What did the Boomers ever do for me?

[Nomama]

In the interests if balance, you understand!

I shall start with the Ford machinists:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_sewing_machinists_strike_of_1968

Equal Pay Act 1970

My thanks to you, Baby Boomers. Without you I couldn't have earned the same honest day's pay as the man working next to me. Hell, I couldn't even have got the job in the first place.

Now this generation needs to thoroughly break the Glass Ceiling!

Oh and I am a union member and do sign petitions(many more of our generation does thanks to the internet).

Oh and re spoon fed,we're all working our arses off and trying to raise a family.I find "spoon fed" insulting and the same old excuse trotted out.

Still not seeing any sensible suggestions.

Suggestions would include becoming more informed and then lobbying your MP and becoming more politicised. Demand what changes you require from society.

As Garlic said, your parents and grandparents did, even we, the Gen Xrs did. Gen Y (Gen Wii??, The Millenials) are the ones that lost the political habit - born 1980 into the 2000s.

But if you do, be prepared for your kids to hate you for whatever it is you get. At the moment they may have a problem with what Gen Y did not do!

But you don't mean that, do you? You mean how do you get more money in your pocket. Suggestion, save, starting in your early 20s and do without some stuff in order to keep saving growth regular. Small savings soon grow.

If it is too late for you give your kids the gift of a saving habit. That may have been the most important thing my pre-boomer years Nana gave me!

Interesting point earlier abiut wants v needs. As i see it, younger generation can fairly easily and affordably get its wants met- to travel, tech, clothes etc but not their needs- for affordable housing, for stable careers! And i know NO late teens with a car- their parents are too busy trying to pay uni fees & board, plus mortgage. I know several people who retired in their 50s inc a couple who promptly came straight back as freelance consultants, no guilt at all! I know many more who have several houses and a few foreign hols a year and this after a modest career and income.
What hope for our children? Uni debt, zero hours contracts or unpaid internships, first house at 40 (average age of first time buyer now)

It's utterly hysterical- save.

Er how exactly?

Many of us are running 1 very old car,with a hefty mortgage for not a lot,no holidays,bills as low as poss,paying for childcare.........

Where is this extra cash in our pay packets because I'm not seeing it.

My mother makes me laugh. They bought a 4 bed detached house in 1969 for 4k, when she was 22. Says to me, "but I didn't have a washing machine like you do".

So if I give up my £200 washing machine, at 48 years old, will I now be able to afford that 4 bed detached house? No, sadly not. Because that 4 bed house now sells for £375k.

We are stuck in a 2 bed terraced house where we can't afford to put the heating on, and have just opened up the fireplace so that we can burn wood that we find out walking. We will never be able to afford to move to a bigger house. We don't have Sky television. We don't eat out. We work 70.5 hours a week between us. We have just one car. We would have loved another child but a) I'm too old now (!!) and b) we couldn't have afforded to buy a house with another bedroom if we'd had a second child of a different gender to the first. We can't afford to adopt because we don't have a spare bedroom for the adopted child. Bla, bla, bla. I could go on.

My mother has never worked, btw. I have worked all my life and still have another 20 years to go.

This is when I feel a little bit annoyed. These ridiculous comments about washing machines are just that, ridiculous.*

Totally agree. Every generation expect to take advantage of advances in technology.

What did the boomers do for me? Lived beyond their means, racked up huge debt to fund giving them more money than they paid in and left the next two generations to pay it off and put up with decreasing living standards.

They will go down in history is the greedyist and most selfish generation ever, as paxman said.

Nom you aren't informed.

Are you really unaware as how little there is to vote for as regards the non wealthy younger generation.

MPs favour the grey vote and are often from wealthy families ie they have no idea or desire to help your younger Joe Blogs.

This utopia of options we just have to sign at the ballot box to achieve is utterly ridiculous.

Flo - I would argue that there are some of us that would gladly spend a day doing the washing by hand if we didn't have to go out to work 5 days a week and send our children to strangers before and after school just to pay the rent/mortgage. There is a very different pressure involved in going to work, having 'performance assessments' every few months, having to make yourself look presentable each day, behave nicely all day, and be polite to people you really can't stand, than there is being at home, and having a good old swear to yourself when the mangle cracks your buttons or you burn your arm, and not having to put on a face for 'people at work' when things are too much at home as well as work. Completely different.

