Over 60s Should Be Encouraged To Downsize

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Pierre

If they've worked all their life they've paid for their own pension/ health care already, and probably for those that haven't contributed.

I also echo the sentiment in the quote.


If I can afford it, I'll have it and keep it.

You're a class act, Pierre.

[danielf]

I find it difficult to escape the notion that a generation is being blamed for doing what current generations wouldn't do any different. Baby boomers have lived through a time a relatively great prosperity. It doesn't surprise me one bit that house prices increase in times of prosperity.

It doesn't strike me that baby boomers have in any way been knowingly irresponsible. Perhaps someone can enlighten me as to how they might have been?

[Ignitionnet]

You can find bits about it all over the internet.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...-voting-muscle
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/book...-WILLETTS.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/c...se-prices.html

An interesting debate both ways can be read at http://www.totalpolitics.com/opinion...-selfish.thtml

The point isn't the relatively great prosperity, it's that all the money from that prosperity has been spent, along with more, and some of that 'more' has been saved up in PFI for future generations to pay, along with the distinct lack of signs of that prosperity.

Rather than saving up for pensions they covered current pensions, as generations do, and spent more than they were putting in despite the North Sea oil revenues and the relatively low cost of education and health care. Their parents paid for their education, my generation will pay for their health care and pensions in retirement.

Had they done something like this there would've been little cause to complain.

Prosperity doesn't mean house prices rocket, they were fairly flat until 1997 despite periods of extremely rapid GDP growth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_property_bubble

[danielf]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

You can find bits about it all over the internet.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...-voting-muscle
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/book...-WILLETTS.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/c...se-prices.html

An interesting debate both ways can be read at http://www.totalpolitics.com/opinion...-selfish.thtml

The point isn't the relatively great prosperity, it's that all the money from that prosperity has been spent, along with more, and some of that 'more' has been saved up in PFI for future generations to pay, along with the distinct lack of signs of that prosperity.

Rather than saving up for pensions they covered current pensions, as generations do, and spent more than they were putting in despite the North Sea oil revenues and the relatively low cost of education and health care. Their parents paid for their education, my generation will pay for their health care and pensions in retirement.

Had they done something like this there would've been little cause to complain.

Prosperity doesn't mean house prices rocket, they were fairly flat until 1997 despite periods of extremely rapid GDP growth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_property_bubble

I don't have time to read all of it, but to be honest, I'm still having a hard time with the notion. It seems a bit easy to me to take the current situation (intergenerational inequality) and conclude that it must be the fault of the previous one, unless it's clear that the previous generation was deliberately irresponsible. For one, hindsight is a wonderful thing. Secondly, coming up with things like the cost of climate change seems ludricous to me, as it's simply not the case that these costs were envisaged 20 or 30 years ago.

All in all, it seems to me people were doing what seemed prudent at the time (and they were doing it all over the world). Playing a blame game when circumstance have changed doesn't achieve much.

[Ignitionnet]

Hrm nope. By the 80s it was very clear that birth rates weren't going to be enough to replenish the work force when Boomers retired, the can was kicked down the street.

Climate change I'll go along with, the pensions and health care costs I won't.

As you've said though there's no reason to think it would or could be any other way, doesn't mean I have to like it, and I sincerely hope that my own generation bequeath the one below us with a better legacy though I'm not entirely sure how we can given we'll both be paying pensions and health care for boomers along with more and more of our own costs.

[danielf]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Hrm nope. By the 80s it was very clear that birth rates weren't going to be enough to replenish the work force when Boomers retired, the can was kicked down the street.

Climate change I'll go along with, the pensions and health care costs I won't.

As you've said though there's no reason to think it would or could be any other way, doesn't mean I have to like it, and I sincerely hope that my own generation bequeath the one below us with a better legacy though I'm not entirely sure how we can given we'll both be paying pensions and health care for boomers along with more and more of our own costs.

I'm not denying that in hindsight things could have been better. What I'm saying is that this seems a silly blame game. The generation before the baby boomers gave us 2 world wars and a ravaged Europe. The generations before that were quite good at generating wealth. They simply robbed the rest of the world. I'm sure they will be eternally grateful. Equally, I'm sure the current generation will find something to do wrong.

Let's not forget that we're in a better position than we were after WW2.

[Traduk]

Originally Posted by danielf

I find it difficult to escape the notion that a generation is being blamed for doing what current generations wouldn't do any different. Baby boomers have lived through a time a relatively great prosperity. It doesn't surprise me one bit that house prices increase in times of prosperity.

