City braced for bombshell raid on Middle England's pensions

[NotAllThere]

... university fees and grants (remember those?),

Yes. And I'm firmly Gen X (latchkey kid). It was the boomers who got screwed over by Tory liberalisation of pension funds, which had the effect of public service pensions quite considerably. The older half of Gen Y did very well out of the housing market. Really only the Gen Y and so forth from about 1990 onwards have cause to complain - and it should, if at all, be aimed at boomers, X and older Y.

The "it's all the Boomers fault" accusation is essentially crap. What's happened is that the demographics have shifted and we seem to be universally plagued with crap politicians.

[Whorty]

They want to double tax it like they do with corp tax/dividends

As malvolio would say - “Labour would have done it anyway”

Brown started the raid on pensions back in 1997. No one complained so it's become an easy target for all governments of whatever flavour.

[mattster]

The "it's all the Boomers fault" accusation is essentially crap. What's happened is that the demographics have shifted and we seem to be universally plagued with crap politicians.

I agree actually - I don't think it is their fault, as such, just that those generations happened to be in the right place at the right time, and many (not all) did very well by virtue of having worked no harder than generations that came after them. I doubt we'd have behaved any differently, but the fact remains that the youngsters of today are not going to find it easy. How do you retire if you've been renting all your life and been unable to save for a pension? No house, no income. I expect to see pensioners treated less well as power shifts to the new generation. Things like the triple lock and non-means tested winter fuel allowance are already hard to justify, IMO.

Is politicians getting worse something that just happens as you age, like policemen getting younger? I can't remember worse governence in my lifetime, yet they are still miles ahead in the polls. I didn't necessarily agree with all of them, but politicians like Clarke, Heseltine, even John Major and Blair seem like titans compared with the current shower.

[jamesbrown]

How do you retire if you've been renting all your life and been unable to save for a pension? No house, no income.

Well, assuming the usual laws of physics apply, that "wealth" has got to go somewhere when people don't live for infinity. But the people inheriting it are probably the people that already have houses or a reasonable prospect of owning them, so it does reinforce an existing pattern. The best case scenario would be a Japanese-style gradual hammering away of asset prices over a period of decades.

[GJABS]

All the young need to do, in order to stitch up the boomers, is in aggregate learn to vote. The fact that boomers vote in higher proportions is what gives them the power.

[LondonManc]

All the young need to do, in order to stitch up the boomers, is in aggregate learn to vote. The fact that boomers vote in higher proportions is what gives them the power.

Not going to happen. They're too busy TikToking. Don't forget that a lot of them are part of the entitled generation. We're now in a world where far more families have both parents working and the kids are compensated with money instead of having time spent with them. Just because the internet exists, many feel the need to be F5ing it every few minutes to check that nothing that is impacting their lives is still not impacting their lives. They also have the ability/need to form a really strong opinion about something based on absolutely f**k all.

What makes it worse is that the political parties aren't the Labour and Conservative parties of 40 years ago and voting for them now just because you did then has become a bit pointless. That said, neither side has impressed me for quite some time.

[SueEllen]

All the young need to do, in order to stitch up the boomers, is in aggregate learn to vote. The fact that boomers vote in higher proportions is what gives them the power.

They don't think their vote makes a different which is why they don't vote.

I live in a marginal so I can see that mine and people I know in the area votes make a different. However many people don't.

[mattster]

Not going to happen. They're too busy TikToking. Don't forget that a lot of them are part of the entitled generation.

This take is just as inane as "boomers bad".

[SueEllen]

This take is just as inane as "boomers bad".

[LondonManc]

This take is just as inane as "boomers bad".

Not really. My lad's at uni and half his mates are convinced they'll "walk" into £50k+ per year jobs and nice semi-detached houses in leafy suburbs. There's zero expectation management done at education establishments because they don't live in the real world.