Dear Editor:
Over the past two years I have noticed many readers writing in to complain about higher taxes, higher mortgages, and a lack of vacations (yes, things are a far cry from optimal).
It is unfortunate that one of your letter writers (Sylvia Taylor, July 6) was forced to pay $7,044 in property taxes this year. By my calculations, her home should be worth more than $2.5 million, if it's an older home. Likely it is worth even more.
Count your blessings and consider yourself lucky, Ms. Taylor, that you can afford to sell or remortgage your home since you decided to live beyond your means (typical baby boomer move, by the way).
Most people in retirement don't have $2.5 million in assets to fall back on. The retirees I know are worried about rent, medicine and food with a drained bank account and assets worth little to nothing. This brings me to Part 2 of our story, the so-called "lost generation."
At 26 years of age I am looking at things evolving around me in absolute bewilderment. It is not the economy that has me stumped, nor is it our politicians or those annoying traffic issues due to sprouting North Shore apartment developments no current resident wants. I can even - to a limited extent - understand it.
What has me so bewildered is the indifference and greed of the majority of our baby boomer parents. The lack of forethought, planning, and simple ignorance in regards to the younger generations (not only your kids.)
While you were living the majority of your life in a golden age of prosperity and wealth, looking to horde as much as you could accumulate, we are living in recession and are accumulating debt on a provincial, federal, and personal level. The majority of us cannot get a mortgage let alone afford to pay one off, and I will not even get into the huge inflation of housing prices forcing younger generations entirely out of the buyers' market.
We are having a hard time paying rent.
Our wages are half what yours were even just 20 years ago and yet food, rent, gas, electricity, taxes, school fees (yes, they tax us as well!) have all seen double-or even triple-digit percentage gains. Demands for what are considered necessities for work keep increasing as well - better add my cellphone and Internet bill to the list. Did I mention that my retirement age was also just raised?
I write this not to complain about the current state of affairs, rather to simply tell the other side of the seemingly rarely told story, the story of the disenfranchised youth that is stuck with the mess that you baby boomers have created for us.
So please, next time someone is considering complaining while living in a home worth over a million, take a breath, read this letter over just one more time, count your blessings, and do what you must to survive even if it means selling your home. At least you have one to sell.
Thomas Grunewaldt
North Vancouver
