Blame the baby bloomers of the sixties

Older people own the wealth –housing and pensions and for the first time in British history, pensioner incomes after housing costs have caught up with those of working-age families. While government and the opposition wants to build more  houses for young people  – though they do want to keep free TV licences for the over 75s as well.

 

Jennie Birstow’s book Stop Mugging Grandma, treats  “ generationalism” not as an economic fact  but as a malicious social and cultural chronicle, analysed through British debate. British thinkers are familiar with differences of class, gender and ethnicity as powerful to illustrate economic differences.

According to Birstow when you are born does matter. The experiences that shape people’s view of politics often occur during the early twenties as it determines the economic environment when you enter the job market. Those born after second world war  who come of age in the 1960s enjoyed rising wages without competition in a global labour market from workers in China and India.

 

Government polices  are littered with age rules: it is political choice that a 21-year-old travelling to work on London Transport pays full fare but a 61-year-old travels for free, which was a political decision to protect pensioner benefits with the so-called triple lock  that ensure British pensioners  enjoys benefits rising by a minimum of 2.5 per cent  average earnings growth or  Inflation whichever is the highest, while freeze on benefits for families of working age.

Birstow draws  attention to these decisions not to promote generational warfare, but it is merely asking whether we are really delivering fairness between the generations.

 

Birstow replies to Boomer bashing contracts  between generations and argue that  drawing attention to the continuing disadvantages faced by ethnic minorities in not promoting ethnic hatred, but draw attention to these divides not to deepen them but because we want to overcome them.

You may like being a servant to your elders when you are a junior but don’t worry, eventually you will get you turn when you are senior.

Stop Mugging Grandma: The “Generation Wars” and Why Boomer Blaming Won’t solve Anything by Jennie Bristow, Yale £ 18.99, 258 pages.