Give millennials £10,000 each to tackle generation gap, says thinktank
Resolution Foundation proposes ‘citizen’s inheritance’ to help redistribute wealth to young
Every person in Britain should receive £10,000 when they turn 25 to help fix the “broken” intergenerational contract between millennials and baby boomers, an influential thinktank has proposed following a two-year study.
Comments
I am 81 years old and have NEVER witnessed a generation that found buying a home easy. For a good number of years now interest rates are at all time lows. Cannot get my head round this. Presumably the Foundation has Socialist leanings.
A £10,000 handout is a short-sighted solution to millennial misery
Gaby Hinsliff
magine a world in which millennials’ fortunes no longer relied on the “bank of mum and dad”, because everyone inherited £10,000 when they turned 25.
No more nonsense about how young people could easily become homeowners if they just spent less on avocado toast; no more rage-inducing hagiographies of young entrepreneurs, which somehow always fail to mention that they got their fashionable startup off the ground thanks to a big dollop of family cash.
Under the “citizen’s inheritance” scheme proposed by the Resolution Foundation thinktank, every young adult would receive a cheque from the state – funded by inheritance tax reform, and strictly reserved for non-frivolous purposes such as a house deposit, further education or starting a business – to get them started in life.
The snag, unfortunately, is that it almost certainly isn’t going to happen. The political odds are stacked against such radical ways of easing the tension between baby boomers and struggling millennials, and not just because the Tories remain wary of antagonising their ageing supporters. Would public opinion really stand for giving a “citizen’s inheritance” to young City traders already earning six figures by themselves, or the heirs of the landed gentry? Yet means-testing it would simply create a whole new kind of resentment among those who just miss out.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/08/millennials-inheritance-tax-reform?