Categorising people into convenient and arbitrary age groups is bunk. The term "Boomer" and it's offspring was originally coined by lifestyle journalists in the 70s for glossy coffee table magazines. It's a pseudo science and has no place in sociology.
The idea that because you were born into a randomly determined 20 year age range that determines your tastes, your cultural markers, your personality and political opinions is stupid when you think about it. So someone born in 1946 shares all these "Boomer" traits with someone born in 1964? Ludicrous.
Lumping people as "Boomer", "Zoomers" etc is how the Right do identity politics. They use it to engineer intergenerational conflict. The people smeared as Boomers, and it is always used as a slur, never a compliment, are our parents and grandparents. Reject the terms, don't play identity politics and divide and rule. Don't be a leftist.
You’re brilliantly mental Pam, I love it. So you ARE going to get a state pension then? Hmm. I think you need to explain how that “pension” is affordable for British grandchildren to pay, seeing as you’ve got a PHD and all. Me being so uneducated in numbers I had to ask AI if it was, it laughed in my face and said “fuck no” but I’m sure you can do sums better because you’ve got the magic money tree calculator they gave the boomers and x generation in “economics” classes at school, right.
That’s cultural shit is not important, the young were born drowning in debt taken out to pay for the olds largesse in benefits, to themselves. That largesse continues unabated and the spenders are completely unapologetic apparently.
Every young worker since 1948 has paid to support existing old people. It’s not new. What is new is globalisation, the export of all the good jobs, plus expansion of welfare to over half the population, and adding twenty million dependents to an overcrowded island.
The size of the generations matter. The reason the douchebags in charge have brought in millions was in an effort to keep the whole Ponzi scheme paying out for the boomers “pensions” and cheap labour for boomers healthcare. There is the economic reality of our indebtedness and the boomers and most of the x generation don’t fucking live in it.
I hate my parents for different reasons. Who built up the national debt? Was it the grandkids? As an X I’m just as guilty but the boomers do have a sense of entitlement and lack of personal responsibility towards the national finances that is beyond parody.
All of them. Every single one and presumably you've met every Boomer. Because when you lump millions of people into a box then you strip of them of their agency and individuality. That's leftist thinking.
It’s a very odd situation: so called ‘Boomers’ seem to involve anyone before 2000.
And there are different dynamics for each generation. My mum (1940 Dob) inherited post war poverty but invested and was able to watch her property purchase accumulate worth as inflation/recovery took effect, but it was extremely hard.
I (GenX) came of age at the end of the eighties where that brief flourishing of growth and low inflation saw my parents actually genuinely become materially more wealthy, but I faced a job market flat on its face and inflation going bonkers by the early nineties. I only mustered enough collateral in the early teenies to buy a house. Before it was rent rent rent. 15 years of rent and saving.
I can’t speak for all the following generations but my step son (born 2000) and therefore I think a GenZ has got eventually a decent job but is still renting. He probably won’t buy a house until his late 30s in as much as I did. The difference will be the cascade effect of the end of the boomer generation. I recently inherited 100k through the house sale of my deceased mum’s property.
Most of that is being reinvested. Eventually my sons will receive a similar boost. Providing I continue my path to avoid paying for a care home by aiming to shuffle off this mortal coil in my seventies.
The Boomer effect will cascade for some eventually, but its effect will be uneven, and longevity and low retirement ages aren’t helping.
But the younger generations need to make tactical decisions like the older generations did. House share in the sticks. Commute from lower value areas and put the money into savings. Don’t expect the ‘model’ in your early thirties. The model doesn’t exist if in fact it ever did.
Be rational not resentful of older generations.
There are opportunities for younger people I never had. Not least the crushing polarity of education results which is rapidly disappearing in the rear view mirror.
The government can and should help by closing down the absurdity of the triple lock.
