to feel pissed off with selfish 'baby boomer' generation

[hermionepotter]

this was in response to a newspaper article where people surveyed wanted interest rates to go up. I could be BU I know. But it won't be those paying massive mortgages and debts who'll be wanting rates to go up, will be older people wanting interest on their savings and sod everyone else. So am I BU?

Chunderella- being able to have a career is a pretty big deal too. My mother may have lived in a home financed by my fathers earnings alone, but she never had a decent career, and had to give up work once she had children (as did almost every other mother back then in the 60s/70s) because maternity rights and childcare were pretty much non existent. The only mothers I knew who worked, had evening or weekend jobs for pin money where they relied on a family member or neighbour to mind the kids for a few hours. It's all very well to point the finger at these wives who lived in houses purchased by their husbands income, and never really had to do a full time job in their life again, but I'm sure this wasnt the fulfilling life of riley which some people seem to think. Also, these baby boomer women are now statistically more likely to be outliving their husbands, so I wouldn't be too sure they're living the life of riley now on a state pension either. Ok, so the state pension probably won't exist in future, but do you really think anyone lives a wonderful life on the meagre state pension now?

janey68 those tax credits and childcare subsidies are now only available to those on very low household incomes - there might have been a period in the 2000s when they were generous but they are decidedly not now. I think the household income threshold for tax credits incl. the childcare element is about 22-26k - not a lot.

15% interest rates - which were only for a year in the early 90s (earlier double digit rates were ameliorated by double digit inflation) - can be in any case deceptive. Bear in mind that now real house prices are 3x what they were then. Which would you rather have: a larger percentage of a smaller amount or a smaller percentage of a larger amount? 5% of 300,000 is the same as 15% of 100,000. First time buyer mortgage rates are around 5-6% - not at all the nice low 1-2% rates that boomers with lots of equity get.

Don't you see yet?

I don't think remaining single and childless but having a career, or marrying and having kids but giving up any chance of a decent career, was much choice actually!
And that really was, in reality, the options available for women until relatively recently. Regulated childcare is a recent phenomenon. So are maternity and paternity rights.

And as for the state pension- I think you're under the misapprehension that I'm going to benefit from one chunderella. I am in my 40s. I am not mak

But BabyBoomers did have it easier. Both me and DH do two jobs each and we are very careful with money. But we will never ever be able to afford our own house, a priviledge that was taken for granted by our parents' generation.

Babyboomers put their good fortune down to hard work alone... that is bullshit. Sorry.

Oops!
I am not making any assumptions a state pension will exist when I retire. In fact I assume it won't. I pay several hundred pounds into my pension every month precisely because I assume that a state pension won't exist. And yes, I stand by my point that even if it does, it's a meagre existence, I don't believe any pensioner who is wholly reliant on a state pension is living it up!

YANBU

Obviously every generation tries to make the best of the hand that they are dealt. However, I think there is a problem with the baby-boomers not having empathy and understanding towards the younger generation.

The 'I've worked all my life'-ists who don't understand that the current generation are propping up their totally under-funded final salary pensions.

The 'we scrimped and saved to buy our first house'-ists that don't realise that with current SE house prices you'll still be eating baked beans on your grave before that actually adds up to a deposit on a house from an average wage.

The 'kids spend too much time indoors'-ists - who raised their kids on a GP salary in a five bedroom house with a two acre garden.

The 'I don't agree with young 'uns in nursery' brigade - that forget that their own mothers gave them years of free childcare

And so on!

ioughtobecosier you say we shouldn't call the baby boomers, individually or collectively, selfish - but how does that square with the fact that a majority of them (logically, and looking at historical voting patterns) voted Conservative during the Thatcher era? When Conservative policies sold themselves explicitly as selfish and individualistic, based around reduction of labour rights, private ownership, investment greed and so on? Lots of things that have contributed to the current financial and housing crisis stem directly from that era - the removal of secure tenancies and their replacement by the short term AST, Right to Buy, the removal of union powers over wage-setting, the encouragement of property speculation and a mentality of no such thing as society, carpetbagging, greed is good, short term profit and everyone for him or herself. And the boomers voted en masse for these things over a long period of time: they knew what they were voting for, so it's hardly unfair of us to say that they did!

Whenever I hear a boomer saying something like: "but it's not our fault, we were just looking out for ourselves and did what anyone would have done and we just happened to get lucky but we didn't do it deliberately so you can't blame us, but oh look my children can't afford a house and I worry what will happen to them", I ask if they ever voted for Thatcher. And if they didn't, I ask which of their friends they think voted for Thatcher. And then I suggest they go and complain directly to those friends that their children can't afford houses, because it sure as heck ain't my fault.

'Boomer women' (how I dislike that term) could return to work after having a baby, but they would most likely be returning to work for an employer tgat was not at all sympathetic to their changed circumstances.

