to think that the baby-boomer generation are ripping off the young?

[Upwind]

It has been mentioned on several threads here recently. The baby-boomers tend to hold the more powerful positions right now and they seem to be more than happy to deny younger generations the advantages they enjoyed. Especially in terms of affordable housing but also pensions, free university education etc.

see this transcript of a speech on social justice across the generations

I thought that was just mike and the mechanics.

hmm mike was very astute

YABU and unrealistic.

When my baby boomer folks were my age they survived on 1 and 1/2 incomes, never went abroad on holiday, grew their own food so that they could afford for us to wear shoes that fitted and eat, worked extra shifts to support the family, didn't have half the material possessions that people automatically expect these days and Dad used to do all the work around the house ie DIY, and then mend the ONE car at the weekend, plus have the privilege of driving over 10 mile round trip to work (in a crappy factory)on a 2 stroke moped...what luxury! Also they had very few clothes and possessions, a lot of which were second hand - first (black and white) TV was a moment of celebration and was pre-used!

And a computer and internet access, purleese - a phone was a luxury! And NO BLOOMIN CENTRAL HEATING (perish the thought)

We (personally) have access to a good house, more material possessions than the boomer generation ever expected to own, the benefit of good educations paid for by the boomers, MUCH cheaper food - lets face it, you can always squeeze into a smaller house/flat/garage, but not eating is a bit tricky (unless you are of supermodel proportions ) and lots more stuff like leisure time things to do and we have the expectation that we will get 'me' time. Mum's 'me time' was the time she spent at work, or managed to squeeze in a bit of reading - no trips to the beauty salon for her! Also we have at least one holiday per year and a lot more time off...

YES house prices are STUPID now, but this is IMO largely due to the restrictions on mortgages being lifted - boomers were only ever allowed (I believe) to borrow 3 times the largest (generally mans') salary. This capped the house prices cos you can only sell something for the money people have available to buy it. Now you can get 100% mortgages, and really long terms. Also they spent a huge amount of their salaries on food as it was quite (relatively) expensive.

Yes, in some ways the boomers 'had it good' with some full employment years, house prices and it has been the generation where the most social movement has occurred (I was the second person to get a degree EVER in my whole extended family - my brother was the first) BUT lots of them have worked incredibly hard for their whole lives, without the pay conditions and benefits that our generation now enjoy, including the earlier health care - how many people of my generation know someone personally who has suffered from TB or measles?

OK all experiences are different and there are many different stories for each generation, but it isn't the baby boomers giving the MP's whacking great pay rises and pension benefits that will cost the country millions in years to come (and now as the taxes load uip the MP pension coffers) It's not the boomers releiving borrowing restrictions on mortgages or managing the economy. Also the world is a very different place to what it was even 20 years ago....

mps' salaries are a drop in the ocean. it's those pensioners who are eating up all the dosh. maybe we should blame them?

Are you an MP?

I think the issue is that those growing up in the 50's and 60's have enjoyed certain fundamental benefits that have now gone, notably free university education, affordable housing and decent company pensions.

It's very sad, because the loss of these things has contributed considerably to the rise in inequality and decreased social mobility that we are seeing now. Don't know what the answer is but you can't blame the entire generation.

Hear, hear 80'sMum. Totally agree with all you say. Re the BB being able to afford houses - we had no choice! When we bought our first home no one, but no one, would give you a mortgage on 2bed houses or flats, because they were 'unsellable' and in any case, afaik, they didn't even exist outside London. You had to go cap in hand to the building society, with whom you had to have been saving at least two yrs, and beg for a loan of 3x the man's salary and 1/3 the woman's. I'm not saying this for sympathy, I'm just saying that wasn't all a bed of roses for babyboomers.

As for Nametaken's comments, I too hope it's a wind-up. My dh has psoriatic arthritis and gets zilch from the State for it, he even buys his own ibuprofen to keep the pain down.

But we are also reaping the benefits of some of those things that were fought for during from the 40s through to the 80s even - and which I see some younger women take for granted.

From my memory most working class from the BB generation expected to live in council housing. It was quite unusual to own property until Thatcher and then they all bought said properties.

But only about 5% of people went to uni in the 50/60's, Iorek, unlike today, and company pensions weren't available to many working class people. Housing was more affordable to buy but so many people were excluded from buying, such as my working-but-disabled BIL. He eventually managed to buy a small house with a special mortgage from the council.

ah, I see people have started telling 'I was poorer than you' stories. My dad likes to tell me he couldn't afford the bus fare to work so he walked. This may be true but what he neglects to mention is that he was on a management graduate trainee scheme, so hardly the same as a 16 hour shift down the pit. And, more importantly, that by the time my parents were 26, they had bought a four bed detached house in a desirable commuter village. One one wage!

