The demise of the Baby Boomers will change Britain forever

Children of Baby Boomers are due to inherit £1.2 trillion from their parents, making society more unequal than ever before

Right now it’s open season on the Baby Boomers. Left-wing millennials seem to blame the postwar generation – most of whom are now pensioners – for everything from wealth inequality to the shortage of affordable housing. Indignantly they quote claims that the average pensioner now has a higher income than the average worker, that pensioners control around 80 per cent of this country’s private wealth, and that one in five pensioners is a millionaire. In their fury, however, these millennials are forgetting a small but significant fact.

Which is that Baby Boomers are not immortal.

As a result, over the next 20-30 years this country is going to experience a phenomenon that experts are calling “the Great Wealth Transfer”. According to one estimate, the children of the Baby Boomers are due to inherit an incredible £1.2 trillion from their parents.

It may seem an unlikely figure. After all, lots of pensioners don’t have all that much in the bank. But a great many of them do have a house. A house they bought decades ago, when the average property went for a fiver and a packet of crisps, but has since rocketed in value to mind-boggling heights. When they die, therefore, their children will be able to stick it on the market, and rake in the handsome proceeds. Obviously there’s inheritance tax, capital gains and so on. But there should still be a fair whack left over. And since the Boomers are by far the richest generation in history, their children will receive by far the biggest inheritance in history.

This windfall will change our society forever, for several reasons – but not all of them good. First, because the windfall won’t be equal. Some millennials will become rich overnight, while those who were born to poorer parents will get nothing. This is bound to make our society even more bitter, resentful and divided than it is now. Because instead of attacking Boomers, millennials will be attacking each other. “How can it be fair that you inherit a fortune, and I’m still penniless?” they’ll scream. “You did nothing to earn that money. Why should you get to buy yourself some big fancy house, or retire early?”

The Great Wealth Transfer may also have a dramatic effect on our politics. Put it like this. Once they inherit wealth and property, today’s Left-wing millennials may suddenly decide they aren’t so keen on socialism after all. Finally they may detect one or two upsides to capitalism, now that they have some capital of their own.

And so, to their horror, they may find themselves afflicted by a creeping temptation to vote Conservative. And not only that. Once they’ve used their Boomer windfall to buy a nice house, they may start to reconsider their constant demands for mass house-building. Out of nowhere, they may discover a deep and heartfelt passion for protecting our precious green spaces, and for preventing property developers from ruining our beautiful countryside (or at least, from ruining the view from their own houses). In short: today’s Yimbys may become tomorrow’s Nimbys.

Of course, it’s possible that the Great Wealth Transfer won’t be quite as great as experts imagine. For one thing, much of the Boomers’ wealth may ultimately get swallowed up by the costs of their care. And future Labour governments may increase inheritance tax. In which case, millennials won’t inherit very much after all.

Then again, millennials are overwhelmingly Labour voters. And if a Labour government threatens to slash their inheritance, they may threaten to stop being Labour voters. So, just as Conservative governments have repeatedly shrunk from the wrath of the Boomers, Labour governments may shrink from the wrath of the millennials.

Whatever happens, it’s bound to be bumpy. And it should confound at least one ageist prejudice.

Many of today’s angry young Left-wingers tell themselves that once these Tory-voting Boomers are out of the way, they’ll finally be able to build a fair, just and equal society. But in reality, the demise of the Boomers may make society more unequal than ever.