By Nicolas Van Praet
One of the most repeated hippie lines to make the rounds in the 1960s was “Never trust anyone over 30.” Now, it’s meaningless.
Today’s conflict between young and old is a complex and nuanced affair that elicits as many different responses as the number of people you ask.
The generation-bashing line of the late ‘90s could be “never trust anyone over 65, especially if you’re under 31.” Or “never trust anyone 40 to 50 if you’re in your 30s.” But even those are disputed.
There are two main conflicts between generations today — and another brewing, says University of Toronto demographer David Foot, author of the best-seller Boom, Bust and Echo.
The first battle is the thirty-something Gen-Xers versus the bulging-waistline boomers nearing 50, says Foot. He says because they were so numerous, the boomers got the best things in life first. Xers were left with the scraps.
“The boomers took all their jobs, drove up the house prices and blocked their career paths. Those in their 30s today resent the boomers. They think the boomers have everything.”
Battle two, the one that’s just started over the pension issue, says Foot, pits the twenty-something baby busters against young seniors who grew up in the 1930s.
The busters — so called because they were born during a period of declining fertility – have correctly identified rich young seniors as the people riding the system, Foot says. “And in no way do they want to pay taxes so that the richest people in Canada can have free health care in Arizona six months of the year.”
But the image of moneyed seniors driving motor homes south for the winter and enjoying themselves while giving nothing back to society is wrong, says Ivan Hale of the Canadian Seniors Network. Hale says it overlooks the fact that seniors are the biggest donors to charities, hospitals and universities in Canada.
“They’re sharing the wealth. They’re not hoarding it for themselves.”
Not quite, says Re. Jim Love, one of the founders of Canadians for Intergenerational Justice, a group working to fight ageism and bridge the gap between generations.
Love says although he has certainly met some seniors who love young people and want to nurture a healthy Canada, when it comes to the pension plan, many seniors believe they are entitled to full benefits, even if the system hurts young people.
“Older generations are highly consumer and materialistically oriented and many basically don’t give a flying fig about the young of this country… We need to challenge older generations without getting into senior bashing.”
Love argues that younger generations are being told to pay not only for deficits created before they were born, but also for the pensions of historically advantaged older generations. And this at a time when their own income is declining.
“This is not whining,” Love says. “It’s just the way it is. The young are in no position to maintain the high lifestyle expectations of some senior citizens.”
Those lifestyle expectations might come from the fact that their generation created the social programs we have today, says Hale. Seniors have seen their quality of life improve over the years and they see no reason why it can’t remain that way.
“All of those programs that we’re enjoying today were born out of one generation that happens to be our seniors and they don’t want to lose that for their children.”
But it’s not their children that are losing out, says Foot. It’s their children’s children. Not the baby boomers but the baby busters.
“If you think of someone who is 69 today, born in 1930, they didn’t start paying into the pension plan until 1966. By the time they retire, they’re only paid in for 20, 25 years or so and they’re going to take out more than that. Whereas the 20-year-olds are going to put in for 45 years and it may not be there when they retire.”
Don Swartz, a professor of public administration at Carleton University, argues that there is a small group of people in Canada fanning the flames of generation bashing to serve their own interests.
For example, Swartz says, Bay Street financiers are trying to get a piece of the pension pie by talking up the rift between young and old on the issue.
The financiers stand to benefit if the pension system were privatized or replaced by a system of mandatory RRSPs.
“I think the story is really just how silly this discussion is,” Swartz says. “There is a cycle of life where parents look after children when the children are young, and there’s a period of neutrality and then the children look after the parents.”
That’s true, says Foot, but the real question is how much each group thinks it deserves. It’s a question of fairness.
“I would argue that almost all the discussion of intergenerational conflict in Canada has largely been limited to the pension issue, where of course, contributions have been raised dramatically for those of working age. Me included as well as you. And benefits weren’t cut for today’s seniors who are the relatively rich ones.”
The good news, Foot says, is that we’re entering a “glorious period” in Canadian history.
The boomers are moving into their 50s and 60s — ages where income earning and tax paying are at their prime.
Meanwhile, their teenaged children — Foot dubs them the echo generation — are now entering the work force and starting to pay income taxes.
Because the echo is also a huge group — now numbering about seven million — the Canadian economy could do very well with this many workers.
“And if we manage this correctly,” he says, “we could build up the savings needed to pay for the boomers as they start to retire.”
The bad news is that because the echo and the boomers want different things, another generational conflict could emerge.
And this one would be big, Foot says.
“There is a conflict coming in the marketplace between the boomers hitting their 50s wanting peace and quiet and quality because they’re willing to pay for it, and their echo kids in their 20s wanting noise and action but cheap prices because they don’t have very much money.
“It could spill over to the lakes — the Sea-dooer blasting by the quiet fisherman.”