Critics of so called baby boomers

[Pixxie7]

What is wrong with you people comments like waspi women are grabby and baby boomers have all the wealth because they bought their houses for a few thousands. I started work at the age of 16 with a salary of £7 a week, worked all my life. Did not have access to pension contributions until I was 52. Paid nearly 50 years of national insurance, which was for my pension which is not a benefit but a right, only to have nearly £50,000 stolen by the government. Imagine how you would feel if this happened to you.
Not saying you have it easy but you have far more opportunities than we ever had.

How much is your house worth now OP? I’m guessing its value increased at least tenfold to 240k so consider that in lieu of 50k in pension and you’re still 190k better off than young people...

Of course you had opportunities. You had the opportunity to go to university free of charge, buy a house that cost 3 x the average salary and to travel, study and work freely in Europe. Generation Z will have none of this, some it due to how baby boomers voted and have run the country.

We are baby boomers just. We have worked v hard at professional careers, have made a lot of money from property and have very good pensions ahead. DH may not retire until his 70s due to the nature of his work. We are nearly 60.

Our DC are 24 and 21. They are both v responsible with money. DS has just started his first job - £35k. He can get a foothold on property via shared ownershil which is not what I had to do at 24.

However in our 20s we had no parental support at all, there was a huge shortage of private rentals, and everything else cost a fortune. White goods, clothes, etc.

As baby boomers we can help our children and have and will help them. I have no doubt that if we didn't have funds to help them we would downsize and do it that way. I see no point in seeing ones children struggle when their lives could be made easier by those who live them most.

White goods you could rent and clothes you can manage without lots of. Though those things are now proportionately a lot cheaper, they are one off and discretionary. There are now unavoidable huge monthly costs like energy bills and accommodation which take up a huge proportion of people's incomes.

I grew up in the 80s in the south. My parents didn't just "let me play out without fear". It was similar to now. As it was for most of my friends.

I would say we were encouraged to be more independent compared to my friends who have similarly aged children now.

Can't we just agree it's swings and roundabouts and pissing on each other doesn't help anyone?

I'd guess it's a response to all the bullshit millennials hear and read about everyday.

Baby Boomers often say "We worked hard..." etc. Yes, but you worked hard within a system that was strongly weighted in your favour, unlike today.

Of course you had opportunities. You had the opportunity to go to university free of charge, buy a house that cost 3 x the average salary and to travel, study and work freely in Europe. Generation Z will have none of this, some it due to how baby boomers voted and have run the country

Very few women of the 1950s went to university, the evidence that women of that era were disadvantaged in education and the workplace is well documented. Most were married young and became SAHP.

If some of the older generations and I include my own Gen X in this, stopped voting for increasingly right wing governments which look out for the rich and fuck over everyone else, we’d all be in a better place. However, the Tory’s only have to scream ‘immigrants, foreigners, benefit scrounges, crime!, and they’re voted back in. I can only imagine the BS Priti Patel will come out with to convince DM readers to fuck over themselves and their own kids during the next election campaign.

Unfortunately, they’ve squeezed every last drop out of every other part of society so now they have no choice but to start squeezing their own base. The younger generation have nothing left to give.

Op, and that's not old person for Christ's sake, did you say you had 15000 deposit for your house you bought?

Absolutely.
Was very proud of my 98yr old grandma and her vote to remain and to (after a lifetime) renounce her Tory leanings as they are "making life worse for everyone except themselves"

Some insight and less intransigence would be good.

Though I see my own baby boomer parents being more like the above. Saddens me.

Strongly in our favour 😂😂😂

Women of the 1950s lived in an age where women were discriminated against, both in society and with employment rights.

Women who undertook the caring role all their lives, looking after children, elderly relatives etc, got no employment pension at all and only got a part state pension based on their husbands NI contributions if they paid little or no NICs. A very small sum to live on.

