Post by Naselus on Jul 11, 2009 1:54:26 GMT
not even sure if anyone checks this site anymore, but something's been bugging me and I figured I'd stick it up here just so as I've got somewhere to find it.
Has anyone else noticed the extreme reluctance of the mainstream media to refer to the elephant in the corner of the beginning baby-boomer retirements? Seems to me that their loathe to mention ANYTHING relating to this looming disaster... Given the poor population growth in the mid-70s, and the fact that pensioners now for the first time outnumber the under-20s as an age group (fully 18.5% of the population are now over 65) , added to unprecedented lifespans (2007 data claims male life expetancy is now 80.3 years; female lifespan 83.6), plus the obvious point that our hopelessly mis-managed economy has fallen to bits (taking with it many of the private pension funds that so many of the soon-to-retire were banking on)... well, it just seems an awful lot like there's a huge bill to be paid and the people who ran it up are going to be claiming benefits as we put the money in.
a quick scan of the net brings up suprisingly little information. There's several US Ivy-league student blogs complaining about it, but very little mention of anything at all in the UK. Yet simply asking around a few friends will show that this IS a big worry amoungst the younger generation, which will surely become more pronounced as the largest proportion of our population begin to retire in the next 10-15 years. With an extra 8 million people retiring in the next 10 years alone, this is surely going to generate some hostility from the people left carrying the can - the generations referred to as 'X' and 'Y'.
Let's begin with the charge sheet for those who have come before - the baby boomers. This refers to those born between 1943 and 1961, generally - the time of a massive surge in population growth following the second world war. It's a generation which includes the vast majority of our current leaders and politicians, including Dubya, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, and half of new New Labour. And what has their time in power been spent doing?
Well, firstly there's the flourishing empire of the US, which has been supported in it's imperialist ambitions (and let's be honest, there's no real hiding from the fact that it IS imperial ambition that brought the US to Iraq now) by Britain up-to-the-hilt. This is an expensive war which has been fought nearly-exclusively by younger generations (the average age of soldiers killed in Iraq is 27). Anti-imperialist sentiment is extremely high in the younger, more media-savvy generations - the Xers and the Ys get a good portion of their news input from the web, outside of traditional main-stream control areas like TV, and also haven't grown up under the ultra-patriotic atmosphere of the cold war. To these younger people, the words 'American' and 'Good' are NOT automatically synonymous; the west shouldn't throw it's weight around in the middle east. The baby boomers have thrown away lives in a war that most younger people are against, and now intend to retire quietly so that the survivors can come home and pay for it.
Speaking of paying for it, we come onto the second point - the shabby state of western economies. The Capital-friendly, Labour-hostile business environment of the New Right has left the world in the most inequal state since the First World War. The frankly insane consumer-driven economics (including the idea of buying things from China using money borrowed from China) of Britain and particularly the United States have led to their actual ability to export anything drying up completely... and who's been growing rich at the top levels of that fire-sale of the national economy? Several notable boomers, who were already established in their jobs when Thatcher took power, leaving the shitty end of the stick outheld to those who 'came of age' when Privatisation and outsourcing had eliminated employability for the young and inexperienced almost completely, and who had to face a 5% minimum unemployment level for 'anti-inflationary' defence purposes...
Let's not forget that the baby boomers enjoyed full grants for their education - grants which were replaced with 'loans' for their successors, lest the tax burden on the greediest generation should rise. In fact, slashing taxes appealed to the baby boomers a lot - and their massive glut of votes meant that they generally got their own way. Small government, low-to-non-existant regulation, and rabid consumerism are the economic legacy that has been left - effectively leaving others to foot the bill for their profligacy.
In ecological terms, the effects of global warming have been ignored on the assumption that, once again, it's 'someone else's problem'... carbon emission levels have fallen by a shamefully small amount given how long global warming has been recognised as a phenomenon, especially given the amount of denial we heard on the subject right up until 2008. Suddenly, as the older generation reach pensionable age and will no longer be paying to clean up the mess themselves, they recognise the problem exists and begin asking for it to be dealt with. Hmmm. Sounds like the economy thing again....
What we have here is, in sociology terms at very least, the outright opression of one generation by another. The selfish greed of the generation now passing into retirement effectively dominating the lifetimes of those who succeed them, who will be paying to sort out the economic mess alone for at least 10 years and may be paying for the ecological damage with their lives. A massive government debt, a huge pension burden (and let's not even get onto the fact that we'll be claiming OUR pensions at 68-70, rather than the comparatively lenient 65... given that our lifespan is estimated to be MUCH lower than that of our parents, it's far less likely someone my age will have even 1/3rd of the retirement lifespan of a baby boomer), a messy and drawn-out occupation, and massive social inequality are the Boomer's parting gift.
