The Unbearable Denseness of Boomers
17th April 2025
One might think that those who purport to be “defending democracy” would want to know why its advantages are not so self-evident to their children and grandchildren, who will inherit it. If preserving the social contract matters so much to them, shouldn’t they be the least bit curious as to why under-30s young professionals don’t want to bear the increasing tax burden of their NHS care and pensions? But nobody appeared like the Lorax from the stump of our civilisation to suggest felling every tree in whose shade subsequent generations should sit might be a bad idea.
It seems belief in the permanence of the welfare state has engendered an unprecedented entitlement in older generations. When their successors complain about the cost of subsidising an unsustainable system they will never benefit from, Boomers accuse them of trying to deprive them of provisions they have paid for all their lives. When they express reluctance to be conscripted and killed, they are condescended to as ignorant children who should be so lucky to receive a lesson in European history. Intergenerational noblesse oblige has been so utterly severed that the Conservative party could court Boomers as a client group at the last election by promising to tax their grandchildren to the hilt to quadruple-lock their pensions, then force them to either deliver prescriptions as an indentured servant to ‘are NHS or be conscripted to die in a ditch in Ukraine.