Please stop blaming baby boomers for the woes of today’s younger generations | Letters

I feel the explanation Polly Toynbee’s evaluation “almost triggered a riot” is as a result of it’s so clearly wrong-headed (My generation is sucking Britain’s young people dry. Why are politicians too scared to admit it?, 14 February). The substitution of “era” as an analytical instrument over and above drivers of inequality resembling class, race and gender will inevitably result in the lifeless finish of “concepts … for relieving older folks of their accretions of unearned asset wealth”.

Not all older folks have unearned asset wealth. The era of working-class folks thrown on to the dole by Margaret Thatcher don’t have any such property. Neither do their youngsters. For those who grew up in poverty, you’ll possible keep in poverty, and so will your youngsters. The important thing issue isn’t age however class. The thought of a social contract whereby every era is best off than the final assumes that the category pursuits of probably the most highly effective don’t militate towards that. The redistribution of wealth from poor to wealthy over the many years for the reason that Nineteen Seventies suggests in any other case. The argument that the battle over redistribution is an intergenerational one confuses each what’s at stake and the forces required to vary issues.
Nick Moss
London

Polly Toynbee’s opinion piece about intergenerational injustice hit me at precisely the unsuitable time. This older individual, alongside along with her husband (76), had spent 9 exhausting hours the day earlier than taking care of 4 of her small grandsons so their dad and mom may work. Slightly than us wanting the blood of the younger – as Ms Toynbee suggests could be the anti-ageing remedy of the longer term – we really feel our blood is draining the opposite manner.

Ms Toynbee conveniently fails to say that roughly 14 million grandparents throughout the UK are saving the financial system an estimated £7bn a yr on childcare. We older folks might have been “given every little thing” when younger, however many people at the moment are giving again to the nation – and never simply to our personal youngsters.
Marilyn Sandy
London

As one of many postwar infants born right into a household from a poor mining background, my life probabilities benefited from all these postwar authorities insurance policies talked about by Polly Toynbee. Funding in well being, housing and training – significantly free tertiary training – enabled a level of social mobility and began to counter a number of the historic inequalities.

It was the financial and industrial insurance policies of Margaret Thatcher’s authorities that at a stroke sabotaged this progressive course of and commenced to demolish the very foundations of the welfare state. Subsequent Conservative governments resolutely pursued insurance policies which have continued to prioritise the privileged and rich. Slightly than pillory my era, Polly Toynbee’s ire needs to be firmly laid on the door of each a type of MPs who willingly colluded with this travesty. The fairest path to redress this generational disparity is to reinvest in well being, housing, training and coaching, and to ascertain a tax regime which focuses on wealth, capital and property reasonably than revenue by the wage packet.
Peter Riddle
Wirksworth, Derbyshire