A few years ago I put forward the theorist here that the aging population is doing strange things to the mentality in the country. Not invented by myself, but once heard of Jan Latten, retired demographer: things that belong to being young and inquisitive – taking risks, making noise, experimenting, plunging into the deep without straps, greedily embracing the strange and new – would give way to preoccupations of the aging man – anxiously focused on preserving what you have, complaining about perceived dangers.
Immediately I thought I saw signs everywhere: decreasing tolerance for lying around bicycles and ad hoc parties on the sidewalks, complaining about fireworks and noise, obsession with all kinds of risks, duplication and the standards of the retirement home.
Although there was also doubt: risk aversion and insurance drive are perhaps just typically Dutch (except on holiday, when the Dutch go hiking far away in walking shoes between guerrilla groups and people are in turmoil here if something happens to them).
Then came corona. Children were imprisoned immediately, and remained so long after it was clear that they were at the lowest risk. Students even remained locked up until someone in The Hague had time to look into their condition after a year. Adults were only given ‘urgent advice’ to work from home, and when that didn’t help, schools were simply shut down one more time to victimize children as ankle bracelets.
Then came the obsession with closing everything at night, the time when a little teenager or student goes out. Curfew, evening lockdown, as if corona is extra dangerous in the dark. All this ‘to spare the elderly’.
You see, I thought. This is what happens in a country where the average age is 42.3 years (in 1975 it was still 33.2 years). Where the proportion of the group younger than 20 is steadily declining, where the numerical preponderance and political power lies with the forties, fifties and sixties.
Although I still had my doubts about the theoret: in the spring of 2020, the elders in nursing homes were also scandalously abandoned to their fate, when all the spotlight was on the IC heroism of Diederik Gommers and Ernst Kuipers. I read the interviews with 100 year olds de Volkskrant: all golden people.
Then came the new coalition agreement, splashing with money for climate measures. Finally something for the distant future, finally something young people asked for. Only: they have to pay the bill themselves. Anyone who now has lobby access to ministries will be spared.
The opposition did not like that. Payment must now be made, and that by the wealthy, was the – fruitless – demand. I jumped up for a moment: that’s where the voice of the young people is. But unfortunately: in the same breath came the plea for a higher state pension, a measure with which money mainly leaks to the many rich elderly (Princess Beatrix!) and which appeals to the elderly who are politically homeless after 50Plus blew itself up. CBS economist Peter Hein van Mulligen recalls the proportions: The Netherlands has 88 thousand ‘poor’ pensioners and 221,000 children who grow up in low-income families. You can help those poor old-age pensioners with specific measures. Anyone who nevertheless wants to transfer an AOW account of 2 billion to young people who will hardly benefit from it themselves (search for franchise and supplementary pension) hates young people.
It is incomprehensible that a youth revolt has not yet broken out. High time for voting rights to 16. High time for the barricades.