Yesterday, I was surprised to learn that buying a home in London is actually far more achievable than I'd assumed. Apparently, I just need to stop eating so many shop-bought sandwiches. Also: stop going out at night, buying takeaways and having holidays. Then, after a mere five years of thriftiness, estate agents Strutt & Parker estimate that a typical millennial like me will have enough for half a deposit on a London property. Almost, that is. After these budget cuts, I'll still need my parents to bung me an extra £29,400 – close enough the average annual wage in the UK.

There is, of course, no way the people who put together this report were unaware it is complete bollocks. A cursory glance over Strutt & Parker's numbers – from the £10 we're supposedly spending per day on lunch (that's a generous trip to Pret) to the £115 we're blowing on a single night out, to our supposed £16 a week lottery habit – quickly reveals that this is just another company hoping to generate anger and make their name go viral. I guess it's cheaper than tube ads.

Taking a longer view, though, I wonder if this stuff serves an unintended political purpose if every time it's claimed - through ignorance or cynicism - that millennials can solve structural economic issues with minor personal lifestyle tweaks, young voters are pushed a little more leftwards.

About six months ago, a millionaire Australian property developer claimed it's our expensive avocado on toast habit that's keeping us all off the property ladder, a suggestion so patently absurd it has become a running joke and seems to have stuck in the mind of many young people who aren't normally particularly political. You don't need to follow current affairs particularly closely to understand your own circumstances. And it's not necessary to have studied Marx to feel hard done by when you're handing over more than half of your wages to a landlord – particularly if the place you're renting is mouldy, overcrowded or otherwise inadequate, and it's difficult to get them to do even basic repairs.

It's hard to escape the conclusion that our whole economic model is fundamentally broke

And whatever their interest in politics, I don't know anyone who doesn't feel mugged when they're forced to hand over several hundred pounds to a letting agent for mysterious 'agency fees' which seem to amount to little more than printing off and filing a Word document. Not that it stops there. I've found that most renters also have at least one experience of a landlord messing them around over their deposit – claiming that pre-existing damage is new, or deducting inflated amounts for very minor issues.

When you know, at some level, that you're being exploited, someone coming along and declaring that it's actually your own fault does more than just annoy you. It brings the sense of injustice that you feel in your gut to the front of your brain, and sets you thinking about what's actually going on. Cutting out shop-bought sandwiches clearly isn't the solution to the issues young renters face, so what actually can solve the problem?

Intuitively, wealth redistribution has to be part of it. The problem is that your landlord has wealth and can afford to buy properties to rent out, and you don't have wealth so you're forced to fund their Caribbean holiday and new Mercedes. Is it about making it easier for more people to own homes? Or is ownership unimportant if everyone has a clean, secure and affordable place to live? Whichever view you take, when you really consider the state of UK housing, it's hard to escape the conclusion that our whole economic model is fundamentally broken.

Radicalism is most appealing when you believe you've got little to lose.

Various older commentators have expressed bafflement that young voters are so enthusiastic about Jeremy Corbyn. They claim that he's a dangerous radical, and that Labour's policies pose a threat to the established order. What they don't seem to understand is, for many supporters that's exactly the point.

Corbynite social democracy is actually a comparatively mild solution to the issues younger voters are facing. Rent controls won't stop private landlords from making a profit, they'll just keep the cost of housing in check. Building a 100,000 new council houses each year is really the minimum required to start replenishing stock lost through right-to-buy.

A growing minority of young people are losing faith in capitalism altogether, which makes sense when you consider that most of them are being directly rinsed by a capitalist on a monthly basis. Combine that with stagnating wages, increasingly insecure employment terms and the looming threat of climate apocalypse, and can you blame anyone for wanting large-scale change?

Millennials are statistically far more likely to vote Labour now than past generations were at the same age, and articles – sincere or otherwise - blaming young people for the systemic issues keeping them poorer than their parents are only going to push them further to the left, particularly when they're authored by people profiting from those very struggles. Radicalism is most appealing when you believe you've got little to lose. And anger at injustice only grows more virulent when it feels like your oppressor is taking the piss.

@AbiWilks

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