Baby Boomers making out like bandits as usual

ruggedtoast

ILW wrote: »

What homeless?

The only homeless I have seen appear to be either alcoholics or drug addicts. A lifestyle choice I suppose.

Yes, them.

WhiteHorse

Clifford_Pope wrote: »

You talk as if baby boomers were some kind of alien species who had infiltrated Britain and stolen all the best bits.

They are, and they did.

They happen to be the children of the previous generation who fought the war for us, and the parents of everyone of the younger generation who will inherit their legacy and financial assets.

The younger generation won't be inheriting much at all - not after the boomers have taxed everything out of existence to line their own pockets and to pursue their populist utopian nonsense.

ceridwen

ruggedtoast wrote: »

I appreciate your candour, but I am afraid the homeless must still move into your bedrooms.

?????

slightly puzzled by the reference to it being "candour"....

...and I'm sorry mate....there's absolutely zilch chance of having anyone (homeless or otherwise) billeted in my place.

It ain't my fault the country is overcrowded (hence the supply of housing is so dear and we're having to fight to hang onto what countryside is left).

Don't blame me - I'm English and I haven't had more than "replacement number" of children (more than 2). I've "done my bit" and there is NO chance I am going to try and make up for other people not having done theirs.

Crash_Over

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Boomers have grown rich, and old, by mortgaging their children's future with unsustainable, unmanageable bills for healthcare, pensions, public spending and a long, slow, banking fiasco.

It is simply reprehensible for boomers to sit smugly in their astronomically priced homes, having benefitted from free everything and blame the younger generation's credit profligacy on the banking crisis in 2007. An event which happened in national macroeconomic terms, around 3 days ago.

The economy was broken before that, for us anyway. Younger people were told to study hard, go to university, play the game as the rules were explained and we could reasonably expect what our parents got. Right?

Wrong. Generation X and Y walked slap bang into a golden generation who plundered the piggy banks of education and the nhs, and gleefully hoarded property thus inflating its price to extraordinary levels. Then we had our pockets picked trying to buy into this piece of the pie too. Something which could suddenly only be done by taking on vast amounts of debt enthusiastically shoved at us by a predatory and cynical financial regulatory system, mostly run and managed by... oh look boomers again.

The cupboards were bare.

Yet boomers can begin to make amends. How many young families live cramped in unsuitable terraces, dreading the next mortgage or rent payment, while over the street indolent empty nest boomers float around detached mansions that they could never at any point in their lives have been able to buy at todays prices, trying to find something to do with themselves, until they choose to make another killing by selling up and saddling themselves to the barely breathing over-burdened mule of the nhs?

Every retired couple must have their homes audited. For each empty unused room they selfishly hoard a fee of £50 - £75 per week must be levied, the proceeds used to fund social housing. For each new local development that is planned and voted down by selfish NIMBY boomer solipsists then this fee should rise by 20%.

If they choose to let the rooms out to a lodger then no fee is payable for that room, and if they give it to a homeless or a Guardian reader then they can receive a stipend from the government.

This would begin to solve the housing crisis and enforce a sense of moral responsibility that seems totally lacking from a large section of our most privileged demographic.

You seem very embittered.

I notice you only require elderly people to pay the £75 tax on empty rooms. Not everyone. Hmmm. Bit of an ageist agenda here.

Anyway fortunately elderly peole vote in large numbers. It's too much trouble for the youngsters you believe are entitled, to even get off their !!!!!! and walk to the polling station.

Going4TheDream

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Boomers have grown rich, and old, by mortgaging their children's future with unsustainable, unmanageable bills for healthcare, pensions, public spending and a long, slow, banking fiasco.

It is simply reprehensible for boomers to sit smugly in their astronomically priced homes, having benefitted from free everything and blame the younger generation's credit profligacy on the banking crisis in 2007. An event which happened in national macroeconomic terms, around 3 days ago.

The economy was broken before that, for us anyway. Younger people were told to study hard, go to university, play the game as the rules were explained and we could reasonably expect what our parents got. Right?

