By Michael Baxter 9 Dec 2010 [0 Comments | 458 views]
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It wasn’t much of a rebellion. The government mooted this idea for letting companies switch the income payments on their pensions so that they rise in tandem with the CPI inflation index rather than the RPI index. We covered it here yesterday, see: The rebellion of the baby boomers
Of course it raised a furore. Newspapers, which count an awful lot of baby boomers as their readers, vilified the plans.
And now it seems they have been dropped. The government quietly and un-ceremonially scrapped the idea yesterday, apparently.
So that’s a victory for common sense and fairness.
It is just that there is another way of looking at this. The baby boomers’ retirement on current terms is simply unaffordable. The proposed plan would have made this retirement just a touch more affordable.
Of course the government’s plan was unfair. But so is it unfair that students are set to pay a fortune for their university education.
What we forget is that, actually, it is those same students who we are asking to get into debt to fund their education, who will be paying for the baby boomers’ retirement (and that includes the author, by the way).
The baby boomer generation is the most influential generation in history because it makes up a higher proportion of the electorate than any generation has done before. And that means unfair political decisions will be focused on younger generations.
These youngsters may not look quite so kindly on the baby boomers when they are old and doddery and a burden, and the working population who pay for their care find themselves with a huge tax bill as they somehow fund the retirement of their elders, but maybe not their betters.
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