The Rant of a Baby Boomer to a Millenial
rant
noun
a bombastic extravagant speech
Dear Millennial,
It is true that we Baby Boomers own our own house and have fat pension pots allowing us to retire at 60.
It is also true that you may feel somewhat peeved that we grabbed it all and left you scrambling to afford a house and having to work into your seventies in order to retire.
You should bear in mind, however, that it is you who decided to take a gap year before going on to study for your degree, or took a year or two,or three afterwards in order to travel the world. It is you who refuse to accept the menial jobs, like bricklaying, roofing, road building and painting, that are required to build houses.
It is you who failed to grasp the magic of compound interest and spent everything that you got instead of saving it.
It is you prioritised spreading your oats over the obvious economic benefits of sharing the bills with a spouse.
OK, in your thirties you started to panic and finally got married.
Getting married in your thirties is not like getting married in your twenties. It is not OK to start off with the cheapest residence and work yourself up to a better one.You want the perfect house now and fill it with nice new things now. My first furniture was all second hand and gradually, as it wore out, I replaced it with new pieces.
You want a big new car now. No, not one car but two,since you got used to each having one. Even then, you find it hard to understand why these new cars are making you poor. I accept some blame for that for not adding a course on this to the school curriculum.
Oh, and you both have careers, and since you invented the concept of equality between the sexes, you both have to have to work. That means you need to pay for daycare for your babies. I do understand that we Baby Boomers should be doing some of the heavy lifting with our grandchildren. That would be fine if we were in our fifties, but because you left things so late we are now in our sixties and don’t have the same energy that we used to have. So, sorry, daycare is your only option! Of course we will come to visit and perhaps even babysit once in a while.
Since you got married in your thirties,spreading out your child bearing is a moot point. So you need to pay for daycare for not one, but up to three kids at once. That is a massive burden.
Kids in daycare constantly get sick from the other kids and need to stay home. So one of your careers is taking a hit and your job is barely paying for the daycare, if at all.
We Baby Boomers would have liked to have attended our grandchildren’s weddings. I cannot be sure that I will make it. After all, if they get married in their thirties, like you, and if we haven’t kicked the bucket by then, we will be in our nineties!
We have to talk about something else. You rightly tell us that we screwed up on the environment. I am truly sorry about that. We were busy trying to stop the Cold War turning into a nuclear war. Trying to extricate ourselves from Vietnam and bringing down the Berlin wall. I wish all of that had been enough. I am sorry that it wasn’t. I am also sorry that right now, we are the generation that is declaring war and sending our children to fight it. Perhaps if we had to fight it ourselves we would not declare it.I am all for making a universal law that says that the people that declare war must actually do the fighting. Perhaps that will put an end to wars or perhaps I am being naive.
I have digressed, we were talking about the environment. Living with global warming will not be easy and may not even be possible at all. Yes, we screwed up, but here’s the thing, we didn’t know that we were screwing up the environment while we were doing it. We only now know with a reasonable amount of certainty. You know it and don’t do anything about it!
It is true that some of you go on protest marches. Some of you tie yourselves to railings or climb on statues, block roads or throw paint on works of art. But it is only a small minority. The fact is you would not vote for a political party that proposed to double the cost of private cars or double fuel prices or increase VAT in return for lower income tax. So dont blame us Baby Boomer politicians for not committing political suicide.
If we are talking about the environment, is individually wrapping and delivering clothes to your door, only to find that they don’t fit or look on you how you imagined, really the most efficient form of distribution? Do meals that wizz around town on a motorbike driven by a Gen Z who does not understand that his motorbike is costing him more than he is earning in delivering your food, really taste good? I don’t think so. When I was making your meals, I made sure that you got to eat them within seconds of them coming out of the oven or frying pan.Don’t get me started about electric cars!
I have ranted enough. Perhaps my rant is unfair. We produced you and we nurtured you and you are you because of us and despite my rant there is much that we can be proud of you for.
Now, a few words to Gen Z …