Wrong. Generation X and Y walked slap bang into a golden generation who plundered the piggy banks of education and the nhs, and gleefully hoarded property thus inflating its price to extraordinary levels. Then we had our pockets picked trying to buy into this piece of the pie too. Something which could suddenly only be done by taking on vast amounts of debt enthusiastically shoved at us by a predatory and cynical financial regulatory system, mostly run and managed by... oh look boomers again.

The cupboards were bare.

Yet boomers can begin to make amends. How many young families live cramped in unsuitable terraces, dreading the next mortgage or rent payment, while over the street indolent empty nest boomers float around detached mansions that they could never at any point in their lives have been able to buy at todays prices, trying to find something to do with themselves, until they choose to make another killing by selling up and saddling themselves to the barely breathing over-burdened mule of the nhs?

Every retired couple must have their homes audited. For each empty unused room they selfishly hoard a fee of £50 - £75 per week must be levied, the proceeds used to fund social housing. For each new local development that is planned and voted down by selfish NIMBY boomer solipsists then this fee should rise by 20%.

If they choose to let the rooms out to a lodger then no fee is payable for that room, and if they give it to a homeless or a Guardian reader then they can receive a stipend from the government.

This would begin to solve the housing crisis and enforce a sense of moral responsibility that seems totally lacking from a large section of our most privileged demographic.

My first response is to laugh at your ridiculous statements. Not only would it be political suicide - old people vote too! and more than young but you come across as very bitter

My second is to perhaps 'enlighten' you as to the term ' baby boomers' which is people born in the post war era between 1946 and 1964. Many of whom are actually still working and not pensioners at all.

Taking that into account, the first of these are only just coming up to retirement age of 65 or just reached it. Women were allowed to retire at 60 if they were born prior to 1950, however many doing so will have not been entitled to a full state pension as many did not accrue enough pensionable years as they worked and bought up families for many years. It is very unlikely many of these would have had a gold plated pension from their employment.

There are a few that have been able to retire such as teachers etc, but these terms were allowed by the government, hardly the fault of the person if the employer makes 'generous terms available' and my understanding is that they traded of some of the pension in order to do that? However that has also changed as governments realised that it was an affordable and unfair cost to all long term. This change likley affected many who fell outside the timescales. I am sure if that was you in the position you may have taken advantage of the offer? Why shouldn't they? They contributed to society and the education of future generations, when education and schools were good!

People have seen their private pensions plundered, those that had them, having worked all their life to find that what they were expecting is not what they will get and there state retirement age going up... a bit of a double whammy when you are within a few years of retiring.

Final salary pensions were good for those that got them but this was not generally what your manual/blue collar worker would have got. Lets not be fooled in to believing that every boomer went to University and got a white collar job high flying well paid job with generous perks. Because they didn't. Britain was still a big manufacturing country and many worked in factories on the shop floor.

Plundered the NHS? Successive governments have done that, by changing many things, adding layer and layer of management/ implementing reporting. The NHS was set up to give every access to basic free medical care, hardly the fault of the boomers that it is over bloated in the wrong areas, under funded in others and badly managed?

Many of the boomers have elderly parents that they often care for, I know several women who now only work part time to support that, like wise many women also support child care for their children so again dont work.

You seem to have a misconception that these baby boomers are all stinking rich and live in mansions and lived easy lives to achieve it. Many people who own houses, own the same ones that they bought and raised their families in. Most are likely terrace homes, or semi detached. They have not played the markets. They may be asset rich but many are cash poor. They may have a spare room but what do they do if they are on the lower end of the market, sell up and move into a bedsit? They have families, some still have their children's families at home, like their friends to stay. Just because a bedroom may not be used all the time doesn't mean it isn't used at all. Many of them made sacrifices to buy a property, living at home, living in rented accommodation and saving up and going without many things that we see as normal today. Many struggling to pay the mortgage on a three day working week, high interest rates and without the plethora of benefits that working families get today. Today many of them find themselves supporting/caring in some way for both their parents and their own children

The only reprehensible thing is your comment is that we should apply tactics akin to the Mugabe regime in 'reclaiming' some of this property in some form by forcing people to have their 'spare' rooms taken from them or charge them for keeping them. Whilst Mugabe is a pig and what he did by force taking land from white farmers and giving it to black workers was disgusting, forceful and violent, he at least had the justifying argument he was taking back what perhaps wasn't rightfully someones to have in the first place....(rightly or wrongly whilst you are just suggesting ' reclaiming/stealing/taking back' something that someone else rightfully owns to help others who never owned anything.

