Have you got children yourself? There is a gen z attitude to the baby boomers that is very interesting and ruled by influences they read and hear. It is focussed on the fact that baby boomers have had a very easy time with going to uni and college on generous state grants, enjoyed significant house price inflation and it partly stems from there.
Yes, living for the here and now, house, cars, technology, holidays are bigger priority it seems, never thinking they’ll get old.
The thatcher years were a real boom for the boomers, Black Wednesday is always celebrated in my household, 15% mortgage rates were a blessing, my parents loved the 3 day week, power cuts, of the 70’s and the fear of nuclear war. As a kid I had two family holidays before my 21st birthday, 10 nights in Benidorm and a week in Blackpool. I particularly loved the crash of 2008, the timing was perfect for baby boomers and their families followed by a decade of austerity, yep we boomers have always had plain sailing, never had to pick ourselves up dust ourselves down and work hard to stand still.
There are plenty of Baby boomers brought up on council estates that never went to uni on generous state grants who could not afford to buy their own homes that got by on low wages in coastal towns paid for seasonal work too that lived from one week to the next who have never been abroad. You make it sound like most baby boomers have had it great when the truth is lots struggled throughout their life too and there are lots of poor 55-80 yr olds, its just they may not live in areas you or I frequent too often.
Compounding of state pensions is important to everyone, whatever your life chances were. The thing with pensions is that nobody benefits from it till later in life, everyone benefits from the raises of rates from the generations before, even people who have never paid a penny in N.I. In their lives.
I get the fact that if it becomes unaffordable then maybe a double lock of CPI or 2.5% is still acceptable. My point was really about how the complainers always benefit too eventually, providing they live long enough. I also understand that there are currently some bigger priorities and it maybe should be amended. I have no problem with it being lost completely if you have generous private wealth.
The people that really benefit from rising house prices are the kids through inheritance when you die. I understand some people may downsize (moving house isn’t cheap), a few may use equity release but most wont I’d think. It is clearly an emotive subject and those nearest to change will appear to be the most affected but the truth is everyone is.
This thing about the votes is overblown too in my opinion. I doubt that people become tory because of the triple lock, I doubt most posters on here will become tory at 65. I feel we are heading for a cyclical change where the tories are less relevant and will need to change their ways to be relevant in the future (they wont though).
