How the baby boomers have stuffed the younger generation

Davesnave

To be perfectly honest, as a Boomer, I didn't notice all the wonderful advantages I had to make vast sums of money. I simply went to uni, worked hard, bought one house, married, had a few kids and then, when I could no longer balance the pressures of work & caring for an aged parent, took early retirement. It wasn't till that parent died that I was finally out of debt, and even then I had to pay off 30k of their debt too.

I'm not complaining, just pointing out that during all those adult years, screwing the next generation wasn't uppermost in my mind. If I felt anyone had been screwed it was me, because some of my friends who'd never bothered with uni, or indeed A levels, got well ahead in the housing stakes while I was still in rented, trying to scrape a deposit together. Older, wiser older folk had advised me that if I got a degree, I'd soon 'catch up,' but thanks to seventies inflation, I don't really think I did. The basics of middle-class life took me 35 years to pay off, and that's without foreign holidays and new cars etc.

I have 'kids' in their 20s, so I can see both sides of this. At present, they haven't got a snowball's chance in hell of owning a house. They have student debt to pay off, but one knows she wouldn't be at uni at all if she'd been born in 1950 and, despite gaining a first, the other rather doubts it too, so that's a difficult one. Personally, I think both are victims of qualification inflation, as are we all.

The difference between now and 1950 is that we are living in a country where expectations are much higher than our ability to sustain them. I think it likely that there will be pain for all of us, including the pensioner generation, and that much harder choices will follow the relatively mild cuts we've had so far. It won't be particularly good for Boomers if those choices aren't made wisely and equitably, because your generation will, in the natural course of events, become more numerous & influential.

Whatever happens, it will be a pity if, armed with the so-called facts about how easy life was in the past, younger people manage to vilify an entire generation because a minority bought and rented out property, rather than pay money into a pension scheme. Bearing in mind what happened to some of those, I'm not sure if they got it wrong, but in any event, they don't represent this entire group. We are, believe it or not, all individuals like you are and, despite the easy time we apparently had, many of us tried to provide for ourselves in the years after work, suspecting things wouldn't always be so rosy. After all, we saw pretty clearly what inflation did to our parents' savings!

Saying things like, "my view there are some good arguments for just taking some of the savings of some of these people, they caused the suffering that the young now have to deal with." doesn't help you to convince anyone that "revenge and retribution are not in my makeup."

Graham_Devon

Butterfly_Brain wrote: »

Wy are you always blaming the baby boomers
Blame the true culprits - mismanagement by successive governments :mad:

I blame Maggie.

princeofpounds

I agree in the sense that the boomers have in practice screwed the younger generations over. Blaming governments is no excuse as the policies were voted in by that generation.

However, being realistic about it I suspect any generation would have done the same thing in the same circumstances.

That doesn't mean that there isn't a conflict opening up though.

The biggest sin for me is not the house prices; market forces (and the simple fact that people die) will address this problem in time.

I am much more angry about the national debt stock. Debt is a tool for bringing forward consumption at the expense of future income - that is its fundamental financial purpose. Effectively the older generations established a contract to borrow unsustainable amounts to support their government spending and reaped all the benefits. The bill however has to be paid off over the next 5-30 years, when the people bearing the burden will be the younger generations.

That's why I always seethe when people use the phrase 'bank of mum and dad'... because mum and dad have very effectively raided the 'bank of son and daughter' on a national scale.

CLAPTON

each generation blames the one before
then they grow up

FTBFun

The_Fox wrote: »

You look at the evil discrimination in South Africa that took place, but once it was done away with many made a point of ending what had happened that day in order to move on, i feel the same way about most things.

So if you want to get at me you had better try another avenue, revenge and retribution are not in my makeup, justice is.
And lets be clear here, you and a few others are always going to get picky about my posts because you want high house prices, end of.

I really, really hope you're not trying to compare apartheid to expensive housing. Really.

