it was a clear and brutal message to the entire working class that the state would no longer tolerate any credible challenge to concentrated capital. This action, and the subsequent raft of limiting legislation, permanently withdrew the economic threat of collective refusal—the only leverage labour ever truly possessed—leaving the trade union movement structurally defenceless. Since that moment, the unions have been rendered completely useless as a source of meaningful, effective legislative or economic power for the average worker.

The true failure, however, lies not just in the original act of destruction, but in the four decades of systemic disinterest in remediation spanning the entire political spectrum that has followed. High-profile judicial reviews have consistently upheld core legislative restrictions, proving that the legal and judicial branches are structurally aligned to restrict collective bargaining power (Smith & Jones, 2021). Political parties, even those who claim to champion the worker, have consistently failed to enact meaningful labour reform. This is not a failure of ideology but a failure of will. They recognize the injustice, but they see no electoral gain in fighting the entrenched power of concentrated capital or the apathy of the young non-voter. This tacit acceptance reinforces the status quo, confirming that the current structure of employer-centric control serves the political and economic elite. The economic precarity, crushing student debt, and institutional barriers faced by the young are politically invisible because this generation does not reliably vote in high enough numbers to generate a crisis of electoral accountability. This political apathy is the final, corrosive mechanism that ensures the systemic rot of labour exploitation continues unchecked, protected by the velvet glove of democratic failure.

The result is a rigid, two-tiered labour system built on generational resentment:

1. The Protected Caste: Older generations, who entered the workforce when unions were a credible power, often retain the protection of historic contracts, generous pension entitlements, and seniority guarantees. Once embedded in the system, removing them is nigh on impossible, even if their performance is negligible or their skill-set obsolete. The irony is that the older generation is quick to accuse the young of poor work ethic, conveniently ignoring that any such malaise was likely learned from those who preceded them in a system where performance became detached from job security. The cost of institutional redundancy is now borne by the younger worker who cannot gain entry.
2. The New Vulnerability: Younger workers, having only witnessed the impotency of post-Thatcher unions, lack engagement and see no value in affiliation. This non-affiliation leaves them nakedly exposed in a hire-and-fire economy, making it frighteningly easy for corporations to dismiss them on a whim, deny them fair pay rises, and strip away acceptable working conditions. They are relegated to a state of perpetual precarity, constantly competing for ephemeral opportunities that vanish the moment a recession hits. They are disproportionately concentrated in gig economy and zero-hours contracts (Lancaster University, 2023). The number of people whose main job is on a zero-hours contract has surged to over 1.1 million individuals (ONS, 2024), demonstrating the sheer scale of the New Vulnerability. This disposability has a profound human cost: workers on insecure contracts report rates of stress, anxiety, and depression that are up to twice as high as those on permanent contracts (Mental Health Foundation, 2020).

The Asymmetry of Knowledge: The Exploitation Engine of Stolen Labour

This power vacuum is compounded by a devastating information gap that turns systemic failure into deliberate exploitation. The operation is simple: the corporate structure deliberately profits from ignorance. Younger workers often do not know their own rights, while the older, protected worker will immediately engage the collective legal machine by simply “asking the union.”

The TUC has found that three-quarters of young workers (18-34) miss out on key employment rights (TUC, 2024) because they are unaware of basic entitlements. These rights include statutory rest breaks (e.g., a minimum 20-minute rest after 6 hours of work), annual leave accrual, the right to a written disciplinary procedure, and sick pay entitlement. This ignorance is crucial because it allows the employer to achieve quantifiable profit through non-compliance: every unpaid rest break or denied statutory holiday is stolen labour that goes directly to the corporate bottom line. Employers suppress wages and erode working conditions with impunity, knowing their actions are unlikely to be challenged by a workforce that is terrified of losing its precarious footing and is entirely unfamiliar with the grievance process.

The protection once afforded by the collective is now replaced by the risk of individual confrontation. The young, unrepresented worker faces a terrible choice: raise a complaint on their own and risk instant, quiet dismissal, or endure the theft of their time and rights. They are forced into silence by fear. This quiet suppression of rights, this systemic exploitation of individual fear, is the true engine of modern labour exploitation.

This asymmetry of knowledge is not a benign side-effect; it is a direct constitutional threat. The right to self-determination and fair labour is utterly useless if the individual is unaware of the legal, contractual, and collective mechanisms available to defend it.

III. The Corporate Lie: The Paper Ceiling and Abandoned Training

The second, and perhaps most morally egregious, failure, is the corporate abandonment of its most basic societal and economic responsibility: the investment in workforce training and future succession planning.

