The intergenerational argument has vanished – buried beneath the Brexit talks and the traditional fixation with class inequality. The fear that millennials, whatever their class, are going to have a tougher time than their forebears appears to have had the life squashed out of it.

A two-year investigation by the Intergenerational Commission, a group sponsored by the Resolution Foundation thinktank, has found that what it calls the “contract between the generations” is at breaking point. It warns that society risks dumping a disproportionate amount of the costs of an ageing population on their shoulders. It’s been going on for some time and now the situation is acute.

In short, the baby-boomer generation – 54-year-olds and above – are making increasing demands on an economic and social system that, after the 2008 financial crash, can barely cope with existing commitments.

This report appeared in May and has so far failed to ignite a broader debate. Leftwing economists prefer to reflect on income and wealth equality across the generations. A Financial Times commentator who considers himself a voice of the left described the report as delusional.

Those on the right of the political spectrum were equally dismissive. In response to the main headline-grabbing policy idea in the report – that every 25-year-old should receive a £10,000 donation to their education, training, house purchase or new business – the Institute of Economic Affairs thinktank said: “There is nothing progressive about cash transfers that are based on age.”

It’s true that a five-figure payment just for being a twentysomething was always going to be seen as a poorly targeted benefit. And if it can be used to buy a house, then it is not much better than David Cameron’s scheme for first-time buyers, help-to-buy, which subsidised deposits: that just sent house prices spiralling upwards.

Yet this criticism of the commission’s policy proposals was not part of an effort to find better ones. It was designed to debunk what is seen as a myth.

But there is so much more to say about the exploitation of the young – even more than was in the hundreds of pages in the commission’s report, which pulled its punches when it came to analysing who counts as rich and how far society needs to change to adapt to an ageing population.

Their disposable income is beyond what many working families could ever achieve through higher wages or even promotions

It’s not just the top 1% who are rich. It’s not even the top 10%. About a third of the 12 million over-65s are wealthy. How can they be well off as pensioners? It’s because they have a generous occupational pension and property wealth beyond anything they might have considered when they bought their first home.

They are millionaires. More than that, they are millionaires with very little to spend their money on.

This third of pensioners has none of the transport, clothing or food costs associated with full-time work. Their disposable income is beyond what many working families could ever achieve through higher wages or even promotions.

Their wealth is like a tax on the young. They hang on to property in the hope that it will rise in value and, when they die, be bought by someone younger with an astronomical mortgage, mitigated only partly by their own inheritance.

To help their own children, they voted in droves for George Osborne’s £1m inheritance tax threshold. It was the single policy that got David Cameron over the line in 2015 with a working majority.

The Intergeneration Foundation (IF), which is not connected to the commission, has pointed out the huge costs being left to millennials to pick up from oil and gas industry decommissioning, nuclear decommissioning and policies to ameliorate climate change.

They hang on to property in the hope that it rises in value, making their wealth like a tax on the young. Photograph: Alamy

This is not a blame game. Baby boomers had no idea that the overly generous pensions, failure to deal with the overspill from dirty industries and nimbyism would build up costs for the young.

The point is to recognise the impact and, as a society, agree ways to deal with it. At the moment, voting patterns show boomers are in denial and prefer politicians who shore up their income and wealth.

The commission and IF say working pensioners should at the very least pay national insurance. We should go beyond this policy and force the retired to pay income tax under a separate regime. This would set the 40p rate at £20,000 (compared with £43,000 for workers) and the 45p rate at £40,000 (against £150,000 for workers).

A new regime for property tax is also needed that taxes more wealth at a lower rate, spreading the load and making it less avoidable, capturing the rich and middle-income earners alike.

The millionaire no longer just lives in the squire’s house. Times have changed. The retired teachers of Beverly in Yorkshire, and former BT engineers in Tunbridge Wells, are having a great time at the expense of young families.