Here follows a sentence that no one at the outset of a journalistic career expects to ever write. For a glimpse of the west’s future, look to Kathmandu. Young people there are marching against the privileges enjoyed by the children of the Nepali elite. Foreign media have framed this and similar movements in the region as a generational uprising, which is half right. The telling schism is within a generation. It almost always is.  

I have never been able to work up much anger against “boomers”. Some of this is residual Asian-immigrant solicitousness towards elders. The rest is common sense. Life is much better now than it ever was in their heyday, and anyone who disagrees just isn’t serious. Crime is lower than it was in, say, 1980, the range of entertainment wider, the sexual freedom greater, the medical science more advanced, the great cities no longer depopulating, the Iron Curtain no longer drawn. Yes, a house in E8 will cost you now, but if you think that outweighs the invention of the hepatitis B vaccine, you might investigate the option of growing up a bit. 

More to the point, why should I hate the old when I have my own peers to hate? The west is about to live through a horribly divisive event. The millennials are starting to lose their parents. As this process goes on, some will inherit fortunes, thanks to the asset boom of recent decades and the smallness of modern families. (A house is more often split two ways now than four.) Most aren’t so well-placed. It is billed as the greatest transfer of wealth in history, but it is an uneven transfer. While dumb luck has always been central to life, I don’t sense that people are quite prepared for how much is going to hinge on whose parents bought in which neighbourhood, when.