Dialogue: Greedy oldies retaliate

Nobody in this world spits the dummy quite like an already privately wealthy pensioner who hears the words "means testing" and "superannuation" in the same sentence.

Such people don't even like to hear means testing and superannuation mentioned in the same city. They simply can't be reasoned with on this point.

I learned these things the hands-on way after suggesting last week that Generation X doesn't believe superannuation should be a universal entitlement. And that Generation X should be allowed an opinion on the topic because it will be footing the bill for flush baby-boomers' swanky retirements.

I was also going to suggest that no member of Grey Power should be allowed the vote until such time as he or she woke up to him or herself on the above-mentioned issues. Sadly, I ran out of space before I could do this. We'll save it for another time.

It's the viciousness of the responses to suggestions that a universal pension isn't sustainable that is frightening. People genuinely believe that a state-funded pension for all - even for those who have adequate private income - is an unassailable right that God himself specially decreed for New Zealand.

To suggest otherwise is tantamount to suicide. At the very least, it draws the same sort of lightning that is normally reserved for child molesters and people who spit in the altar wine.

If you don't believe me, wander down to your next Grey Power meeting, take the stage, and scream out something like, "Greedy oldies!" When you get out of hospital, write and tell me what happened.

"You're a silly bitch," ageing boomers hissed at me last week. "Your turn is coming."

In fact, it is not. When my turn comes, there'll be absolutely nothing left.

I'll die at 40 anyway, having, like every other Generation Xer in this little nation, been worked into the ground to prop up universal superannuation for boomers.

This is why the points people try to make about "my turn" as a pensioner strike me as kind of moot.

Others have suggested that I drop dead, or should never have been born, fed, taught to speak, allowed out of the house and so on. Which isn't very nice. Still, I prefer these aggressive, openly hostile persons to the ones who open their mouths only to whinge, bleat on about how unfair the world is, what they're owed, and why you and I owe them a living even if they already have one.

These are the ones who seem to feel that they should get a pension not because they need it but because people who make it into their 60s deserve some sort of memento - much in the way that people who turn 100 get a hand-signed thumbs-up from the Queen.

Sentences such as "Everybody should be entitled to a small pension at the end of their working lives," have been screamed into my poor ears with monotonous but unflagging regularity this past week.

People use the word "everybody" a lot in this context. I suppose that if you use the word a lot, and say things like "everybody deserves a pension," you have a better chance of disguising your greed as philanthropy.

I applaud Dr Cullen for his courage in lifting the lid from the can of worms in the first place. But his solution of a giant, barely supportable slush fund leaves plenty to be desired as far as members of Generation X are concerned - and we vote, too.

As far as Generation X is concerned, the concept of a universal entitlement is an arrogance left over from an era that was spent largely in cloud-cuckoo-land.

We've all (boomers included) paid relatively low taxes for a long time now. The argument that retirees "deserve" some sort of payback becomes less and less relevant the further we get away from the days of the dreaded two-thirds tax.

What we're talking about here is a Generation X mind-set. We're talking about the coming of a mind-set that does not believe that people who have been in a position to save for their retirement deserve state funds.

We're talking about a mind-set that thinks that to suggest otherwise is to support an insupportable greed.