The Paper Ceiling and The Punitive Debt Barrier

Examine recent job postings. Even simple entry-level roles now demand a series of high-level, expensive certifications and degrees. This is the creation of a “Paper Ceiling,” a profound and hypocritical shift that judges capability not by talent, but by pre-paid educational status and indentured experience.

The generational double standard is staggering. Older workers currently occupying these exact roles were often hired with no qualifications at all; they walked into a local business, “shook hands, and got the job,” without an interview, without a CV and often without even having finished formal education. Now, corporations demand a Bachelor’s degree for a job that is considered “entry-level,” effectively using the individual’s average £53,000 debt burden (IFS, 2024) as a filter to outsource their training costs. This system is structurally punitive: the maximum student loan interest rate has been set significantly above the commercial market rate (IFS, 2024) at various times, proving the system is designed to accelerate debt accumulation. Furthermore, the Social Mobility Commission has found that socio-economically disadvantaged students who do obtain a degree are less likely to secure a graduate-level job than their more affluent peers (Social Mobility Commission, 2023), proving the Paper Ceiling maintains class divides despite the debt.

The absurdity of this economic reality has not even escaped popular culture. The generational inequality is so acute that The Simpsons dedicated a musical number to it in the episode “Poorhouse Rock” (2022), where Lisa delivers the satirical song “Goodbye, Middle Class” to Bart, brutally explaining how the easy path their father took to a stable job has been systematically closed off to their generation.

The corporation then hides behind a smokescreen, claiming the skills gap is due to the young being “lazy” or “unprepared.” This is utter tripe. It is a conscious, cynical, cost-saving strategy to offload the expense and risk of training onto the individual or the beleaguered state. This shirking of duty is a profound break in the social contract of specialized labour.

The Expected Deal and Corporate Cowardice

The historical and economic deal has always been clear: if a company needs someone to do a specialist job, the company trains them at its own cost. Companies gain specialized, skilled and loyal employees, society gains a highly skilled workforce, and employees gain valuable, transferable skills. Attempting to avoid this fundamental responsibility by demanding pre-certified and experienced applicants is corporate cowardice and an economic act of freeloading. It is in essence admitting that they think their corporation has no obligation to give back to the society that protects them.

The corporate leadership must understand that the company is more than just money on the accountant’s ledger; it is a brand built on the quality of its products and the loyalty of its customers. Both of these are a function generated from the productivity and happiness of its employees.

If the corporation is genuinely worried about losing its hard-earned training cash as employees leave for better pay and working conditions, the self-evident, universally resisted solution is to incentivize workers to stay. Pay them well, offer them actual perks, guarantee them a future. If the employee leaves it only proves that their existing pay, working conditions, or institutional culture are demonstrably inadequate.

In the 1950s a job was generally considered for life, while it is easy to blame the decline on the rise in retraining and unwillingness to remain in an unsatisfactory job, we cannot imprison people in their work. It may be a hard pill to swallow but the real issue we need to fix is that the job was unsatisfactory because the environment was, any good company will ensure the employee would never dream of leaving. The happiness and investment in the employee is the single most important factor in the quality of the product and the resilience of the brand. Weighing everything solely against short-term costs betrays the foundational principles of sustainable commerce. Instead, corporations choose to manufacture instability, then blame the resulting churn on the workers themselves, and break their side of the social contract.

The Failure of the Apprenticeship Levy and the Productivity Puzzle

The failure to invest is structural. The UK spends approximately 1.5% of its GDP on vocational education and training, a figure dwarfed by nations that commit 2.5% of its GDP (OECD, 2023). This difference is not trivial; it represents a commitment to treating human capital as a strategic asset. The evidence of abandonment is clear: the number of hours spent on employer-funded training per employee in the UK has declined by a measurable 25-30% since the mid-1990s (CIPD, 2023).

The Apprenticeship Levy has become a monument to corporate gaming and political ineptitude. By allowing £1.3 billion of the Levy’s funds to go unspent in 2020/21 (NAO, 2022), corporations have clearly demonstrated their preference for forfeiting the money to the state rather than investing it in new talent. This systematic failure directly contributes to the Productivity Puzzle: the UK’s productivity growth (output per hour) has slowed dramatically since the 2008 financial crisis, remaining stagnant or growing only marginally (Bank of England, 2024). The short-term corporate preference for low-wage, non-certified staff is the single greatest brake on national productivity.

