The Monday Column

Boomers won the lottery by virtue of when they were born. They have also worked extremely hard but so do Gen X, Y. A boomer telling someone to save harder is like a Lotto winner saying “knuckle down and you can be rich too”. It’s meaningless. Especially when much of the money that could be saved by younger generations will be spent on boomer superannuation and health care.

So why do boomers have such a problem with the rest of us? Probably because every generation thinks the next one sucks. Values move with age. Technology changes but people stay pretty much the same. Baby boomers are angry at younger Kiwis for behaving like they did when they were the same age. Eighteen-yearolds have always been 18-year-olds and 28-year-olds have always been 28-year-olds. Now thanks to medical advances and slowing birth rates we have more 68-year-olds than 18, 28 and 38-year-olds. Which is fine, good on them. There’s nothing wrong with getting older as long as you stay friendly and open. Sadly boomers plan to spend their remaining years bitching about the world simply because it’s slightly different from the one they grew up in.

A few weeks back a boomer in his late 60s approached my friends at a sports bar. We were all on our devices and he took offence. “Are you standing here texting each other?” he snarled. “Can’t you people have a conversation?” As it happens we were working remotely at the time but even if we had been “standing around texting each other”, who cares? Why are boomers obsessed with how younger people communicate? Surely it’s better than standing around smoking like their generation did 30 years ago. Gen X, Y’s phone addiction will never cost the country as much as the boomers’ love of fags has. I could have replied “shut up you ignorant, judgmental, irrelevant, walking cliche”. But I would never say that. I love boomers.

Surely we can all agree that the

The power will shift at some point. In the meantime it would be great if boomers could cheer up and be nicer.