Must growing old mean becoming poorer and lonelier? | Nick Cohen

Maybe it was just a trick of the light, but for the first time I thought I could see people in their 30s and 40s twitch as they began to realise how dark their twilight years could be.

All discussions about retirement must begin by acknowledging the primacy of class. In normal circumstances, the wealthy middle aged will enjoy a wealthy old age. Modern intergenerational unfairness is as nothing when set against inequalities in income and assets.

And yet and yet... When the government announced that 7 million people born between 1970 and 1978 will now have to wait until they are 68 before they can claim the state pension, the economics of a new Britain, where life is long but money is short, shifted into view.

Nagging thoughts needled those of us fortunate enough to have jobs we enjoy. Barring sickness or family tragedy, we could work until we were almost 70. But would employers want us? More to the point, what of manual workers and shop workers who cannot possibly keep going for so long? Deduct 68 from the Bible’s three score years and 10, and you have only two years left, a calculation worth keeping in mind as you remember that life expectancy is lower for the poor than the rich.

Discussions of future pensioner poverty feel out of place when today’s elderly are enjoying unparalleled prosperity. For the first time in history, pensioners have higher average incomes than people of working age .

While remembering again that class trumps all else, and a miner who lost his job in Margaret Thatcher’s day is hardly privileged, the last general election demonstrated with impressive brutality that no politician can threaten the pension benefits of the baby boomers. Leaders who ask them to relinquish the smallest of their privileges will go the way of Theresa May.

It is not fashionable to have a good word to say about her. And I confess to waking up every morning and being astonished to discover that she is still prime minister. But don’t forget that when she seemed to have an unassailable poll lead, May found the courage to tackle the social care crisis.

She understood that the system cannot cope now and will collapse as more of us live on into our 80s. She understood as well that the vast and unearned housing wealth of pensioners was undertaxed.

Mark the sequel. Her plans for a dementia tax had two political consequences. First, connoisseurs of socialist hypocrisy were greeted with the gorgeous spectacle of Jeremy Corbyn, supposedly the most leftwing Labour leader ever, defending the right of billionaires to pass their mansions to their children. Second, May threw away a lead of 24% and almost lost the election.

Every politician has learned the lesson well: do not mess with baby boomers if you want to survive. They cannot be made to pay, so their children must suffer instead.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said there is now a direct trade-off. The higher the triple-locked benefits are for existing pensioners, the higher the government will have to raise the pension age to keep the costs under control.

The generations that come after the boomers already have less money to save for pensions – real wages are in their longest period of stagnation since the Napoleonic wars. Add to that the costs of Brexit, which the boomers in their selfish idiocy have dumped on the young, and the economic consequences of restricting immigration and I cannot see how the majority of people aged 45 and under can enjoy the retirement privileges of today’s pensioners.

As the financial resources for coping with old age vanish, so too do the social resources. You cannot generalise about sex and relationships without sounding ridiculous, but as you cannot say anything clearly without generalising, it is a risk that has to be run.

What you look for in a man or woman when you are in your 20s is not the same as what you look for when you are in your 60s. Romantic love and sexual passion are replaced by the appeal of companionship and the willingness to care. This is why wise friends and relatives do not ask whether the supposed love of your life is attractive, rich or exciting, but whether they are kind.

Vast numbers of people now live without the kindness of family and close friends. It is hard to know how to take the explosion of interest in the loneliness they suffer.

Every ideologue can use loneliness to justify their pet passion. Conservatives of the left and right can blame loneliness on capitalism, secularism, the decline of religious respect for marriage, women’s equality and the rise of individualism.

That said, humans are a social primate and researchers are discovering that loneliness whacks up the risks of mortality as effectively as smoking or obesity. (If humans were animals in a zoo, says the neurologist John Cacioppo, the keepers should attach “Do not house in isolation” to our cages.)

There are certainly more people living alone now than 20 years ago and although no one can say with certainty whether the numbers will grow, everyone suspects they will.

Already, as the Red Cross, the Jo Cox Foundation and many others emphasise, 9 million people say they are always or often lonely, and more than half of all people aged over 75 in the UK live alone.

We are thus moving into a time when the reserves of money to help people through old age and sickness are vanishing, as are the reserves of love, if you will forgive my sentimental choice of words.

No democratic government can force people to love one another or stick by one another. But a progressive government could try to succeed where May failed, break with the baby boomers, gorging themselves on universal benefits, raise the necessary tax revenues and direct them to those, whether young or old, who need them the most.