I'm with Hasbeen on this: anyone under, say, 25 who thinks they're worse off as a generation than the Baby Boomers needs to get a sense of perspective. Yes, there are fewer long-term dead-end full-time factory jobs like the one my father held from 1967 to 1976 -- starting with shift work and eventually moving on to a permanent daytime shift (starting at 7:20 AM) as he got into his sixties: but there are many more part-time and/or casual jobs which often pay better -- like the ones my son is holding now -- it's much easier and more pleasant to work from home, and teleworking for interstate or overseas concerns is a feasible and growing option. Education is much more open and readily available and welfare is at least as generous as it was.

What we have lost is manual work, and with it the opportunity for totally unskilled men -- very seldom women -- to earn a quid. Most of that can be addressed by education, but eventually we will have to acknowledge that there are some people who just cannot produce more value than they cost to employ. Whether we deal with that by lowering the minimum wage, or paying them pensions, or inviting them to move to some country where manual work is still an option, remains to be seen.

...The best motivation for the young to succeed, is a chance for a job, and an affordable home for a family..These basics are a receding dream in Australia for young and old. General education no longer positions the young to achieve those basics.

Where do I begin?

Let's start with the Lima Declaration of '71 (or '72) which,vin very flowering terms, stated that all Western countries should try to move 20% of their manufacturing into underdeveloped countries by the year 2000. It's now 2014, and 80% of our manufacturing is now off-shore. The outcome has been, yes, it has helped underdeveloped countries, but more importantly, has reduced manufacturing costs for big business dramatically, with cheaper labour, power, infrastructure, land, etc, vastly increasing their profits even after transport.

Secondly, it has forced the price of labour down in Western countries by maintaining unemployment, particularly in unskilled and level skill areas.

Then there's the deregulation of banking and business that has allowed everything from senior execs incomes jumping from 6 times the lowest wage earner in the company, to the current 200-400 times the lowest wage earners. Then things like the Subprime Loan fiasco spawned by Wall St, on-selling unsecured loans as AAA investments, leading to the GFC.

We have sold off all our infrastructure, causing government to lose income, increasing the tax burden of the worker, for no other reason than big business is more efficient. Sure, but it's still a loss of government revenues!

We are living longer, with the average life expectancy jumping 20 years in the last 60 years, causing the cost of pension funding to increase nearly exponentially. I can go on, but 350 words isn't enough to list everything. But in short, everything is geared towards corporate monopolies running the show, while we're just the marketplace, the labour, or cannon fodder.

My above post listed some of the areas that our tax dollars have vanished to. So what young voters need to appreciate is that they must be both numerous in numbers and loud in voice to create change...that's what the baby-boomers did. Moratorium marches to pull out of Vietnam, constant pressure for free university, free health, unionism activity, and other vocal protests that were made. The author of the article seems to think it was laid out on a platter for us, and couldn't be more wrong. The younger generation's apathy is their fault, not the fault of baby-boomers who fought for change.

That being said, what change needs to occur? For starters, the re-introduction of regulated business and banking markets, rather than the casino philosophy that has become prevalent. We had no financial crashes when those things were regulated, but since deregulation, we've had the '87 Stock Market Crash, the '91 Stock Crash, the Dot Com Bubble, the Subprime Loan fiasco and the GFC. Go figure!

Secondly, bring back some of the manufacturing that's gone off-shore, while reintroducing tariffs, to make onshore manufacturing more attractive.

Set CEO's incomes as not being allowed to exceed 8 times the lowest income earner of the company...the janitor, and if they don't have a janitor and only high income earners, be forced to employ one.

Higher taxation on the wealthy and high income earners.

Nationalization of infrastructure, rather than selling it off.

Those are steps that would reverse the situation, but anything short of regulation is nothing more than pissing in the wind.