I’m 62.
My horizons are limited by my mortality. And as you get older, I’ve found, you accommodate yourself to that inevitability. As will, collectively, an entire generation.
So what do the boomers want for the next few decades they have left?
Good health, for one. And economic security. And for this fortunate generation, certainly in Canada, that’s not an unreasonable expectation.
Regardless of what is or will be happening around us, aging boomers would prefer things to continue pretty much the way they do now. They’d like to continue using the last, best resources while they’re still cheap – oil, water, land, air – with a sense that there’s no real limit to our consumption save what we can afford. In the face of limits, we expect that technology – as it has all our lives – will save the day. Smart people will figure something out.
Because we happened to be born at the right time, in the right place, accumulating wealth has been as easy as breathing. The great post-war boom has benefited us more than any other in human history. Why wouldn’t we want that to continue, until we ship out?
In short, we don’t wish to be inconvenienced in any dramatic way. And as we get older, we do get crankier in the face of unexpected unpleasantries.
So here’s the cranky version of the generational bargain that underpins the world view of the self-regarding boomer.
We want to live out the closing years of our lives with as much stability as possible. Don’t ask us to change our lifestyles before illness and disability does it for us, and certainly don’t ask for more in taxes.
We intend to spend our wealth, to which we feel entitled, largely on ourselves. We don’t know the consequences, yet, of all the carbon we have emitted into the atmosphere but would prefer not to be reminded while we’re travelling.
We will pass along whatever’s left and also the debts – whether measured in credit or carbon – to whomever has to make the tough decisions. However, because we vote in large numbers, we assume we’ll be exempted without being asked to alter our lifestyles for the sake of another generation.
We do expect the young’uns to work hard and creatively to address the challenges heading their way. And we expect them to pay taxes sufficient to fund our health care or accept that less will be spent on things like education. But we’re hoping they won’t make a big fuss as they realize they’re not going to get the opportunity to acquire what we took for granted. Because we really don’t want to make room for them if it means changing the character of our community or negatively affecting our property values. So, please, don’t think about rezoning our neighbourhoods or taking road space for bike routes.
As I say, that’s the cranky view.
But if it were seen to be the mainstream opinion among the aging, I’d say we’re in for a pre-revolutionary period – not necessarily a violent one, but a time when the assumptions of a generation can be suddenly and decisively overturned. After all, why would those in their twenties put up with financing the boomers end-life at the cost of their own beginnings? Why would they remain passive if they felt boomers were taking them down even as they stood in the way of change?
Put that combination together – inequity in the present, disregard for the future and refusal to change – and you have the conditions that disrupted North American society in the late ’60s and North Africa practically yesterday: young people with resentments, not much to lose and a lot of new ways to communicate.
The more hopeful view is that, unlike tribal warfare, generations are resilient because we’re all rooted in families – and society is, in the end, a big family. Older people do see the need to share, and there is a lot of wealth to be passed on. Technology and creativity do make a difference. Smart people can come up with solutions. Democracies do absorb disruptive change. And the generational bargain is capable of being rewritten so that no one need suffer unjustly.
But we’d still be in a potentially pre-revolutionary state if our political leadership can’t find a way, without being penalized, to convince the boomer generation that some significant changes to their neighbourhoods, their taxes and their lifestyles are in order.
The boomers rebelled against their parents. Would they rebel against their kids?