Gen Xers have been screwed so badly in NZ.
Not only were they the first generation to pay for their education, they then had to start saving for their retirement and they have been priced out of buying a home in a speculative market.
Being a Gen Xer in NZ is harsh, this article sums up the day to day reality of most Gen Xers…
Every morning you check Seek, you check Trade Me, you check every bloody job site you can find and then you remind yourself of everything you’re grateful for – that was my doctor’s advice and it seems to help. I am a member of Generation X-Employed.
Now I don’t have any fancy science to back up this claim, just far too many darkly hilarious chats over possibly a few too many beers. If I was to define us, it’d the the last gasp of the Boomers and opening overs of Gen X, overwhelmingly tertiary qualified, and all formerly part of now-dying industries. We don’t really show up in employment statistics, maybe because we refuse to accept the reality of what has happened and register as jobless, instead we prefer to use terms like independent contractor.
And it kind of sucks. Again, maybe because we didn’t see it coming, but also because it wasn’t the life path we’d been sold as pups. Our parents and even some of our grandparents had careers. The kind that lasted a lifetime, the kind that forge your identity, the kind that become a central plank of your obituary. The trick, we were told, was to find one you enjoyed and, if you worked hard, showed loyalty and didn’t abuse any privileges that might come along with it, you would be rewarded with promotion, more money, Friday drinks and a morning tea when you retired.
Instead, it turned out that the technology we craved to make our work easier ended up, in one way or another, going all Skynet on our arses.
And of course we’re far from unique in this situation, what with youth unemployment and a constantly changing work environment, it appears that the employment window for future generations is narrowing. Having just one job will sound foolish, rather everyone will need a portfolio of incomes and short-term contracts. Well that’s what I reckon anyway and it’s the approach I’m trying to adopt. Okay, I’ve only got to two incomes streams, trickles really, but the dream remains alive even if I hate the hustle to death.
As a result I will cop to being more a work- than a job-hunter. Oh, I’ve applied for a metric truckload of jobs, but really it’s like my turn was called and I didn’t hear. Instead of having shown loyalty in my past job I’m asked if I’m institutionalised.
When I’m asked – if you actually get a response to your application let alone an interview– why do you want to work here? Because I’ve got kids to feed and it’d do plenty to reduce my stress levels might be honest, but, well, you know. Then they always want to know about my social media game; I really don’t like the rules – and don’t get me started on the HR gatekeepers, there aren’t enough walls to line them up against.
How it is that a bunch of nobodies get to decide who best fits the mould of a job they have no idea about has me beat.
Okay, I’m still carrying around some anger issues. It’s my second redundancy, that’s life, but the way we are walked out the door by people who then pat themselves on the back for a job well done is inhuman.
Geez, let it go, just let it go.
And you do, at some point, have to. The constant stress of where the next bunch of money is coming from is hard enough without lying awake over revenge fantasies. You have keep going. So every morning you check Seek, you check Trade Me, you check every bloody job site you can can find and then you remind yourself of everything you’re grateful for – that was my doctor’s advice and it seems to help.
Speaking of whom, don’t be afraid of getting real help. I came close to a total meltdown when, on top of everything else, an old friend went into a hospice. So I swallowed some pride and now every morning I’m taking a pill I’ll never be able to pronounce and hey presto, sleep is my friend again and I’ve recovered a smile. Which doesn’t mean I’m drinking any less but hey, when you’re an independent contractor every day is Friday.
Still, balance in all things, my mum says, so I’ve upped my exercise routine along with the guzzling, again, partly on doctors orders. If nothing else it means I’m not a total ruin at job interviews.
But something has to give. Until now I’ve stubbornly insisted on making a living from the craft I spent 20 years honing. Almost the day after leaving work I cracked into what I figured I should and began talking to others in the same boat. I put out feelers to people who might be able to help, I wrote my first CV in decades and started researching whom I could blag my wares to.
I just never thought it’d be this hard or all-encompassing. You end up thinking about work all the time, will this help, will this hinder? I’m tired of it. I’m even feeling paranoid about this story – there’s no hiding from Google – along with pretty much everything I say on social media.
She’ll be right. Even if only because it has to be, so I’m thinking about retraining possibilities and even the potential of getting in a housemate. It’s arse though that getting a job feels like winning Lotto, and as I say, there are plenty of people like me out there. Hey, I know, let’s stay the course, get through summer and start all over again next year.
NZs intergenerational theft is always loaded against Gen Xers. With so many Gen Xers fleeing NZ to pay their student loans off, Baby Boomers forever have the tyranny of the majority to ensure their cradle to grave Government subsidy will never end.