It doesn't strike me that baby boomers have in any way been knowingly irresponsible. Perhaps someone can enlighten me as to how they might have been?

I think that the current generation is miffed because for the time being they do not have the opportunity to be in a position to gain as did the boomer generation. Windows of opportunity arise fairly rarely in any lifetime and for many boomers it was the private house boom in sales and privatisation.

For many the privatisation bonanza saw their exit in the '87 crash. For me that huge bonanza yielded a small amount over Libor rates so the whole experience was a useless exercise. Nobody without real money and a constitution of iron held long enough to make real money and even some who did saw their nest eggs broken to 10p in the pound in 2000. Myths abound but reality is different.

Houses are a completely different ball game and few would argue that they are stupidly high. I can think of one owned by a relative that was bought new 43 years ago for £10K and now would carry a price tag of 80X that amount. The owner and all other boomers have done nothing to influence that but the answer for bidding up prices to stupid levels lies with the surprising wealth friendliness of the Labour administration from 1997.

Oh yes they did favour wealth and from what I heard the number of bright young things hitting £250K salaries increased with incredible speed. They pumped prices up not the boomers because in a market passive onlookers have no influence on prices. Only bidders move prices up and then only if not overwhelmed by supply.

As to what happened to all the benefits from the bounties that were found or were one offs. Various governments mishandled them and with usual gross incompetence vast numbers of billions vanished into the ether. If there was ever a boom for real money to be made it was from 1997 to 2007 and relatively few of the boomers were going to go out on a limb in their fifties so proportionately did not really gain.

I actually think that the problems being blamed on the boomers should be better directed at those who did rather nicely in the golden decade, courtesy of Labour.

---------- Post added at 18:29 ---------- Previous post was at 18:06 ----------

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Hrm nope. By the 80s it was very clear that birth rates weren't going to be enough to replenish the work force when Boomers retired, the can was kicked down the street.

Climate change I'll go along with, the pensions and health care costs I won't.

As you've said though there's no reason to think it would or could be any other way, doesn't mean I have to like it, and I sincerely hope that my own generation bequeath the one below us with a better legacy though I'm not entirely sure how we can given we'll both be paying pensions and health care for boomers along with more and more of our own costs.

Governments would never relinquish the grip on the source of revenue which was always going to head into crisis. Dozens of times the questions were raised but no answers were ever forthcoming. Even the carefully negotiated de-linking from NI by some companies retained a symbiotic link as control would not be given up. My work pension is intrinsically linked with the state pension in a complex web.

A lot of people wanted to opt out of the government schemes or anything linked with them but with NI just going into a communal pot along with tax the hand to mouth system carried on. It was known decades ago that the ratio of payers\receivers had been 7:1 and would likely become an unsustainable 2:1 but it was left for whoever found the problem on their watch to deal with.

We never had any more control over our destiny in the past than your age group do now. We were hostage to fortune as are you.

[Ignitionnet]

Interesting comments from Paxman here.

Somewhat amusing that the top two most recommended comments are both from ex-pats living in Thailand.

[Traduk]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Interesting comments from Paxman here.

Somewhat amusing that the top two most recommended comments are both from ex-pats living in Thailand.

I would much rather somebody who supposedly decides to portray a collective guilt was not a person who had supped more than adequately from the supposed cornucopia.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standa...-four-years.do

I would rather a person who was obviously educated to a very high level did not generalise as though the levels of education afforded to him and his like were commonplace. Amongst my dozens of peers I can count the numbers who went to university on the fingers of both hands and the one who went to Cambridge on of a single digit.

We, the boomers were born at the end of an era and that era saw the two world wars in which 10's of millions were slaughtered in the globally anarchic pursuit of power. In my formative years the spectre of having to serve under conscription played a part in the decisions made regarding career choices. It was withdrawn before any actual impact but for his age group did not figure in any equation.

I have said periodically, to my wife, over the past two\three decades that in our case through hard work and sacrifice we are rich beyond our wildest dreams of avarice compared with our teenage year expectations. Being a lifelong cynic I added that at some point the establishment will try to take it all back and here we are, on the threshold of the reclamation.

