It appears that the UK has it’s equivalent of our Republicans. Fake fiscal conservatives who preach austerity for younger generations and the poor, in particular seeking to take away their old age benefits before they know what they are missing. While pandering to today’s seniors and the better off, exempting them from austerity or even providing enriched benefits and more tax cuts in the face of soaring debt and long term fiscal crisis. But there is a big difference. Whereas over here no one wants to talk about what has happened, over there the fairness of the past 30-plus years has come out in the middle of an election campaign.
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21645192-britain-should-stop-subsidising-old-and-rich-expense-young-and-poor-granny
“INVOKING the spirit of the Blitz, Britain’s Conservative-led government says that, when it comes to austerity, Britons are in it together” thundered The Economist. “Yet the group born under the shadow of the country’s wartime trials is largely exempt.” “Over the past five years, the average British household has seen its income fall by about £500 as a result of coalition tax increases and spending cuts” according to this source. “The average two-pensioner household has taken a hit of just £23. Yet far from being the shivering, uncomplaining veterans of Tory spin, its members more typically came of age in the easy-living 1960s.” The Financial Times chimed in, too. The comments are also worth reading. The whole issue is out in the open.
I guess this is the advantage of a parliamentary system. There the Tories and their allies have run up additional generational inequities on their own. Here it is always bi-partisan, with the old media joining in by what it covers and what it does not.