Yearly interest alone is 110 billion now the 3rd largest government spending item, behind social protection and health. social protection is roughly £330–340 billion a year in the current UK budget with the State Pension alone accounting for the largest single chunk of that, followed by disability/incapacity benefits and Universal Credit. Total spending is around £1.36 trillion this year, so against £1.232 trillion in receipts, that's the £132 billion deficit and rising. Inflation will make will make taxes impossible for many taxpayers to pay AND eat at the same time in about, oh in about ages ago! Which means uc benefits rise along side pensions on top of the demographic crisis. The whole thing is a magic money tree mess being left behind by the older generations who apparently believe in pixies and think this is how an economy is supposed to be, or do they just use silly commie economic theory to try and explain away the obvious fact that they have bankrupted the nation by paying benefits to themselves.
What demographic are mostly still unapologetic Blairites?! The national finances were always fucked because of the size of the boomer generation, pensions, health and social care were never going to be affordable for the generations after at the levels expected by the boomers, these things have been obvious for 50 years so it’s not like boomers didn’t have time to sort it out and save, is it?
They don’t need to pay off the debt. The debt *provided it is not increasing* will look after itself via inflation. The problem isn’t the debt: it’s the deficit and put bluntly that means spending control either implemented by gov or insisted upon sooner or later by the markets. But spending £153bn a year more than revenue is idiotic especially when 2/3rds of it goes on interest. Market confidence is a beauty parade. We don’t need to be whistle clean we just need to be better than our peers.
Easy. That's only £100K each tax payer to pay off our national debt. Of course if we wait for it to "look after itself via inflation", it will soon be £200K each. I'll go look at my small change!!!!!!!
Sorted out by inflation!! Inflation is a hidden tax at least and at worst the death of economies. I just can’t believe what I’m hearing on this thread. Maybe we should try living within our means and investing our time in building up our economy to pay for services or is that an outdated concept now?
Inflation is a fact of life. The aim should be to have it under control. And actual productive growth ahead of it. And if so then the debt pile will be eventually be eaten away. But none of that is the priority: the deficit is key. By keeping to a balanced budget the most important thing will occur: interest on Gilts will reduce and the combination of that with the reduction of government spend by dint of having to include the £100bn odd of interest payments in the deficit but requiring budget balance eventually the share of public spending (the root cause of the situation) will naturally decline.
These are all automatic stabilisers, and are achievable without running around screaming about the end of the world debt pile.
This has been done before and will be done again. It just needs to happen under a gov prepared to grasp the reins or it will happen under market duress and be infinitely more painful.
Musk predicts robots will manufacture other robots in their millions starting in around 10 years.
Thats the end of jobs as a means of sustaining an economy.
In addition Musk predicts the standard of living will improve dramatically as robots make things faster, better and cheaper.
So the fundamentals of how an economy runs, has to change.
The idea of what sustains a country’s economy needs reviewing.
Pensions are a good example of false information being disseminated.
The pension triple lock was brought in because the UK pension had fallen behind other countries so badly that countries like Bulgaria were looking after their elderly better than the UK.
Even now the pension is only 12th/13th in the world, still below countries like Ireland, after 15 years of operation.
When has the media explained that?
What is needed is a new look at UK economics.
But we are bound to the City of Londons commissions and charges. If they are that good they don’t need us.
Trump thinks they are leeches, I don’t disagree.
Iran looks to be teetering, against the predictions of ‘experts’.
Trump will sort out Ukraine next and the financial sector will cave in with their scam to make money from war.
It’s a new world, if we’re fortunate, at the beginning of a new journey. Let’s hope that a Christian world emerges from it.
I was born in ‘56 and feel desperately sorry for the Zoomers. Despite it being completely obvious what Blair/Brown and his successor Tories were doing to our ethnic base as a substitute for genuine productivity improvement to counter the impact of feminism on the birth rate, they did nothing to stop. People trying to raise the alarm were ignored and labelled bigots. ‘Told you so’ is not much comfort.
