The Myth Of The Baby Boomers

[stormymonday_2011]

Bit of common sense at last ...

http://www.independentage.org/campaigning/our-campaigns/campaigns-we-support/the-ready-for-ageing-alliance/

The Ready for Ageing Alliance has published a report called 'The myth of the baby boomer' which highlights that among the baby boomer population there is significantly more diversity than is often recognised. It also challenges the sometimes lazy assumptions being made about the group of our population often described as "boomers".

"Similarly, it argues that while people in the 55 to 64 age-group have the highest level of equity on property after a lifetime of working and have not yet begun to draw down on savings, many do not share in this. It adds that 28 per cent of people aged between 55 and 64 in mainland Britain have no private pension wealth at all a proportion which rises to 37 per cent among women. The report notes, wryly, that people over 50 even play less golf than other generations. The term baby boomer is increasingly used as a term of abuse, it concludes. The picture often painted is one of a group who are ageing well. They are wealthy demanding consumers who are demanding Government resources and stealing from the young. But painting this picture has the potential to result in worse outcomes for both young and old. If we are to ensure that future generations experience ageing better, policy makers cannot use the myth of the baby boomer as an excuse for inaction. It is in the interests of both younger and older people that we find a way of ensuring more older people today and tomorrow retire well.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11808431/Myth-of-the-baby-boomers-how-post-war-generation-doesnt-have-it-so-good.html

I am disappointed. Surely they spend all day planning how to dump Generation X, Y and Z into the piranha pond

BTW worth noting that some of the senior members of the current Cabinet who spend so much time thinking up ways to torture 18-25 year olds are not strictly baby boomers, including George Osborne who was not born until 1971

[Fed_Up]

BTW worth noting that some of the senior members of the current Cabinet who spend so much time thinking up ways to torture 18-25 year olds are not strictly baby boomers, including George Osborne who was not born until 1971

Oh that's alright then... torture away!

[stormymonday_2011]

You've swallowed the Willetts line whole. And a bit more (far, far higher taxes than today was something today's 70-year-olds and 50-year-olds really do have in common).

Relatively high benefits which are locked? You're thinking of pensioners there. Certainly not Willetts-boomers.

Council house? Not quite sure of the timings there, but again I think it was the generation who lived through the War who really got them en masse. They certainly didn't exist for the 1960s-born Willetts-boomers, nor (I think) for some time before.

I'm a little puzzled by stories of those final-salary pensions. The story my generation learned was that they were useless unless you stuck forever in one job. They weren't transferable between schemes, and your frozen final salary pension on a final salary of £5k in your first job as a young graduate was going to be worthless by the time you reached an age to claim it. So not an option if you expected a career with a range of different employers. That's why they brought in personal pensions, though those were a massive ripoff in terms of huge charges until real competition started to arrive about 10 years ago.

On this site boomer just means anyone older than the poster who has more cash or property than them.

The term is used so loosely it seems to cover anyone from the age of 45-90 who might own a house, a pension , a free bus pass, a fee TV license etc, even though for example the last item on that list is only available to people over 75 who clearly were born before the end of the Second World war

Strictly speaking the main UK baby boom ran from the late 1950s to the mid 1960s (with a preceding intense but short lived spike in live birth about 1946-1947 after the end of the Second World War). As a consequence most of its members wont actually be retiring until the middle or end of the 2020s into the early 2030s

All these demographic facts about the UK population are well documented at the ONS and elsewhere but you still see slack brained idiots parroting the US baby boom demographic data as though it was identical to the UKs when it is not

[ccc]

Final salary pensions schemes - a lottery win for many. Adding that to huge house price gains for many - menas that many have literally been gifted a few million pounds. Not all of course - but a hell of a lot.

Am I jealous ? Well probably yes.

[Confusion of VIs]

Very few people think all baby boomers are rich, anyway. They're not making a particularly radical or important point by reminding everyone that some boomers are poor. My parents are boomers and they've barely a pot to piss in. Hell, there are some of the very youngest of them who didn't think of buying property until quite late who ended up priced out. However, the salient point is that they as a generation, a cohort, have had and continue to have it significantly easier than those who follow. The stuff about golf is just a risible attempt to distract from that.

Have you any evidence for your statement "have had and continue to have it significantly easier than those who follow". Real incomes have

more than tripled since the boomers were born. I don't think many of the the generation Ys have any concept of how little their parents had to live on for the first half of their lives.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/8414447/How-UK-incomes-have-risen-and-fallen-since-1948.html

[Guest]

Any talk of 'real' incomes first has to agree on an inflation figure. In my opinion inflation has become a political tool and is manipulated so much it's meaningless. When measured against housing incomes have been shrinking rapidly. Living standards are supposed to increase, but in all but the most superficial of ways they've been decreasing since the 90s (at least).

