There has never been a generation that has had it quite so good as the Baby Boomers. Born into the post-war settlement, they benefited from an era of free education, expanding public services, and housing that was not only affordable but became the engine of their personal wealth.
For many, a modest job was enough to secure a mortgage on a family home. Decades later, those homes have rocketed in value, turning into untaxed windfalls that no amount of hard work will ever allow their children or grandchildren to replicate.
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The state, too, has bent over backwards to cushion this cohort from risk. The triple lock on pensions – a guarantee that retirement incomes will rise by whichever is highest of earnings, inflation, or 2.5% – has protected Boomers from the volatility of recent years.
But let’s be clear: this is a privilege that future generations will not inherit. The sums don’t add up. With fewer working-age taxpayers and more retirees living longer, maintaining such generosity is fiscally impossible. It is a deal struck in their favour, to be pulled up behind them like a ladder.
And yet, despite enjoying these structural advantages, Boomers have consistently voted in ways that make life harder for those who follow. Brexit stripped younger generations of freedoms – the right to live, study, and work across the EU – that Boomers themselves once enjoyed.
On immigration, they back hardline parties and policies, ignoring the simple demographic truth that immigration is the only thing that can keep the pension system afloat. As birth rates fall and young families are priced out of parenthood, it is only newcomers who can stop the country from ageing into economic decline.
This is the central paradox of the Boomer legacy: the most materially fortunate generation in history, yet the one whose political choices have been most destructive to those coming after them. Their prosperity has been underwritten by a spirit of collective investment they now seem unwilling to extend.
History may yet judge them harshly – not for what they enjoyed, but for what they denied.