Intergenerational Warfare: Who Stole the Millennials’ Future?代际冲突：谁偷走了千禧一代的未来？

戴维·威利茨

Two new books， The Theft of a Decade and Stop Mugging Grandma， examine the divide. 《被偷走的那十年》和《別再啃老了》剖析这一差异。

Class used to predict how people would vote in Britain and elsewhere—in 1974 if you were a member of the working class you were three times more likely to vote Labour than Conservative. Now the distribution of votes by class in the UK is almost even between Labour and Conservative： the new divide is by age. In the 1970s， 40 per cent of voters supported Labour in almost every age group. Age was a political irrelevance. But by the 2017 general election it had become a key driver of how someone votes. A 30-year-old was almost twice as likely to vote Labour as a 70-year-old， and a 70-year-old twice as likely to vote Tory as a 30-year-old.

This political divide reflects an underlying economic reality. Older people own the wealth—housing and pensions. And now， for the first time in British history， pensioner incomes after housing costs have caught up with those of working-age families. All this has put fairness between the generations high on the political agenda. So both parties promise to get more houses built for young people.

Joseph Sternberg and Jennie Bristow take diametrically1 opposite approaches to this in two new books on the subject on intergenerational economics. Sternberg’s The Theft of a Decade is full of evidence， mainly from the US， which shows the scale of the problem. In particular he shows how the financial crash of 2008 has hit young people particularly hard and the policy response to it in turn has boosted the assets of older generations， widening the gap with the young.

Bristow’s approach is very different. In Stop Mugging Grandma she treats “generationalism” not as an economic fact but a pernicious2 social and cultural narrative.

British social thinkers are familiar with differences of class， gender and ethnicity as powerful tools for explaining economic differences. Compared to them， Bristow regards the accident of when you were born as rather trivial. She argues it is a device to hide the shared interest in， for example， good pensions and divert attention from real economic problems—such as an insecure low-wage labour market—which are nothing to do with the generation you belong to.

But when you were born does matter. The formative experiences that shape people’s view of politics often occur during their early twenties. Those born after the second world war who came of age in the 1960s enjoyed rising wages without competition in a global labour market from workers in developing countries

While entering the labour market after the 2008 financial crisis may have permanently scarred the millennials， Sternberg also cites evidence that it affects lifetime consumption patterns too.

That is the decade which Sternberg rightly says has been taken from the millennials. Being born into a big cohort like the baby boomers—roughly those born between 1946 and 1964—gives you greater power in the marketplace and the ballot box so you can shape society to favour your generation.

Government policies themselves are littered with age rules： it is a political choice that a 21-year-old travelling to work on London transport pays full fare but a 61-year-old travels for free. It was a political decision to protect pensioner benefits with the so-called triple lock3 that ensures British pensioners enjoy benefits rising by a minimum of 2.5 per cent， average earnings growth or inflation， whichever is highest， while imposing a freeze4 on benefits for families of working age.

Behind these political choices are judgments about who is deserving—and who votes. Drawing attention to these decisions is not promoting generational warfare， it is asking whether we are really delivering fairness between the generations.

Young people are rightly sceptical that in 50 years they will in turn benefit from generous policies for pensioners because there might be different spending priorities then. The evidence so far is that the big generation of boomers have enjoyed policies favouring the young when they were young and policies rebalanced to the old when they are older.

Meanwhile， the millennials are caricatured5 for consuming avocado toast instead of saving. Yet the evidence is that their consumption on holidays or eating out is actually growing less than affluent boomers. When the boomers were young in the 1980s， people aged 25–34 consumed roughly the same amount as people aged 55–64. Now they are aged 55–64， the younger generation coming along behind are consuming 15 per cent less than them.

Boomers have defined benefit pensions payable after a certain age， so as they live longer the value of the pension goes up. Millennials have defined contribution pensions with a fixed pot6 of money that will pay out less per year as their life expectancy rises. And trying to save earnings for a deposit on a house illustrates when the rise in assets relative to incomes shifts from an economic abstraction to a personal reality—it would have taken a typical young Boomer family about three years to save for a deposit whereas now it takes 19.

That is why the biggest， boldest thing we have to do is boost property ownership among the younger generation. It happened in Britain in the 1980s with the sale of publicly owned council houses and access to shares in privatised industries. We need a contemporary version of that—one option is a capital endowment of perhaps £10，000 when a young person reaches the age of 30. Otherwise we will face a young generation of the dispossessed.