Food, holidays, and consumer electronics are cheaper.

Decent pensions are all but gone.

Higher education has become a debt trap designed to delay entry onto the unemployment figures.

Housing is vastly more expensive.

How can you live without shelter? We've gone from a single salary - even in a normal job like a postman or a truck driver - being enough to support a family in a family home to requiring two well-paid professionals (or maybe top-up benefits) to pay the rent on a flat too small for children. I might have access to more 'stuff', eat out more, and take more flights but in some fundamental ways I'm worse off than my parents were when they were my age.

I'd trade my iPad for a reasonably priced Parker-Morris home in a shot.

'Boomers' might not like to be told they're lucky - people like to think there is a link between effort and reward - but as a group, they are lucky. For those starting out now, that link between effort and reward has been pretty comprehensively destroyed. The fact that the choices of some older people ('BTL is my pension') are directly contributing to the misery is just the icing on the cake.

A standard of living comparable to the previous generation now requires a lottery win or an inheritance.

Boomer-bashing might not be very nice or particularly useful. But before a problem can be fixed you have to admit there is a problem, and there are far too many older people willing to close their eyes and cling to comforting myths - 'I worked hard all my life', 'young people want everything now', 'I'm an accidental landlord', 'I support my kids', 'we ate beans on toast for two years to save a deposit'.

Some acknowledgement of the challenges facing the under-40s would be nice. But in my experience too many older people are too busy justifying their own position in life.

The point about who would manage to buy their own house now, were they starting over again, is a telling one.

[BlokeInDurham]

Exactly IrrationalActor,

The generational inequality wouldn't grate so much if it didn't dwarf the free will of the following generations quite so much. There is much less incentive to better oneself because, while it is always possible to better ones lot in life, for the younger generations the effect of this self-betterment is dwarfed by the effect of whatever they inherit on a personal level. That is to say their "self-betterment potential" makes up a much smaller proportion of their life outcome than was the case for previous generations. The result is a series of increasingly infantilised generation. This is not only corrosive on an individual level, but results in an inefficient society. There is much less potential for human advancement in a society where there is little reward for achievement. We don't want hand-outs from previous generations, we want the ability to forge our own ways in life, which requires previous generations to relinquish their paternalistic monopoly on all advantage. It's a very important distinction.

It's not that "young people nowadays" don't live on beans on toast for a couple of years to save a deposit because they're too good for beans on toast, it's because living on beans on toast for a couple of years would have no ******ing effect whatsoever on saving for a deposit!

[Northerner]

It's not that "young people nowadays" don't live on beans on toast for a couple of years to save a deposit because they're too good for beans on toast, it's because living on beans on toast for a couple of years would have no ******ing effect whatsoever on saving for a deposit!

True, but the virtue of frugality does seem to be lost on the young 'uns today.

[iamnumerate]

You've swallowed the Willetts line whole. And a bit more (far, far higher taxes than today was something today's 70-year-olds and 50-year-olds really do have in common).

Relatively high benefits which are locked? You're thinking of pensioners there. Certainly not Willetts-boomers.

Council house? Not quite sure of the timings there, but again I think it was the generation who lived through the War who really got them en masse. They certainly didn't exist for the 1960s-born Willetts-boomers, nor (I think) for some time before.

I'm a little puzzled by stories of those final-salary pensions. The story my generation learned was that they were useless unless you stuck forever in one job. They weren't transferable between schemes, and your frozen final salary pension on a final salary of £5k in your first job as a young graduate was going to be worthless by the time you reached an age to claim it. So not an option if you expected a career with a range of different employers. That's why they brought in personal pensions, though those were a massive ripoff in terms of huge charges until real competition started to arrive about 10 years ago.

Higher taxes? Very hard to calculate that as NI has gone, allowances have gone away, VAT has increased as have stamp duty. Comparing the amount of tax paid in 1980 and 2015 is almost impossible. For example I earn a similar amount to my Dad but to buy a home like this would cost almost a years wages in stamp duty - which was not the case for him the 1980s! (Before the changes last year it would have been more than a years wages).

[iamnumerate]

Not entirely untrue, except in that in conflates cohorts with very, very different lifetime circumstances.

It's equally true if you substitute "Jew" for every use of the word "boomer" in the above. Uncomfortable thought.