Any thoughts?
Has anyone else noticed the extreme reluctance of the mainstream media to refer to the elephant in the corner of the beginning baby-boomer retirements? Seems to me that their loathe to mention ANYTHING relating to this looming disaster... Given the poor population growth in the mid-70s, and the fact that pensioners now for the first time outnumber the under-20s as an age group (fully 18.5% of the population are now over 65) , added to unprecedented lifespans (2007 data claims male life expetancy is now 80.3 years; female lifespan 83.6), plus the obvious point that our hopelessly mis-managed economy has fallen to bits (taking with it many of the private pension funds that so many of the soon-to-retire were banking on)... well, it just seems an awful lot like there's a huge bill to be paid and the people who ran it up are going to be claiming benefits as we put the money in.
a quick scan of the net brings up suprisingly little information. There's several US Ivy-league student blogs complaining about it, but very little mention of anything at all in the UK. Yet simply asking around a few friends will show that this IS a big worry amoungst the younger generation, which will surely become more pronounced as the largest proportion of our population begin to retire in the next 10-15 years. With an extra 8 million people retiring in the next 10 years alone, this is surely going to generate some hostility from the people left carrying the can - the generations referred to as 'X' and 'Y'.
Let's begin with the charge sheet for those who have come before - the baby boomers. This refers to those born between 1943 and 1961, generally - the time of a massive surge in population growth following the second world war. It's a generation which includes the vast majority of our current leaders and politicians, including Dubya, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, and half of new New Labour. And what has their time in power been spent doing?
Well, firstly there's the flourishing empire of the US, which has been supported in it's imperialist ambitions (and let's be honest, there's no real hiding from the fact that it IS imperial ambition that brought the US to Iraq now) by Britain up-to-the-hilt. This is an expensive war which has been fought nearly-exclusively by younger generations (the average age of soldiers killed in Iraq is 27). Anti-imperialist sentiment is extremely high in the younger, more media-savvy generations - the Xers and the Ys get a good portion of their news input from the web, outside of traditional main-stream control areas like TV, and also haven't grown up under the ultra-patriotic atmosphere of the cold war. To these younger people, the words 'American' and 'Good' are NOT automatically synonymous; the west shouldn't throw it's weight around in the middle east. The baby boomers have thrown away lives in a war that most younger people are against, and now intend to retire quietly so that the survivors can come home and pay for it.
Speaking of paying for it, we come onto the second point - the shabby state of western economies. The Capital-friendly, Labour-hostile business environment of the New Right has left the world in the most inequal state since the First World War. The frankly insane consumer-driven economics (including the idea of buying things from China using money borrowed from China) of Britain and particularly the United States have led to their actual ability to export anything drying up completely... and who's been growing rich at the top levels of that fire-sale of the national economy? Several notable boomers, who were already established in their jobs when Thatcher took power, leaving the shitty end of the stick outheld to those who 'came of age' when Privatisation and outsourcing had eliminated employability for the young and inexperienced almost completely, and who had to face a 5% minimum unemployment level for 'anti-inflationary' defence purposes...
Let's not forget that the baby boomers enjoyed full grants for their education - grants which were replaced with 'loans' for their successors, lest the tax burden on the greediest generation should rise. In fact, slashing taxes appealed to the baby boomers a lot - and their massive glut of votes meant that they generally got their own way. Small government, low-to-non-existant regulation, and rabid consumerism are the economic legacy that has been left - effectively leaving others to foot the bill for their profligacy.
In ecological terms, the effects of global warming have been ignored on the assumption that, once again, it's 'someone else's problem'... carbon emission levels have fallen by a shamefully small amount given how long global warming has been recognised as a phenomenon, especially given the amount of denial we heard on the subject right up until 2008. Suddenly, as the older generation reach pensionable age and will no longer be paying to clean up the mess themselves, they recognise the problem exists and begin asking for it to be dealt with. Hmmm. Sounds like the economy thing again....
What we have here is, in sociology terms at very least, the outright opression of one generation by another. The selfish greed of the generation now passing into retirement effectively dominating the lifetimes of those who succeed them, who will be paying to sort out the economic mess alone for at least 10 years and may be paying for the ecological damage with their lives. A massive government debt, a huge pension burden (and let's not even get onto the fact that we'll be claiming OUR pensions at 68-70, rather than the comparatively lenient 65... given that our lifespan is estimated to be MUCH lower than that of our parents, it's far less likely someone my age will have even 1/3rd of the retirement lifespan of a baby boomer), a messy and drawn-out occupation, and massive social inequality are the Boomer's parting gift.
Any thoughts?
