The young against the young

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Here follows a sentence that no one at the outset of a journalistic career expects to ever write. For a glimpse of the west’s future, look to Kathmandu. Young people there are marching against the privileges enjoyed by the children of the Nepali elite. Foreign media have framed this and similar movements in the region as a generational uprising, which is half right. The telling schism is within a generation. It almost always is.  

I have never been able to work up much anger against “boomers”. Some of this is residual Asian-immigrant solicitousness towards elders. The rest is common sense. Life is much better now than it ever was in their heyday, and anyone who disagrees just isn’t serious. Crime is lower than it was in, say, 1980, the range of entertainment wider, the sexual freedom greater, the medical science more advanced, the great cities no longer depopulating, the Iron Curtain no longer drawn. Yes, a house in E8 will cost you now, but if you think that outweighs the invention of the hepatitis B vaccine, you might investigate the option of growing up a bit. 

More to the point, why should I hate the old when I have my own peers to hate? The west is about to live through a horribly divisive event. The millennials are starting to lose their parents. As this process goes on, some will inherit fortunes, thanks to the asset boom of recent decades and the smallness of modern families. (A house is more often split two ways now than four.) Most aren’t so well-placed. It is billed as the greatest transfer of wealth in history, but it is an uneven transfer. While dumb luck has always been central to life, I don’t sense that people are quite prepared for how much is going to hinge on whose parents bought in which neighbourhood, when.   

Two college friends get along as equals until mid-life, at which point one inherits half of a townhouse and the inevitable Dordogne barn

If there were such a thing as generational solidarity, it might take the edge off the coming bitterness. But — and this should be scratched into the top margin of every writer’s MacBook screen — people do not go around thinking of themselves as members of a generation. Nation, yes. Region, class, political camp, religion, postcode, yes. But talk of Gen Y this and Gen Z that is a media tic, like using the word “multiple” in place of “several” (do we think it sounds more scientific?) and the idea that anyone gives the least hoot about the Murdoch succession. In fact, a polling firm should find out what share of the public knows the meaning of “Gen Z”. If it is more than a third, I’m a Dutchman. 

When life expectancy was lower, the divergence between those who inherit assets and those who don’t at least happened before they could get to know each other. A very 21st-century phenomenon is this: two college friends get along as equals until mid-life, at which point one inherits half of a townhouse and the inevitable Dordogne barn. Perhaps the long friendship smooths things over. But there is economic literature to suggest that immediate comparisons are precisely the ones that sting most.  

If nothing else, there is fun to be had in guessing where the battle of young versus young will be worst. Fiscal logic suggests the US, because the estate tax threshold is so high there. The public realm won’t capture and redistribute much of a rich kid’s patrimony. But at least America has a virile economy. The dread in western and southern Europe is a fossilised inheritance class in the context of general torpor. Either way, no more boomer-bashing, yes? The inequities within a generation dwarf those between any two.

The one Vietnam war protest song that doesn’t sound a bit wet today is Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son”. It owns up to the split within a generation: between the rich or well-connected and those who had no way out of the war. Such life-and-death stakes are absent from the intra-generational rift that is opening up now. Still, as people see their peers come absent-mindedly into vast wealth, the refrain won’t be all that different. It ain’t me, it ain’t me . . .

Email Janan at [email protected]

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