I disagree with every single element in the look back in anger or envy over the past. Compared to the two generations before we did enjoy release from the shackles of being cannon fodder suffering the multiple diseases that ravaged mankind and most importantly the non threat of hunger. To think that the more modern technological advances were showered like an endless stream of gifts is outside of my experience and most of my peers. The only good thing about that era was I suppose that during the long tedious period of saving for a freezer, you actually appreciated the thing when it could be afforded and didn't throw it away when the warranty expired.

IMO, it's over and that era is on its way out. Nuclear weapons ended the prospect of global wars because you cannot subjugate and enslave people if the environment will not allow life. Money is the new control factor coupled with the twin control of supply.

As a new world order emerged from the war era another is emerging and those favoured must do what is needed to benefit. Looking back in anger will miss what is often in front of one's nose, if forward looking and is a pointless debilitating exercise anyway. It is easy for a boomer to think back and wonder if alternative decisions could have yielded better results. When I so indulge the answer is always mitigated by facts. It takes time to amass what people see as credentials and that is money and asset collateral. Just like today without either an individual is only worth their last salary cheque and that isn't worth much as this week I have spoken to three people who have either drawn their last or shortly will.

Perhaps the insight into social engineering is something that comes with age. I am truly disappointed to see how readily sections of the community are so easily duped into the blame game by less than subtle political manoeuvring. With so many factions of the community overtly blamed for all of the ills it more than difficult to know where one should be positioned to be one of the good guys. What a good job is being done to create the divide and conquer scenario. What a shame that the public are so gullible. All of this stuff is 101 psychology for beginners which is distract, divide, cause tensions and squeeze the lot in the knowledge that they will not form a collective response.

[Ignitionnet]

I trust you feel better after that, clearly a quite sore point!

When an entire generation has so little to look forward to it's not that surprising they look back in anger and envy over the past. They have no prospect of amassing 'credentials' however long and hard they work and they know it. If they're lucky they'll be paying a social landlord and if not they'll be paying on average over 40% of their income towards someone else's mortgage, most likely a member of the older generation who leveraged the massive increase in their own house price to purchase another.

It's rarely summed up better than through all the comments on that story mentioning how people have worked since the age of xxx - at least there was work for them to do which is more than many of our youth can lay claim to.

[Traduk]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

I trust you feel better after that, clearly a quite sore point!

When an entire generation has so little to look forward to it's not that surprising they look back in anger and envy over the past. They have no prospect of amassing 'credentials' however long and hard they work and they know it. If they're lucky they'll be paying a social landlord and if not they'll be paying on average over 40% of their income towards someone else's mortgage, most likely a member of the older generation who leveraged the massive increase in their own house price to purchase another.

It's rarely summed up better than through all the comments on that story mentioning how people have worked since the age of xxx - at least there was work for them to do which is more than many of our youth can lay claim to.

Unfortunately although I know that I am verbose beyond all logic you still do not get the point.

We Boomers had expectations and aspirations that for the most were zip, nada, nil but against the measure of our parents and grandparents just to survive without succumbing to Polio, Tuberculosis or being atomised in some muddy field of warfare looked like a positive way forward. Even that was frequently in question with wars almost constant and a culmination in the near miss of the Cuban crisis.

Of course there were jobs a plenty and at one point I had three (day, evenings and weekends) but they were at exploitative low pay and mind numbingly boring which if you were prepared to tolerate brain dead toil allowed the extraordinarily slow creation of enough capital to actually climb on the lowest rung of the housing ladder. With a non working wife and two children I turned down offers of council accommodation whilst against my wife's wishes I struggled for 5 years to acquire a house which needed complete renovation.

Nine years later, the fourteen years of saving and re-building reached a workable asset base which had initially and all the way through looked as though it had no prospect of success. The only way forward then was to risk the lot on business ventures which true to my inner philosophy of I will not be beaten, won through but not without a ton of grief on the way.

Nobody has or has ever had a working crystal ball. We had no hopes or aspirations any more than now. What we did have collectively and individually was a determination to make the most of what was available and contrary to the themes currently in circulation didn't decide to lose the human race in self defeatism and criticism of others before even trying to run the race. Perhaps in the educational lack of competitiveness they should have pointed out that although not coming first is acceptable, not taking part is not.

There could be a far better tomorrow just around the corner and with luck you may not have to strive for 14 years just to become a player. Luck sometimes visits those who are unprepared but mostly overnight luck is after years or decades of diligent preparation with hope but not expectation.

[Ignitionnet]

You're rather wasting your time personalising things with me given I'm in the evil top 5% in terms of income, though oddly bottom 20% of assets due to the whole generational thing.

