to ask if you're pissed off with the Baby Boomers?

[DamFineBeaver]

Because people who are currently young-ish adults (MN's main demographic?), and younger, will be paying for the lavish lifestyle they've enjoyed?
The money borrowed for their nice big pensions will be paid back by us and our children.

Does this mean they shouldn't spend so much time in Tenerife?

Margaret - as others have said housing benefit allows people who would not otherwise be able to put a roof over their heads to live somewhere. I can assure you that many of those receiving such a benefit will be living in properties less than ideal - for all sorts of reasons - because a) there's not exactly a lot of choice at the lower end of the rental market and b) landlords who accept HB are few and far between.

In other words, housing benefit isn't like winning a prize - it can't be seen as a welcome bit of 'extra' money .... it goes, immediately, on rent.

Please don't bemoan the fact you never received HB .... why would you in any case, I think you said before you own your own home. And that, in itself, is something to be grateful for. With your own home - a 3 bed IIRC ? - you have the option of downsizing and releasing equity. Granted, you might not want to leave your home - and I understand that - but nonetheless being a homeowner gives you that potential choice. People who rent obviously don't have the same option - and they can be effectively forced to leave with relatively little notice at any time.

There's absolutely no need to be snipey about those who receive HB given your own relatively fortunate circumstances.

And paying for grandchildren's parties may be all well and good, and kind and generous of you but again you must see you're lucky to be able to do this, if you choose to do so. Presumably the grandchild didn't hold a gun to your head ?

Choosing to spend your money on non essentials like that cannot be used as justification when you seem desperate to 'prove' that, actually (in your opinion) you're not all that well off. Compared to the super rich you're not of course but then that applies to most of us .... compared to a much larger percentage of the population then you are. Can you not be thankful for your security instead of repeatedly producing silly examples in an attempt to paint yourself as living in some sort of genteel 'poverty' ? ...... I cannot stress enough how I (and millions of others) would be over the moon if we could ensure a retirement like yours - especially a 'retirement' where we'd not actually worked in paid employment for decades anyway (instead of one which followed an extended period of paid employment - who knows how much further away the state pension goalposts will move ? - as well as juggling raising our kids at the same time).

Oh ... I meant to add (not sure if anyone's already made the same comparisons?) that it's the ingratitude (for being lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time), the sense of entitlement (to pensioner benefits which aren't needed) and the insistence that 'younger' people could have exactly the same if only they got their finger out and stopped being so 'workshy' from BB bigots like Margaret which make some of the younger generation lash out towards the Boomers in a general fashion - which I agree isn't fair to tar them all with the same brush.

But I do understand why there's a knee jerk reaction to 'the Boomers' when people are confronted with such narrow minded and insulting nonsense from (some) people who seem to have a very over inflated sense of their own importance ....

I agreed with you until you said:

If you want what they have you have to work for it.

What they have is gone. I am not in any way bitter towards my parents or IL's, because we benefit from any good fortune they have had, both because they have given us financial help and because if they had no money we would have to provide for them. (This makes us and them very, very lucky).

However, I cannot get a job with a final salary scheme, just as my daughter won't be able to live in a flat share in London because of her typing skills (as I did), because the world of work has moved on and there are no more final salary pension schemes and the typing pool has gone. (Although at least she won't have to live in a world where a woman in an office is assumed to be the secretary).

The world moves on, and we do better if we all move on together.

Oh ffs squinkies for the millionth time, people are not bitter about their parents or whoever receiving these things, they are annoyed with a certain demographic who don't realise their good fortune and moan about the feckless youth who should work to get what they had. In fact, from your last line, you are familiar. The younger generation ARE working for it. They are working harder and longer and for longer hours than previous generations. Yet they get sneered at by those generations who don't realise times have changed.

Catsmother, that is what I was trying to say in a less eloquent way!

I've been back and read this thread.

I really am not sure about Margaret because I am a BB and know many others. I've never heard even very wealthy ones express the opinion she holds.

She could be genuine but she could also be fed up 30 something working from home.

Maybe I'm just a bit suspicious of Margarets. I remember a very nasty one from the past. I know I shouldn't tar all Margarets with the same brush......I'm not doing honest.

I'm a Boomer and have met a few (but really very few) smug contemporaries who make this thread possible.

My friends are all worried for the younger generations (they are parents FFS and are watching their children struggle).

None of them, I think, would consider themselves particularly lucky with their (private) pensions because they are expecting to live in reduced (but not completely penurious) circumstances on retirement.

They would certainly consider themselves lucky with the capital tied up in their houses but none of them expect to live with their children in old age and so the capital is earmarked for care homes. None of them will have a pension that begins to cover a half-way decent care home.

Margaret Why don't young people fight to have decent pensions?

I suspect not just that you're a troll but that they are too busy working to pay for them.

Unlike you.

The younger generation ARE working for it. They are working harder and longer and for longer hours than previous generations.

Deserves to be repeated. Of course, BBs will come on and say they worked long hours etc, and they may well be right - every situation is different - but this statement is true as a general rule.

When did I ever say I wasn't worried about the young? I think your find I said several times how much I help out with grandchildren and will continue to do so untill they reach 18, despite having an income well bellow the UK average.

Every generation has its problems. I remember growing up the house was freezing, often had ice on the windows inside and the only slightly warm room was the lounge and for this I had to light a fire and tend to it all day. I would have loved to ho to uni, but it sadly wasn't an option then.

We don't know what pensions will be like in the future, they maybe much better. So people should support bb and their pensions so that they still exist when they come to retire.

Many women are working longer hours maybe. Some of the younger fathers I know have reduced their working hours to spend time with their DC. This fantastic but would have been impossible for my DH. He did in case you are interest work very long hours.