Given that many boomers are not retired, I wonder which group you refer to that are wandering around their detached mansions?

Perhaps the people who lived and fought in the war, most of whom had tougher lives and less support that any generation in the 20th century?

wotsthat

I do enjoy a nice jealousy thread.

Am I unusual in not wishing my parents dead?

ILW

ruggedtoast wrote: »

I appreciate your candour, but I am afraid the homeless must still move into your bedrooms.

Hi RT

Just out of interest, what have you done or achieved that makes you think you deserve to be able to own your own home?

julieq

What this comes down to is the fact that we've created a society where people believe there is a big brother who will pick up the tab for them, and there must be some other group to blame for everything they don't like. Honestly there's no substantive difference between the idea it's the "baby boomers" or that it's an international conspiracy of bankers who are to blame, anything really to shift blame elsewhere. It's not as if baby boomers are a particularly homogenous group anyway.

What is going to be amusing is when our lazy flabby Generation Y start meeting the developing world head on and try to extract their "entitlements". 2 billion Chinese want a standard of living about a 1/10 of ours, and of those enough of them are well educated and ruthlessly motivated to succeed in taking your livelihood. Either you stop whining and play the hand you've been dealt, or you're going to see your standard of living slipping faster than you can imagine.

We are living on accumulated capital, and (incidentally) on the benefits of having pillaged most of the world for a couple of hundred years. If we as a society were generating net wealth we'd see our standards of living increase. At the point at which that stops, as it must inevitably as other countries catch up, then we don't moan about what we had, we get on with competing or we slide off into history. Greece and Italy both led the world in prosperity in ancient times: look at them now.

Because if we don't, someone else will, and no amount of "occupy" protests or whining on bulletin boards will change that.

ukcarper

Graham_Devon wrote: »

I love these arguments.

But one point....it's all well and good having a pop at the younger generation, suggesting we want it all and want it all now, blah de blah.

But who did we we, the youngsters get this attitude from?

Going to upset a few just stating that. But surely we only learn what we are shown and given access to?

Or is it maybe not that we want it all and want it now? I dunno. But you can't continually blame the younger generation, neither can you continually blame the older generation. There just seems to be generational warfare.

The attitude that every youngster is out clubbing it and paying £5 for a lager is no better than the attitude that baby boomers had everything easy. Baby boomers had their day for partying. It was called the 60's. No one ever went drinking at festivals? Could have fooled me....no one ever spent money on entertainment and enjoyment? Strange how the Beatles etc raked in such a fortune.

This thread was started as a blatant attack on babyboomers so if people respond you shouldn’t be to surprise. I personally don’t think all young people are irresponsible whingers I know plenty who aren’t. Obviously people had fun in the 60s and 70s I had a couple of holidays abroad before I got married. But once I decided I wanted to get married and buy a house we did very little for 2 years and managed to save the equivalent £20k in two years which was all of my take home pay.

Very few if any single working class people bought homes then.

I think the one advantage I did have was the jobs with good prospects available to me after leaving school with not many qualifications.

FATBALLZ

oldvicar wrote: »

Just for the record, the baby-boomers are the generation who paid down the national debt from 350% of GDP to less than 100% now.

There had of course been a bit of a war to make the debt so high in the first place. And we have only recently made the final repayment installment to America.

Oh look, another boomer retard talking utter crap and attempting to rewrite history.

Firstly, 'post war' boomers, are exactly that, people who were born after the war, so don't try bringing that into it.

Secondly, the national debt was back to around 100% by 1960, when the very first boomers would have been 14, so even the ones who did work at that age would have made next to no contribution to paying the debt back due to not earning much.