We have so much to thank Baby Boomers for. They forced social change, increased personal freedoms and demanded accountability from Government. They protested Vietnam War, feminism, nuclear free NZ and the Springbok tour, but what they failed to protect was the very universal provision of social services that set them up so well in later life. Boomers are happy to benefit from universal provision, but not happy to share it, the charmed existence of the boomer hasn’t existed for anyone but them.
And then there are the Millennials.
I think there are deep cultural issues here between Gen X and Millennials.
Living in the shadow of nuclear annihilation, Gen Xers distrust authority and always challenges it and so demand a system that is fair for everyone. They started to see the erosion of the cradle to the grave state subsidy that Boomers have enjoyed and demanded it for everyone out of solidarity and a sense of a collective enemy.
As the first user pays generation though, Precariat Millennials are fighting for change because they want what the Baby Boomers had for themselves, not because it’s a socially just thing to do. Me first cultural norms mixed with narcissistic social media has created an identity politics that is crippling in its individualism, not bonding.
Without an idealogical compass, self interest to a user pays generation becomes confused with self interest for all. No where can that be seen better than by the Spinoff’s support of Bill Ralston.
This is the legacy of 30 years of neoliberalism, this is the mythology that success is an individual pursuit that has nothing to do with the hegemonic structures of power within a society and being poor is a personal choice. This idealogical virus has infected user pays society and warped the values.
That’s not to attack Millennials with the usual ‘they are a selfish generation and blah blah blah’, they have these values because that’s what a user pays culture does.
This all however comes to an abrupt end because of climate change. The world Millennials are inheriting from Boomers and being forced to share with Gen Xers destroys those individualistic values because co-operation is the only way we can face the challenges of climate change.
A progressive Government coming into challenge this intergenerational theft should first consider reapplying death duties to redistribute all that boomer good luck to other generations because the current situation can’t and won’t stand.
The reason this will all change is because millennials, Gen Y and X are waking up to the scam they’ve been served up and the intergenerational theft that has allowed it to happen. Politics stops being some disconnected thing when you bear the brunt of it.
In 2014, there were 864, 100 NZers aged 60 and over. 87% of them voted in the election. On the other side of the equation, there are 743 200 NZers aged between 18-29 but a mere 49% of them bothered voting.
That will change as life gets progressively more difficult and by 2023 Gen X and Y and those boomers still with a political conscience will finally outnumber the Speculator Boomers, and that’s when a political revolution has the opportunity of finally ridding us of self interested speculator boomer politics and we begin building a new nation.
Time is on our side comrades.
There was an excellent discussion on this on RNZ yesterday on their Outspoken slot just after the 5.00pm news. Well worth listening to
Yep that sums things up as a generation X very well… Generation Y are still accepting the system. But as it states that will change in time…
As a prime example of GenX, and a life time renter the thing I can’t get my head around is how and where will I live in my old age??
I guess the idea is that my savings will keep the landlords happy, but then my husband and I are using those, and a percentage of our wages, to help support our 3 millennials who are being hit with massive living/education costs.
And the odds are that ‘the kids’ will not make it onto the housing ladder either.
So my question to whomever is hoping to get my family’s vote…where is the sustainable housing plan for future pensioners ‘surviving’ on the pension and who only enough savings to buy some false teeth and a mobility scooter??
I wait with bated breath.
Got to live in the provinces it’s the only way to own property. Even if the whole family buys a rural property to rent out to others in order to increase your asset/capital. Complicated i know but it can be done.
As a lifetime renter and one saddled with student loan debt (that was 11.5% while a fulltime student when National brought the policy in), I am watching and waiting and will be in the front lines with my pitchfork and machete when society collapses (and it will), and I will cut down any straggling wheelchair-bound boomer in an orgy of extrajudicial violence…. you can hate on this all you want… it’s what’s coming…. the policies being enacted by those now in power are hastening its guaranteed eventuality…
Asset Test …$1m in Assets should be enough to live on. A Reverse mortgage & tell the kids to take care of the grand kids.
If you are lucky enough to have any assets and I am a boomer and I sure don’t have any. After three redundancies and setting up a small business, which was meant to be my retirement income got stuffed by john keys new dumb alcohol laws and the christchurch earthquakes . Now I am a 65 year old boomer with nothing, still having to work ( for at least another 6 years) to pay off substantial debt . So not all of us boomers are sitting pretty most of us have been screwed over too .
Too right Geoff. Still working our guts out in retirement.
