Baby Boomers: Powerful And Selfish

[OnionTerror]

Another boomer thread...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/05/baby-boomers-voting-muscle

The one piece of good news in the budget was that George Osborne restored the link between state pensions and earnings, which Margaret Thatcher broke in 1980. Osborne's decision comes just in time for the baby boomers – the children of the 1960s – to benefit.

But for the children of the baby boomers, governments offer only misery. Higher education minister David Willetts has made it clear that students' fees are going to go up. A lot. Baby boomers, born between 1945 and 1955, paid no fees at all when they were students in the free and carefree 60s.

Today, because people are living longer, baby boomers are a much more powerful political force than 55- to 65-year-olds have ever been before. And they are exercising their political muscle on their own behalf. Any government that fails to give the baby boomers what they want, even at the expense of younger generations, is in for severe punishment at the ballot box, according to research from the thinktank Demos.

I'm a fully paid up baby boomer. My tonsils rest, no doubt carefully preserved, in an NHS hospital. When I got polio (from which I made a complete recovery) my parents did not have to worry about enormous medical bills, as their parents would have done. Aneurin Bevan's NHS – the greatest civilising measure ever undertaken by a British government – saw me right.

When I went to university, my widowed mother being demonstrably penniless, I received not only free education, but a student grant that I could live on in term-time. For the first time, proletarian and regional accents were heard throughout the British university system, and their owners were no longer made to feel out of place. Neil Kinnock, as he famously told the Welsh Labour party conference in 1987, was "the first Kinnock in a thousand generations" to have a university education.

We are the first generation in which pretty well everyone can read and write fairly fluently. We had the freedom that comes from not having to fear starvation if your employer fires you: there were other jobs to go to, and a welfare state to fall back on. These things made possible the freedom of the 60s.

And what did we do with this wonderful inheritance? We trashed it.

We created a far harsher world for our children to grow up in. It was as though we decided that the freedom and lack of worry which we had inherited was too good for our children, and we pulled up the ladder we had climbed.

Six decades after its birth, Britain's welfare state is in the worst danger it has known. Commentators and politicians sneer at it and undermine it while legislators chip away at it. The political will in the Labour party that created it has gone.

More and more bits of the health service cost more and more. The principle that no one should die of a treatable disease was breached long ago. For years, no politician could safely criticise the NHS without courting the severest electoral punishment, but now some top Conservatives are saying that the NHS isn't "relevant in the 21st century".

The welfare state is starved of money, and struggling under the weight of great, bullying, bureaucratic initiatives designed to give it the appearance of a market, because nothing that does not look like a market is apparently acceptable in the Britain the baby boomers built.

Most capital expenditure for education and health no longer comes from the present-day taxpayer, but from the next generation, because the baby boomers have been too stingy to pay for it. This trick is done by means of the private finance initiative (PFI), a scam for getting the cost of public buildings such as schools and hospitals off the present government's books, and placing them on the books of governments 10 or 20 years hence.

The freedoms the baby boomers fought for, they deny to their children. "Hoodie" was just a name for a garment in fashion with children and teenagers, until it was demonised by people who were young and fashionable in the 60s. Teenagers under legal drinking age have a dramatically reduced range of options for a good night out. Pubs and clubs are barred to them, far more effectively and efficiently than they were ever barred to us. We force our children into the school uniforms we rejected, partly because they help the police to recognise those who ought to be at school. It is like making them wear prison uniform so they will be instantly recognisable when they scale their prison walls.

Education is no longer seen as a good in itself, but as the acquisition of the skills required to swell someone else's profits. New Labour abolished the higher education department, and placed its responsibilities under the department dealing with business and industry, a pretty good indication of what ministers now think education is for. The new higher education minister, David Willetts, has made several speeches since the election, and has not yet once mentioned any sort of education that does not provide marketable skills.

Harold Wilson saved the baby boomers from having to fight alongside young Americans in Vietnam. When the baby boomer generation formed a government, its prime minister, Tony Blair, told lies to the young so that he could send them to fight alongside the Americans in Iraq.

