*Covid and the climate crisis show why we need a new social contract between old and young.*

Let's resist supposing that the question is whether to blame the baby boomers in general or generation z in general, because maybe it's neither. Plutocrats often play divide and rule. Setting the old and the young against each other is just their sort of thing.

The argument that we need to retire later, and thus keep working longer, makes perfect sense, but how can that be reconciled with the fact that lots of people in their 50s are already terminally out of work?

Meanwhile, the lifestyles of Americans are terribly inefficient. Surely we can do something to move to greater efficiency in our consumption.