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!

Generation Jones - great, let's define everyone by television programmes. I was born early 60's and these stereotypes do not reflect me or my friends at all. And to say we are the most well off like it's some kind of revelation is daft; most people of our age will have paid off their mortgage and reached their highest earning potential - of course we have the most money.

I agree with other posters who say this is the politics of divide and rule. While there are people on here bemoaning the fact that older people have more than them, you can wander over to Style and Beauty and see people asking which £1000 plus handbag they like most, there are threads about pushchairs that cost several hundred pounds. There are plenty of threads from people who have cleaners (one at the moment..."my four bathrooms aren't being cleaned adequately..."), threads from people who have six figure incomes. Do you honestly think these people are all baby boomers? It seems very unlikely. Watch some daytime television; are the people going into property development so they can exploit the buy to let market all boomers? No.

The problems in this country are down to wealth inequality, which exists amongst all age groups.

I'm a boomer. I'm still supporting my teenager through education, have a massive mortgage, take in lodgers to try to make ends meet, drive a car that was made in the last century, etc. I'm also job-hogging and will continue to do so until I retire at 67 on an inadequate pension. On the other hand I have friends who live exceedingly well. The point is, there have always been haves and have nots.

The people who malign baby boomers are, IMO, misdirecting their anger.

Rita, i think that is the crux of the issue- my parents live in their ridiculous 5 bed triple garage and annex mansion overlooking countryside, complaining about consumerism. They think that if younger generations didn't have mobile phones or occasional Starbucks they would be able to afford to do the same. Hahahahaha. They were junior level civil servants and dad retired at 50. their equivalent counterparts now would NEVER be able to afford even their original starter home as it would cost ten times their combined salaries. It does not matter whether they never touch technology or indulge in overpriced coffee, no bank is ever going to lend that much, and in the meantime their rent would be too high to manage a deposit anyway. So they occasionally indulge in the things that are within their reach and are sneered at by previous generations that didn't have such luxuries, but DID have the opportunity to buy a decent house from a junior job. Faced with the impossibility of achieving that dream, i can fully see why people choose to have other "luxuries" instead. It does rather rile me that they don't understand how lucky they are.

Said Babybooners enjoy tech and coffee too.Most boomers I know have IPods,smart TVs,newer phones,Sky,yearly new cars etc whilst being the generation that can afford coffee and meals out.Coffee out for a family of 5 is beyond the budget of many.Believe me the people stuffing the coffee shops midweek aren't the youngsters.

Born 1956. Left school and started work at 15 (as did many). Equal pay act had been passed, but was not yet fully operational. I actually got paid less than a male on a lower grade than me.

That aside, my state pension age is now 66. I will have worked for 51 years, having paid my taxes and national insurance the entire time. Someone upthread mentioned paying from the age of 23, so it would not be unreasonable to anticipate a state pension starting at 74 just to stay equal with the likes of me, or an even higher age if you want to give your halo that extra glow.

Lepetit, exactly, but the boomers in question (not all boomers, just the specific examples that get derided on here) hoik their judgeypants at the younger generations buying their coffee, and say that is why they cant afford their houses! And that they have "worked hard all their life" or at least worked 36 hours a week until they took their early retirement and "earned it" as they are now comfortably well off largely due to unearned house price increases but the younger generations working 80hr weeks or on zero hour contracts, are feckless layabouts!

twofingers but the six figure incomes aren't relevant - that is the successful top few, and there have always been highflyers that were wealthy- the specific baby boomers that are derided are the ones sitting on piles of wealth due to house price increases and generous pensions that future generations will not benefit from, claiming that they "earned it" despite never actually earning very much in salary terms.

The problem, bedgraggled, is the lack of differentiation on some posts. Not seeing that every generation has it high earners and that not all boomers are wealthy, retired, home owning fat cats.

And not all of this generation are scrimping and scraping by, some of them are also high earning, handbag buying, home owning fat cats - inherited or earned wealth, who really cares?

Every generation has the same wealth inequity. Blaming the high earners of one generation for the poverty stricken end of the next is, as it has always been, ridiculous and futile.

Ah, so now we're talking about 'specific' babyboomers. Well how about not sticking a label on everyone in that age group and acknowledging instead that some people have always had more money than others and different opportunities from each other?
Of course, the six figure incomes are relevant. The issue in this country is inequality and unequal distribution of wealth, regardless of age group, background etc.

There are fewer and fewer high earners and those that are are more likely to be older generations.That is the point.

It's going to be crap for our children,really don't like thinking what it's going to be like for my their generation,in particular those without kindly grandparents helping out as much as they can and trying to pick up the shortfall.

But two you didn't need to earn a lot to enjoy a stonking pension and lifestyle. That is also the point.Many Babybooners enjoying 4 holidays a year including long haul,yearly new cars etc weren't on 6 figure salaries but one pretty average family income.

As an aside I wonder if those enjoying the above lifestyle really need it.Does anybody need four holidays a year etc?

It just seems like a huge waste when more could be done for younger generations.

The massive house price increases and pensions that boomers get were ALL unearned. They never did pay for those houses and they never did pay enough into their pension pots to justify what they are and will in future take out of them.