Opinion polls show that the now elderly baby boomers will use their increasing voting power to ensure that when the bad times come, the young are hit first, even though it is by a chancellor of the exchequer who was not even born until the 60s were over. When the baby boomers were young, they believed society could afford student grants; now they are old, they think it can afford pensions. I say it can afford both – but only if young and old alike learn to care for each other.

[Realistbear]

Another boomer thread...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/05/baby-boomers-voting-muscle

A wise man once said: There is nothing new under the sun (Solomon c. 1100BC).

He observed that each generation was a repeat of the one before it and that nothing really changes. The boomers, when they were young, blamed the "establishment" (former generation) for all the wars going on then (Vietnam especially) along with social ills etc. Now its Iraq, another generation, another blame game.

IMO, the generation conspiracy theories are meaningless drivel. History just repeats and people do not change. Much like the economny, a boom is followed by a bust and the bigger the boom, the bigger the bust that follows and this next bust will be one big mother of a bust!

[LJAR]

Nobody likes paying taxes, but they want more expenditure.

We let the politicians keep treating us like infants that cannot understand that things must be paid for.

[Executive Sadman]

Not sure if linking pensions to earnings instead of RPI/CPI should necessarily be construed as a good thing for pensioners. We will see.

And Kinnocks a prat for thinking they had universities 1000 generations ago.

[Stars]

IMO, the generation conspiracy theories are meaningless drivel.

A rather silly and intelectually lazy attempt to smear rather than argue

Edited July 5, 2010 by Stars

[REP013]

And Kinnocks a prat.

Sorry, couldn't resist!

[pilchardthecat]

Boomer power will start waning shortly, as they retire and get older.

Soon they will be quietly rocking back and forth in the window with a paisley blanket across their collective knees.

[RDW]

Boomer power will start waning shortly, as they retire and get older.

Soon they will be quietly rocking back and forth in the window with a paisley blanket across their collective knees.

Yes, but still voting.

[Cogs]

Boomer power will start waning shortly, as they retire and get older.

Soon they will be quietly rocking back and forth in the window with a paisley blanket across their collective knees.

I wouldn't be too sure. In all history they will be the generation that retired in the best health and with the highest levels of wealth, we won't be so lucky and I very much doubt our children will be either. So on the contrary, their power will only increase as they can go full time with it.

[DeepLurker]

Not sure if linking pensions to earnings instead of RPI/CPI should necessarily be construed as a good thing for pensioners. We will see.

And Kinnocks a prat for thinking they had universities 1000 generations ago.

He's a prat (agreed), but I also think it's pretty clear he was being poetic rather than accurate

[Realistbear]

A rather silly and intelectually lazy attempt to smear rather than argue

Not worth the time or effort. Blaming the previous generation has been going on for millennia. If anything, each generation has got progressively worse than the one that went before if you measure mass killing. 20th century took the prize there and they probably blamed the 19th century mooshes for Empire building etc.

Nothing new under the sun about sums it up IMO.

[Realistbear]

Boomer power will start waning shortly, as they retire and get older.

Soon they will be quietly rocking back and forth in the window with a paisley blanket across their collective knees.

And in another 40 years.............................? And another? And in the end we all end up in the same place blaming the previous generation for all the ills and the next generation for not knowing their knee from their shoulder blade. And on and on and on....................................

The beat just keeps on going and going and going. Nothing new under the sun.

[Injin]

And in another 40 years.............................? And another? And in the end we all end up in the same place blaming the previous generation for all the ills and the next generation for not knowing their knee from their shoulder blade. And on and on and on....................................

The beat just keeps on going and going and going. Nothing new under the sun.

..he typed into his PC....

[Guest DissipatedYouthIsValuable]

You could always ****** them up with massive strikes, and huge wage inflation demands.

[campervanman]

Boomer power will start waning shortly, as they retire and get older.

Soon they will be quietly rocking back and forth in the window with a paisley blanket across their collective knees.

Or alternatively relaxing in the sun sipping another glass of Merlot having a good laugh at UK gerneration lemming cheering as they destroy their future in the name of austerity.

[mitchbux]

I wouldn't be too sure. In all history they will be the generation that retired in the best health and with the highest levels of wealth, we won't be so lucky and I very much doubt our children will be either. So on the contrary, their power will only increase as they can go full time with it.

