Article Defending Boomers

[Si1]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/why-millennials-have-got-baby-boomers-all-wrong/?WTmcid=tmgoff_soc_spf_fb&WT.mc_id=sf31170624

Apparently the reason the young can't afford houses is because they have smartphones. Enjoy your raised blood pressure.

[Drummer]

Because in the 1970s, everybody stayed in and saved. Going out and holidays was a no-no. They certainly didn't buy LPs.

[Royw6]

Because in the 1970s, everybody stayed in and saved. Going out and holidays was a no-no. They certainly didn't buy LPs.

That made me laugh! Love the LP quote.

[Venger]

Ahh the 15% interest rates again, on their £30K mortgages.

.....the initial interest payment on a £100,000 repayment loan at a 15 per cent interest rate is the same as that for a £300,000 loan at 2 per cent.

Becomes more interesting when capital repayments are considered. £15k wipes out 15% of 100k loan and only 2% of £300,000k. Or very roughly, doubling payments compared to interest-only will clear your debt in 6 years at 15% or 50 years at 2%!

I'm not anti-boomer... when I post boomers it's more about a wider mindset including in non-boomers. They keep pointing to our iphones, as per that article - and in comments of some many property articles on Daily Mail - I'll keep pointing to mad-gainz and challenges for younger people in housing market.

[zugzwang]

Mad old bastards. They've been sustained in their cosy roosts by Osborne and predecessor borrowing a trillion quid and monetising a further £375bn, while at the same time conducting a fire-sale everything that isn't actually nailed down to the bloody Arabs and Chinese. The UK is slouching towards extinction not eternity.

[Dorkins]

Total refusal to acknowledge that the majority of their generation had a good run at it economically and the majority of GenX and GenY have much less.

I'm not sure which is more frustrating, the unfairness of the intergenerational inequality itself or the refusal/inability of most older people to acknowledge the inequality even exists.

Edited July 19, 2016 by Dorkins

[Dorkins]

The article is titled "Why millennials have got baby boomers all wrong" but I'd say on the basis of the article alone the millennials have got the baby boomers bang to rights. The baby boomers had (and have) it better than the later generations economically but they don't even have the grace to admit it.

[spyguy]

Because in the 1970s, everybody stayed in and saved. Going out and holidays was a no-no. They certainly didn't buy LPs.

My Dad spent ~50% of his eanred money (when he cold be ar5ed to earn it) on cars and bikes.

[One-percent]

I try not to engage with the intergenerational stuff. Classic divide and rule. I'm inbetween the two in terms of age and so can see both perspectives. Some boomers were/are very well provided for. Some not. Depended on whether you got a db pension, which most in regular work did. My own position is that I have been able to buy a home, just because of my age. However, have seen my terms and conditions at work eroded, my pension reduce, even though I am paying more in. Then I look at young people aand see that they will never own a home, will work till they drop, literally, and leave the earth with massive debt. Not that they will care about that.

The issue, and one I DO blame boomers and my own generation for is allowing this situation to come about. There has been a polarisation of wealth and the post war years saw a genuine redistribution of wealth towards the ordinary working person. What we have and are witnessing is a move back, like the Great Gatsby, to the wealth being held in fewer hands. It is THIS that is criminal and those who have let it happen should be ashamed.

[canbuywontbuy]

You can't blame a generation for being born when they were, and simply wanting to live a good life. We would all do the same. However, I really do have a problem with those of the boomer generation when they think things are essentially the same, and that if only the younger generation didn't buy Xboxes, they'd be paying off their mortgages by their early 40s. This is arrogance, because they don't want to believe they were lucky. But they were.

[TheCountOfNowhere]

You can't blame a generation for being born when they were, and simply wanting to live a good life. We would all do the same. However, I really do have a problem with those of the boomer generation when they think things are essentially the same, and that if only the younger generation didn't buy Xboxes, they'd be paying off their mortgages by their early 40s. This is arrogance, because they don't want to believe they were lucky. But they were.

It's the nimby boomers that get me

[Fatmanfilms]

Ahh the 15% interest rates again, on their £30K mortgages.

.....the initial interest payment on a £100,000 repayment loan at a 15 per cent interest rate is the same as that for a £300,000 loan at 2 per cent.

I'm not anti-boomer... when I post boomers it's more about a wider mindset including in non-boomers. They keep pointing to our iphones, as per that article - and in comments of some many property articles on Daily Mail - I'll keep pointing to mad-gainz and challenges for younger people in housing market.

