At a time when western societies are in turmoil - wracked
by liberal white guilt over the plight of third-world shitholes, even when some
of their denizens come here illegally, with an avowed intent to subjugate suppress
and destroy us; shoring up crumbling physical infrastructures built in an
earlier age when honest toil was valued and common values really were common; hysterically
rending garments about the fate of the planet and telling ourselves horror
stories about apocalyptic climate events to follow – what better time could
there possibly be to stoke up the generation wars?
Positing a yawning chasm between the baby boomers and millennials,
the Resolution Foundation – an organisation which appears to exist purely to
stoke up such perceptions – is suggesting reparation. In similar vein to proposals
such as a Citizen’s Basic Income they are floating the idea of a ‘Citizen’s
Inheritance’: yes, more free stuff. I’m guessing that somebody at Resolution must have been listening
to the Corbyn/McDonnell circus because it will be funded from - you guessed it -
inheritance tax. Yes, well, of course, inheritance tax is a moral tax, right? I
mean, you’re dead so, hey, your stuff should be up for grabs.
But what do you actually want, millennials? We boomers had
prospects based on the mores of our own day. We went to school and then to work
and became part of the machine pushing Britain towards the current century. Many
jobs were a drudge, but if you didn’t put in it was widely recognised that you
couldn’t take out. Now though, you demand your somewhat nebulous ‘rights’ as
well; long before you have done anything to earn them. There are jobs today which
never existed back when we valued each other, rather than valuing whispy
notions of equality and diversity and ‘social justice’. (Have you any idea how
silly that all sounds to us?)
I’m of the later baby boomer generation, but I have no
second house, no ‘gold-plated’ pension, etc. I am frugal and fair and I know
the value of what I have worked to acquire. It’s not much but I earned every
penny, and far from slowing down I’m working longer hours now than ever before –
and this from a past of working a seven-day-week, ten-weeks-on cycle for years. But in
doing that I reckon I’ve learned a few things. I know, for instance, that you
can’t buy friendship. That charity doesn’t engender respect. And that there really
is no substitute for doing the hard miles. I don’t begrudge anybody what they
have, still less do I want to take it from them.
Every generation has its own challenges and opportunities
and it is human nature to value less the challenges of others. If we want to use what
we have accumulated through our graft to help upcoming generations it strikes
me that the most valuable gift we have to bestow is knowledge. We should be preparing
young people for the world of productive work, not the world of entitlement;
what does a £10k gift teach in comparison to the real education of making choices
and learning for yourself?
One day, son... one day.
So, for me at least, this headline grabbing soundbite is
just that. A faintly ridiculous, virtue-signalling expression of yet more
liberal guilt which, if it did anything at all would just objectify older
people as piggy banks and deepen the divide. There’s nothing wrong with
pondering the situation of young people, but why damn them with the soft
bigotry of low expectations? Instead of teaching them to hold out their hands out
we should be saying: “You want what I have? Good... off you go and work for it.”