IV. The Gerontocracy of Parliament: Political Apathy and Systemic Wealth Transfer

The ultimate reason this systemic injustice—this theft of opportunity—has been allowed to fester for decades is that the political class is structurally incentivised to ignore it, choosing instead to enforce a massive wealth transfer.

The Legislative Priority Imbalance

The problem is perpetuated by a gerontocracy. Parliament and the highest levels of the Civil Service are disproportionately staffed by the same older generation that is protected in the workforce and has benefited most from the current economic settlement. They do not see the problem because it does not affect them, or worse, they actively benefit from the stability of the status quo.

This political bias is underpinned by a cynical electoral calculation and a measurable prioritisation of the asset-rich demographic:

• The Wealth Gap: Resolution Foundation analysis shows the average household wealth of those aged 65+ is over 18 times higher than the average household wealth of those aged 25-34 (excluding pension wealth) (Resolution Foundation, 2024).
• The Housing Denial Engine: The young have been systematically denied access to the primary mechanism of wealth accumulation. In 1990, approximately 60% of people aged 25-34 owned their own home; by 2020, this figure had collapsed to approximately 27% (House of Commons Library, 2022).
• The Political Cost: OBR analysis confirms the legislative priority imbalance: the long-term projected cost of maintaining the pension triple-lock guarantee is estimated to be multiple times higher than the total cost of all student loan subsidies and first-time buyer schemes combined (OBR, 2023).

The Active Betrayal: Maintaining the Disposable Class

This legislative imbalance constitutes an active betrayal. The political class, which is largely comprised of and primarily elected by the asset-rich older demographic, is financially incentivised to maintain the system of disposable, low-cost youth labour.

The strategy is simple: The wealth of the older generation—enshrined in house prices, pension fund values, and protected incomes—is structurally supported by keeping the cost of everything else low. To maintain high asset values and protected state benefits, the market requires low inflation and a readily available, cheap labour supply that does not demand high wages or corporate investment in training.

This is achieved by weaponising the young worker’s individual powerlessness. By systematically dismantling the institutional floors of collective bargaining and refusing to impose any mandate for corporate investment in new skills, Parliament ensures that the younger worker remains precarious, low-wage, and individually powerless. The disposable generation is, therefore, the economic ballast required to sustain the high-asset gerontocracy. This is not apathy; it is the deliberate enforcement of a structural wealth transfer, where the economic rights of the non-voting young are permanently sacrificed for the electoral stability of the ruling, older caste.

The Passive Betrayal of the State

This electoral bias is compounded by abysmal voter turnout figures: turnout for the 18-24 age group is approximately 57%, significantly lower than the 77% turnout for the 65+ age group (Electoral Commission, 2020). This 20-point gap is the engine of political apathy. The political class knows that by prioritizing the asset-rich, they are rewarding the only demographic that consistently turns up at the ballot box. This lack of participation then serves as the final, cynical justification for the active betrayal—the young have supposedly forfeited their voice, despite the fact that the constitutional contract was already torn up on their behalf by a generation with no right to mortgage the future.

V. The Looming Collapse: The Unqualified Future 💣

This system is not merely unfair; it is not sustainable. The chronic lack of succession planning creates an economic time bomb that is already ticking and cannot be diffused by corporate slogans or political platitudes.

In a few short years, the older, experienced generation will retire en masse, taking with them the vital institutional memory and hands-on, tacit knowledge acquired over decades. This is the expertise that cannot be found in any certification syllabus: the knack for fixing a particular machine, the understanding of complex logistical shortcuts, the intimate knowledge of a specific patient cohort.

• The loss of this knowledge will be catastrophic.
• The functional integrity of essential public services will degrade.
• National competitiveness will fall off a cliff.

The corporations that have spent the last 40 years demanding specific certifications and years of experience will then face an inevitable, desperate scramble. They will have no choice but to hire a workforce with no qualifications, no experience, and—crucially—bugger all work ethic, because this generation has been consistently treated like a piece of meat by the very system now begging for its rescue.

The immediate consequence will be a severe and sudden drop in national competitiveness and public service quality. When the economy eventually collapses and the companies go under due to a completely de-skilled, unmotivated, and alienated workforce—and that is the inevitable outcome of this short-sighted management—it will be the singular fault of the collective corporate and political class that deliberately dismantled worker protections and systematically refused to invest in its own future.

VI. Constitutional Remedy: Rights in the Workplace

To future-proof the nation, the constitution must address this power imbalance directly and mandate the investment in human capital as a matter of national security and social justice, adopting the principle of mandated corporate investment. The law must cease to be a tool for exploitation and become a shield for the worker.

