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The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Took Their Children's Future - And How They Can Give it Back | 
 enlarge | Author: David Willetts
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Category: Book
List Price: £18.99
Buy New: £10.80
You Save: ?8.19 (43%)
New (19) Used (5) from £10.28
Rating:  reviews
Sales Rank: 5571
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.3
ISBN: 1848872313
EAN: 9781848872318
ASIN: 1848872313
Publication Date: February 1, 2010
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| • | New | | • | Mint Condition | | • | Dispatch same day for order received before 12 noon | | • | Guaranteed packaging | | • | No quibbles returns |
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Product Description
Argues that the baby boomer generation have thrived at the expense of their children. This book offers an account of intergenerational relations in Britain. It is suitable for parents and policymakers alike.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A wide-ranging review of the likely impact of the 1950/60s baby boom on 21st century Britain May 30, 2010
Richard Murphy (Winchester, England)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
An excellent read for anyone interested in getting behind shallow press coverage and political rhetoric on social issues, and into the detail of how best to run the country in the interests of all its inhabitants.
David Willetts has a reputation as a thinker, as well as a politician. The book looks at the impact of the baby boom on modern Britain, and the challenges we face as this group move into retirement. The book is heavy on analysis and light on conclusions, and is all the better for that.
He resists anecdotes and popular myths, and concentrates on the numbers. For example he stresses that in Britain property tends to be bought and sold as needed, and not passed down through the generations. Importantly this is not a new trend - 87% of land transactions were between unrelated people back in 1400, and this is very different from other countries and cultures. He highlights that what will stop a habitual 20 year old criminal is not prison, but for him to get a job and a steady girlfriend. And what do Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Congo and Somalia have in common? All these global trouble-spots have a median age under 20, compared to the world median of 29 and UK one of 39.
What has this got to do with the baby boom? You need to read the book to find out, but what he sets out to demonstrate is that a country's cultural traditions and population profile have a huge effect on the wellbeing of its citizens. The political solutions to Britain's problems over the next few decades will need to take both into account if they are going to succeed.
Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in politics, and in particular social policy, but also a fascinating book for the general reader.
Fascinating read May 5, 2010
P. A. Snowdon
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is an excellent analysis of one of the most pressing social and economic questions in Britain today - how to maintain the gains of the baby boomers from an age of prosperity while meeting the ambitions of younger generations who face a range of obstacles in matching and exceeding their parents' dreams. Well-researched and highly readable, Willetts provides a survey that gets to the heart of issues which if not explained clearly and soberly may often seem baffling. Recommended to anyone who wants to understand the generational gap and how it might be closed.
Brave and well thought-through May 5, 2010
A. Brixey-Williams (London)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
How lucky my generation has been. Never called up to fight a major war. A student-loan-free education. An indomitable feeling that we can do anything. A generation approaching oldie-ship that will look different, act atypically and feel unconventionally about ourselves. No lawn bowls for us, or fawn windcheaters, or sensible shoes (unless we choose to wear them with a sense of post-modern irony, of course...). Heli-skiing at 73 - why not?
In a characteristically scholarly but lucidly readable fashion, Willetts provides a sociological, economic and demographic grand tour of a generation that has amassed great wealth and power and, he postulates, pulled up the drawbridge behind it. Reading it as a BB evokes pride and guilt in equal measures, but Willetts, a baby-boomer himself, stresses that this is not a book attacking his generation, but merely asking it to use its power wisely and fairly.
As a financial planner I deal with many made-it-big-time baby boomers, but watch with dread the younger cohorts sleepwalking into great poverty in old age. Many start life in debt; often have a misplaced obsession with property (Willetts cites research that suggests our decisions about what to invest in are shaped for several decades by the types of assets that were booming in our youth), and even their bosses, whose own pension planning might have been derailed by reductions in tax-relief for the better-off, may no longer feel quite so inclined to encourage their younger staff to save prudently for their later years.
I related strongly to Willetts' idea of baby boomers who were allowed to be 'free-range children', and that the social contract between parents and children is less trusting these days, for reasons I still don't fully comprehend, even as a father. Many children of that generation, this reviewer included, spent their days playing freely in the fields/bomb sites/streets - sans mobile phone or GPS kiddie-tracker or bicycle helmet - turning up muddy, grazed, but happy, for afternoon tea. We took risks, made mistakes and got messy, but, equally, so did our parents in allowing us the freedom of spirit that now seems to be emblematic of the generation.
So read this book - if you're not a BB, try to understand that although we're not an evil generation, we certainly got lucky, without necessarily realising it. If you are a BB, heed Willetts' words - that your children are the ones who might eventually choose your care home...
Cutting to the heart of inter-generational discord. April 18, 2010
Mr. Adam G. White (London, United Kingdom)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Inter-generational cooperation is disappearing from British society, and the young and old are at greater odds with each other than at any time since the Second World War. The baby boomers have robbed their children of the prosperity they themselves took for granted, by living beyond their means and enriching themselves at the expense of the young. That is the bleak analysis of the state of British society by the Conservative front bencher David Willetts. Perhaps this rather pessimistic view of ourselves is not something you'll be rushing to read, but this is an excellent analysis of one of the greatest problems of our time and deserves your time.
Willetts offers a comprehensive and authoritative account of why inter-generational relationships in our society have soured so badly (I think the fact that they have is indisputable) by assessing both public policy, and also our cultural traditions and norms. The brutal reality of the generational inequality that now lies at the heart of British society is laid bare. For the young, like me, this is a book that is both shocking and galvanizing. From the destruction of pension schemes, to the housing bubble that has left it harder than ever before to get onto the property ladder and right through to the unprecedented levels of public debt that will have to be repaid by the efforts of the people now joining the work force, the results of the baby boomers policies' are damning.
But this book goes deeper than the economic arguments, which are compelling none the less, to look at how socially destructive these inequalities between generations can become. The resentment and antagonism that currently lies at the heart of inter-generational relationships will prove dangerous for all involved if allowed to fester, and as Willetts argues, no social contract - however long established - can survive an infinite amount of polarity.
In his considered, thoroughly researched and accessibly written analysis of this burgeoning crisis at the heart of our society, Willetts is admirable in his attempt to bring an issue that absoloutley nobody of importance seems prepared to talk about - the elephant in our national living room - to the fore of political debate.
Pensions industry view April 17, 2010
Pensions industry view (surrey)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
A bit over-simplified in places - for example, not convinced that, just because modern mums have more labour-saving devices, children nowadays have more parental attention than when most mothers didn't go out to work - but it's still very unusual to see a politician who believes in researching the evidence before venturing an opinion and there's a lot of fresh evidence that he's marshalled to support his arguments.
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