| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Have the Conservatives changed under Cameron? | |
| Posted by: | Sarah Smith | |
| Date/Time: | 06/10/09 12:52:00 |
| My generation paid (partly) for its own university education and graduate with an average debt of nearly £20,000 and politicians are planning to up the fees and make loans more expensive. Those in their fifties received free further education. My generation (especially in London) has found that the cost of a starter flat for a first time buyer is around eight times average income (in London). Those in their fifties who got on the property ladder twenty to thirty years ago have benefited from the rise in property prices which has been funded by the younger generations who are looking to buy a place to live. This is an effective transfer of wealth from the younger to the older generations. Final salary/defined benefit pensions are almost impossible for those in their 20s and 30s to find yet were common place for those in their fifties. Those in their fifties funded the pensions of a generation who died in their early 70s. My generation will fund pensioners who will live until their late 80s or early 90s. Though I would never vote Tory, raising the pensionable age to 66 is not an unfair policy. If we all have to "do our bit", working for a whole year extra is hardly much to ask considering you'll still have twenty years of retirement. It looks like Cameron is backtracking on it anyway- the demographic bulge of baby boomers means he can't afford to alienate them, even if it comes at the cost of us youngsters paying for it. |