The politics of the next decade will be dominated by a battle over public spending and taxes between the generations.
- Why are conflicts between old and young never debated?
- The average baby-boomer’s benefits is 118 per cent of the taxes they paid.
- Baby boomers are so numerous that no politician dares to campaign against their interests.
Will politics degenerate into a conflict between the dwindling number of voters with children, who care about education and the future, and the massive power of pensioners?
Here is a modest proposal to avert this awful outcome. Since children under 18 are not allowed to vote, perhaps pensioners could be deprived of the right to vote after 75 or 80. An equally effective alternative would be to give mothers an extra vote for every child under voting age.