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!

[Fadingmemory]

Roasting - we Boomers worked and lived according to the conditions of the time. We had no gift of prophecy and, as ever, hindsight is a wonderful thing. Nor were a large proportion of us slavishly supportive of government policy.

I truly pity you for the difficulty or impossibility of buying property, of making a salary that can be lived on and for the prospect of being unable to retire until you are 70. I am not, though, responsible.

[SconeRhymesWithGone]

You have a good point, DustBunny. Here in the US, Boomers are known as the generation who rode the buses as Freedom Riders in the Civil Rights Movement, who fought for women's rights as part of second wave feminism (and helped establish women's domestic violence refuges), and who led the anti-war movement.

This was recognized as early as 1966 by Time Magazine with their second group selection for Man of the Year (now Person of the Year).

[FaFoutis]

Sold me a hugely overpriced house they bought for peanuts.

I don't know any boomers who were involved in anything political, unless you count their more recent support of UKIP. I know a lot of middle class boomers (motto: 'I paid in').

[Andrewofgg]

I plead guilty to being a public-sector boomer, 1952 vintage. And yes, I am choosing to work beyond 60 when I could have gone which a PP called job-hogging and I call earning a living rather than not earning a living.

Roasting the reason your generation can't have a house and one earner is that building societies c. 1972 stopped ignoring women's earnings in deciding how much to lend - which gave two-income couples much more to spend, massively increased the equity of existing homeowners, and screwed the chances for single-income couples or of course singletons of either sex.

But would we want to go back to lenders only considering one income, presumably the higher, even if that was in some cases the woman's income?

[paxtecum]

Roasting: you are full of bitterness and I think you are misdirecting your anger.

[HeraldAngelSinging]

Dancingwithmyselfandthecat Technically speaking some boomers were born before 1944 when their fathers were home on leave - as mine was and I was born 9 months later. Then he went back for a further 4 years and well, well, my sister was born in 1946. I didn't know him when he finally came home.....

Yes, I've had a good life though.

Suicide was decriminalised in 1961.

[FaFoutis]

Roasting: you are full of bitterness and I think you are misdirecting your anger.

That is quite patronising.

[SconeRhymesWithGone]

Job-hogging: what a nasty and ageist expression.

[senua]

building societies c. 1972 stopped ignoring women's earnings in deciding how much to lend - which gave two-income couples much more to spend, massively increased the equity of existing homeowners, and screwed the chances for single-income couples or of course singletons of either sex.

You said it for me andrew It used to be one, man's wage that bought the home. Then we had women's jobs so a couple suddenly had two incomes to spend. House prices rose accordingly, as they always will under the rules of supply and demand. So we naively thought we were doing the right, feminist thing but we were - apparently, unbeknown to us - messing up the next generation.
Another thing we never had - no help with childcare costs. Assuming there was childcare, of course, provision was very patchy. And only three months maternity leave. Who is paying for the current generation's twelve months leave and places at nursery?

[WetAugust]

Boomer here and agree that we have a good standard of living. However, many of us have been working since we left school at 16 and will continue to do so until we draw our State pensions at 66. I'd go as far as to say that the generation before us had it even better In the 50s and 60s when you could buy a large 3 bed house for a few thousand and retire at 60

Yes, today's generation have been totally screwed. Promised riches via a worthless degree which were not delivered. Priced out the housing market. Saddled with student loans and probably having to work until they die.

I really don't understand why they are tolerating this system without any real complaint They should be marching in the streets at the unfairness of it

[Scaredycat3000]

That's really interesting about the mortgage change Andrew. So women's lib ruined the housing market
It is very galling listening to DM 'worrying' about money when they paid off their mortgage a few years ago, 3 bed semi, cashing in her bonds and reinvesting and has taken early retirement on a whim, all on her and DF unskilled jobs. Whilst I sit in a rented house, could get thrown out at the owners whim, next to no pension plan having paid off my student loans and knowing the only way out for housing security for my DC might be an inheritance when I am to old to get a mortgage and they have left home. No two jobs here, no family near by and OH shifts make two salaries of which one won't be spent on childcare impossible.