There are those who constantly belly ache and those who look to provide solutions.
Sadly those that belly ache are in the ascendancy with very few concentrating on the solutions.
The MSM as well as online constantly churn over the problems we face but who is yet centre stage with the solutions?
Back in 2012 I organised a meeting in Harrogate attended by 30 individuals and Dr Richard North ( Pete's father) and we identified our salvation lay in giving people more power over their politicians so that the majority could no longer be ignored us turning our politicians into our servants instead of being our masters.
The result of our meeting produced the six demands of The Harrogate Agenda which I strongly suggest has to be a large part of the solution by providing the people with the power to direct our politicians rather than allowing them free reign to lord it over us.
I haven't met a 'boomer' that isn't sympathetic to gen z. They are their grandchildren, so I don't know why sone of them ard so dismissive. Is it a difference in the working class and middle classes?
Those you work white collar jobs and those you are in more middle management?
The kids have been screwed by the boomers generation and anyone who doesn’t understand that is illiterate. Look at the debt they’re leaving behind them for fucks sake! They didn’t have a world war to fight but they are leaving us with debt like they had multiple.
Your reference to Eddie Murphy cheered me up. In his early 20s he was privately and public ally upbraided by Bill Cosby as being a bad example to American Black youth. After Cosby’s conviction, Murphy noted that in the end he was the boring steady Eddie stay at home living with his kids and grandkids, whereas Cosby……!!
Categorising people into convenient and arbitrary age groups is bunk. The term "Boomer" and it's offspring was originally coined by lifestyle journalists in the 70s for glossy coffee table magazines. It's a pseudo science and has no place in sociology.
The idea that because you were born into a randomly determined 20 year age range that determines your tastes, your cultural markers, your personality and political opinions is stupid when you think about it. So someone born in 1946 shares all these "Boomer" traits with someone born in 1964? Ludicrous.
Lumping people as "Boomer", "Zoomers" etc is how the Right do identity politics. They use it to engineer intergenerational conflict. The people smeared as Boomers, and it is always used as a slur, never a compliment, are our parents and grandparents. Reject the terms, don't play identity politics and divide and rule. Don't be a leftist.
I'm an Ignoomer, ie totally ignorant of the definitions of boomers, aoomers and zoomers. not sure where that places me.
You’re brilliantly mental Pam, I love it. So you ARE going to get a state pension then? Hmm. I think you need to explain how that “pension” is affordable for British grandchildren to pay, seeing as you’ve got a PHD and all. Me being so uneducated in numbers I had to ask AI if it was, it laughed in my face and said “fuck no” but I’m sure you can do sums better because you’ve got the magic money tree calculator they gave the boomers and x generation in “economics” classes at school, right.
That’s cultural shit is not important, the young were born drowning in debt taken out to pay for the olds largesse in benefits, to themselves. That largesse continues unabated and the spenders are completely unapologetic apparently.
Every young worker since 1948 has paid to support existing old people. It’s not new. What is new is globalisation, the export of all the good jobs, plus expansion of welfare to over half the population, and adding twenty million dependents to an overcrowded island.
The size of the generations matter. The reason the douchebags in charge have brought in millions was in an effort to keep the whole Ponzi scheme paying out for the boomers “pensions” and cheap labour for boomers healthcare. There is the economic reality of our indebtedness and the boomers and most of the x generation don’t fucking live in it.
You've bought into the bunk. You're being manipulated into hating your parents.
I hate my parents for different reasons. Who built up the national debt? Was it the grandkids? As an X I’m just as guilty but the boomers do have a sense of entitlement and lack of personal responsibility towards the national finances that is beyond parody.
All of them. Every single one and presumably you've met every Boomer. Because when you lump millions of people into a box then you strip of them of their agency and individuality. That's leftist thinking.
Nonsense!
How much was the mortgage in cash terms?
I’d rather pay 18.5% on a 100k mortgage than 5% on 500k.