I believe there are many more part time workers too.

Nomama: a) yes, very naice and b) yes, relatively speaking but also c) bloody massive mortgage.

Thanks for reading that as intended

More part-time work because, a lot of the time, that's all on offer. So people (like me) end up working several part-time jobs at once. To make ends meet.

bedraggled I think you are misreading me.

I am just pointing out that this behaviour isn't an age thing. Selfish people exist in every strata of society. Getting pissed off with any one of them is of no Earthly use to anyone - well, maybe politicos who can get mileage out of it!

Margaret, give it up, your income is not well below the UK average. You cannot compare with full time workers salaries unless you have gone out and got a job in the last few hours. Look up average household incomes and you will find that your total income of £16k puts you right at average. And you don't even work, and don't have to pay rent or mortgage. You are above average in terms of disposable income and you haven't even had to work for it.

Nomama, yes there are indeed selfish people of all ages, it is just this specific attitude that is the subject of this thread! I do think younger people who have benefitted from house prices or good pensions at least realise their good fortune due to knowing these things are vanishing. Plenty of them may be jerks too though

I've just been job-searching on a local recruitment site - for both me and DH.

We work in different areas and there was not a a SINGLE permanent job advertised for all the jobs we are vaguely qualified for. All were temporary, one-year fixed term posts. A few were of six months duration! Earning between £20-30,000. So this is not very young people looking at starter jobs.

This is an example of how job security has evaporated. And along with that goes housing security.

I am a late boomer (generation Jones). I was raised in a working class household (outside loo and no central heating) but I benefited from free uni education and have done fairly well. I'll be working to 67 at least though.

I have become increasingly concerned about the widening wealth gap, and am particularly worried by the effect on my own (still school aged ) kids. However, I have been a little unnerved by all the anti-boomer rhetoric which I see on this site & elsewhere and I have often thought that the most vocal anti-boomers are probably those from fairly well off families, as they are aspiring to what their parents had. Chatting to a friend today, we talked about what would cause the current economic crisis to tip into unrest and I mentioned that it takes some input from the middle classes to cause an uprising.

So, I was quite interested to hear on Radio 4's podcast "Clinging on - the decline of the middle classes" someone say that there is nothing more dangerous than a middle class person who us disappointed in their expectation.

Can I recommend you listen to this programme and Robert Peston's " the Price of Inequality" which is also on the Radio 4 website? They make very interesting listening.

Every generation has its problems and its advantages.

As I mentioned upthread I am not strictly a BB as I was born in World War 2, but I did grow up working with older BBs.

Comparisons are indeed odious but let's be odious for a minute and do some.

For example:

Which would you rather:

1. Pay for uni but know that more than 40% of you can go if you get the grades versus free, but only 8% can go no matter how high your grades are?

2)Have to work as a mother to make ends meet versus being sacked when you became pregnant (or sometimes just when you married)?

3. Have to manage a demanding but equal ops career versus being limited to a handful of jobs e.g. retail, secretarial, nursing;

4. Find it impossible to afford to buy a home versus having the money but not being allowed to anyway because you had no male guarantor?

5. Being able to go to law against harassment and discrimination versus putting up with daily harassment and discrimination as part of life?

6. Finding food, energy etc. very expensive versus food and petrol rationing so it was not available whether or not you had money?

7. Struggling to pay a credit card versus having no choice but to wait for what you wanted to buy until you had the cash? (It was difficult to get stuff on the never-never as it was called unless you had the cash anyway).

8. Have a legal right to maternity leave even if it hampered your career somewhat versus no maternity leave at all? (I had my first child in my fortnight's leave) - that was my condition for not being sacked;

9. Being able to live and have a baby together without being married versus being shamed if you became pregnant after the inadequate contraception available before the mid-60s and facing a 'shotgun' wedding?

10. Having the full range of subjects to study at school and sports to play versus being shoved into the cooking/netball ghetto?

I could go on.. but you get the drift. Now, which is better, which is worse? I have no idea. Personally I would much prefer childhood in the age I was brought up but adulthood, with all its difficulties in the current age. But that's just me.

As to who is working harder, again who can say. I can only say that I worked for 51 years and apart from a few years when the children were small it was rare for me to work less than 60 hours a week, which is why I have been able to help my DCs with their housing costs - a result of mostly hard work, long hours at night getting the qualifications I wasn't able to get while younger (being female) and long working hours, not being 'lucky'.

As I said comparisons are odious. I don't envy the young today with their uni costs and housing problems, but rationing and anti-female discrimination was not a walk in the park either.

Often, it's the disenchanted middle classes who foment revolutions, not the working classes.

Wonderful post, grimbletart.

I'm emigrating. I hate the idea of subing a whole generation.

Great post grimbletart but with employment rights being eroded and low pay and the changes to legal aid many women in low paid jobs dont/wont have the money to pay for a solicitor if they are being sexually harassed at work.

Not worry grimble....if the Tories have their way we will be returning to the austerity of the 1930s and workers rights will be non existent and there won't be a welfare state.
The Tories want - and will probably get - an American style society.
A very very rich elite, low taxes, private health care and a poor sub class.

I agree, good post grimble. I think probably 5050 on your questions. Just to start with the first I would rather the latter, was I wanted to shoot tony Blair with his education, education,education rubbish undervaluing degrees while making them vital for what used to be unqualified roles.

The discrimination type issues, although discrimination is bad, I think women have the worst of both worlds through feminism as they now have to work while raising their kids and probably still do most of the housework.
Pretty much on the fence though.

Well done for a nice balanced post. The problem with some boomers is the lack of balance and empathy/ understanding of changes in circumstances