Boomers! Your country needs you!

It’s strange feeling, being on the wrong side of history.

Last century, as the West grew richer, our parents took the opportunity for some post-war shenanigans and before you could say Marie Stopes, we had arrived, that great generational demographic outlier, the Baby Boomer generation.

We grew up, enjoying the soundtrack, perplexing our parents with a combination of wild hair, “permissiveness” and an unwillingness to conform to the previous generation’s assumptions for our future. We loved every minute of it, aspiring above all not to be like those who came before us. Such was our influence that this became the standard model for future generations.

Then we made money, bought houses, sold houses, started businesses and generally grew up. The Boomers. Born into an optimistic world where change was possible, indeed obligatory. We had our children as all generations do, invented stuff, climbed to the top of our chosen careers, as all generations do and then began to retire.

Meanwhile behind us came a couple of generations who didn’t have the same good fortune. Cyclical economic recession, which had supposedly been consigned to the dustbin in the early 2000’s, reemerged ferociously and predictably. Those in charge got a richly deserved kicking. In a departure from previous practice though, the Millennials and then the GenZ-ers laid the blame on a whole generation, it was all (all of it!) the fault of those hedonistic, irresponsible Baby-Boomers. The phrase “OK Boomer” became a commonplace insult, applied willy-nilly to 1.1 billion people worldwide, whenever they dared to demur when told to ascend the tumbrel.

We are the Ignoble Generation that came after the ‘Perfect’, sorry, ‘Greatest’ generation

Anyway, it’s all too late now for us to make amends, nevertheless we are about to, whether our successors, keen to lay the blame somewhere, like it or not. As our enormous wealth percolates down to those who come after us, I predict that the Millennials might calm down a little. Those beautifully kept houses are changing owners and the account holder names are changing at the bank of Mum and Dad. It’s difficult for Millennials to moan while their mouths are being stuffed with gold.

However, in the West at least, there’s one last service that we could render unto our successors. You see one inconvenient fact occurring worldwide in industrialised countries, is that all the generations after our parents’ have rather fallen down on the job (as it were) in the reproduction stakes. The birthrate has dropped precipitately.  It’s below 2, the replacement rate, throughout the industrialised world.

Obviously that creates a few practical problems. You can list them:

1)      Workforce reductions mean that tax receipts fall, creating public sector and pension funding issues (State pensions in most countries are funded from present taxation – there’s no pot of money we’ve all paid into that’s been set aside). This means -

2)      Not enough young people to look after the old (Sorry about that, once a Boomer always a Boomer – self self self!) This means that-

3)      The workforce has to be augmented somehow to keep the lights on. This means that-

4)      However, it’s dressed up, however the rabid, Farageist, Trumpist, Le Penist parties like to present it, immigration from poorer countries to our own is already a precondition for the preservation of our way of life.  It’s a fact of life for the whole industrialised world and bleating about ‘preservation of our precious culture’ will not change it.

Which brings us back to what we Boomers might do as the generation moving out of the workforce at the moment.

Well, here’s the thing, we have moved, or are moving into the phase of our economic lives called “dissaving”. We aren’t actually adding to the country’s Gross Domestic Product anymore, but spending what we have. Additionally, we are going to live as a generation, a damned sight longer than our parents. Our drain on the state’s resources is going to be commensurately greater, before we even take into account the extra numbers in our coterie. Yes, we may have more savings (Not quite so irresponsible then eh!) but we may well have spent them by the time we hand in our dinner pail. So, how about we make one last change to society as we close the door behind us?

We are the fittest elderly generation there has ever been. Boomers are going to be around for at least another 30 years. We represent a massive resource that could have a material positive effect on our country’s GDP for decades.

All we have to do is stay at work for longer!

No, I’m not suggesting we all go and do ‘good works’ in some kind of charitable tree-hugging way. The workforce shrinking is the problem – we can ameliorate things just by continuing to do what we are good at, workwise. We just stay in work and contribute that way.

 I can already hear the moans from contemporaries among us, whose lives have revolved around that Nirvana-like state of being retired. It may be on the horizon already and the idea that it might prove to be a cruel mirage is unpalatable and I do get it. But as I approach the fateful day when I hear from the Ministry of Truth (Who actually is it that runs pensions? I’ve never bothered to find out) that I am “of pensionable age” I really cannot see the attraction.

The other hardy perennial trotted out by those looking for an argument, can be summarised as “Typical selfish Boomer, staying in work and stopping a younger person having their job”. A bit like a sort of employment bed-blocker. But that falls into the trap that economists call “The lump of labour fallacy”. If there were only a fixed number of jobs, the idea that by staying in work Boomers would be taking a job from someone else might hold water. But in fact, staying in work creates more demand and more jobs (This fallacy applies to immigration too, by the way.) Anybody looking for evidence need only consider the growth of the number of women in employment since the 1960’s. Their addition to the workforce didn’t come at the expense of men’s jobs.

The longer we Boomers stay in work the more breathing space we provide for the country to finally come to terms with the global facts of economic life as it will be lived in the future. Oh! And, selfish to the end naturally, we of course benefit from staying mobile, we keep our brains under a bit of tension, we delay the point where we might need the caring services, we add to our savings pots.…. And finally we have a great opportunity to tell the “They come over here stealing our jobs” brigade that they should get back to work themselves if they don’t like it.

Finally, we can also feel the warm glow of pathfinding the future of society for our children. And will they thank us for it?

No, of course they won’t.