Unless you're Liz Jones, in which case I wouldn't be surprised.

MRSTITTLEMOUSE

princeofpounds wrote: »

I agree in the sense that the boomers have in practice screwed the younger generations over. Blaming governments is no excuse as the policies were voted in by that generation

To be fair we voted in a "government" what they did and indeed do is out of our control afterwards.
You only have to look at the present government,how many policies have they gone back on already.

MRSTITTLEMOUSE

Davesnave wrote: »

To be perfectly honest, as a Boomer, I didn't notice all the wonderful advantages I had to make vast sums of money. I simply went to uni, worked hard, bought one house, married, had a few kids and then, when I could no longer balance the pressures of work & caring for an aged parent, took early retirement. It wasn't till that parent died that I was finally out of debt, and even then I had to pay off 30k of their debt too.

I'm not complaining, just pointing out that during all those adult years, screwing the next generation wasn't uppermost in my mind. If I felt anyone had been screwed it was me, because some of my friends who'd never bothered with uni, or indeed A levels, got well ahead in the housing stakes while I was still in rented, trying to scrape a deposit together. Older, wiser older folk had advised me that if I got a degree, I'd soon 'catch up,' but thanks to seventies inflation, I don't really think I did. The basics of middle-class life took me 35 years to pay off, and that's without foreign holidays and new cars etc.

I have 'kids' in their 20s, so I can see both sides of this. At present, they haven't got a snowball's chance in hell of owning a house. They have student debt to pay off, but one knows she wouldn't be at uni at all if she'd been born in 1950 and, despite gaining a first, the other rather doubts it too, so that's a difficult one. Personally, I think both are victims of qualification inflation, as are we all.

The difference between now and 1950 is that we are living in a country where expectations are much higher than our ability to sustain them. I think it likely that there will be pain for all of us, including the pensioner generation, and that much harder choices will follow the relatively mild cuts we've had so far. It won't be particularly good for Boomers if those choices aren't made wisely and equitably, because your generation will, in the natural course of events, become more numerous & influential.

Whatever happens, it will be a pity if, armed with the so-called facts about how easy life was in the past, younger people manage to vilify an entire generation because a minority bought and rented out property, rather than pay money into a pension scheme. Bearing in mind what happened to some of those, I'm not sure if they got it wrong, but in any event, they don't represent this entire generation. We are, believe it or not, all individuals like you are and, despite the easy time we apparently had, most of us tried to provide for ourselves in the years after work.

Saying things like, "my view there are some good arguments for just taking some of the savings of some of these people, they caused the suffering that the young now have to deal with." doesn't help you to convince anyone that "revenge and retribution are not in my makeup."

Excellent post :T.

princeofpounds

The difference between now and 1950 is that we are living in a country where expectations are much higher than our ability to sustain them.

Why? Well the expectations side of the equation is open to debate, but the sustainability is quite clear; we have been saddled with more debt than we could bear, which was used to fund services instead of taxing the working population of the previous generation. That and the spending of north sea oil, unlike the Norwegians who now have the third (IIRC) biggest sovereign wealth fund in the world on the back of a similar amount of oil.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

markharding557 wrote: »

Government policy today is geared towards the older generation because they are the largest group of voters and proportionally more of them turn out to vote.

True. And it's always been that way.

When the boomers were young, they were the irresponsible hippies in the 60's, etc...

In a couple of decades or so the newer generations will be the largest group of voters,they will have less assets,less pensions,student loans,many will not be home owners and so their priorities will be different than todays older generation.

False.

Todays young will end up just as wealthy as the boomers, on average.

All wealth is ultimately redistributed to the younger generations, always has been and always will be. Perhaps you've heard of this little thing we call "death"...

WhiteHorse

If there is one thing that the older generation can be blamed for, it's stupidity - stupidity in falling for all the same old lies from the same old politicians, time and time again.

The problem is ... the younger generation doesn't seem much different.