'The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there'.
Different generations grew up with different issues, problems, opportunities, demographics, technology, context & attitudes and I think this current anti boomer/make them pay attitude is unhelpful and those who advocate it often have a very selective view of the past.
My father and FIL are both still alive in their early 90s and both fought in the last years of WW2 and were stuck in Burma and Berlin respectively for a while afterwards. The reason I was born in this country is that my father, a proud Irishman, fighting against all Hitler stood for, was reviled by others in his village for (as they saw it) fighting for the English. Had to leave, got a job in Swindon cleaning trains and slept in them as couldn't find affordable housing as it was still the days of landlords in the poorer areas saying 'no blacks, no Irish, no dogs'. He worked tirelessly to 'better himself' as he called it. Evening classes, extra jobs, scrimping, saving, making do. My aunt always lamented the fact she was 9 when sweets were rationed and 19 when they came off rationing. She and my mum (now both dead) were both evacuees. We were never financially stable when I was a child despite the best efforts of my parents. My mum always worked but the equal pay act didn't come into force until 1970 and sex discrimination act until 1975. She was very active in fighting for both. I'm mid 50s, still work, and so experienced the turbulence of the 1970s. In some ways, it's a similar situation to now, life was reasonably good in the early 1970s, low inflation, good rates of employment, easy to find a job then we had the oil crisis. I think there are some similarities to now in the sense that no one thought the Yom Kippur war, something that seemed far away and nothing much to do with the UK would cause the oil crisis and result in the 3 day week, power cuts, huge levels of inflation & unemployment etc. We then had significant recessions in the early 1980s, 1990s, 2008 and I was made redundant in both, got reemployed after a while but at lower salaries.
Every generation has it tough in many respects although (and I'm sure I'll get flamed for this) in many ways a lot of people nowadays take what was regarded luxuries as essentials and don't think about the opportunity cost of these. For example my nephew has the latest phone, much better car than me, lots of holidays, loves his night life, that's all fine but then stop moaning you can't afford a flat particularly as he lives in a part of the UK where houses are affordable. But this brings me back to to the point that each generation sees the world differently. So yes, there will be austerity after all this, but it needs to be fairly distributed, we all will need to think about lifestyle choices, work together to protect the vulnerable (young & old) and not one generation pitched against the other.