Lately, a narrative has been circulating in discussions and some books that contrasts those born during the post-war population boom with the newer generations. According to this discourse, the well-being of the former is mortgaging or conditioning the future of the latter. But this idea, rather than being the result of rigorous analysis, is a simplistic fallacy that obscures the real causes of current inequalities and tensions, which are certainly worrying.

The cannon life It's a song by the Madrid-based group Alcalá NorteBut it is also the expression chosen by journalist Analía Plaza to title her book – published by Temas de Hoy – and to describe the living conditions of a very specific generation as they reach old age: the baby boomersThose who, in the case of Spain, were born between 1957 and 1977. According to the data and profiles collected by the author, these individuals have already paid off their homes, enjoyed more stable careers than their children, and are now retiring with good pensions and a wealth of cultural experience.

Only from shortsightedness can resentment against retirees and the elderly incubate. boomers in general, painting them as privileged beneficiaries of a splendid past of generous salaries and an opulent future assured thanks to owning an apartment and a juicy pension, reduced to the sentence "they have lived better than their parents."

We read it in the ARA (with our reading glasses, which we just lost and found). The dossierChallenges and policies in the age of longevity, published this Monday by CaixaBank Research, tells us that "to finance pensions it will be necessary to postpone the retirement age to 68 years." It seems that the fault lies with us, with the children of the baby boom, that not only are there too many of us to collect, but on top of that, when we reached the age of procreation, we didn't follow the example of our hardworking parents. My parents had six. I had one. Where are you going? In my childhood and adolescence, marked by the series Cone eight is enough (about the extended family of a widowed journalist, father of eight, living in Sacramento and making ends meet), we were often joked about, which we all picked up on as adults. "You're a oginet", they told you. It meant that your parents, poor, at the time without a cell phone, without Netflix, without heating, without cheap Japanese restaurants, had to spend the boredom and the cold in bed making love (hidden from their grandparents and the whole gang of children they already had). In the absence of condoms, the famous method of Dr. Ogino, which was based on abstaining the days close to ovulation and doing like rabbits the rest of the month. It was a method, of course, that failed more than an umbrella bought on the subway, and hence the children of the method that didn't work were called oginetes.