[senua]

Promised riches via a worthless degree which were not delivered.

Again that is simple supply and demand. Degrees were never going to maintain a 'salary premium' when 50% of the population had them. You must have known that "past performance is no guarantee of future returns".

[Scaredycat3000]

Oh yes the worthless degree, hands up here's mine! I should have done an apprenticeship, but they barely existed in the 90's. And the thing was to get the 'yoof to uni.

[OxonConfusedDotCom]

Wet- so good to hear your honest views! We are all screwed but the boomers vote disproportionately so their income alone in real terms is protected while everyone else's goes down. Agree, have no idea why there are no protests in the street!

[Scaredycat3000]

Senua can you answer my question on the last page about comparable prices please? I'm really interested in the answer. And how was I meant to understand that about degrees, I was 17 and my elders, the boomers, were telling me to go to uni, it was the dream!

[WetAugust]

In 79 you could buy a 3 bed Victorian terrace for about £5k. By 1982 that had risen to around £25k. By 1986 it was £36k. Now it would be around £280k

I applied to my building society for a mortgage in 1982. They asked how long I had been saving with them. When I said 2 years, they told me to come back when I had been saving for 5 years!

I remember house prices rising steeply when the Chancellor announced that couples could not claim 2 lots of tax relief on their joint mortgages. There was a stampede to purchase before that law came in. I am amazed that house prices have not fallen as historically offices have been cyclical, but if we gave 260,000 extra people arriving in the Uk each year and all needing somewhere to live you can see this will help to keep house prices high through the additional demand. We need to build more houses.

[Andrewofgg]

Indeed WetAugust we need to build more houses and we need to throttle Mr and Ms NIMBY and NODAM to do it.

[Tobyjugg]

I sometimes think the real issue with boomers (& I'm one - born mid 1950s) is that we knew how to play the system.

[TamzinGrey]

I'm a Boomer (hate that word) born in 1954. Left school at 16 along with most of my friends. Didn't go to university - hardly any of us did back then. I went immediately into work , the very next week after leaving school - no such luxury as a "Gap Years" in those days.

After 33 years of hard slog in local government I was suddenly made redundant. They timed it deliberately so that I was just short of my 50th birthday which meant that they could save money by not giving me a pension. I've never been able to get another job as nobody wants to employ anyone over the age of 50 in my profession.

We manage, just about, but only because DH is still clinging onto his low paid job. Yes, we do own a house. but only because we managed to pay off the mortgage with my redundancy money. We have no savings at all, and if DH ever loses his job we will be completely stuffed. Nobody will employ people at our age.

I'm sick to death of sweeping statements being used to describe whole generations.

Oh, and OP, I was at Greenham Common too

[Tobyjugg]

In 1978 a 2 bed Victorian terrace in South London cost us £16K.

[WetAugust]

Don't forget Mr and Mrs BANANA too.

I disagree about Boomers knowing how to play the system. The thing was there was a template that you followed. Leave school, get a job (or be one if the 5%that went to Uni). Stay at home until you married and moved into your small owner-occupied starter home. Then you had the kids, moved into a bigger house, thought about having a few luxuries, such as a new car or a foreign holiday......

It's was the expected pattern to follow.

And yes, we had no free childcare so it had to be laid for from taxed income. And working part time in. 'Good' job was pretty much unheard of. My central govt dept only allowed it's middle management to start part time working in the mid 1980s.

[ouryve]

Their education system far outshone the shitty comprehensive experiment my generation was forced to go through. You were educated to a level you wanted

This is nonsense. My dad passed his 11+ but still didn't get a place at grammar school. He came from the wrong side of town.

[OxonConfusedDotCom]

Not nonsense- my dad went on full scholarship to local public sch, gave him a steo up to orofessional career/contacts.
In reaction to that, he sent me to local shitty comp. i know which one i'd rather have been at and who had the better education.

[Andrewofgg]

And Mr and Ms SOBBY who want all improvements to the infrastructure and socially useful projects, as long as they are in Some Other Bugger's Back Yard.