The house price bubble has created a massive transfer of wealth from young to old. Of course that doesn't make each individual in the baby boomer generation evil. Or well-off.

But it is a very serious effect. (And in passing I would like my parents to note that if they had just put up with each other for another 30 years instead of frittering their money away getting divorced I might have had better prospects!)

Good point Suedonim, but don't forget the biggest group excluded from mortgages - women!

hmm, interesting thread.

I agree with some of the points of the OP, I don't think that babyboomers themselves are denying the younger generations free education and affordable housing (that's more a function of an economic cycle we can't do much about) but it does make me cross when an entire generation is deprived of free university education without a murmur, and yet the papers are full of stories about grey-haired protesters waving banners about gripes and groans over minor pension alterations. While they were saving up a deposit for their first house, my generation will still be paying off our student loans, and by the time my generation gets to their age we'll be lucky to get ANY pension, let alone a fat index-linked final salary deal.

And FWIW my parents and grandparents both agree that although my generation is richer in small materialistic terms (eg "plastic tat") we are poorer in terms of what really matters - time to spend with your kids, economic security, social mobility. Their generation may not have had a holiday every year, but they paid a tiny percentage of their income into their mortgage, could survive comfortably on a single wage, and had the security of long-term employment contracts and a generous welfare state. I know which I would prefer.

But I think the part of the responsibility lies with the media. More than ever we have an electorate who prioritise whatever the newspapers tell them to. And the papers tend to represent the problems of the middle-aged newspaper buyers over those of teenagers/students/young families.

You can read the Money section of any paper any weekend and read dozens of articles about the difficulty of finding affordable care for the elderly, or getting ripped off with your stocks and shares portfolio, or how best to release equity from your house to supplement your pension, or how to tackle problems with your endowment mortgage. All of these are serious problems and deserve attention - but you can scour the same pages for weeks and not find a single mention about the problems of surviving as a single parent on benefits, or negotiating the tax credit system, or finding affordable childcare, or working your way through uni with a huge debt and trying to juggle two jobs and your course. These problems are just as pressing and yet our media largely ignores them.

I've been thinking about this all evening and it came into my mind that since the BB's were born, the UK hasn't had a major war. Perhaps not killing off our menfolk has also had an effect on life today in terms of population.

In fact, so many things have changed, it's hard to tell which is more significant. Divorce has become easier and there is less pressure now to be in a twosome so there are more single person homes required. Older people are less likely to share a home with their adult children (my grandpa lived with us for 13yrs - wouldn't wish that on anyone!) so more single person homes or retirement homes needed there.

One of my ds's has in fact bought his first home at an earlier age than dh and I did. It's smaller but ds has made a huge profit in three years and can now move somewhere larger. But my other ds is in his 30's and lives in the US where he stands no chance of getting onto the property ladder at the moment.

Oh yes, that right, Edam. It seems so antiquated that I can't believe it was like that in my lifetime! Women were treated so badly. Until the divorce laws of 1970-ish, a woman who left the family home, even if it was because she was physically abused, was deemed to have abandoned her children and she would lose custody of them and receive no state support at all. Thank god those days are long gone.

"grey-haired protesters waving banners about gripes and groans over minor pension alterations."

Losing your entire pension just before you retire is hardly a 'minor pension alteration'! - that's what the protests were about.

the swell of to-be pensioners will cripple the economy though, we need to get back to actually caring as communities to support them...

i'm under no illusions that my children will one day have to look after me and my hubby, and there might not be anything in my pension pot later on (currently £3,000 a year)!!!

"We managed financially on dh's income, but only just. I had no new clothes for 5 years (did have 1 or 2 pairs of shoes though) and the children's clothes were all from jumble sales and charity shops. We did not own a TV, a microwave or a tumble drier to name but a few - and we had no central heating and never went on holiday. Of course we could never afford to go out and we didn't drink or smoke either. Every penny we had went on the essentials. But we were happy enough."

Apart from the TV and a microwave, both of which I think you'll agree are very affordable these days, this sounds exactly like myself and DH. Except that we have to rent from the council and have absolutely no hope of buying a house in the next, oooh, 15 years. And, frankly, I think that's an optimistic prediction. It's the "we were poor, but by god, we were happy" bullshit narrative the BB generation have woven about themselves as justification for hoarding wealth. I wish we were as "poor" as my parents were at my age! At least we'd be scrimping by with the eventual hope of owning our own house one day. As it stands I'm just paying off someone elses (probably a BB's buy-to-let) mortgage, and have done for the past 10 years. It stinks!