However, I totally concede that in terms of attitudes towards equality and equal rights, we absolutely do have it better. But I remain unconvinced that the pressure/stress of paid employment/work as well as trying to raise a happy family and keep them feeling as though you are always there for them is compensated for by the lack of physical drudgery involved nowadays in housework.

Interesting thread!

I don't know enough to comment on whether I think the baby boomers have caused problems for my generation. But I do find it crass when the current generation is criticised for being entitled but there is a small section of people who have wealth gained from rising house prices simply by virtue of having a mortgage and are drawing final salary pensions but state they deserve this simply because they paid into it.

Granted these people scrimped and saved to pay their mortgage and went without in order to contribute to their pension, but they are still in a far better financial position than someone in the current working generation would be if they did the same now. Luck is having bought a house that more than doubled in price over a number of years, though for some reason people feel they deserved this because they saved to buy the house in the first place. I do think there are some people that just don't recognise that the same opportunities for luck and sacrifices = reward don't exist nowadays.

Sooooo so far we have save with your imaginary spare cash and vote from your huge array of imaginary political parties that favour the young- oh and sign a few petitions.That will get us a decent retirement and future for our children.

Oh to have the luxury of being able to be so naive.

I am not of the baby boomer generation.

1. Progress in any economy is a progression of the sustained efforts of generations upon the accomplishments of their predecessors. So, in a very real sense, the BB generation built upon their predecessors, and passed on to us a better, more prosperous, more equitable and more wealthy world.

1. If you don't believe that, take your average 'poor' person in the UK, who is able to live a life with greater access to money, greater access to education, greater access to a more superior level of health care, at absolutely no personal cost, than any previous generation in history, and at a level almost incomparable to any other country in the world (secondary school education at state level is an exception here, which appears to be declining in standard).

1. The economic landscape of every generation changes. It is a fact of life. You cannot compare a manufacturing based economy, with an intellectual property based economy developing in the Information Age. You can whine all you like about, 'Daddy was able to get a job for life making springs for Ford'. He still can. He just needs to be willing to do it in this economy. But Daddy couldn't earn £200K a year shooting YouTube videos on his iPhone, unless he was willing to put the effort into inventing the iPhone, the Internet, and YouTube.

1. You have to accept that the world changes every day. It does so whether you like it or not. Every change impacts on the world economic climate. It is not something ANY individual generation can choose or alter. So cherry picking economic disparities based on single subjective narrow focused parameters without comparing them to other governing factors is both asinine and moot.

1. We owe every success and failure in our world to its people, and we must take responsibility for that, not perpetuate the narrow minded paradigm of 'point the finger and blame someone else'. If you are stuck in that mindset, you read too many newspapers and watch too much television. Do not blindly buy into dogma and rhetoric just because it is what you have been taught.

Again...

You do not pay Uni fees. Your kids do once they are earning. If you choose to pay them you are, as Martin Lewis pointed out, utterly barking!

I know lots of kids who are given cars... boomer grandparents perhaps? There parents are not boomers, not old enough.

Savings, well, I did say you had to start very early in life and I did point out that the monthly cost of a mobile phone would be a start.

But like the other information I linked to, that has been ignored.

Petite, you are missing the point regarding voting. Unless you do it, unless you start demanding, then those who do, the squeaky wheel, will be heard. It is not enough to recognise that someone else is getting other voice heard. You have to do what earlier generations did, SHOUT for what you want!

Again, I am NOT a boomer. I am informed. I am politically active.

So times have changed(yup think we realised that), what should we do after excepting that(which I think most have)?

In many cases, house prices have way more than doubled! My dparents in S.West bought for £25k in 1981, sold for £300k in 1996. A ataggering 12-fold increase in 15 years! They then traded down, using their equity to buy not one but 3 houses. Yes, they were frugal in early marriage (as were we!) but that is an unbelievable ei dfall to get pre-retirement. That and 2 final salary pensions.
All the saving in the world could not get us anything like their (unearned) bounty. They are just an incredibly privileged generation. But don't know it. Not their fault, luck thats all. But to preach that we should behave as they did when we will get none of the benefits is pure folly .

