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.

The average salary in 1984 was not £3000, it was 3 times that. But that does not fit your narrative does it?

I was born in 1966, left school in 1982, out of my class of about 32, only maybe 10 stayed on for A levels & only half of that number went to University, no female pupils went. We left school at the height of Margaret Thatcher's reign, were lucky if we got a job or a youth opportunity scheme, the majority of use went from school straight on the dole. I got my first job just before I was 19, earning £64.65 a week as a clerical assistant in the civil service, I had a couple of friends who didn't get their first job until they were well in their 20's from leaving school at 16. There were no prospects for school leavers unless you were lucky or knew someone who gave you a job. If you had children, there were no nurseries & very few childminders, you had to hope that your parents would look after them for you. Where I lived in 1985 you could buy a 3 bed semi for £20,000, those houses now sell for £270,000. I am lucky because I got in to a non contributory final salary pension scheme, women paid no contributions & men paid 1.5% of their salary for a widows & orphans pension, women didn't start paying this until 1990. Lots of us had a part time job as well as our main job, I worked in a pub 3 nights a week plus Sunday lunchtime, I got £25 a week for this. I don't think that we got such a good deal, schools weren't as good as they are now, the majority of pupils left with little or no qualifications, there was no encouragement to carry on & go to university, your parents wanted you to be out working to contribute at home.

That a ridiculous argument the nhs and welfare state was developed to care for people from cradle to the grave. With each person paying for the generations above them. We haven’t just paid £50000 but much much more as everyone will have to.
The 50000 was to enable people to live in relative comfort in their old age.

I didn’t say the average salary was £3000 in 1984 I said when I started work I earned £7 a week. Given that a vast majority of people are expected to survive on about £12000 per annum these days I think your figures may be slightly out.

gawd this old shite...i think everyone has it hard in their own personal way, its no ones fault, its just the way it is.

Is there not some government panel
On inter generational wealth that is looking into this?

I thought they had come to the conclusion that the boomers are collectively so wealthy compared to everyone else that policy had to be shaped to ensure a better distribution?

Or you know, we could just go on complaining about millennials... walking around like they rent the place.

Glad you feel this is s.... I presume your not affected.

Don’t know where you got facts from !

It is here in fact...

publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201719/ldselect/ldintfair/329/329.pdf

I didn’t say the average salary was £3000 in 1984

^03:35:17
My first house was £24,000 yes but given that the average salary was about £3000 per annum. It’s all relevant

06:09:50
I agree but my op was in response to waspi women being called grabby. No it was a standard 3 bedroomed house bought in 1984 although it was in the south.^

Yes you did.

Thank you will read with interest.

Stakeholder pensions didn’t start until 2001 so you argument holds no weight.

OP, my husband and I are a similar age, but reading your posts I can't help feeling that what you are saying is, "I believed I would have things much, much better than the people who are younger than me and now I find I will only have things a little bit better and that is something that has been stolen from me" . Plenty of young people leave school at the earliest opportunity these days, but many of them go into zero hours contracts, not knowing whether they will get paid or how much any given week. Some young working people sleep rough because the wages are either too low or too uncertain (zero hours) to rent a room . And know that by the time they are old, there will almost certainly not be a state pension. Is it really our generation that has had something stolen from us? I would expect a 16yo of today to reflect that it was our generation who were in charge when these changes happened, who could have got politically active and done something, but who didn't.

Women of my era weren’t encouraged to do well at school, I certainly wasn’t. We went into dead end jobs and then married and had children. We were the ones who stayed at home, whilst our DHs had careers and built up pensions. My first DH was an arse and I ended up raising three children as a single parent. He never paid a penny in maintenance and back then we didn’t have the child support agency, or anything else.

I had low paid part time jobs as child care then, was none existent.

My DILs all have much more equality. They work full time in well paid jobs. Child care is freely available for the children. My sons change nappies, cook, clean etc.

Don’t take my word for it. Discrimination against women is very well documented. Women of my era were discriminated against and now they are being shat on from a great height with their pension changes.

A much better way of introducing the changes would have been gradually. No one denies that having the same retirement age is correct but what isn’t right is the inequality some women have faced all their lives.

