Britain’s greying post-war generation are getting increasingly used to a bad press.
Britain’s greying post-war generation are getting increasingly used to a bad press. Once lauded for liberating British society, the teenyboppers of the 1960s are now vilified for squandering a time of plenty, having mortgaged their children’s futures to fund a reckless, debt-fuelled shopping spree.
The Baby Boomers’ thirst for property speculation, their younger critics lament, has transformed the UK housing market into a vicious collusion between rack-rent retirees and latte-crazed estate agents.
For the young, owning a house has become a distant dream. Bright-eyed graduates pump the bulk of their income into subsidising the Boomers’ buy-to-let investments, scrambling for the chance of a no-pay internship in the vague hope of a life of low pay in a moribund labour market.
And on their youthful shoulders rests a national debt so large it won’t be paid off until the day they die, with the prospect of retiring before 65 likely to be relegated to a fanciful 20th-century luxury.
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