It’s a very odd situation: so called ‘Boomers’ seem to involve anyone before 2000.
And there are different dynamics for each generation. My mum (1940 Dob) inherited post war poverty but invested and was able to watch her property purchase accumulate worth as inflation/recovery took effect, but it was extremely hard.
I (GenX) came of age at the end of the eighties where that brief flourishing of growth and low inflation saw my parents actually genuinely become materially more wealthy, but I faced a job market flat on its face and inflation going bonkers by the early nineties. I only mustered enough collateral in the early teenies to buy a house. Before it was rent rent rent. 15 years of rent and saving.
I can’t speak for all the following generations but my step son (born 2000) and therefore I think a GenZ has got eventually a decent job but is still renting. He probably won’t buy a house until his late 30s in as much as I did. The difference will be the cascade effect of the end of the boomer generation. I recently inherited 100k through the house sale of my deceased mum’s property.
Most of that is being reinvested. Eventually my sons will receive a similar boost. Providing I continue my path to avoid paying for a care home by aiming to shuffle off this mortal coil in my seventies.
The Boomer effect will cascade for some eventually, but its effect will be uneven, and longevity and low retirement ages aren’t helping.
But the younger generations need to make tactical decisions like the older generations did. House share in the sticks. Commute from lower value areas and put the money into savings. Don’t expect the ‘model’ in your early thirties. The model doesn’t exist if in fact it ever did.
Be rational not resentful of older generations.
There are opportunities for younger people I never had. Not least the crushing polarity of education results which is rapidly disappearing in the rear view mirror.
The government can and should help by closing down the absurdity of the triple lock.
Yearly interest alone is 110 billion now the 3rd largest government spending item, behind social protection and health. social protection is roughly £330–340 billion a year in the current UK budget with the State Pension alone accounting for the largest single chunk of that, followed by disability/incapacity benefits and Universal Credit. Total spending is around £1.36 trillion this year, so against £1.232 trillion in receipts, that's the £132 billion deficit and rising. Inflation will make will make taxes impossible for many taxpayers to pay AND eat at the same time in about, oh in about ages ago! Which means uc benefits rise along side pensions on top of the demographic crisis. The whole thing is a magic money tree mess being left behind by the older generations who apparently believe in pixies and think this is how an economy is supposed to be, or do they just use silly commie economic theory to try and explain away the obvious fact that they have bankrupted the nation by paying benefits to themselves.
How are they tactically going to pay off the debt we have got the nation in, they’re not, we fucking screwed them pure and simple.
Not “we”. The national finances were pretty sound in 1997.
What demographic are mostly still unapologetic Blairites?! The national finances were always fucked because of the size of the boomer generation, pensions, health and social care were never going to be affordable for the generations after at the levels expected by the boomers, these things have been obvious for 50 years so it’s not like boomers didn’t have time to sort it out and save, is it?
Brown didn’t help by destroying private pensions, we were OK until then, best pension provision in Europe. Oh, and the gold.
They don’t need to pay off the debt. The debt *provided it is not increasing* will look after itself via inflation. The problem isn’t the debt: it’s the deficit and put bluntly that means spending control either implemented by gov or insisted upon sooner or later by the markets. But spending £153bn a year more than revenue is idiotic especially when 2/3rds of it goes on interest. Market confidence is a beauty parade. We don’t need to be whistle clean we just need to be better than our peers.
Easy. That's only £100K each tax payer to pay off our national debt. Of course if we wait for it to "look after itself via inflation", it will soon be £200K each. I'll go look at my small change!!!!!!!
Sorted out by inflation!! Inflation is a hidden tax at least and at worst the death of economies. I just can’t believe what I’m hearing on this thread. Maybe we should try living within our means and investing our time in building up our economy to pay for services or is that an outdated concept now?
