Couldn’t quite believe what I heard on the radio yesterday morning: according to the organisation Grandparent Plus, Grandparents ought to be paid to provide childcare for their grandchildren – or get tax credits or whatever!So, this is what we’re in for, as baby boomers become grandparents!
Was there ever such a fortunate generation? Was there ever such a self-centred generation? Ever a generation with such a strong sense of entitlement?
Baby Boomers are those born between roughly between 1946 and 1961 (pre 1946 they’re categorised as war babies, as my mother will tell you, but I challenge you to find a war baby who was unable to take advantage of the same economic and social conditions just as well as a baby boomer).
As a generation they have benefitted from a health service, social security, largely benign or indeed positive economic conditions, better educational choices and no war.
They are certainly more fortunate than the generation before them.
And they will rely on the generation below them to support them in their old age, like no other generation before or after them will be able to.
Just think of all that capital they’ve got tied up in their houses, whilst their children’s generation struggle with overwhelming debt.
Just think of all the fuss made last year or the 40th anniversary of 1968!
But is all this advantage enough?
Remember when forty became the new thirty? And fifty became the new forty? (Which of course was already the new thirty) That was baby boomers.
And as Baby Boomers become older and grandparents then we start to see demands for tax credits on their pensions and the right to flexible working. Pensions that their children’s generation are already paying for.
Did they do this for their own parents when they relied on them for child care help? You bet your bottom dollar they didn’t!
Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, George Bush. All Baby Boomers.
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3 comments:
Jo,
Not so fast...
We now have various credits available for working mothers who place their children in daycare, predominantly in the form of vouchers. So, if grandparents are willing to do the job more cheaply, why shouldn't the money, or some of it at least, go to them. They're saving the state, and by extension, the taxpayer, money.
Unless, of course, you're suggesting that the state should not support mothers returning to the workplace. You're not saying that, are you?
Sorry, Mark but you're glossing over quite an important distinction. Vouchers for daycare are given to parents to pay for the childcare of their children.
If the grandparents want to get vouchers they're able to register as childminders - therefore becoming the childcare provider. I have no problem with that.
But I don't think that we should suddenly start subsidising Grandparents to do what they've always done (normally out of love, to be fair) and what their parents did for them.
The job of the state is not to provide tax exemptions to people because their offspring managed to procreate.
I am saving the state money by paying for my own private health care, some parents save the state money buy paying for their child's education - should I and they get tax credits for that?
My point is that only the baby boomer generation could possibly think that what other generations have done out of love since the dawn of time (and/or since people lived long enough to be grandparents) could become a reason for a tax break!
I'm with Jo. It is no coincidence that Thatcherism happened at the height of the baby boomers' earning power and at the low point of their reliance on the state.
Those with proper pensions have a deal the like of which will never come again - retiring at 60 and living another 30 years on the backs of a dwindling labour force, meanwhile protecting their house prices by preventing enough homes being built for young people to have homes too.
Bunch of spoilt brats.
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