[edit to add] Because that's dangerous ground, let's clarify. My actual point is that "anti-boomer" sentiment is indeed exactly the same social phenomenon as anti-semitism.

It is worth pointing out that housing was cheaper for boomers because then we can ask the question why. The answer we built more homes than we had people coming into the country.

[iamnumerate]

Have you any evidence for your statement "have had and continue to have it significantly easier than those who follow". Real incomes have

more than tripled since the boomers were born. I don't think many of the the generation Ys have any concept of how little their parents had to live on for the first half of their lives.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/8414447/How-UK-incomes-have-risen-and-fallen-since-1948.html

I don't think boomers had significantly easier than young people today apart from with regard to housing, university education. It is not anti boomer sentiment to say that just a statement of fact, if we ignore the problem then we will never have a solution.

[porca misèria]

Housing is vastly more expensive.

Wrong.

Houses are indeed much more expensive.

Housing, by contrast, is much cheaper. What you can either buy[1] or rent for a given proportion of a [minimum|average|typical-graduate|insert-measure-of-choice] income is incomparably better than 30 years ago. Which was, I understand, in turn better than being Rachmann's tenant.

[1] Based on a regular FTB-sized 90% mortgage.

[iamnumerate]

Wrong.

Houses are indeed much more expensive.

Housing, by contrast, is much cheaper. What you can either buy or rent for a given proportion of a [minimum|average|typical-graduate|insert-measure-of-choice] income is incomparably better than 30 years ago. Which was, I understand, in turn better than being Rachmann's tenant.

I find that very hard to believe can you prove it? I know from (what a neighbour paid 23 years ago) that housing where I live (renting or buying) is at least 50% more relative to wages. (That is not including stamp duty which is far more).

[sideysid]

It's not that "young people nowadays" don't live on beans on toast for a couple of years to save a deposit because they're too good for beans on toast, it's because living on beans on toast for a couple of years would have no ******ing effect whatsoever on saving for a deposit!

And this is exactly the point, and is proved by my own situation. I am mid 30s bought my first flat at age 21 with my ex in the early 2000's with an 95% interest only mortgage (no help from parents). We then used the HPI from the flat for a deposit to move into a 3 bed house in 2005 on a repayment mortgage.

My relationship was coming to an end and I expected the crash to be coming soon, so we decided to sell in 2006 and go our seperate ways, with 50k each from the HPI.

Fast forward to today and I've been with my current partner living in her 1 bedroom flat (shared ownership 50% since 2008) and we have a 3 year old child together. She recently has had an inheritance from the sale of her mum and dads house. She does not work as its economically unviable for us due to child care costs, so we rely on my 30k salary.

Combined we would have a total of £150k deposit alongside the sale of the flat, but I could not get a mortgage to be able to afford a 2 bedroom house even in the most undesirable areas in my location (south London) in which I need to be close to transport links working early shifts.

Now please tell me where I've squandered my money and chances in life to not be able to provide my daughter with her own room?

Yes there were high interest rates spikes in the 80s/90s but the house prices were a fraction of what they are today. What average income young generations could ever hope to own property around London and other major cities without a significant crash?

[canbuywontbuy]

Any talk of 'real' incomes first has to agree on an inflation figure. In my opinion inflation has become a political tool and is manipulated so much it's meaningless. When measured against housing incomes have been shrinking rapidly. Living standards are supposed to increase, but in all but the most superficial of ways they've been decreasing since the 90s (at least).

Food, holidays, and consumer electronics are cheaper.

Decent pensions are all but gone.

Higher education has become a debt trap designed to delay entry onto the unemployment figures.

Housing is vastly more expensive.

How can you live without shelter? We've gone from a single salary - even in a normal job like a postman or a truck driver - being enough to support a family in a family home to requiring two well-paid professionals (or maybe top-up benefits) to pay the rent on a flat too small for children. I might have access to more 'stuff', eat out more, and take more flights but in some fundamental ways I'm worse off than my parents were when they were my age.

I'd trade my iPad for a reasonably priced Parker-Morris home in a shot.

'Boomers' might not like to be told they're lucky - people like to think there is a link between effort and reward - but as a group, they are lucky. For those starting out now, that link between effort and reward has been pretty comprehensively destroyed. The fact that the choices of some older people ('BTL is my pension') are directly contributing to the misery is just the icing on the cake.

A standard of living comparable to the previous generation now requires a lottery win or an inheritance.

