Have the Boomers Pinched Their Children’s Futures? - with Lord David Willetts

[CliffEdge]

In a nutshell, there are huge elements that are missing from his discussion. Using his figures the population of the UK would be around 40 million, instead it is (according to the census) around 75 million and according to the supermarkets around 85 million ( the census covers the number of people 'counted', the supermarkets measure the number of people buying food and hence the idea that people destroy 30% of the food they buy to make the two figures compatible) The fact that immigration currently replaces somewhere between one third and one half of the total increase makes his figures a nonsense. One could just a viably point out that it isn't those immediate descendants of post war Britain that have stolen the Futures, but the large number of immigrants who have arrived during the deskilling and comparative lowering of wages ( yes, wages went up but not as quickly as the expectation of the standard of living, So yes. I may have bought my own house at 30, but I did not have the money to furnish it, heat it (no central heating), maintain it properly and after paying the mortgage and travel fares to work had just over £20 a month for food and bills.

There are lots of 'forgotten nastinesses in his theory, summed up in his histrionic patronising aimed at providing "them" with a largely silent target to blame and demand reparations from.

Deeply unpleasant propaganda by an evil man.

To be clear, you’re accusing him of evilly blaming boomers when actually it’s all the fault of immigrants?

The problems are the fault of immigration (done badly) not immigrants.

[SimonS]

In a nutshell, there are huge elements that are missing from his discussion. Using his figures the population of the UK would be around 40 million, instead it is (according to the census) around 75 million and according to the supermarkets around 85 million ( the census covers the number of people 'counted', the supermarkets measure the number of people buying food and hence the idea that people destroy 30% of the food they buy to make the two figures compatible) The fact that immigration currently replaces somewhere between one third and one half of the total increase makes his figures a nonsense. One could just a viably point out that it isn't those immediate descendants of post war Britain that have stolen the Futures, but the large number of immigrants who have arrived during the deskilling and comparative lowering of wages ( yes, wages went up but not as quickly as the expectation of the standard of living, So yes. I may have bought my own house at 30, but I did not have the money to furnish it, heat it (no central heating), maintain it properly and after paying the mortgage and travel fares to work had just over £20 a month for food and bills.

There are lots of 'forgotten nastinesses in his theory, summed up in his histrionic patronising aimed at providing "them" with a largely silent target to blame and demand reparations from.

Deeply unpleasant propaganda by an evil man.

To be clear, you’re accusing him of evilly blaming boomers when actually it’s all the fault of immigrants?

Not ar all, the man is doing a Dawkins, He has a reasonable and scientific sounding argument that appeals to a certain sort of person, his target audience, and he makes money out of tailoring his output to the biases and prejudices of his audience.

Taking the birthrate as a factoid and simply saying that the birthrate is the cause of the 'Boomer affluence and the 'poverty' of the current generations while ignoring the effects of variously, education, political shortcomings, immigration, the offshoring of large parts of industry, etc etc is merely weaponised propaganda, and people who promote a divisive cause like this knowingly are evil, because it can, possibly will destroy any harmony in society. It's as dangerous as promoting one race or one country as the cause of all woes.

So, one can look up the number of births and deaths in any year and discover that it is rare for the births ever to be marked different than the deaths
(2020 for example 613000 births and 689000 deaths) but net immigration from 2003 to date has not been less than 200000 per year. To blame the boomers for population growth at any stage after 1990 is to ignore reality, unless one wants to posit that in a democratic society any political action / decision is the result of the will of 'the people' but by 1990 the post war baby boomers were a minority in the electorate (ie lass than 50% of the total population).

The biggest increase in UK population over the last 30 years has been immigration. Some of those immigrants may well have been born during the years 1955 to 65 (the rise after the 1947 'welcome back warrior" initial spike had fallen back) but they aren't a birth-driven increase in population.

[Spet0789]

To be clear, you’re accusing him of evilly blaming boomers when actually it’s all the fault of immigrants?

Not ar all, the man is doing a Dawkins, He has a reasonable and scientific sounding argument that appeals to a certain sort of person, his target audience, and he makes money out of tailoring his output to the biases and prejudices of his audience.

Taking the birthrate as a factoid and simply saying that the birthrate is the cause of the 'Boomer affluence and the 'poverty' of the current generations while ignoring the effects of variously, education, political shortcomings, immigration, the offshoring of large parts of industry, etc etc is merely weaponised propaganda, and people who promote a divisive cause like this knowingly are evil, because it can, possibly will destroy any harmony in society. It's as dangerous as promoting one race or one country as the cause of all woes.

So, one can look up the number of births and deaths in any year and discover that it is rare for the births ever to be marked different than the deaths
(2020 for example 613000 births and 689000 deaths) but net immigration from 2003 to date has not been less than 200000 per year. To blame the boomers for population growth at any stage after 1990 is to ignore reality, unless one wants to posit that in a democratic society any political action / decision is the result of the will of 'the people' but by 1990 the post war baby boomers were a minority in the electorate (ie lass than 50% of the total population).

The biggest increase in UK population over the last 30 years has been immigration. Some of those immigrants may well have been born during the years 1955 to 65 (the rise after the 1947 'welcome back warrior" initial spike had fallen back) but they aren't a birth-driven increase in population.

I don’t see an argument here. Have you either watched the lecture or read his book? No one’s blaming anyone for population growth. That is a red herring. You keep talking about it as if it’s a problem in itself. That’s not the point.