Nom you are missing the point.

There.is.nobody.to.vote.for.

I won't be paying a penny of my dc's uni fees however they will actually need to pay rent,eat and pay for living expenses whilst at uni.The loans if you earn over a certain amount don't cover it.

We had grants and loans which went on living expenses so our parents didn't have to pay a penny.

Have you read all of the parties' manifestos LePetit?

Rita I know all about the pressures of working and bringing up a family - I'm doing it too. But trust me, I wouldn't have had my mum's so-called non working life for anything.

The physical drudgery of many womens' lives until the late twentieth century - and the isolation - seems to have been completely forgotten. And you couldn't have told them to 'leave the bastard' as they had no financial means to do so. If there is a lack of awareness among older generations about the hardship of young peoples' lives then it cuts both ways.

Sooooo so far we have save with your imaginary spare cash...

Free cash is a product of providing utility to the market in exchange for money, and consuming less in utility provided by others than you are willing to give into the market. You put more in than you take out and day out save the difference.

I have no television. I have no smartphone. I have no car. I also claim no benefits from others. We work, we buy food, clothe ourselves, pay our rent, electricity, gas, etc. And we save whatever is left. Yes if I smoked, played on my Xbox, watched my 42" plasma screen TV and kept in touch on my iPhone, I would not be saving, but saving is a choice for most. They tend to choose luxury and instant self gratification over future security and self reliance.

... and vote from your huge array of imaginary political parties that favour the young- oh and sign a few petitions.That will get us a decent retirement and future for our children.

Voting to support and sustain the status quo is dumb IMO. I realise this is contentious, but government control has never improved the economy, or the lives of its people better than a free market economy will. The solution to improving the country is rarely, 'well let's just take money from the people and give it to corporations to do things for them.'

Don't need to.

Tories,Labour,Lib Dems and Ukip won't be getting my vote whatever they put in their manifesto.

Have read the Greens.

chica - what you described as luck was the act of being born at a certain time.

Don't think that counts as luck, especially if you see luck as being something you have some control over, something you make (like Thomas Jefferson) rather than something that just falls out of the sky!
.

Come on- the old clear left-right divide is long gone! Other than basket-cases like UKIP, theres v little between the electable parties. I would love the Greens to win but am so alone in this view that they are unelectable unless we being in PR.

Erm no IPhone,Plasma tv.......... here thanks.

there are some of us that would gladly spend a day doing the washing by hand if we didn't have to go out to work 5 days a week and send our children to strangers before and after school just to pay the rent/mortgage. There is a very different pressure involved in going to work, having 'performance assessments' every few months, having to make yourself look presentable each day, behave nicely all day, and be polite to people you really can't stand, than there is being at home, and having a good old swear to yourself when the mangle cracks your buttons or you burn your arm, and not having to put on a face for 'people at work' when things are too much at home as well as work. Completely different.

I would rather wash by hand, evrytime!

Have you read all of the parties' manifestos LePetit?

Regardless of what party you are talking about, and I didn't read to find out, what you are effectively asking is, 'Have you read all the parties' lists of what they think people want to hear?' You are talking about politics here. Politics IS NOT about giving people what they want. politics is about telling people what you need to tell them in order to get into power, remain in power, and remain solvent.

Petit, no, I am not missing the point, I think you are just too far removed from politics to see it how I do. I am politically active, I vote and I campaign. I rarely sign petitions, they do very little, but I do get involved at local level - which feeds into the mainstream, national party politics

And loans didn't exist back then, and as far as I am concerned, never did cover all expenses, certainly not for me, like most I worked all through my degree. I was the first to go to Uni, there was no chance of it for my boomer parents.

Seriously, some of the things you 'know' really are exaggerations and weird stereotypes that a delighted media push upon us. Blaming one generation for the ills of another is ridiculous and ignores or bastardises so many peoples experiences.