Nobody borrowed £100k in the 1970's, it would buy a house in London priced at 5-10 million today.

Even the property I bought in 1985 in London for £40,000 is now worth £1,600,000 today.

[Venger]

I really like this post by our Silver Surfer. Honest and straight.

I bought my first house in the very early 1980's. It was three bedroomed terraced house in a decent part of Sheffield, it cost about £10,500 and my pay was about £5,750.

After a couple of years my job took me to London, in price terms I virtually swapped my Sheffield house for a one bedroom flat with an SW1 post code, Sloane Square was less than a five minute walk away and the nearest "off licence" was Berry Brothers & Rudd.

A couple of years after that I paid about £22,000 for a two bedroom flat in Fulham, I think at the time my wages had topped £10,000. Property costs can't have been too much of a burden because soon after I bought a Porsche.

Incidentally, I had no student debts and a rock solid final salary pension that subsequently allowed me to retire at 55.

Absolutely none of this is available to my children. They're fortunate in that I can afford to match for them the benefits that I was lucky enough to enjoy, but anyone from my generation who thinks their own hard work and industry were the keys to their good fortune is just taking nonsense. We were the most privileged generation that has ever lived.

[Venger]

Nobody borrowed £100k in the 1970's, it would buy a house in London priced at 5-10 million today.

Even the property I bought in 1985 in London for £40,000 is now worth £1,600,000 today.

Accepted - I was just using it to put the 15% rate into context vs 2%.

However, for the second part... that really shows the long-wave HPI, and everything else, for London side of the market. And difference of haves-and-have-even-mores (many who claim their homes not worth anything as just shelter), and the renter-saver generations. Wondering if you still own it but not really prying.

Houses bought in 1985 houses for around £40K in low-high prime South Manchester/Cheshire, I guess would be worth around £400K-£600K today.

[iamnumerate]

Ahh the 15% interest rates again, on their £30K mortgages.

.....the initial interest payment on a £100,000 repayment loan at a 15 per cent interest rate is the same as that for a £300,000 loan at 2 per cent.

But over paying saves you so much more with higher interest rates. High interest rates are great for buyers but bad for people who bought before they went up.

[kzb]

Can't you see this is classic divide and rule. Trying to set the generations against each other.

The economy is much larger in real terms than it was. There should be no reason why young people should be poorer than their parent were at the same age.

The question you should be asking is why this is the case. One salient fact is their parents joined unions, went on strike and protested. Perhaps there is a lesson there.

[iamnumerate]

Can't you see this is classic divide and rule. Trying to set the generations against each other.

The economy is much larger in real terms than it was. There should be no reason why young people should be poorer than their parent were at the same age.

The question you should be asking is why this is the case. One salient fact is their parents joined unions, went on strike and protested. Perhaps there is a lesson there.

No there isn't a lesson there, the problem is the cost of housing - unions can't solve that.

[Vested Disinterest]

Looks like the comments have been pulled?

I can't see them, and I turned off adblock just in case that was hiding them.

[Si1]

Looks like the comments have been pulled?

I can't see them, and I turned off adblock just in case that was hiding them.

It's a badly written article, countering statistics with cheap anecdotes and here say, full of non sequiturs. No wonder they cancelled the comments.

[Greg Bowman]

The economy is much larger in real terms than it was. There should be no reason why young people should be poorer than their parent were at the same age.

But it's flatter because of globalisation, automation and technology. More lower paid jobs less higher paid ones.

[Riedquat]

The economy is much larger in real terms than it was. There should be no reason why young people should be poorer than their parent were at the same age.

The question you should be asking is why this is the case. One salient fact is their parents joined unions, went on strike and protested. Perhaps there is a lesson there.

The question I'd ask is how the world should look, ideally (obviously considering the practical realities, not some fantasy utopia).

No there isn't a lesson there, the problem is the cost of housing - unions can't solve that.

That's one problem, and certainly a big one, but by no means the only one. I partially agree about the unions, a balance of power is needed and things screw up when one side has too much, but there's a lot more going on than that. However the dominating short-term economic pressure is always on pushing out the lower end. Unions, at best, can only slow that down (and if they're not careful increase the pressure). So it's true that they can't solve anything in the long run, but there's no sign of anything that can. All we've had so far is keeping our fingers crossed that something new will turn up, an almost certainly unsustainable position although how long it'll take to fail is anyone's guess. However we are in a time where we're getting less and less meaningful from that.