My first flat was £19k. My salary was £7.5k when I was 22. Didn't need a deposit and could have increased the 100% mortgage to cover fees and furniture. If an average starting salary now is £20k (and it's probably less) then where can a young person buy a flat for £50k?

Because I moved jobs a few times my pension pot is minimal but I have my house as an asset. I do think pension is a benefit in the same way that disability allowances are benefits and unemployment payments are benefits. I think saying it's "a right not a benefit" is a slogan that is disrespectful to others who have need of state support.

I'm a high earner - way past what my parents could have dreamed of - and I don't think that kind of "social mobility' exists now for the majority. I'm a high earner largely because I had completely free education - and a generous grant for my travel expenses. I also received unemployment benefit during the short vacations, and had decent jobs during the long ones.

Young people today have it much tougher, no doubt about it.

@Tellmetruth4
In 2011 census, the total usual resident population of London stood at just over 8 million, 37% of which (3 million residents) had been born outside of the UK.
migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/london-census-profile/
As the largest annual numbers of incomers was in 2015 I'd presume the figures are higher now.

Former labour MPs admit mass immigration was not a good idea.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24924219

Women of the 1950s lived in an age where women were discriminated against, both in society and with employment rights

People who were women in the 1950s are not baby boomers and not the subject of this discussion.

No one stole anything, the government changed a rule for a contributory based benefit you want to claim. You had decades of notice of this.

Also you could have paid into a private pension way before you were 50. It’s no point blaming the government for your lack of financial preparation for retirement.

My issue with the 70+ generation is not appreciating what they did have that was good and now voting to help themselves further, not to make life better for those who are suffering the consequences of successive Gov policies.

They should stop blaming the young for not trying hard enough, the young should stop blaming the older people for just being born then. We should all be working together to sort out those in charge and improve life for all of us and the generations to come.

70+ generation are not baby boomers.

But the immigrants still haven’t pushed up house prices. When they do buy they buy in the less desirable areas or rent multi occupancy housing.

The houses in Primrose Hill or cool apartments in East London are not full of Polish builders or Nigerian office cleaners. All the Aussies I know in London also rent and leave after a couple of years.

It’s the older/wealthier Brits taking advantage of the housing boom by buying second and third homes to rent out as they were encouraged to do by multiple BBC and Channel 4 house buying programmes.

I love being told to just prioritize. I had never thought about that before.

You had the opportunity to go to university free of charge, buy a house that cost 3 x the average salary and to travel, study and work freely in Europe.

I haven't worked out how old op is, but assuming she is early sixties, opportunities to go to university were fairly limited in the 70s - about 14% of school leavers by the end of the 1970s. So I think it's a very brave assumption that op had the opportunity to do that if in fact she left school at 16. But yes the increase in house price salary multiples means that overall young people today are much much worse off in terms of house purchasing power. Reasons for that are various.

Tbf young people still have the opportunity to travel, work and study in Europe freely - though anybody's guess what will be the position on 1 November!

Example of house price increases:

Valuation date 1 (Q1 1980): £24,000
Valuation date 2 (Q3 2019): £229,455
Percentage change: 856.06%

It’s the older/wealthier Brits taking advantage of the housing boom by buying second and third homes to rent out as they were encouraged to do by multiple BBC and Channel 4 house buying programmes.

And, crucially, the introduction of Assured Shorthold Tenancies, and a tax system which made btl profitable (tax deductibility of mortgage interest for example). Governments could have acted to discourage btl and have now started doing so - George Osborne with some tax changes, and more on the way, but it's complicated - if house prices fall people who have bought recently will be in negative equity. Insoluble problem!

I do agree that the house price situation means young people are much worse off than their equivalents in the 1980s and 1990s.

I'm very tail end of the BB generation. We did have it easy compared to young people today and it's our actions that have made it harder for today's young. We should be renamed the Selfish Generation. Brexit (that we voted for and the young don't want) is our final dying kick in the teeth to the generations below us.