The Baby Boomers Have Squandered Their Children’s Future

THE BABY BOOMERS HAVE SQUANDERED THEIR CHILDREN’S FUTURE We should protect ourselves from the self centred attitude of the elderly. A generation that have ‘pulled the ladder they climbed up after them’, intending to prevent youth from attaining the merits of their own yesteryears. I am painting the picture of intergenerational fairness – a product of blame and a constant of culture designed to justify the impeding nature of society today. This vociferous claim is stifling nations as the desire to classify a diagnosis implants the division of ages through a unjustified mood.

The baby boomer generation filled the hole opened by the wounded and dead, supplied a new workforce and bolstered prosperity, developing consumerist nations. A 1958 story in Life magazine declared that “kids” were a “built-in recession cure. ” Whilst the thousands of men who returned infertile are denied scrutiny, despite declining fertility rates, aiding an ageing generation and contributing a diminutive amount to society. To destroy the idyllic past is the recollection of rationing, utility clothing, national service and events such as the Vietnam war.

Can dwindling resources, debt or the enevitable issues of over population really be placed on these elders’ shoulders? Especially as, since October those over 65 are allowed to remain in occupations, so state reliance beforehand is free from their influence, just poor government prediction. Opposition then utter words of stunted growth. However the labour market is dynamic, not static – mature workers continue to pay taxes, fuelling the wealth that will expand employment, providing those opportunities for the young. In the UK university attendance has increased by 40%, the literacy rate is 99%, minimum wage will increase to ? . 31, we face higher life expectancy, and greater affluence as wealth is expected to double by 2050. Is this prospectus so detrimental or terminal? Since when has spending equalled squander? It merely stimulates the monetary cycle of the economy. The end of the post war economic boom, arrived from the collapse of the Bretton Woods System in 1971,the 1973 oil crisis and The Nixon shock causing the stock market crash. It is the traditional conservative government that now promotes that each generation has a moral obligation, acting as a trustee and beneficiary, moving attention towards insubstantial social issues.

But western society is not expected to evaluate through ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation as it tends to distort conceptions, this can be applied to age. It is vital to consider that one single group, circumstance or historical event has ever been solely to blame. There is always a collective of responsibilities and actions, therefore to burden the baby boomer’s would be naive and childish. An ideological obsession has formed causing the propagation of every single inequality and injustice between generations. A western, educated, modern society judging averages, demonising the elderly rather than adapting and extending change.