If you are lucky enough to have any assets and I am a boomer and I sure don’t have any. After three redundancies and setting up a small business, which was meant to be my retirement income got stuffed by john keys new dumb alcohol laws and the christchurch earthquakes . Now I am a 65 year old boomer with nothing, still having to work ( for at least another 6 years) to pay off substantial debt . So not all of us boomers are sitting pretty most of us have been screwed over too .
Don’t be so sure,I am already there and doing that . Reverse mortgages are to be avoided at all costs. if you can work then you do even if it’s just selling veges at your local market.The cost of living for two people is $40,000 minimum p.a.and that’s with growing your own food buying second hand doing own haircuts solar etc. It’s fucking expensive to live.
As genx I am really pissed off we here from the Bady doomers how there entitled as they paid there tax well we are paying bloody taxes as well and are being given the two fingers phill goff campaigned in 2011 asking the Bady boomers to help recapitalise superannuation they told us to piss off well if we are not going get the same deal why should we pay there bloody super now .and as for the natz they should be hung we wouldnt be in this mess if those greedy wankers hadn’t destroyed every savings fund kirk scheme 1976 ,winstone peters 1997 referendum the Cullen fund moving the goal posts on kiwi saver those fuckers are to blame our rage should be squarely aimed I at the natz I for one will not accept being screwed over and it’s long over due the natz get it in the neck,
And you will notice, that the only party with guts to raise the Superannuation Age, is ACT. Our website says it all:
“ACT believes that retirement is a predictable expense for which the vast majority of citizens are able to save independently, given clear signals about what the government will and will not be providing. Under the Status quo, superannuation is an enormous fiscal cost that is subject to political manipulation.
In the short term, the government should abandon the unproductive policies of saving (the so-called ‘Cullen fund’) and subsidising Kiwisaver while in the government itself is in debt and running deficits. In the medium term it should reduce the fiscal costs of superannuation by raising the age of entitlement to reflect increases in life expectancy and then index it to reflect further increases. Over the long term, the government should send clear signals to younger New Zealanders that superannuation in the future will be a safety net for those genuinely unable to provide for themselves.
A vote for ACT will help pay off debt and make working kiwis responsible for their own superannuation lifestyle needs.
on the crap wages high cost of living fat chance act party must be on LSD planet coo coo land
OK then, bring it on. Bring on raising Super Age as an election platform for 2017 election
Let National, ACT, United Future, TMP and TOP fight the next election on raising the superannuation age.
Bring it on, but I m sure that Crosby, Textor and Farrar will be as pleased with that prospect, as they would seeing a turd in their corporate punchbowl.
Bring it on Bill, David, Peter, Marama, and Gareth. Raise the Superannuation Age to 70+.
But, you’d be better to make Super’s eligibility only for residents of 25 years or more, otherwise immigrants should apply to their country of origin for their Superannuation. That should stave off having to alienate boomer voters and millenials.
So, Hobson’s Choice really. Alienate the boomer voters and millenial voters, or alienate immigrants. Tough choice – eh Winston?
the elephant in the room is the housing bubble popping and prospect of thousands families going underwater/bankrupt
its not realistic to expect gen x to have anywhere near the required savings rents and housing costs are killing any savings margins that exist
and those who have bought a home are sitting on a debt bomb waiting to go off when the bubble pops you have to be freehold by your early forties to have enough time to save.
the nats are to blame thats who we need to hang,
i still think these fund manager will find away to loot kiwi saver
this PBS documentary is worth watching the retirement gamble
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ZAy03ubSw
Interesting commentary, and some good points. My 2 bits worth: (1) all student debt should be forgiven forthwith (I speak as one of the generation that actually had allowances to attend university); (2) clamp down severely on immigration, only admit those who really would add to us (we have, e.g., far too many chefs and taxi drivers from elsewhere, adding to the burden).
Right on Tom. My partner and I are working in our retirement because we made sure our offspring were relatively debt free after their education finished.So we have less nest egg but we do have oour health and own mortgage free property. So we now get to work ourselves to death. And any millennial, Gen Xer who wants to learn how to live sustainably from two old boomers who know how, feel free to get in touch we always need labour and will provide food and accommodation in return.
What’s worse Tom, is that an immigrant only has to be here 10 years to be eligible for full Superannuation at 65. How is that fair?
Most Kiwis have worked for 40 + years with the expectation of having a universal Superannuation at 65. If Super is too expensive, surely that immigrant loophole should be closed first and sooner than later.
Divide and rule – while gen x and the millennials are blaming labour-voting boomers for their suffering you fail to address the real issues.
So, what are these “real issues”? I notice “you failed to address the real issues” as well.
[…] even suggested that I was falling for a right wing scam to privatise or lower Superannuation, which if you read my column on Superannuation, seems […]
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