I'm sure that there are baby boomers out there who generously share the wealth lady luck has granted them in their lifetime amongst their less fortunate parents and children. It's just that my parents didn't. Not only aren't they sharing their wealth, but I've noticed that my parents have been leeching off of their parents too. My parents aren't representative of every boomer, but the generous wealth sharers aren't either.

we shouldn't hate the older generation for it though, it's just that they have had longer life span than most generations and have been able to accumulate more wealth...

though i think that second homes should pay full council tax (that would help round here - cornwall - the county where people come on holiday). My parents between them have 3 homes and sister can't get on to the housing ladder (wonder why?). But guess what, MP's have lots of homes, so they aren't going to vote for in crease in second-home council tax (currently 50%) that reasonable conclusion!

The person dd1 rents her uni house from has a portfolio of properties, at least 10, I believe. And he's barely 30yo!! I don't know how he's managed to accumulate so much in such a short space of time, but I have told dd to get a wiggle on and marry him.

I was born in 65, so I'm just outside the babyboomer age range, but I've seen my older brothers and sisters starting their lives and SO agree with 80's mum.

And I spent most of my early years of marriage working for a good wage, but having to spend most of it on an interest high mortgage. I scrimped and saved and did without and watched younger colleagues spending money they didn't have on designer kitchens or clothing, brand new cars and other crap.

I never owned a designer buggy or spent £300 on a handbag...I don't wear designer clothes and my daughters stuff has mostly come from Ebay/car boot sales.

Most of us empathise with the young and the fact that they'll struggle to get on the property ladder. Most of us have some sympathy with the way life has gone in terms of pensions, etc, but we're not exempt from this stuff.

I'll have no pension to speak of, because I decided to be a SAHM after 20 years working in a variety of poorly paid, unstable jobs.

I'll probably have to pay for my child's further education and thank you, I've already been caught out with the endowment misselling..and the pensions misselling.

I was bought up to stand on my own 2 feet, though, so I never took advantage of the social security system, despite helping to fund it for 20 years of my life. I figure I've put in my wadge for the future society and funded my own pension (had the Government been sensible enough to invest it wisely!).

I'd say each generation has it's own set of problems. I grew up in Thatcherite Britain...saw the race riots, the miners strikes, mass unemployment and bonkers interest rates.

New generations will face their own problems, and will undoubtedly (as someone has already said) blame the noughties generation for their problems.

Get a life...stop the blame culture and look for solutions rather than running round saying, please miss...it was them that did it!

"Get a life...stop the blame culture and look for solutions"

I am. I've got a nasty feeling that the solution to funding the retirement of thousands upon thousands of boomers is going to involve me paying higher and higher levels of tax for the next forty years.

I don't think I mind supporting all the boomers. I just wish they'd stop bl**dy moaning like my PIL. They have no idea.

i agree with much of dizietsma's post - well, except the last part.

my parents were not boomers. my father was born in the Depression and my mother shortly before the US entered WWII. her younger sister was a boomer, however, born in december 1946 after their father came home from the war, and even my mother comments on how things had changed by the time her sister went to high school from my mother's 1950s stint.

they even think boomers had it pretty good.

my dad sometimes quips, 'most of them don't remember rations.'

i think the saddest part of this generation, and one that is reaping a very sad crop, is the breakdown of community spirit - more a factor of the forces beyond peoples' control, of course, more a function of economic and worldwide phenomenon.

Oh yeah...cos I don't have to pay an increasing amount of tax each year for the increasing number of people we support in our social security system....

I don't have to pay more and more on my accident insurance and car insurance as society's values go down the drain and crime increases.

The thing that really pisses me off about this thread is the fact that ageism is apparently o.k. on mumsnet

I don't believe in being overly pc, but I do get annoyed when I'm included in a sector of society that's getting blamed for ripping off the 'youth' of today...cos they'll have to pay my pension when I get older.

I had to pay for my mums and dads pensions with increasing taxes. They had to pay for theirs.

My poor childless sister pays tax and NI and has done for 43 years (so far) and she's got no kids and has a personal pension, so won't be asking you for a penny of it back, thank you very much! If she ends up alone, in a home somewhere, they'll take her house off her too, just for good measure. So I don't think she'd accept your argument that she's exploiting the youth of today with her lifestyle!

It strikes me as totally unacceptable that one sector of society can be blamed for all the ills of another. This is no different from people blaming immigrants for all their problems, or blaming young people for everything that goes wrong in society. It's taking a one size fits all approach to people and it's just plain wrong.