Returning to a management role in public service on a reduced hours/part-time basis post-maternity leave was virtually unheard of. As was flexible working - it was 9 to 5 in those days and signing in under the red line if you were late for work.

We didn't have the protection of the Equality acts then either. When I told my manager I was pregnant they cancelled my training courses (which had already been booked!). When I said I would return to work I was told that mothers should be at home for their children.

I passed my promotion board but it took them 4 years to give me a post in the higher grade because I worked part-time(because of childcare) whereas my full-time colleagues waited about 6 weeks for a post.

Yes, working as a mother could be a constant battle.

Chunderella- the point I'm making is not arguing the detail of how one generation has it 'better'- because as many of us have pointed out, there are swings and roundabouts and so many variables that it becomes a meaningless argument

What I'm saying is that you cannot lump people of one age group altogether, as if their life experiences and outcomes are all the same and all a result of the 'luck' or 'bad luck' of being born in a particular year

You are doing the same with me: saying that I am only able to afford my pension because of my age. Wrong. I know plenty of women of my age (many of my friends among them) who don't have adequate pension provision. Equally, I have some younger (and older) colleagues who do. Again, there are many variables to consider. I am able to afford my pension payments because I have worked full time for my entire career apart from 4 years when I worked 3 days a week, and a total of 6 months maternity leave for my children. Now- heaven forbid that this should turn into a WOHM/SAHM debate!!- and I'm certainly not telling anyone else how they should live their life, it's up to them. But people aren't all automatons - they make choices, and yes Of course we all have to make choices within the parameters available to us, but that still allows for a wide variation in how people live.

If what you say is true, then every woman of my age would have marvellous job security and a guaranteed good pension. That patently isn't true. The fact is that most women of all age groups have inadequate pension provision. If what you say is true, then all baby boomer pensioners would be living the life of riley. That patently isn't true. Many pensioners are really hard up.

Life is only black and white if you live in daily mail land. Back in the real world it's shades of grey, and you can't simply lump people of one age group together and make sweeping generalisations about what their lives are like

Even within the same generation (post boomer) there is an imbalance caused by extremely low interest rates. I have some family who have borrowed (to me) vast sums to buy large houses or second homes to do up and sell on, they are still afloat despite imprudence (in my eyes) as they are enjoying low interest rates. Their leveraged houses have maintained a value that seems ludicrous when compared with local earnings (we are not in London.) This works against younger people trying to get on the housing ladder.

Meanwhile we are all getting poorer on a world scale due to quantitive easing.

Janey - yes you can make generalisations based on majorities and historical data; why not? Obviously there are exceptions; but generalisations tell us important things about the way the world is. If I say the boomers did not have to pay tuition fees, that fact is true regardless of how many of them did or didn't go to university. That group as a whole did not have an expectation of paying for education, whether or not they participated in education. That expectation is now not the case.

Another example: you say many pensioners are hard up. Of course some pensioners are hard up. But the aggregate data shows that pensioners as a group are now one of the least hard-up groups in society by age, both in income and asset terms. Young people and young families are much worse off in both income and asset terms. So should we ignore that data because a few pensioners are not rich and we have collective memories of pensioners being poor in the 80s and 90s?

YABU. It's not a whole generation that's at fault. Put the blame where it belongs. With the Government.

I'm on the edge of the Baby-boomer thing at 48. I bought my first house when I was 25, so I came in when the property prices had started to edge up. My house is now worth 3 times what I paid for it.

We could afford to buy it at today's prices, as my husband recently got a very good job, but we'd be tight for money.

I have a 13 year old dd and am sad to think that she will never be able to stand on her own two feet as we did. I came from a council estate, worked hard, met DH, we saved up enough to buy a dilapidated terraced house and did it up before I moved to the semi we live in now.

We were lucky. We are currently planning on using the equity in our house to buy our daughter's first place, when she's at university. She will be lucky, if we manage to achieve our goal.

Yes, we lived through crappy times. We face crappy ones when we're older as I have never paid enough into my pension and DH's pension is worth buttons. There is also the danger that our house will be taken by the government if we need care, but that's one of life's chances.

My sister, who is 7 years older than me, so a proper BB, is living in council accommodation, providing free childcare to her grandchildren. She lived through a divorce from a drunk, repossession of her house and a period of time living in a place that makes Belfast in the 70s look like a Haven Holiday.

Put the blame where it belongs. With the government and the Bankers. And consider one last point. If you had the advantages the baby boomers had, wouldn't you take them? You want what they had, so why hate them for it???

badasahatter, all good points, but I'm not sure that if we 'had the advantages the baby boomers had', we would in fact take them at the cost of our own children, no.

It's the personal nature of the OP which sits uncomfortably for many of us. To be "pissed off" with an entire generation of people, as if they personally are responsible for every ill in today's society and economy, is ridiculous. It's also illogical, because the attitude of the OP seems to be one of envy: she wants what the baby boomers have (in her perception at any rate) so she's basically admitting that if she'd lived through their era, she'd have taken advantage of the lower house prices etc.

