The generation game is getting personal, according to Glynne Williams and Vanessa Beck. \u2018Generation gap\u2019 once referred to the gulf in culture and understanding between teenagers and their parents. Now that the baby boomers are approaching old age, however, it is made to refer to a pernicious economic divide. <\/i><\/p>\n
What began in 2008 as a financial crisis now looks like a state of permanent austerity. The battle over taxes and public spending is rapidly turning into an inter-generational war with politicians doing much of the mongering. David Willetts\u2019s The Pinch<\/i><\/a>, <\/i>for example, tells younger people that the baby-boomers have \u2018stolen\u2019 their future and that they should be made to give it back. It wasn\u2019t the bankers or the politicians who got us (you) into this fix \u2013 it seems that your mum is to blame! By voting for a decent health service and universal pensions, her generation has bankrupted Britain, thereby condemning an entire generation (yours) to depend upon another (theirs) for food and board while working through one zero-hour contract job onto another.<\/p>\n The assumption underpinning calls to arms like this<\/a> \u2013 for Willets isn\u2019t alone here<\/a> \u2013 is that the standards which we have become accustomed to are now unsustainable. Working harder, working longer and reducing our expectations \u2013 both as employees and as citizens \u2013 these are now presented<\/a> as economic and moral<\/i> necessities. This is very much how the extension of working life has been presented. By removing fixed retirement ages we will be given the opportunity to continue as productive members of society. This is called an opportunity, but it is also a duty<\/i>. At the same time, though, workers are accused of hogging younger peoples\u2019 jobs! This isn\u2019t a one-way argument, of course. For while older people are berated for draining NHS resources and blocking the housing market<\/a>, young people are accused of being high-maintenance individualists<\/a> who are unrealistically picky about jobs even though their options are so obviously limited.<\/p>\n