Monday, August 27, 2012

Thoughtful article about generational employment rates

There is a lot of rubbish written about 'generational conflict' . You know, all of the stuff about the bad baby boomers and how they are financially screwing their kids.  I cannot speak for the rest of Europe but the UK, like the US, has far too much of this nonsense published.

The two big issues that lead to the angst (and confusion) are debt and jobs. Both are incredibly important but are not easily explained by painting one age group as the 'baddies' and another as the 'losers'.

I thought this article attempted to take a much more balanced view of the subject. It is not perfect and doesn't give enough credence to the changing relative economic strengths of East and West but it is much better than most of the nonsense that is written.

From a marketer's viewpoint the question we should be asking is - what does the change in the buying power of different age groups mean to our companies? The answer to this is not easier to unpick because of the way that parents are transferring wealth to their children at an earlier age.

The sooner we start treating the subject of generational wellbeing seriously the better. It far too important to be left to a few point scoring journalists to set the rules of the debate. Dick Stroud

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