Enough! It’s time to stop bagging out baby boomers

If you were an alien coming to visit Earth and you read traditional and social media you would think baby boomers were a scourge on society. Not only do they hoard the nation’s wealth, they think in black and white – or in an Australian context Labor or Liberal – and they are travelling the world on a fat paycheque from the government, all the while complaining they’re not getting enough.

I don’t know, old people these days….[insert eye roll!]

Is anyone else tired of hearing how useless, unproductive and expensive we boomers are?

Rachel Stewart, writing for Stuff.co.nz certainly is. She says she’s tired of being blamed for all of society’s ills, from poverty to inequality and poor governance. It’s not our fault, she says, so stop blaming us for everything!

“We live in an age of economic and cultural disparity that will not be fixed by attempting to paint an entire generation as parasitic or lazy in nature.

How can a whole sector of society possibly be held responsible for being born at a particular time and place in history?

Only the arrogance of youth would assert that every single Boomer had it easy. Poverty and unemployment wasn’t invented last week. Economic hardship and war have been around the block a time or two as well.”

In another article about just how much boomers have rubbished the world, one writer calls us out as “hippy-crites” saying we flew the flag of socialism and now rule the roost of capitalism.

I hate to break it to you, young man (author of Why Baby Boomers Suck), but that is a blatant generalisation and, quite frankly, it would not fly in your PC world if you were to propagate such stereotypes about someone’s gender or race. Why is it okay to pick on us because of when we were born?

You say we hoard wealth when our taxes paid for so many of the privileges you take for granted. How selfish of us to want to stay in the homes we worked so hard for! How unfair of us to complain when the promises made to us our entire working lives are threatened!

Do we sit in our vast empty homes stuffing money into our mattresses? Last time I looked my friends and contemporaries were busy spending – from a latte in your hipster bar, to your child’s private-school education.

Two years ago, a Grattan report said that 25-35-year olds were in danger of becoming the first generation to be worse off than their parents. This stark prediction was based on the increase of wealth in the baby boomer cohort, and the decrease of wealth for their children’s demographic, based on an eight-year-period.

The report rubbed a blister on the toes of society, which threatens to become a festering sore as the election looms and questions of pensions, parental welfare, superannuation and tax are lobbed around.

Who will be the winners? It doesn’t really matter: whatever the outcome, it’s bound to be our fault.

Do you feel baby boomers are being unfairly blamed for the nation’s problems?