The current and future generations will pay for all that.

The mathematics are simple. If you are a boomer and worked as a civil servant retiring at 50 having worked 30 years and then went on to live another 30 years on a pension at 50% of your final salary you would have had to contribute at least 50% of your salary whilst working to your pension pot to be able to take out a 50% penion. Absolutely no one did that. If they had they would not have been able to afford to buy houses.

The mathematical reality is 'well off' boomers have taken out twice as many resources as what they put in. The National Insurance they paid only just paid for the NHS, free education and family allowance for them and their dependents and contributed nothing for their future pensions.

When parents talk about not having had a washing machine, I don't think they're referring to its monetary value (which I agree is tiny, compared to house prices.) We did have a washing machine in the 60s: basically a tub with a motor attached. You had to heat the water, fill it, empty it and refill it over and over. I remember my mum often having burn marks on her arms. You couldn't leave the house while it was on and it was always flooding. There was no spin drier so my mum put all the wet washing through a hand mangle . Washing used to take her at least a day. I've no idea how she got things dry in the winter as we didn't have central heating.

Labour saving devices absolutely transformed lives - womens' lives - in the second half of the twentieth century in ways that are very hard to imagine now. It might be worth thinking about it the next time some of you say your mothers never worked.

Exactly, Beta

Fair enough, Flo
But today's mothers have to pack it all in - work, home life.. Staggering on in career with small children so that they may get (pitiful) future pension, paying horrendous childcare bills which may well exceed their net income.

I just missed out on being a boomer myself by those dates and realise I was fortunate to get on the housing ladder though only just in time (should have done it sooner if I could have managed it) Also fortunate to enjoy free Uni and have some freedom to enjoy traveling (inter-rail x3) in my twenties, a bit of wider travel outside Europe, and a year in Japan pre-DC. Also the luxury to change careers until found something I was happier with and not feel tied to first choice, though feel the real boomers a few years earlier - and also those a few years down the line from me - may have had it even better job wise. So think younger women may have had more job security but perhaps less freedom due to higher financial pressures than my contemporaries and I.
Recognise I have lived in relatively good period of history for women and generally in this country. Also geographically of course - many countries are much worse off than us, especially for women's lived experience.

DParents though born earlier than the true boomers have done well from property (value of home) and pensions. But growing up in the war-time has left a hard legacy I feel in terms of life view so I don't envy them. Think there's a good reason the boomer years start in '46 (year after the war)

Beta Do you think there are many civil servants who retire at 50?

And to have a pension of half your final salary you have to have worked for forty years. If you retired at 50 even if you started at 16 you would get 42.5% of your final salary.

But whatever you get it's what you and the State signed up for. By definition pensions are a long-term contract and it's no use either party complaining that things have changed since they signed on the dotted line. Public sector pensions are as much part of the National Debt as what anyone pays into National Savings.

Flo both my mother and mil are Babyboomers and had fridges/washing machines etc,it was their parents who didn't.

Well then Andrew the younger generations need to be able to pay less tax and have more of their taxes go towards their retirement in order to be able to prepare and put in what they need to.

Agree lepetit. And cut freecbus teavel & WFA (i know people who claim it from 2nd homes in Southern hemisphere )

Rather than contributing to this very interesting & lively thread, I'm probably going to hide it. I am a baby boomer. I had it great during the 1980s. Not so great during the '70s. By the '90s, I was being pushed out of everything due to my age and my pensions were being embezzled/misappropriated.

Ten years of the good stuff - but that good decade began with no paid maternity leave and endemic sexism. It was all a fight. Plus, I was one of the lucky few. Vast swathes of young adults were being made homeless, unemployed or working for pittances in unsafe conditions.

Two things were changing - financial dis-regulation and the switching of our economy to a loans based model. Nomama said the Thatcher administration is what changed everything, and she's right. I benefited briefly from those changes, but never voted for them. Thatcher's ideals have, however, taken hold: they've created a generation which supports greed & entitlement and doesn't even realise it.

You can criticise people of my generation who lack the political & social insight to understand why the 80s were good to them; I criticise them too. They are not, however, representative of the whole. More representative of a whole generation, I think, are those in their 30s who value youth above everything and who were raised in an individualistic culture that seeds grandiose expectations. I will probably hide the thread because such ingrained attitudes can't be changed by posts on a forum. And they are harmful: not only to me and others like me, but to everyone.

We are being blamed for acting within the circumstances brought about by previous generations - those who lived through war and those who thought a welfare system was a good idea. Unfortunately things change; we thought our children would have broadly the same as us only better, we weren't thinking "Me, me, me"

Less tax? What less than the 75% tax band of the 60s?

In 1979 Thatcher reduced the top rate from 83% to 60% and the basic rate from 33% to 30%... what more reductions would you like? Brown reduced it further for you... you already pay less income tax than your parents and grandparents paid.

Interest rates are also far lower than Gens Boom or X had to pay... VAT is higher, NI is too... so more of your 'tax' does go towards the state pension and benefits.

Facts are really interesting things!