It’s more complicated than that, says Rosa Anderson in response to an article by Phillip Inman, while Peter Mather says boomers are being stereotyped, and Moira Sykes says the article picks the wrong target
Oh no, not again. Guardian readers deserve better than Phillip Inman’s tedious and hateful boomer-bashing (Boomers think their wealth came from wise choices – this myth needs busting, 20 September). This summer we’ve had his tax plans (tax boomers more), his suggestions for dealing with the housing crisis (kick boomers out of their homes), his idea for boomer “national service” built around volunteering, and now his attacks on older people’s occupational pensions. Goodness, Phillip, you really can’t let this obsession with boomers go, can you?
Economic inequalities – and with them social and health inequalities – are getting worse, and while Inman tells us with monotonous regularity that “it’s the boomers wot dun it”, it is in fact a little more complicated. Generation is a far less important factor than gender, race, disability and, above all, class, and if we don’t start looking at intra-generational inequalities we are going nowhere – not least because wealthy parents raise wealthy children, and support them financially to a value about 26 times more than poorer parents in the same generation, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Continue reading…It’s more complicated than that, says Rosa Anderson in response to an article by Phillip Inman, while Peter Mather says boomers are being stereotyped, and Moira Sykes says the article picks the wrong targetOh no, not again. Guardian readers deserve better than Phillip Inman’s tedious and hateful boomer-bashing (Boomers think their wealth came from wise choices – this myth needs busting, 20 September). This summer we’ve had his tax plans (tax boomers more), his suggestions for dealing with the housing crisis (kick boomers out of their homes), his idea for boomer “national service” built around volunteering, and now his attacks on older people’s occupational pensions. Goodness, Phillip, you really can’t let this obsession with boomers go, can you?Economic inequalities – and with them social and health inequalities – are getting worse, and while Inman tells us with monotonous regularity that “it’s the boomers wot dun it”, it is in fact a little more complicated. Generation is a far less important factor than gender, race, disability and, above all, class, and if we don’t start looking at intra-generational inequalities we are going nowhere – not least because wealthy parents raise wealthy children, and support them financially to a value about 26 times more than poorer parents in the same generation, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Continue reading…