在英國和其他地方，过去往往可以通过选民所属阶级预测其投票倾向——在1974年，如果你是工人阶级的一员，你给工党投票的可能性是保守党的三倍。现在，英国不同阶级给工党和保守党投票的分配几乎是均匀的：新的差异是按年龄划分的。在20世纪70年代，几乎所有年龄段都有40%的选民支持工党。彼时，年龄与政治无关。但到了2017年的大选，年龄已经成为影响人们投票的关键因素。一个30岁的选民给工党投票的可能性几乎是70岁选民的两倍，而一个70岁选民给保守党投票的可能性是30岁选民的两倍。

这一政治差异反映了潜在的经济现实。老年人拥有财富——住房和养老金。如今，在减去住房成本后，养老金领取者的收入已经赶上了工薪家庭的收入，这在英国历史上还是第一次。所有这些都使得代际公平成为一个热点政治议题。所以两党都承诺要为年轻人建造更多住房。

约瑟夫·斯特恩伯格和珍妮·布里斯托在他们关于代际经济学这一主题的新书中选取截然相反的切入点来探讨这一问题。斯特恩伯格在其《被偷走的那十年》一书中大量引用证据（主要来自美国），以彰显问题的严重程度。他特别说明了2008年的金融危机对年轻人造成了特别严重的影响，而政府的应对政策继而增加了老一辈的资产，扩大了年轻人与老一辈之间的差距。

布里斯托的切入点则非常不同。在《别再啃老了》一书中，她指出“世代主义”不是一个经济事实，而是一个对社会和文化都有害的说辞。

英国社会思想家习惯将阶级、性别和种族的差异作为解释经济差异的有力工具。与这些因素相比，布里斯托认为人们何时出生这一不可预测之事相当无关紧要。她认为，这是一种隐藏共同利益（如丰厚的养老金）并转移人们对实际经济问题（如缺乏保障的低工资劳动力市场）的注意力的手段——这些问题与你所属的世代并无干系。

但是你何时出生确实很重要。塑造人们政治观的重要经历往往发生在20出头的时候。第二次世界大战后出生的人在20世纪60年代成年，他们没受到全球劳动力市场上来自发展中国家工人的竞争威胁，享受工资上涨的福利。

在2008年金融危机之后进入劳动力市场可能已经给千禧一代带来永久性创伤。斯特恩伯格还引用证据表明这影响了千禧一代的终身消费模式。

这是千禧一代被偷走的十年——斯特恩伯格这点说的没错。婴儿潮一代（大致是1946年至1964年间出生的人）在市场竞争和投票中有更多话语权，从而可以影响社会，使其惠及同代人。

政府政策本身充斥着年龄规则：在伦敦，21岁的公民乘坐交通工具上班需支付全额票价，而61岁的公民则可以免费出行，这是一项政治决策。通过所谓的三重保障来保护养老金领取者的福利，这是一项政治决定—— “三道锁”确保英国养老金领取者的福利增幅可在最低2.5%、平均薪资涨幅和通货膨胀率这三者中择最高者享受，而工薪家庭的福利却固定不变。

这些政治决策的背后是关于谁应该得到福利以及谁在投票的判断。聚焦这些政策并不是要激发代际冲突，而是要探讨我们是否真的做到了代际公平。

年轻人有充分理由怀疑，50年后他们是否可以从慷慨的养老金政策中受益，因为届时优先支出事项可能会有所不同。截至目前的证据都显示，人口众多的婴儿潮一代在年轻时享受了有利于年轻人的政策，而在他们年老时政策又重新平衡到优待老年人上。

与此同时，千禧一代又被丑化为不重储蓄、只顾消费的一代人。然而有证据表明，他们在度假或外出就餐时的消费增长实际上比富裕的婴儿潮一代更少。在20世纪80年代，当婴儿潮一代年轻时，25—34岁的人消费水平与55—64岁的人大致相同。而现在他们年龄处在55—64岁之间，年轻一代的消费水平却比他们低15%。

婴儿潮一代在一定年龄后享受养老金固定收益，随着寿命的延长，养老金的价值就会上升。而千禧一代采用养老金固定缴款制度，资金库总额是固定的，因而随着他们的预期寿命增加，每年给付的金额就会减少。年轻人努力存钱以支付房屋定金，说明资产相对于收入的增长从一个抽象的经济概念转变为个人现实问题——过去一个典型的年轻婴儿潮家庭要花费大约三年的时间来存够房屋定金，而现在的年轻人需要19年。

这就是为什么我们要做的最重大、最大胆的事情就是增加年轻一代的财产所有权。20世纪80年代，英国公有的议会大厦可供出售，私有行业的股份也可购买。我们需要一个当代版本——一个做法是给年满30岁的年轻人提供1万英镑的资金资助。否则我们将会面临着年轻一代一无所有的境况。

（译者为“《英语世界》杯”翻译大赛获奖选手）