The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Took Their Children's Future - And How They Can Give it Back [Hardcover]

Illuminating... Chock-a-block with fascinating facts, insights and theories. Willetts remains one of the few politicians who understands that Britain's social and economic history sets it apart from most other societies and that a form of individualistic capitalism predated the industrial revolution by many centuries. We have always been a nation of cash, contracts, commerce and nuclear families. This makes his book well worth reading... his primary thesis - that baby-boomers are dumping too many of their problems on the young - is spot on. --Allister Heath, Spectator Business

One of the most thoughtful and provocative books to emerge from a politician's processor in the past 20 years... Willetts writes with lucidity, elegance and wit. He has read extraordinarily widely... Any future government is going to be wrestling for some time with the after-effects of the great pinch he describes.
--Howard Davies, Times Higher Education Supplement

`The Pinch is a powerful personal credo, a mine of information, and a solid and remorseless argument. It is the sort of work that gives intellectual spine to a whole career. It assembles facts, it makes brave judgements, and it offers a conclusion that has large, obvious and quite immediate consequences... The author's logic is always careful, his terms defined, his evidence set out and his tangent from the central argument clear... He offers an engaging, sometimes startling tour d'horizon of research and thinking in socio-political theory since David Hume and Adam Smith... His exposition of theories of human altruism is beautifully clear... This book's argument stands comparison with the speeches and treatises of Sir Keith Joseph.' --Spectator

'Though David Willetts is a member of the Tory Shadow-Cabinet, his book takes the voter right above and beyond party politics, suggesting that the big underlying issue facing all major parties at the election - and the one which will face any incoming government - is to what extent we can or should push the costs of maintaining our own lifestyle onto the next generation. It's an intelligently but simply argued case, packed with surprising information. What politics really should be about.' -- Matthew Parris, selecting The Pinch as his 'One book to get to grips with the 2010 General Election' in The Times

This provocative and thought-provoking book argues that the baby boomer generation have thrived at the expense of their children. The baby boom of 1945-65 produced the biggest, richest generation that Britain has ever known. Today, at the peak of their power and wealth, baby boomers now run our country; by virtue of their sheer demographic power, they have fashioned the world around them in a way that meets all of their housing, healthcare and financial needs. In this original and provocative book, David Willetts shows how the baby boomer generation has attained this position at the expense of their children. Social, cultural and economic provision has been made for the reigning section of society, whilst the needs of the next generation have taken a back seat. Willetts argues that if our political, economic and cultural leaders do not begin to discharge their obligations to the future, the young people of today will be taxed more, work longer hours for less money, have lower social mobility and live in a degraded environment in order to pay for their parents' quality of life. Baby boomers, worried about the kind of world they are passing on to their children, are beginning to take note. However, whilst the imbalance in the quality of life between the generations is becoming more obvious, what is less certain is whether the older generation will be willing to make the sacrifices necessary for a more equal distribution. "The Pinch" is a landmark account of intergenerational relations in Britain. It is essential reading for parents and policymakers alike.

David Willetts is Shadow Secretary of State for Universities and Skills and has been the Member of Parliament for Havant since 1992. He was previously Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and has worked at the Treasury, and the Number 10 Policy Unit. He served as Paymaster General in the last Conservative Government. He is a Governor of the Ditchley Foundation, a member of the Council of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Senior Adviser to Punter Southall, actuaries. David has written widely on economic and social policy and his book Modern Conservatism was published by Penguin in 1992. David is married to Sarah Butterfield, an artist, and they have two children.