Thank you Judy. As a BB and sometime BBB, I concur with what you said. In my mid fifties in a challenging management position, I am contemplating retirement in about 5-10 years. As you also reflect, it will be best to spend the retirement years doing something useful and rewarding. Some charity work perhaps - there are plenty of opportunities. Put something back into the society that I have benefitted so much from. Some part time paid work might be the go, and it would be nice to think employers would consider that my experince and training will give me something to offer them.

To make the most of the rest of my life I will need my health & fitness, and I am working hard on that as I notice many of my generation are. I don't want to squander my good luck by dying unneccesarily early.

Interesting that you come from the WW2 generation. It has always struck me, the contrast between the ease of things for the BB generation compared to the difficulties of preceding generations: 2 world wars, the great depression, a lack of universal secondary, let alone tertiary, education; major disease epidemics like polio, influenza, diphtheria and so on. We really are the lucky ones.

I agree with you, PK.
I was born, as WW2 was declared, to parents who had lived through WW1 and the Depression. They were lower middle class, and resolved that their children would "have a better life" than they.
Luckily, they gave us an appreciation of lifestyle and economic cause and effect, for which I was grateful as I stepped straight from school into the very job in the media I wanted.
I had a vast choice of employment in 1955!
I have recently turned a young 68, started a new business, and am looking forward to many more years of happy, healthy work.
I agree that BBB's, approaching "retirement", need to evaluate just what they can return to the society which gave them so much.
Perhaps they could study objectively the work and social prospects of today's young adults, then become more aware of their own fortune.

My oh my, Judy sure is bitter. I wonder what fairy land she comes from, silver spoon land. I only never knew a BB's who got everything handed to them on plate. But I grew up in a housing estate full of ex servicemen, 99% were poor, finding it hard to put food on the table and overcome their war trauma. When I started work, sure there were heaps of jobs to choose from, but it was still hard to get enough to save for a house or car. My mother was still paying for her house when she died, as were most living in that area.

From my experience, its the BB's who gave their children what they didn't have, its their kids and subsequent generations, that are sitting round saying, I want it and I want it now. What we wanted, was freedoms from sexual stereotyping, inequality, hunger and living from hand to mouth.

Then again, I may not know anything, not having grown up in the middle classes with their silver spoon mentality. Its those people are running our country at present, need we say anything more, to see the results. Either that, or Judy and co, are jealous because they missed out being free souls. As for retirement, I operate a hospitality business and can tell you, all the retired BB.s are loving not having to working and continue slaving to support the elite of the world. Its not on their agenda.

They're saying bugger you to those those not satisfied with having people slave to support their elitist attitudes. Most had father and family killed during WW2 and grand parents, uncle killed during WW1. Most f those were murdered by the middle class officer elite, sending them into places with the only result, being massacred.

Who cares if thing collapse, the real BB's have known its going to happen for the last 3 decades and they're prepared. Still you can try to eat your silver spoon.

Thank you, the alchemist!
Of course you, Judy are not one of these awful people. Why do people have to do this? why do they have to say "YOU got this...na..na..na..so YOU should do this..."
Each generation encounters a different set of challenges as does each individual. Less knocking please, it puts people off any sensible argument one may have.

As an original baby boomer (b 1946) I wonder who Judy is talking about. Certainly not me or my wife (same age). The problem is when you start to generalise to a whole group some perceived attributes of a few in that group. Baby boomers are as diverse in their experience, attributes and expectations as any other group in society.

Judy

Phew! I can't remember reading so much bulldust for a long, long time.

I am a baby boomer (1947). I have not met any of the people to whom you refer. I have never expected instant gratification for anything. I have worked hard all of my life. My parents could only afford to buy me one pair of shoes when I entered high school, so that I had to wear my laceups everywhere. And there were lots like me.

The Alchemist, Tillietee and Rossco - thank you for your posts.

I can't believe that a so-called experienced journalist can get published writing such rubbish. I found the entire article highly insulting. What was your goal Judy? How will your article have a positive influence on society?

Kay