But, there is some support now which wasn't available for baby boomers, such as single working parents (usually mums) have much more support now through benefits than baby boomers did.

That's absolutely rubbish. I was born in the 80s mum is a boomer.

Mum managed to get a mortgage with the proceeds of the house when her and dad divorced. She got income support, which also covered a large portion of the mortgage. She worked 3 hours a day term time. Perfect job for having kids. She did this until I was 11.

In my early thirties I became a single parent. Again managed to get a mortgage. I earned 24k, had to start paying for wrap around care, as self employed exh wouldnt do pick ups anymore. I got a small amount of tax credits/work tax credits. £40 per week. Which went on child care.

Absolutely nothing towards my housing. Reducing my hours would have left us completely skint. My mortgage was bigger than mums, I couldnt have the luxury or working part time and having my mortgage paid.

Mum couldnt understand why as a single parent to 2 kids both over 7, I could not afford to have my own home AND work part time.

Single parents do not have more support.

But old age care needs paying for OP, its expensive.
What else do we save for all our lives? When the rainy day comes, if you need to go into a home, of course your own home should be sold to pay if you haven't cash funds. You don't need it any more! Or are you suggesting working families pay more tax to fund you just so your family can inherit?
This is what hapoens when many people are often living far longer than nature intended.

I was born in 1954. When I became a single parent there wasn’t any child care available no way of getting Ex to pay maintenance, and I well remember trudging round the banks and Building Societies trying to get a mortgage, with the words “talk it over with your husband” ringing in my ears. So yes, we suffered discrimination if we wanted a loan or a mortgage.

When I became a single parent there wasn’t any child care available no way of getting Ex to pay maintenance, and I well remember trudging round the banks and Building Societies trying to get a mortgage, with the words “talk it over with your husband” ringing in my ears. So yes, we suffered discrimination if we wanted a loan or a mortgage.

And that all happens now. Apart from available childcare. But that has to be paid for. Tax credits helps with that then it's gone. Still wouldn't get help with housing unless I rented. CMS is still incredibly difficult for lots of single parents. Its not easy. Harder to get a mortgage a single person or single parent. When getting my mortgage I was asked if exh would contribute more. I ended up moving a 24 min drive from ds school to afford a house.

My mum was born in 1955 and a single parent from 84 to 93.

The very worst thing I can take from this thread, is how much women have been and still are discriminated against. It’s utterly sickening.

Despite my mum working days and evenings we were poor. If Tax Credits were available then we would have been much better off.

In the 80s, the benefit for low income working families was Family Credit. It was replaced in in the 90s with Working Families Tax Credit. You could still be relatively poor on either.

I would expect a 16yo of today to reflect that it was our generation who were in charge when these changes happened, who could have got politically active and done something, but who didn't.

I do think it was striking how little opposition in general there was to raising the state pension age - the waspi issue has emerged as a political question, but in general I think the public was remarkably placid about being told since age x that they would get a state pension at one age oh no sorry we've changed our minds.

Yes I understand the reasoning - fewer workers per pensioner - but that was never really subjected to much scrutiny. The number of workers per pensioner has fallen massively since the middle of the twentieth century and even more since the beginning of it, yet we managed to fund increases in state pensions during that period because productivity improvements meant the country as a whole became so much richer. There's no reason to think that won't continue - AI (which will bring its own problems of income distribution) for instance should lead to massive productivity gains.

Interesting recent research from pensions policy institute - it found that on average, women in their late 50s in Great Britain have about half as much private pension wealth as men.

Not sure where that takes the debate on this thread, but it is a very striking finding!

@Hydrogenbeatsoxygen I posted downthread about being unable to get a mortgage due to being single. I'm 34. This is still happening!

I was born in 1954. When I became a single parent there wasn’t any child care available no way of getting Ex to pay maintenance, and I well remember trudging round the banks and Building Societies trying to get a mortgage, with the words “talk it over with your husband” ringing in my ears. So yes, we suffered discrimination if we wanted a loan or a mortgage.

Presumably because you had insufficient income to service a mortgage. On the other hand, I have a friend in her mid 70s who in her 20s became what in those days was referred to as an 'unmarried mother' rather than a single parent. She still managed to continue her in her recently started nursing career and buy her own house, admittedly we live in a relatively cheap housing area.