[Unbowed]

There is a divide and rule thing going on here. Not all boomers have it good .. just some of them.

Certainly some of the comments about make do and mend were true; simply because many daily items like clothes cost much more back then, compared to the cheap imported tat in the high street now.

True my parents and in-laws may own their own property outright, but their pensions are small. They are not jetting of the Seychelles any time soon.

The media always talks about the retired senior copper or teacher, with a nice pension of 25 - 40K. But they are the lucky ones.

The main problem is simply low interest rates fuelling a house price boom, stealing from savers to save the indebted.

Blame Gordon, he lowered interest rates whenever it looked like the boom might run of steam.

His successors haven't been willing to address the issue, hence the next move we all expect will be -ve.

Labour didn't halt council house sales either. Should be stopped and new ones built.

I'm 50, so went to Uni when it was still free. And I do pity the young, faced with all that debt.

That was Tony's gran plan, expand the Unis so everyone has a degree and is in hoc for it.

But of course, where once a degree was special.. now the kids of the wealthier kind needn't worry about some Comprehensive upstart being better qualified than them.

In the old days those wealthy half-wits wouldn't have got in.

It would probably be cheaper to go back to the days of ability and provide grants to a restricted number of students, than right off half the debt being racked up in 20 years time.

And sorry young people, migrants aren't welcome. Immigration is a tool to restrict your bargaining power.

What's more in my industry (IT) many of them don't even pay tax (there are plenty of dubious scams to assist multi-national companies in this way)

Unsurprisingly, more than 100K people have lost their jobs these past 15 years or so due to this unfair competition

But don't blame the elderly, most of them did have it tough, and many still have it tough now.

Above all, know your real enemy, and it isn't my old mum.

[crashmonitor]

Can't you see this is classic divide and rule. Trying to set the generations against each other.

The economy is much larger in real terms than it was. There should be no reason why young people should be poorer than their parent were at the same age.

The question you should be asking is why this is the case. One salient fact is their parents joined unions, went on strike and protested. Perhaps there is a lesson there.

It probably comes down to wealth distribution as opposed to income distribution so every reason why young people should be poorer than their parents, not least becase wealth has been deliberately skewed towards housing equity.

Given a chioce between a low wage in the 60s and a detached house for 3k and a higher wage and the same house costing 250k or about 30k in 1960s money then it's obvious who is better off. Plus the fact that final salary schemes and state welfare were slow to adjust to life span...unbelievable that the State retirement age was 60 as recently as 2010 ( and by default for unemployed men) at an age when you become prime minister or run 365 marathons in a year. What the f%%k was the welfare state thinking and how could the mainly female takers do so with a straight face.

Edited July 19, 2016 by crashmonitor

[kzb]

Crashmonitor:

I agree about the wealth distribution, the economy has become far too skewed to favour assets over working for your money. Housing is ridiculously overvalued and I think most reasonable older people would agree. But tt's not their fault they've become a millionaire simply by owning a home in London.

I don't know how old you are, but I think you are a bit optimistic about health in later life. Your years of HEALTHY life expectancy have not increased by much. Some are lucky and can run marathons at 68 but the vast majority cannot.

Almost every time I go out in the car these days I have to pull over to let an emergency ambulance pass. A few years ago this was a rare event; it's just constant now. Life expectancy is decreasing, and we can only expect it to decrease further in the future because of obesity, diabetes and cancer rates increasing.

[South Lorne]

I try not to engage with the intergenerational stuff. Classic divide and rule. I'm inbetween the two in terms of age and so can see both perspectives. Some boomers were/are very well provided for. Some not. Depended on whether you got a db pension, which most in regular work did. My own position is that I have been able to buy a home, just because of my age. However, have seen my terms and conditions at work eroded, my pension reduce, even though I am paying more in. Then I look at young people aand see that they will never own a home, will work till they drop, literally, and leave the earth with massive debt. Not that they will care about that.

The issue, and one I DO blame boomers and my own generation for is allowing this situation to come about. There has been a polarisation of wealth and the post war years saw a genuine redistribution of wealth towards the ordinary working person. What we have and are witnessing is a move back, like the Great Gatsby, to the wealth being held in fewer hands. It is THIS that is criminal and those who have let it happen should be ashamed.

...let's face it ..every man, woman and his or her dog could get a mortgage up to the early or mid 2000s ...what happened ...Labour and Gordo Clown.......they created a free for all which was not viable..we are still untangling it...BTL is another reason, which was nursed by that bubble and crash group...looking for an answer ...it's all there...