Young whiners need lessons in real sacrifice
FNASTER than you can say “stealth tax”, George Osborne’s ham-fisted raid on allowances for middleincome pensioners was rumbled. Within an hour of the Budget, “granny tax” was headline news as outrage spread when pensioners with incomes of between £10,000 and £24,000 found they will lose between £83 and £250 a year as age-related allowances are frozen and allowed to wither on the vine.
The Government tried to spin this as tax simplification to stop poor old dears having to fill out all those nasty, complicated forms. The fact this will net £3.3billion for the Treasury over the next four years is just a happy coincidence, then?
What convinced the Treasury that squeezing the modest incomes of 4.4 million people who worked hard all their lives and saved prudently for retirement was the right thing to do?
What message does it give out to younger generations who are not putting aside anything like enough money for their old age?
By 2016 this “granny tax” will net the Treasury three times as much as the bank levy and a Budget forged in the language of class war has ended by fuelling a new social division: inter-generational conflict.
Some Left-wing think-tanks and commentators have bizarrely shouted three cheers for Osborne’s outrageous raid. It is about time, they argue, that the Baby Boomers got their share of austerity pain.
They say those born between 1946 and 1965 have had it too easy for too long. This is the self-styled Jinxed Generation revelling in the pain being meted out to what they call the Jammy Generation.
Oh how they hate those “pensioner perks” the over-65s enjoy, the “bundle of freebies” known as the Winter Fuel Allowance, free bus passes and TV licences. EVER mind the fact that low interest rates have eaten into the savings these careful pensioners worked so hard for. Never mind that pension funds have been savaged by the credit crunch and never mind that soaring living costs hit pensioners harder than any other group.
For whole swathes of selfish, self-pitying young people, the real outrage is giving pensioners £200 to help heat their homes.
This is a vicious, insidious form of social envy. Forget banker bashing, there is a new sport in town: Baby Boomer bashing.
There is no doubt that anyone aged 16-24 faces a bleak future. Britain labours under a £1trillion debt, there are one million young unemployed, tuition fees will drain salaries and many first-time buyers won’t
TIME TO GROW UP?: A group protests against Tesco’s work experience scheme get the keys to their own home until they are 37. Every generation has its challenges but while previous ones just knuckled down, this bunch of whingers act like they have some unique claim on misery.
So you have to pay tuition fees? Boo hoo. University education was a pipe dream for most Baby Boomers. So you know the pain of soaring living costs and high unemployment? Do you think Baby Boomers were immune in the Seventies and Eighties?
This isn’t the divide of the Jinxed Generation and the Jammy Generation, it’s a clash between skivers and strivers.
Welcome to the “poor-me” generation; too snobby to do a day’s work and claiming that doing work experience in a supermarket is a breach of their human rights.
One “poor-me” writer bemoans the work placement horror of “acting as a coffee deliverer or photocopier-in-chief just to get on the first rung of the career ladder”. So? Do you think Baby Boomers started out in middle-management? Rather than recognise the hard work that goes into building a career this lot want one handed them on a plate. Rather than recognise the work that goes into the purchase and upkeep of a three-bed suburban semi, this shiftless generation whines about “home-hoarding” and demands the elderly downsize to make way for them.
Global travel and the internet may have broadened youngsters’ horizons but they have crippled their capacity to strive. Easy credit and easy fame have fuelled disdain for the virtue of thrift and taking pride in the sort of unglamorous jobs older generations embraced without question.
A study published four days before the Budget revealed that throughout the 20th century, each generation had enjoyed a higher standard of living than its predecessor. For the first time, however, the incomes of those in their 60s have outstripped those of the young.
IT IS NOT the wealth gap facts that are so alarming but the reaction to them. The Intergenerational Foundation, champion whingers for the poor-me brigade, delivered its childish verdict on the Budget. The Chancellor gets a Grade A for his granny tax but a Grade F for refusing to go after the “overgenerous universal benefits” of the elderly.
In time, the Winter Fuel Allowance, TV licences and free bus passes may no longer be sacrosanct. However, politicians should beware of allowing intergenerational conflict to flourish in the hope it encourages acceptance of difficult decisions.
With overblown rhetoric Mr Osborne declared at the end of his Budget: “No people will strive as the British will strive.”
If he is determined that Britain must “earn” its way back to recovery he sets a dreadful example by punishing the standard bearers of Britain’s work ethic.
Rather than fuelling resentment by going after Baby Boomers, Osborne should tell the poor-me generation to grow up.