A sad feature of the current economic malaise is to find perceived causes or even scapegoats for the problem among different sectors in our society. One example has been to blame it on immigration, as the European far right are doing right now. Another such tendency is to make it an age-related issue.

I was struck today by an article arguing that a solution to the large size of youth unemployment was for the over-50′s to resign en masse. Lucy Kellaway was suggesting that the over-50′s would be more able to create other work than those who lacked any work experience. She was also saying she wouldn’t be resigning herself.

Recently the Intergenerational Foundation has been arguing that one solution to the difficulties faced by young people in getting on the housing ladder in the UK was in persuading older people in large houses with under-utilised space to downsize.

Both in their way are pointing to the challenges being posed in so-called “advanced” countries of having an ageing population. We can see the issue too in the problems of care for the very old, whose numbers are rapidly increasing, and too in the squeeze on pensions and the problems people are increasingly facing in funding their retirements to come. As with other such issues of change, it is very much a matter of the choices we adopt to manage these changes. I guess what concerns me here is the tendency to go for simplistic solutions to complex problems that concern us all and which in a democratic society need to be agreed upon by all.

For example we can also argue that the housing crisis is partly due to a long-term failure to provide sufficient housing stock in a very overpopulated island, a preoccupation with the owner-occupier ideal, the love of the detached house and garden and a dread of high-rise housing blocks. We could say we have been going through a very deep recession, in economic terms a depression, and that high unemployment tends to be par for the course. Then we could point to the failure to maintain an industrial base and to provide apprenticeships in sufficient number. And for decades we have continued to fail to get to grips with the integration of school leavers into working life, with an education system dominated by the academic university ideal and no thought-through process of preparing young people for work that would offer usable skills to employers. We have simply ducked this issue totally.

Then again in recent recessions there are usually two sets of people who typically get hit, the under-25′s and the over-50′s. This recession is no different. Both struggle to get work.

Of course older people could get defensive about the issue and say they’ve paid their dues in taxes and work, they’ve earned what they have, they’ve already being supporting their own children through, for example, higher tertiary education costs and are still housing them at home, etc. This sort of stuff would of course be more of the same, also adversarial. And a mask for a deeper discomfort, which some are reporting. After all, the duty of the young is to receive and the older to give. There’s a natural reciprocity, instinctual even.

Other countries might look askance at this debate, for example in countries where family cohesion is much stronger and the concept of respect for older people much more deeply ingrained, and where family wealth might be much more jealously guarded and handed on. Perhaps in the UK we are now paying the price for the disintegration of family of the last few decades.

This is a complex issue and it needs a cross-spectrum approach to deal with it. However, the pattern of recessions is to divide people and this is reflected in political crises, unstable governments and radicalisation. Thus it becomes all the more important to rise above the petty, adversarial squabbles that are occurring and look for statesman-like solutions that are supported across the political and social spectrum. There is always a basic fund of goodwill that gets eclipsed in an adversarial situation but can emerge if fostered. After all, let us not forget that at essence, we are all One and this is One world. What we do to others we do to ourselves.

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