Sunday, June 05, 2011

Entitlement malaise strikes at any age

The inevitable comment arrived (also inevitably made by 'anonymous') reacting to my post about the extra handouts to over 65s:

And why not,we have paid taxes all our lives.get the young into eork and leave the oldies alone.Remember most of the facilities the young enjoy today were paid for by these oldies.


I think I am fairly even-handed in my criticism of the entitlement malaise. I don't care what age the sufferer is. The world does not owe you a living.

Recently I wrote about how politicians play one group off against the other by using the welfare state. The commenter should read David Thompson's Selfish Generations which is a fairly good crack at showing how people born from around 1925 to 1940 got back proportionately more in benefits (broad definition) than they paid in tax throughout their lifetimes. He doesn't attack the older generation for this. Merely points out that as welfare states age, later generations fare less well. In turn, my kids are going to do it tougher than my generation.

I won't attack oldies for this either, except when they bleat about wanting even more and ignore that it is their children and grandchildren who are paying for it. And if you want to get a whopping big dose of it go to a Grey Power meeting.

If you are a socialist I will oppose your thinking regardless of age.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Lindsay, I am not a socialist.Just pointing out that my age group paid for most of the infrasture the country used to own but then the mad labour party sold most of it off in 1984.Otherwise we would not have to borrow to buy it back.Do you think it reasonable that 20 year olds should be getting welfare as in dpb and unemployment benifits while us oldies work/