I think you are wrong about their health,type II Diabetes is increasing rapidly.

Edited July 5, 2010 by mitchbux

[non frog]

Or alternatively relaxing in the sun sipping another glass of Merlot having a good laugh at UK gerneration lemming cheering as they destroy their future in the name of austerity.

You really must hate your children.

[campervanman]

You really must hate your children.

Mine are ok/ It's yours I have a problem with.

[pilchardthecat]

Or alternatively relaxing in the sun sipping another glass of Merlot having a good laugh at UK gerneration lemming cheering as they destroy their future in the name of austerity.

I think the point is that their future was stolen, and in you example smuggled overseas to a foreign idyll

There are plenty of ways it can be repatriated or "stolen back" though, just as soon as they let go the levers of power and sit back in that rocking chair by the sea.

[ken_ichikawa]

Who says there will even be a next generation?

The sensible types can't afford to have children

The chavs might get their benefits cut that this is no longer a smart career move and besides they won't be paying taxes anyway if they breed on regardless.

There are many many people of my generation and peer group who don't want children and have options like going to get GFs the morning after pill (bloody expensive it is too!).

My group can be egotistical and selfish too. We are much more mobile and living under some other government means you can't touch our money...

On top of this my pension system is completely untouchable by the state machinery, as said 2035 depending on the technology at the time I will have my DNA reset to defeat the hayflick limit. Or if such technology does not exist have a clone of myself grown and younger parts grafted on and replaced onto my body thus I'll be 50ish but with the body of an 18 year old.

In the absense of that tech I'll go cyborg route where organic components are replaced by mechanical parts.

[ken_ichikawa]

Or alternatively relaxing in the sun sipping another glass of Merlot having a good laugh at UK gerneration lemming cheering as they destroy their future in the name of austerity.

If the slaves refuse to work* the master starves too.

*opting out is also a distinct possibility.

[campervanman]

If the slaves refuse to work* the master starves too.

*opting out is also a distinct possibility.

You ain't getting the choice. It's work or starve in free market future UK. You've chosen the American route, you'll get the American result. Try opting out in downtown Detroit.

[ken_ichikawa]

You ain't getting the choice. It's work or starve in free market future UK. You've chosen the American route, you'll get the American result. Try opting out in downtown Detroit.

You seem to think I am a UK citizen only. And you think my peer group are too stupid as a whole to emigrate or seek employment elsewhere.

I've got news for you they are emigrating in large numbers too.... sure it might just be to teach in Korea or China or something, but it keeps you from sucking their blood.

And the harder the whip is cracked the more encouragement there is to jump elsewhere.

Now you mention is my trek in Beijing I met an enormous number of Americans who went 'travelling' i.e. working overseas and negelected to tell uncle sam....

The Brits overseas also negelect to tell the crown too.

Edited July 5, 2010 by ken_ichikawa

[Stars]

You ain't getting the choice. It's work or starve in free market future UK. You've chosen the American route, you'll get the American result. Try opting out in downtown Detroit.

The free market option wouldn't have you serviced by corralled slaves for sitting on your fanny

[HPCatlast.]

Or alternatively relaxing in the sun sipping another glass of Merlot having a good laugh at UK gerneration lemming cheering as they destroy their future in the name of austerity.

+1

I fail to understand the outright hating of 'greytops' by some of the youngsters on here, it's getting like a stuck record.

As I've said before (and I'll probably have to say again), we left school, always worked (never scrounged off welfare), bought one house to live in (NOT BTL), and sold up on retirement (2007).

From my experience loads of BTL 'chancers' are a generation younger than me, they are the ones (plus a useless lie bore government and w/bankers) who have helped to ruin the dear old GB.

It's the greytops like us who have our savings in deposits earning sweat FA !!

So oldies are the savers, youngsters are the cash losers (won't save, got to have it now, at any price).

It's a very different world to when I was growing up, working on saturdays and during me holidays, and learning the value of money.

You can blaim us as much as you like, we just took managable risks to buy a home, today risks are way to great to buy even a starter home.

DO NOT BUY OVERVALUED PROPERTY, THE VALUES MUST FALL. SUPPORT A BUYERS STRIKE.