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!

I think this thread is confusing two issues.

The first (where the OP started) is what have boomers done for themselves and generations to come, and what is their lasting legacy? On that basis, the generation as a whole is found wanting, I think. The gains that were hard-won by pre-boomers and early-boomers are fast disappearing, and we (I sort-of count myself, born just a bit later than 1964) have allowed that on our watch. Notwithstanding a few of us speaking out and doing what we can to fight for a more equal and caring society, the boomer generation as a whole has not effectively defended society at large against a neoliberalist agenda which has seen a massive redistribution of wealth from ordinary people to the top 1%.

The second issue is have boomers disproportionately benefited from economic policies, and as a generation are they now living the high life at the expense of their children and grandchildren? To an extent, many are. But as someone said some way upthread, you need to factor class, race, gender, disability and just personal luck into the analysis - some have done very well, others less so. My parents (pre-boomers, born early 1930s) did extraordinarily well from working class beginnings, made shedloads of money out of right to buy - their council house in London ended up being worth a fortune, they sold it, moved out of London, retired early and live very comfortably indeed off the proceeds plus their pensions.

In my perfect fantasy future, boomers, pre-boomers and post-boomers collectively decide that what matters is a good standard of living for everyone and collectively decide to do something about it. With a bit of redistribution away from the 1% there's plenty to go round. So if we all think that what matters is affordable housing and pensions available at 65, let's elect the politicians who'll deliver on that, and bolster the organisations (like trade unions) which should have the clout to hold those politicians to account. Rather than use the race-to-the-bottom argument (bad boomers, getting what we who come later haven't got and can't hope for) let's try racing to the top instead, and get a good deal for everyone.

WetAugust You are right on both counts. I walked into a good job with just O levels. It would be degree entry level now.
We were also the generation who had to work full time after DC or give up. In fact I only just missed a rule whereby women had to resign upon marriage! There was no flexible working, little nursery provision (certainly no free nursery places) and much less maternity pay / leave than there is now.
Gradually as I got older my employer realised that flexible working and nursery places would allow them to retain valuable and experienced staff instead of constantly having to replace those who left to have families.

The Boomers gave us Pop and Rock. You've just got to love them for that alone.

SecretSquirrels If you don't mind me asking which sector was that? In the Civil Service the marriage bar was suspended in 1939 (for reasons which had nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with releasing for more pressing tasks) and never brought back into force before it was abolished in the late Forties.

I keep reading about free nursery places. This was introduced when DS1 was about 3. Problem is, it was for so few hours and our nursery was not participating, we had to stick with paying full time. At one point when Ds1 & DS2 were both in nursery full time, we were paying over £1600 per month - more than our mortgage. And I count myself lucky because nursery fees are a lot cheaper here than in the south east. I used to patiently explain this to more senior (much better paid) colleagues who were moaning about the cost of putting a child through uni (on the the old £3k fees). Not everyone lives close enough to rely on grandparents - or has living or sufficiently well parents to call on this support.

Ps I realise DH and I are very fortunate to have jobs that making work (just about) worthwhile.

My mother (teacher) certainly remembered the marriage bar. When she married in 53 she could carry on working (just - although I think it was not that long since the marriage bar was in place). In about 1929 my grandfather was reported in local papers of advocating that only male doctors be hired not female locally because there was a shortage of jobs for men (sexist pig).

Free nurseries - i think they were free or cheap during WWII to allow women to work and then when the men came home plenty of women had a rough time of it - out of a job, with men they no longer liked who were damaged by war and no free nurseries any more.

On the dates above ai am about one year into the boomer years but I don't feel like that - retirement age at almost 70 with virtually no pension. No equity in the house other than what I've actually saved and put into it. Having to help children with student fees etc.

In general in terms of my own children I always feel they have a lot more money and all sorts of comforts like being able to afford things like hair conditioner and orange juice and eating in a cafe which we never ever did.

JanetBookLover I think even for teachers the marriage bar had in practice been abandoned in 1939.

Your grandfather was not a sexist pig, at least not necessarily; he was of his time. I am old enough to remember when many women agreed that men should have preference for promotion because they had families to support - and if you expected to give up work for good when you married or when your first child was on the way you might well be of that view. It's no good seeing the past through the eyes of the present.

DH's boss asked if I was giving up work when we announced our engagement - in 2003! Same again he found out I was expecting #1. He was only about 55 at the time, bloody dinosaur!

DustBunnyFarmer Now that is dinosaur!

He's still on the loose, rampaging through the workforce though I think tempered by younger colleagues like DH.

I stand exactly on the cusp of being a 'Boomer' and Gen-X so I can look at both generations with equanimity.

The major problem I have with Boomers is that they wilfully allowed the hard won rights they enjoyed that their parents fought (and often died) for to be eroded.

For example, the people who stand at the top of corporations now are boomers and will retire on fat pensions but fight tooth and nail to have equal pay, minimum wage and employment rights in general rolled back. Looking at working life for many people now it strongly reminds me of the 1970s.

What could we do, other than plan with the information that we had at the time, and access government help when it was available? Part of that information was that men would retire at 65, women at 60. And that the state would be happy to give Home Responsibility Protection for a parent staying at home to look after a child up to the age of 16. Meanwhile being bombarded with how the break-up of the family was damaging the young people being raised.

Boomers lived far beyond the nations means, consistently year after year (with VERY few exceptions) spending money they didn't have on benefits (in the wider societal sense) that they could not afford. They knowingly lumbered todays and tomorrows generation with the bills for their profligacy.