While I appreciate your personal story it's quite irrelevant - it doesn't change that taxes will be going up to pay the boomers' health care bill, over half the NHS budget goes to retirees and the boomer cohort is massive, those of us coming after will retire later and in most cases with poorer benefits, housing costs generation X triple or more what it cost you, your generation hasn't left much of a legacy of infrastructure and rather than following the responsible Norwegian model spent one-off windfalls on, well, what did it go on I'm still not sure, and are furiously clinging on to the proceeds.

We've had mass immigration for one reason and one reason only from the economic angle, to provide enough tax payers to fund the large generation of retirees who will need health care and welfare. The numbers of immigrants almost perfectly match the shortfall between generations X/Y and the boomers.

Regardless of your personal story this is how it is. The housing ladder that you may have had to work hard to get onto is for many an utter fantasy now however many jobs they have and they've been forced to delay having children as a result, rents have never been less affordable, demand for housing has been increased hugely by immigration forced through the pensions ponzi scheme while certain demographics protest against building and have a planning system sympathetic to protecting their assets.

Malicious or not, victims of fate or not I personally have every right to be frustrated and exasperated with how things are, those who come after me or who may not possess my earning power and are looking to a future with not a lot of silver lining have every right to look back at the past enviously.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...r-parents.html

That extra wealth quite simply didn't materialise from nowhere, it's come from the generations following through their borrowing and in turn work to repay that borrowing, their worse pensions to cover previous defined benefit schemes, their taxes.

Those are the simple facts of the matter, I really couldn't care less whether you think everyone younger than you is vindictive or not, apart from some ignorant sods it's nothing personal I know, it's just your generation's politicians mortgaged us to keep you sweet.

[Pierre]

Two posts that prove, if proof were needed, that some people on this forum have too much time on their hands.

[danielf]

Originally Posted by Pierre

Two posts that prove, if proof were needed, that some people on this forum have too much time on their hands.

Quite unlike you, presumably, being able to take time out of your busy schedule to inform others that you don't approve of something they apparently are passionate about.

Got any hobbies that you'd like me to rubbish just because I can?

[Traduk]

Ignitionnet,

The personalisation is for no other purpose than to dispel the stereotyping which yours and other's generalisations appear to portray. On every bell curve distribution there are outliers. The example you found is an outlier in the boomer group as much as you are an outlier within your age group.

To stereotype one has to centre within the bell curve and I can assure you that there a a heck of a lot of very worried boomers in the centre with a lot of extremely worried ones towards the negative end.

Your self depreciation of being in the top 5% of earners is misplaced, when in my eyes, it is worthy of applause. On a pro rata basis I wish I had been in such a position at such a young age but I wasn't as that was the time I was juggling debts during the 14 year build process.

As for the eluded to waste of funds and the use thereof which you insist was so boomer orientated. We had no more control over its use than now. We voted just like you have been able to do for 15 years and democracy dictated how the dice rolled. You had just as much say in the election and subsequent re-elections of Labour as did I and as the outcome has been and will be possibly the biggest financial crisis in history, blame knows no generational boundaries (apart from those without a vote).

The Daily Mail article you linked to is just more total nonsense. That is just grabbing some numbers that suit to supposedly prove a point and of course we all know many consultants who are of typical of each generation.

They also forgot to mention in the article that with a 30 year age gap the poor hard done by child will most probably have received a trickle down of the parent's small fortune and will indeed be a great deal more fortunate than the parents. A good case there for if there is only one child to lobby for the 1 million pound inheritance tax so beloved by the Tories which with the carry over would give the lot to the child. No worries about pensions for the child unless a parent manages a Monarch's telegram.

I would have thought the greatest harm done to this country in living memory or perhaps forever according to Mervyn King has been done by the last administration and this lot may do no better. Your vote and mine and we both end up unhappy chappies

I missed (apart from the house boom) much of the bounty in the form of ridiculous salary rises under Labour's wealth friendly regime. I would think the biggest task at hand for the top 5% is to hang on to those jobs. I do not care if my house goes down in price but as you pointed out the quantum rise started in 1997... see the linkage. House boom = salary boom. Looks like a rock and hard place unless you are lucky

The media appears as geared towards creating societal divisions as the current government. The we are all in it together and mending the broken society appears to have been somewhat lost in the generate hatred and let them smash it all to smithereens. Makes me wonder what joys are in store if internal divisions are a precursor.