Inflation is a fact of life. The aim should be to have it under control. And actual productive growth ahead of it. And if so then the debt pile will be eventually be eaten away. But none of that is the priority: the deficit is key. By keeping to a balanced budget the most important thing will occur: interest on Gilts will reduce and the combination of that with the reduction of government spend by dint of having to include the £100bn odd of interest payments in the deficit but requiring budget balance eventually the share of public spending (the root cause of the situation) will naturally decline.
These are all automatic stabilisers, and are achievable without running around screaming about the end of the world debt pile.
This has been done before and will be done again. It just needs to happen under a gov prepared to grasp the reins or it will happen under market duress and be infinitely more painful.
Musk predicts robots will manufacture other robots in their millions starting in around 10 years.
Thats the end of jobs as a means of sustaining an economy.
In addition Musk predicts the standard of living will improve dramatically as robots make things faster, better and cheaper.
So the fundamentals of how an economy runs, has to change.
The idea of what sustains a country’s economy needs reviewing.
Pensions are a good example of false information being disseminated.
The pension triple lock was brought in because the UK pension had fallen behind other countries so badly that countries like Bulgaria were looking after their elderly better than the UK.
Even now the pension is only 12th/13th in the world, still below countries like Ireland, after 15 years of operation.
When has the media explained that?
What is needed is a new look at UK economics.
But we are bound to the City of Londons commissions and charges. If they are that good they don’t need us.
Trump thinks they are leeches, I don’t disagree.
Iran looks to be teetering, against the predictions of ‘experts’.
Trump will sort out Ukraine next and the financial sector will cave in with their scam to make money from war.
It’s a new world, if we’re fortunate, at the beginning of a new journey. Let’s hope that a Christian world emerges from it.
I was born in ‘56 and feel desperately sorry for the Zoomers. Despite it being completely obvious what Blair/Brown and his successor Tories were doing to our ethnic base as a substitute for genuine productivity improvement to counter the impact of feminism on the birth rate, they did nothing to stop. People trying to raise the alarm were ignored and labelled bigots. ‘Told you so’ is not much comfort.
Well, isn’t this what the Marxists want? Everyone at each other’s throats so we are disunited?
There are those who constantly belly ache and those who look to provide solutions.
Sadly those that belly ache are in the ascendancy with very few concentrating on the solutions.
The MSM as well as online constantly churn over the problems we face but who is yet centre stage with the solutions?
Back in 2012 I organised a meeting in Harrogate attended by 30 individuals and Dr Richard North ( Pete's father) and we identified our salvation lay in giving people more power over their politicians so that the majority could no longer be ignored us turning our politicians into our servants instead of being our masters.
The result of our meeting produced the six demands of The Harrogate Agenda which I strongly suggest has to be a large part of the solution by providing the people with the power to direct our politicians rather than allowing them free reign to lord it over us.
I recommend it to the House!
https://harrogateagenda.org.uk/
But it is much easier to grumble than to carry out the hard work required to produce THA.
Now to implement it somehow.
I haven't met a 'boomer' that isn't sympathetic to gen z. They are their grandchildren, so I don't know why sone of them ard so dismissive. Is it a difference in the working class and middle classes?
Those you work white collar jobs and those you are in more middle management?
Divide and rule. Have the kids never heard of this?
The kids have been screwed by the boomers generation and anyone who doesn’t understand that is illiterate. Look at the debt they’re leaving behind them for fucks sake! They didn’t have a world war to fight but they are leaving us with debt like they had multiple.
The person you should have a go at is Blair. Not the random pensioner trying to keep warm in Spoons. Generalisation much?
If I had had a go at a random anyone that would be a good point probably.
Some of us protected this country for 30+ years so that you could have the freedoms to write as you please.
Your reference to Eddie Murphy cheered me up. In his early 20s he was privately and public ally upbraided by Bill Cosby as being a bad example to American Black youth. After Cosby’s conviction, Murphy noted that in the end he was the boring steady Eddie stay at home living with his kids and grandkids, whereas Cosby……!!