Todays generation are doing exactly the same. The 'savage' cuts still leave us massively overspent each and every year, no one seriously believes that this or future administrations will eliminate the deficit let alone the the actual debt. Policies to genuinely spend within our means are so unpopular that no serious party even offers them.

So boomers had it good, this generation has it not so good, their children will have it shit, their grandchildren will no doubt be the subject of charity from the developed world.

This will continue until we manage to control our spending. We already spend a huge proportion of our national expenditure on servicing the interest (not capital!!) on this debt (more than we do on defence or transport, or police and courts, or personal social care and services, or housing and the environment) and we aint seen nothing yet.

A plague on all of our houses.

I am positively exploding with GRRR over this issue - it's even keeping me awake, which is why I'm marking my place (how entitled, typical of my generation) to read the thread tomorrow.

I will say, though: Ticking time bomb? Bed blockers? Job hoggers? Too expensive (to live)? Honestly, how would you feel if you were called all these things, with real venom, every single day?

Another 40-yr old here...(with no assets, to establish my own credentials)... who therefore feels free to hate both the selfish taking boomers and the feckless materialistic young.

Now that I've alienated everyone, can I point out that everyone on this thread is correct.

The real problem is that Britain is a society deeply divided between the rich and the poor. It has been since the industrial revolution, or perhaps enclosure. There was a very brief post-war period when it looked like things might be different, when some social equality was allowed. Instead, over the baby boomers' generation, those gains have been reversed and eroded and now inequality is as high by some measures as it has ever been.

We need, desperately, to rebuild our society from the ground up, and it starts with the recognition that all a society is is the people within it, that everyone within it is equally responsible for it, and that at birth we are all equally deserving of the opportunities and wealth society as a whole creates.

Otherwise this society is going to continue disintegrating along its cracks. There will be no blitz spirit when the hammer falls from outside. And the hammer (environmental debt) is falling.

Really interesting thread. Totally agree with lightning and mornington

With regard to job blocking, you need to remember that final salary pensions (certainly in the private sector, I don't know about public) were not transferable. I remember someone leaving from the company I worked for, who had been there 25 years, the value of her pension which she could transfer was £2,500. This was after 25 years of company contributions of 10% and her own of 5%. Even in 1988 this was bugger all.

In the 1980s sexism was still rife. I was in engineering and attended one trade dinner that was "men only" so had to go in a dinner suit so they couldn't chuck me out for being incorrectly dressed. TBH the company got loads of publicity and women were admitted after that, but those attitudes abounded.

getthefeck - many boomers are still living you know. And if you read the IFS links, you know, the ones someone else said would PROVE boomers were/are as you suggest, you will see that it really isn't as simple as you seem to think.

Again the levels of kneejerk vitriol is dismaying. If the negativity was informed, based on facts rather than using the top earning percentile as a representative sample, I would happily accede. But the stereotype presented by the meeja, and repeated ad nauseum on various threads here, is simply wrong - provably so!

My problem with the baby boomers is mostly with the zero desire to help younger generations,the we had it worse stance (no you didn't your parents did) and the holding on to everything that benefits them because they feel entitled.

We're all entitled,all paying taxes and all working hard.This generation will work just as hard for an awful lot less,the next even more so.The older generations just perhaps should be looking at helping the younger generations even if it means losing a small proportion of the advantages they have.My dp and I have worked for 30 years and will lose out massively so not seeing why the rather cosy lives of the baby boomers gets to be preserved in aspic.

That is my beef. Baby boomers have had the best that history has to offer,except that and try to help others less fortunate.Sick of the "why should we" stance you see a lot from said corner.Some bboomers do a lot eg via childcare,financial help when they can etc some frankly couldn't give a shit.It isn't fair that the kind have to carry the load for all.Society should make the younger generations a priority and perhaps take from those within a section of society that could afford it and who have had a great ride in order to do so.

Universal bus passes,WFA should be scrapped.Stopping the erosion of CB,helping with student fees and helping the young to provide themselves with decent pensions would be a start.Looking at the NHS is another.The maj of it goes on the elderly,perhaps they(again not the poorer bbers but those that can afford it) could be contributing a little bit more towards it.

My mum bucked the trend and is a poor baby boomer. Plenty of her contemporaries are not and 5 longhaul holidays a year plus holiday homes are not uncommon. And these are people who had fairly ordinary jobs. But despite this and many retiring at 50! a lot of the people of this generation I know seem very dissatisfied, selfish generally and I dunno...bitter. For all their advantages they don't seem a very happy generation.

wetaugust. Have to disagree that if you pass the eleven plus and opt for a place you will get one. There is definitely such a thing as the wrong side of town.

Here you pass the eleven plus and then places are allocated by distance to school.

So if you live in the shitty council estate on the far side of town you. won't get a place. The middle class families in town live closer in the bigger houses. And the middle class parents from out of town rent terraces closer to the school for a year. They can afford the rent and afford to pay the council tax on two properties which "proves" they live there.

Anyway my dh is classed as a baby boomer. He doesn't even have a pension. Didnt have a house when I met him. I had a house but been 15 years younger I'm not a baby boomer.

A generation of complainers

Late boomers are not boomers but Gen Jones. Anyone born after about 1955 is a Gen Jones. I think you'll find we have a very different take on life than the poor hated boomers.gen Jones
We were the generation screwed by unemployment and Thatcher, terrified of a nuclear war. I don't remember it being easy or pleasant. I find this whole inter generational war really depressing. The fact that people made money on properties and now some people can't afford to buy, is due to successive government policies.

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.