Young people are too often depicted as arrogant, lazy, and entitled by the boomer mob on Twitter and the general media. This is demonstrated by the incredibly patronising term of “the bank of mum and dad”– as if it’s wrong for young people to be supported by their parents!
This outrage has seemed to unite the Daily Mail readers who love to hate young people and the Guardian readers who love to hate rich people. The champagne socialists are up in arms at the fact that wealthy parents are supporting their children.
Recently, the headlines have raged against the Institute of Fiscal Studies’ report that parents have provided a total of £17 billion in gifts and informal loans this year to their children in their late 20s and early 30s.
On the subject, Bee Boileau, a research economist, and author of the IFS report, said:
“Substantial intergenerational transfers happen when people, particularly those with richer parents, are in early adulthood and are buying their first home or getting married. While these transfers are important assistance for some, they are very unequally spread.”
It would be interesting to know what Boileau’s solution is to this inequality. Should the state ban parents from gifting their children money and only allow equally distributed inheritance?
Instead of blaming affluent parents for trying to solve the issue of intergenerational injustice, the focus should be on how Britain has gotten into the mess that young people are forced to be dependent on their parents.
Perhaps young people wouldn’t be so dependent on ‘the bank of mum and dad’ to buy their first home if boomers weren’t consistently voting for anti-planning policies which have made house prices unaffordable.
If only this outrage was targeted towards the fact that despite suffering through a cost-of-living crisis and general high taxation, young professionals are forced to foot the bill of the triple lock pension! Yet instead of being annoyed at this dreadful legal plunder, they dedicate their efforts to fume against parents voluntarily gifting their children money. Where is the crime here?
The fact of the matter is our earnings are lower and our rent is higher. Meanwhile, older generations have seen the value of their incomes and assets surge.
There are 3 million pensioners in millionaire households, a number that has nearly quadrupled in a decade, says the Intergenerational Foundation. This means that one in four pensioners are millionaires. Furthermore, older people seriously under occupy their homes with 67% of homeowners of retirement age have two or more spare rooms, rattling around in houses badly needed for families.
If Boileau wants to discuss wealth being “unequally spread,” then the conversation should instead be focused on how young people aren’t given a fair chance to succeed. In comparison to this, the fact that some young people are able to be supported by their parents is a drop in the ocean.
Furthermore, it’s ridiculous that it’s seen as a bad thing that parents are supporting their children. This is an implicit attack on family values. It’s sad that as a society it is increasingly being seen as immoral for parents to want to provide for their children when they’re financially struggling. Yet the socialists advocate for their children to be dependent on the state through financial handouts.
There’s nothing wrong with one generation wanting to support another. It should be applauded if parents want to support their children or children want to support their parents. As Jordan Peterson said, children should be seen as an investment in the future.
The state needs to stop attempting to replace the role of family. The result of state dependency has been intergenerational resentment. By decreasing the state’s involvement in family life as a third party, parents and children can appreciate the support they provide for each other.
