Merkel: The Boomer Bequest

Every generation inherits a world shaped by its predecessors. Some bequests are of progress: universal education, democratic governance, or technological breakthroughs. Others are less beneficial: debts, environmental scars, social imbalances. 

For those born after the Second World War—the ‘Baby Boomers’—the inheritance has been peculiarly lopsided. They grew up in unprecedented prosperity, stability, and expansion. Yet the legacies they leave behind are fragile welfare states, brittle demographics, and economic systems ill-prepared for the challenges of the 21st century. The post-war cohort has, in many respects, lived well at the expense of their descendants.

The charge against the Boomers is not that they were uniquely greedy or venal—human beings across history have sought comfort and stability—but that, at the decisive moments when structural reform was required, they collectively declined to act. Instead, they pursued short-term hedonism, postponed hard decisions, and allowed institutional rot to deepen. Their mantra was simple: so long as consumption, property values, and pensions were secure, tomorrow could wait. Unfortunately, tomorrow is today.

The Reform Deficit

Consider pensions, the cornerstone of intergenerational solidarity. From the 1970s onwards, demographers warned of ageing populations in Europe, Japan, and North America. Fertility rates were falling, life expectancy was rising, and pay-as-you-go systems would soon be strained. The responsible course of action would have been to raise retirement ages, shift incentives towards funded schemes, or introduce flexible benefit structures. Instead, reforms were timid or delayed until fiscal crises forced their implementation. By then, political resistance was entrenched: Boomers, themselves the largest voting bloc, opposed cuts that might imperil their own entitlements. The result is today’s unsustainable arithmetic: a shrinking workforce asked to finance the retirement of a disproportionately large cohort.

Migration offered another path to demographic balance. Yet here, too, choices were guided less by long-term strategy than by short-term expediency. Western governments opened the doors to mass immigration not as part of an integrated plan to strengthen economies or societies, but to fill low-wage gaps and sustain consumption. Integration and cohesion were afterthoughts. In Europe especially, the influx of poorly integrated migrants has fuelled social fragmentation, cultural tensions, and political polarisation. Again, the Boomer ethos prevailed: enjoy the economic dividend today, defer the social costs indefinitely.

Squandering the Energy Windfall

Energy policy offers an even clearer indictment. The oil shocks of the 1970s should have spurred diversification and investment in secure alternatives. Instead, Western economies leaped from one improvisation to another. Nuclear power, once heralded as a reliable foundation, was abandoned in favour of populist green gestures. Germany’s Energiewende epitomises the folly: a premature retreat from nuclear, paired with lavish subsidies for renewables, left the country reliant on imported Russian gas. When Vladimir Putin weaponised that dependency, the consequences were catastrophic.

This is no accident. The Boomer mindset—averse to risk, wary of sacrifice, fond of symbols—favoured the illusion of progress over the reality of resilience. Policy was not guided by technological ambition or strategic foresight, but by the desire to placate electorates while preserving comfortable lifestyles.

The Merkel Archetype

Few figures better embody this ethos than Angela Merkel, who governed Germany for sixteen years. Merkel’s chancellorship coincided with a period of relative prosperity: export surpluses, cheap energy, and the absence of existential crises. Yet rather than using that window to modernise infrastructure, reform pensions, or diversify the energy supply, she presided over a politics of calculated inertia. Her method was not leadership but management: crises were soothed, not solved; reforms postponed, not pursued.

To her admirers, Merkel epitomised pragmatism and steadiness. To her critics, she was the ideal Boomer politician: content to coast on inherited prosperity, allergic to vision, indifferent to the long-term. Germany, once Europe’s economic motor, now struggles with decrepit infrastructure, high energy costs, and demographic decline. Merkel may not bear sole responsibility, but she symbolises a generation that mistook drift for stability.

Consumption Without Renewal

Underlying all these failures is a cultural pattern: the elevation of consumption over renewal. The Boomers inherited solid public finances, abundant housing opportunities, and rising wages. They embraced mass home ownership, cheap travel, and expanding welfare. But they invested little in the future. Public debt ballooned, infrastructure aged, and education systems stagnated. What economists call ‘capital deepening’—investment in skills, technology, and public goods—was sacrificed to the imperative of immediate gratification.

The contrast with the post-war generation is striking. Those born in the 1920s and 1930s endured privation but laid foundations: new institutions, expanding universities, ambitious infrastructure. By contrast, their children reaped the fruits without planting new seeds. The tragedy is not that the Boomers enjoyed life, but that they consumed the surplus without replenishing the reservoir. Now the bill is due.

Statement

Younger generations face stagnant wages, unaffordable housing, and precarious pensions. They inherit welfare states designed for a different demography, economies vulnerable to energy shocks, and polities fractured by cultural tension. Politicians speak of ‘sustainability’ and ‘resilience’, but the reality is one of patchwork fixes. The scope for decisive reform narrows as the fiscal and social costs mount. It is tempting to assign all blame to politicians, but the truth is broader. The Boomer electorate rewarded complacency and punished foresight. Leaders who promised comfort were re-elected; those who hinted at sacrifice were ousted. Merkel endured precisely because she embodied this quietism.