The free education stopped as the last boomer quit university. The mortgage relief stopped as the last boomer paid off their mortgage. The pension was roughly equal to unemployment benefits until the first boomers retired. It's not coincidence.
Despite all the rhetoric to the contrary "boomers" are not a hive mind of universally conservative tech illiterate bitter resentful retirees who want to destroy the planet. In the same way Milennials are not some collective unified anti-capitalist anti-authoritation avocado toast pot huffing borg collective, people act in self interest and often irrationally so. Few are operating on substantial let alone complete information. Before you look at systemic societal change and pin it on a subconscious predisposition of millions you might want to look at those informed and empowered to cause such change without the cooperation of a disparate group representing almost a hundred million persons. Those with power and authority have long learned optimized techniques to divert culture and society towards their own ends and have been machinating such policy for centuries.
If you are paying more for education, housing, and getting paid less there is probably someone swimming in a Scrooge McDuck money pit on the weekends that with intent wanted that outcome to happen and aligned vast capital resources in participation with the capital resources of thousands of other plutocrats to see it done. The Fox News obsessed obese retiree blaming immigrants for all ills while being jealous of youth and a life unfulfilled is not organized or educated enough to affect national economic and political forces to inflict their will. But the millionaire boss at their last employer with close ties to all levels of government and the executives of all other corporations in their market certainly is.
We need class consciousness in opposition to power seeking to exploit and abuse. I don't expect those of older generations to embrace it - they have vested interests in defending the status quo and are thus erected as the vanguard of the moneyed interests that both make them miserable and make them feel safe and secure in their station. They are not an ally, but they are not the enemy - they are a symptom and victim of systematized propaganda meant to turn them against their own self interest.
It does suck for those of us who aren't in that demographic, though.
Pell grants get pretty close depending on the school and how poor your family is
> mortgage tax relief on their mortgage payments
Still exists.
> a pension based on their final salary
Social security still exists (for now)
> a state pension that is growing about twice as fast as unemployment benefits
If you decide to work for the State this is still the case - especially in safety jobs.
In the UK, mortgage tax relief stopped around the mid-90's (can't remember the exact year off-hand, but I think it was '97). The average boomer was about 45 in this year, and had finished paying off the bulk of their mortgage because of the housing boom around that time.
In the UK, Final Salary pensions stopped being a thing for everyone except civil servants in the 80's, when it started dawning on everyone what a huge liability a guaranteed pension is (see TFA for details). Even the civil service has mostly stopped doing them, I believe (and of course they've outsourced vast numbers of previously civil service jobs to private contractors who don't even provide pensions).
We dont have a generation conflict yet, but if the government keeps ignoring the issue in the hope of it becoming the next generations problem there will be one. Looking at the debate on climate change, where the question what the current generation 50+ is leaving us behind, I hope we will be talking about pensions as well.