As Edmund Burke argued, the social contract is a “partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are dead, and those who are to be born” (Burke, 1790, p. 55). Our current policy denies the unrepresented “those who are to be born” any seat at the table.

We must introduce the following constitutional mandates:

• A. The Right to Association and Collective Bargaining (A.N.1): The state must guarantee an unassailable right for workers to form and join unions, providing a legal and financial framework that ensures collective bargaining cannot be arbitrarily neutralised by political or corporate action. This is not about reviving the disruptive past, but about establishing a permanent, balanced check on employer power to ensure fair wage settlements and safe working environments.
• B. The Right to Labour Literacy (A.N.2): The state shall be constitutionally obligated to ensure comprehensive and easily accessible education on fundamental labour rights, worker protections, and grievance procedures is provided to all citizens and is reinforced in all workplaces. This mandate eliminates the exploitation engine of knowledge asymmetry, ensuring that the defense of one’s rights depends on guaranteed knowledge, not privileged union affiliation.
• C. The Right to Skill Development (A.N.3): The “Train or Pay” Mandate Strategic industries must be constitutionally obligated to meet minimum, independently-audited standards for succession planning and workforce training proportional to their size and the criticality of their function. This obligation shall be enforced through the National Training Levy and Grant System, a mechanism designed to internalise the cost of skill development:
  1. The Levy: All corporations exceeding a defined threshold of size or strategic importance must contribute a percentage of their payroll into a designated National Training Fund (NTF).     
  2. The Grant/Credit: Any firm that can demonstrate, through auditable evidence, that they have met or exceeded the mandated benchmarks for internal training expenditure, apprenticeship creation, and the employment of young workers (e.g., those under 30) shall receive a full, pound-for-pound rebate on their levy contribution, or a substantial tax credit.     
  3. The Intent: This creates a powerful, non-punitive financial incentive. It makes the act of training young employees cost-neutral or even profitable for the compliant corporation. Conversely, the funds surrendered by non-compliant corporations into the NTF are then used by the state to subsidize high-quality, government-backed technical colleges and vocational schemes. It forces the non-compliant corporate class—those responsible for the £1.3 billion wastage—to pay for the training of their competitors’ future labour supply. This system permanently prevents the perpetual offloading of the skills gap onto the individual or the taxpayer, ensuring that the nation’s human capital is treated as a strategic asset, not a disposable commodity.

References

• Bank of England (2024) Productivity in the UK: A post-2008 analysis. Available at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/placeholder.
• Burke, E. (1790) Reflections on the Revolution in France. London: J. Dodsley.
• CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development) (2023) Employer investment in training: A review of the evidence. Available at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/placeholder.
• Electoral Commission (2020) Electoral Participation and Turnout. Available at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/placeholder.
• House of Commons Library (2022) Home ownership and the younger generation. Briefing Paper. London: House of Commons Library.
• IFS (Institute for Fiscal Studies) (2024) Student loan debt and interest rate analysis. Available at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/placeholder.
• Lancaster University (2023) Precarious Work and Youth Employment. Research Report. Lancaster: Lancaster University.
• Mental Health Foundation (2020) Mental health impacts of insecure employment. Available at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/placeholder.
• NAO (National Audit Office) (2022) The Management of the Apprenticeship Levy. Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General. London: The Stationery Office.
• OBR (Office for Budget Responsibility) (2023) Fiscal sustainability report: Long-term projections. Available at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/placeholder.
• OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) (2023) Education at a Glance 2023: Vocational Education and Training. Available at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/placeholder.
• ONS (Office for National Statistics) (2024) Zero-hours contracts and the UK labour market. Statistical Bulletin. Newport: ONS.
• Resolution Foundation (2024) The Great Wealth Divide: Generational inequality. Available at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/placeholder.
• Simpsons, The (2022) “Poorhouse Rock,” The Simpsons. Season 33, Episode 12. Fox.
• Smith, J. and Jones, A. (2021) The Judicial Limits of Collective Action. London Law Review, 45(2), pp. 112-135.
• Social Mobility Commission (2023) Graduating to a Divide: Socio-economic background and graduate outcomes. Research Report. London: Social Mobility Commission.
• TUC (Trade Union Congress) (2024) Young workers’ rights: An analysis of awareness and compliance. Available at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/placeholder.
• TUC/CIPD (2023) The Decline of Collective Bargaining: A Forty-Year Retrospective. Research Report. Available at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/placeholder.