If it makes you feel better, be envious of an era, not the individuals who happened to live through it. If you wish you'd lived back in the day when your husband could get a mortgage on his salary, and you didn't have to work ( or indeed couldnt work) then fair enough, be honest and admit that you wish you'd lived then, but don't heap blame on the individuals who did. And don't assume that they wouldn't be envious of the choices available to you...

But janey, the OP says that her post is in response to a survey where real actual individuals said they wanted interest rates to go up. That's why she's 'pissed off' with them.

badasahatter, who voted for the government?

janey68 if a generation is happy to vote to enrich themselves, why shouldn't we ask them to take done blame for doing so? IMO complaining that when you voted for something you didn't engage your brain and common sense and work out it might end up rebounding on your children is hardly an excuse now, is it?

*some

Train- I just don't buy into the idea that any one generation is intrinsically more selfish than another. I agree that by and large people tend to be motivated by the 'what's in it for me ?' agenda. There are some people who think and act more altruistically, but a lot of people will vote for policies which will benefit them personally.

I just don't see any evidence provided by the OP for her assertion that one particular generation of people behaved selfishly, and that if the generations which followed had lived through that era, then somehow magically they would have behaved differently. Nope, I don't buy into that at all. Humans are humans; I don't think the current 20 something's (or 30 or 40 something's or indeed any age group) had a monopoly on altruism, and one particular generation were all intrinsically selfish. People are people, and usually operate with similar motivations. What changes is the circumstances people live in- not people themselves

But Janey, does it make a difference that in the past 100 years some political movements and parties have explicitly sold themselves as based on theories of being selfish or self-interested, and others as collectively minded? Those who voted for one rather than the other were making choices that were guided by an explicit notion of selfishness (or individualism, self-interest, call it what you will).

There is a longstanding heritage in neoliberalism, neorealism and conservativism dating back to Hobbs in which the tenet is that our collective interests are best served by allowing untrammelled self-interest to reign - so that economic and social order is maintained by competing clashes of self-interest. This is an explicit part of theories of the free market, for example. The alternative tradition is a more collaborative, statist one which sees the collective interest as the guardian of the individuals within it.

The public and private sphere in the 70s and 80s was hardly bereft of warnings of what Reaganism and Thatcherism would lead to when people were voting in their masses (majorities!) for economic and social policies based explicitly on ideas of selfishness and self-interest. If the voting masses didn't listen because they thought eg. Tony Benn was an old socialist windbag or the striking miners were a bit annoying, that doesn't really make things better.

Plenty of people voted Labour in that time too! Not enough to stop the Tories being in for ages, but plenty - that simple fact alone should tell you that you simply can't generalise across a generation. It might feel nice to generalise and to have a neat, contained group of people to blame, but it doesn't make any logical sense at all (and really plays into some people's divide and rule agenda). By all means blame everyone who voted in a particular way, but that group simply doesn't neatly and completely coincide with any one particular generation.

There would be less anger directed at baby boomers if so many of them did not refuse to acknowledge the problems faced by young people especially with regards to housing. For every 1 that acknowledges young people are getting a raw deal there are 100 that babble on about "15% interest rates" (ignoring the massive offset effect of MIRAS, and drastically lower house prices of the time). I'm sure boomers had their own set of problems but that doesn't cancel out the ones of the youth of today.

Blaming young people for not voting is a naff argument too, the only party who have attempted to pretend they want to look out for the young are the lib dems - and they betrayed those same young people in the most horrific way they minute they got near power. Demographics are simply against the young, they are heavily outnumbered and until the boomers start to die off no political party will attempt to represent the minority group of younger people.

I've come round to thinking votes should be weighted as a function of age and intelligence, such that votes count for less as you reach the end of your life since you won't have to live with the long-term consequences of those votes.

Yes train, we're not arguing about that. It's the lack of evidence to support the OPs assertion that the baby boomer generation are inherently more selfish. She hasn't provided any evidence for that whatsoever.

These threads crop up periodically and they are always slightly baffling because the OP never offers any evidence to suggest that previous or more recent generations would have behaved any differently. And the threads usually start from the stance of envying one specific aspect - usually cheaper house prices relative to income, or final salary pensions, while ignoring all the other aspects which contribute to overall quality of life which were less favourable.

And finally, the OPs who start these threads never explain what they would have done differently. Would they have passed up the opportunity to buy a house? If they'd worked full time for 40 years in the public sector and paid into the pension scheme available to them, would they have said 'no thanks' when they became eligible to draw that pension? Would they have said hang on, I won't take it at age 65, I'll choose to work another 10 years because that's what my grandchildren might need to do? I don't think so!

I think there's a confusion here about policies and people . We all know that some political policies are based on self interest more than others. That's nothing new. But the OP is blaming an entire generation for being inherently more selfish than other individuals, and yet provides no evidence for that at all