This is a book about generations. It is about how economic policies over the last 40 years have ‘sold the family silver’. The future has been impoverished to benefit the present. It is also specifically about Generation Z. This generation was born, according to the definitive US study of generations by Twenge (2023), from 1995 to 2012. They have begun voting and will shift the political balance. Older generations, sitting upon large capital gains in housing and stocks, will lose their dominance in determining policy. There will no longer be the strong political imperative in keeping interest rates and taxes low.

Generation Z needs to take control because their actual survival and not just their well-being is at stake. Their anticipated lifespans well exceed the period when the Earth – without drastic action – will become in large parts uninhabitable. Climate change has rapidly moved to the point where 40-degree days are likely to become common in England. There are wildfires in California and Australia, and hurricanes and unprecedented winter storms in the rest of the US. Wildfires in Canada have had severe effects on the breathability of air in New York City and other parts of the northern US. The climate emergency has reached the point of threatening extinction of many species, perhaps our own.

Fiscal and monetary policy will have to be re-thought. Governments will have to balance the books to avoid sharp rises in the interest rate. This means that there will have to be hard choices about rebuilding our education and health system, the social care system, the benefits system and infrastructure. To invest in the future or even to maintain reasonable public services, taxes will have to go up. Choices will have to be made between corporate and personal taxation, and whether or not to return to a progressive and redistributive tax system. Running deficits and printing money is no longer a sustainable option.

Monetary policy will have to make hard choices to rebalance the economy. The UK house price to income ratio of 9 to 1 is unsustainable even in the short run, as interest rates rise. The monetary authorities will have to decide whether to rebalance by having sharp house price falls to restore a normal ratio of 3 or 4 to 1, or to allow high inflation in earnings to catch up with house prices.