Oh, what a lovely recession ... for comfortable old folks

Politicians run the economy for the benefit of the old, not the young. That's because the middle-aged and old are a bigger and more demanding group of voters. The less interest young people take in politics, the more they're likely to be screwed. You can see this from the way we've reacted to the unexpected mildness of the recession. People stopped worrying about the downturn from the moment they realised their chances of losing their job weren't high. The less worried we were €“ and thus the less we tightened our belts €“ the more our confidence that we'd keep our jobs became a self-fulfilling prophesy.