Lip service. The boomers will do nothing to mop up.

Someone wrote a book about why the baby boomers should pay up before they croak. Yeah, right. As if they ever worried about anyone other than fellow Woodstockers.

Over the same time-span, another group no different from the first by all the standard indicators of ethnicity, race, religion, culture, gender and so on, underwent an actual reduction in their wealth.

While all the facts cited are entirely correct, I've cheated a bit in those two paragraphs. They apply not to Canadians but to two groups of Britons alike in every respect but for their age: the winners were those aged 55 to 64 and the losers were aged 25 to 34.

That statistic and a lot of others no less thought-provoking come from a just-published book that's stirring a storm in Britain. Its title is The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Took their Children's Future – and Why They Should Give It Back.