Boomer-bashing might not be very nice or particularly useful. But before a problem can be fixed you have to admit there is a problem, and there are far too many older people willing to close their eyes and cling to comforting myths - 'I worked hard all my life', 'young people want everything now', 'I'm an accidental landlord', 'I support my kids', 'we ate beans on toast for two years to save a deposit'.

Some acknowledgement of the challenges facing the under-40s would be nice. But in my experience too many older people are too busy justifying their own position in life.

The point about who would manage to buy their own house now, were they starting over again, is a telling one.

Great post irrationalactor - many points succinctly put.

It's not that "young people nowadays" don't live on beans on toast for a couple of years to save a deposit because they're too good for beans on toast, it's because living on beans on toast for a couple of years would have no ******ing effect whatsoever on saving for a deposit!

BlokeInDurham, spot on!

True, but the virtue of frugality does seem to be lost on the young 'uns today.

northerner, how can you agree with the above point, but then make that generalisation. Not sure you're right either - not sure where they're squandering their money, but it's not in nightclubs!

[Si1]

True, but the virtue of frugality does seem to be lost on the young 'uns today.

ffs

[porca misèria]

I find that very hard to believe can you prove it? I know from (what a neighbour paid 23 years ago) that housing where I live (renting or buying) is at least 50% more relative to wages. (That is not including stamp duty which is far more).

23 years ago would put you into that 'golden age' of 1990s lower prices, lower interest rates, and a first generation of accidental landlords kick-starting a non-slum rental market.

Not at all the same as the market I graduated into before fleeing abroad.

[bankstersparadise]

How many boomers could afford to re-buy their current property (or in many cases their first ever property) using the maximum equivalent salary they have EVER earned?

Thats not a fair comparison obviously you can't compare nominal house prices today to nominal wages of the past. You would have to adjust for wage stagnation also....sorry, I mean inflation!! ;-)

[Northerner]

ffs

Nice ...

[Si1]

Nice ...

Is that a video of frugal boomers or something?

[StainlessSteelCat]

For me, there's always a nagging doubt that the boomer narrative has been developed as a diversion, and to create division. After all, it is very easier to identify a boomer - basically anyone older and richer than you - which for many of the young is likely to be a large number (and I suspect that's been true for at least the last century when people were able to move beyond living hand to mouth and begin to save and accumulate even meagre assets).

The real question we should be asking is why with all of the additional productivity since the 1970s are we - old and young alike - not seeing more of it. I don't begrudge the (middle class) boomers a long, comfortable and healthy retirement in decent homes, I just think it should be open to all, and it clearly isn't right now (and nor should people have to wait until their parents, or grandparents, die to access any wealth).

It would be interesting to see how wealth distribution has varied over the last half century or so. My strong suspicion is that huge amounts of it have concentrated in a increasingly small minority of people - and the process has gathered momentum in the last couple of decades.

[SillyBilly]

For me, there's always a nagging doubt that the boomer narrative has been developed as a diversion, and to create division. After all, it is very easier to identify a boomer - basically anyone older and richer than you - which for many of the young is likely to be a large number (and I suspect that's been true for at least the last century when people were able to move beyond living hand to mouth and begin to save and accumulate even meagre assets).

The real question we should be asking is why with all of the additional productivity since the 1970s are we - old and young alike - not seeing more of it. I don't begrudge the (middle class) boomers a long, comfortable and healthy retirement in decent homes, I just think it should be open to all, and it clearly isn't right now (and nor should people have to wait until their parents, or grandparents, die to access any wealth).

It would be interesting to see how wealth distribution has varied over the last half century or so. My strong suspicion is that huge amounts of it have concentrated in a increasingly small minority of people - and the process has gathered momentum in the last couple of decades.

+1

Did make me think this post. I don't begrudge anyone a decent retirement and decent benefits and we could probably afford it if our priorities were in the right areas. Wages stopped tracking productivity around 1980, so we have approaching 40 years of gains to be re-claimed. Realistically we should be on a 4 day (or less) week now (for the SAME wages).

[winkie]

One question that has not been answered is......Who else do you think would be owning all the best houses? surely those who have been living and working the longest would have collected the most.....they will not own what they have got forever.... unless knocked down every house will eventually pass down to the following generations....

[sPinwheel]

One question that has not been answered is......Who else do you think would be owning all the best houses? surely those who have been living and working the longest would have collected the most.....they will not own what they have got forever.... unless knocked down every house will eventually pass down to the following generations....

Yep. One man with a 50 million property portfolio.

[ccc]

I wonder what the next generation up think of this generation and whether they have been 'lucky' or not ?

Any 80 year olds in this place ?!