To Those Under 40: Sorry, We Spent All Your Money ...

I am, in many ways, the very essence of a golden generation.  Male. Middle-class. Raised in a white, English-speaking country.  I received a good education—at a price that didn’t crush me. I bought property before it became unaffordable. My parents, themselves products of a post-war boom, will likely leave me an inheritance at the very time in my life when I need it least.

Meanwhile, my healthcare is covered, there's a pension, and my standard of living just fine.  In fact is so fine that it is being propped up not by my own toil, but by the taxes and future contributions of the younger generation. Climate change, while real, will probably inconvenience me more than it will threaten me. I have the luxury of voting in every election, and you can be sure I will—often to preserve systems that benefit me and my peers, even if they burden the young.

This is not confession. This is recognition.  Recognition of the extraordinary structural advantages I’ve been given—and of the blatant extraction from future generations that sustains them.  And yet, when I look around at the prospects of my grown children, I’m bewildered. Not by how hard things will be for them—that’s increasingly obvious—but by how little resistance there seems to be. Where is the outcry? Where is the movement? Where is the full-throated cultural refusal?

If I were 40 right now, I would be looking at a slow, relentless erosion of opportunity, taken from me by the same people urging me to do well. It’s a bait and switch of historic proportions.  Is it a generational Ponzi scheme?

In the past, the idea of borrowing from the future meant your own future. A mortgage. A student loan. A credit card. You were gambling that your future earnings would be enough to pay for something today. But now the model has changed. Today’s systems are designed to take the future earnings of our youth, and give them to the older richer generation—to me, and to those like me..  It’s not just unfair. It’s will collapse under its own contradictions.

So many examples.  For instance, pensions and social care systems are built on the assumption that tomorrow’s workers will keep paying in more, so today’s retirees can keep drawing more. Consider the numbers: a healthy 60-year-old might draw a pension for 30 years, having contributed perhaps 15% of what they’ll ultimately receive? There is no math that makes that work—unless the next generation is quietly forced to subsidise it.

And that's just the money. The environmental bill is even more stark.  We know what’s coming. Climate change isn’t a vague possibility anymore—it’s an unfolding reality. But rather than make real sacrifices now to mitigate its worst effects, my generation allows emissions and consumption to continue, passing the true cost to a future we won't inhabit.

This is a masterclass in smoke and mirrors: an elaborate performance that preserves the illusion of sustainability while the cracks get bigger. And still, very little changes. The media scrolls, the influencers speak, and then… silence. A few protests to get some views. Some furious annonymous comment threads. But where are the sustained movements from the young memers of our society most at risk? The culture of defiance? The big ideas?  The shared purpose?

Greed is just ego in economic form. It may motivate individuals, and even an organised minority, but it cannot imporve a society. And it certainly cannot guide a planet through crisis, or resist this generational heist.  This is not a call for guilt. At the end of the day each generation has to fight its own battles. But it is a call for clarity. Because without clear, organised, deliberate resistance, the clever old will continue to outvote, out-lobby, and outmanoeuvre the unorganised, distracted young.

If you're under 40, the question is not whether you’ve been robbed. You have.  The question is: are you going to keep letting it happen ... or just keep scolling?  I hear AI will make life even better and more entertaining