Arjay, so not blaming the boomers, As i said they had an opportunity that anyone in their gen would go for, and they helped shape it. But Instant Ramon poses a good question. We are a backwater here, with nary a progressive govt in sight, so the opportunities are much more limited than say, Europe. So many innovative cutting edge stuff that Australians do has to go OS to be developed, researched, produced and then imported back because we no longer do it here. And so many jobs being moved offshore. I don't blame the boomers, nor the gen xers and to blame a generation or two is a waste of time. More importantly, how do we move away from it without shaving the greying ponytails off the lot and/or banning any more movies with Tom Hanks as the lead?

Well Di, I say to all the younger generations,if the idiots here don't wake up to themselves,go overseas and find a more lucrative job.Only when they see the wheels falling off will the brain dead morons in Govt react.My daughter finishes her degree this year and will seek a job in Europe next year.Vote with your feet.

It is all very well to say "if you don't like it, go elsewhere", but there is a fundamental point here that is in danger of being overlooked.

Let us accept that the boomers fought valiantly through the tough times, and succeeded through the sweat of their brow to where they are now. They are now in a position to direct all economic benefits to the feathering of their own nests, whether it is in the form of astronomic salaries for them and their corporate mates, or in clinging on to tenure in academia, or using every means possible to boost their own income at the expense of the next generation as our beloved politicians are now doing.

The point of the article is that they are not only capable of doing all this, but are in fact busily putting it all into practice. It is a matter of selfishness and greed, a dog-in-the-manger attitude that is corrupting us all, and is impossible to legislate for or stamp out, short of involuntary euthanasia. Previous generations had a fundamentally different attitude towards continuity between generations, but this has been totally lost - for a multitude of reasons, not just one - and is causing a highly destructive us-or-them attitude to be considered normal rather than abnormal behaviour.

Natasha, I would love to know exactly whom you are thinking of (apart from the perennially demonised Helen Garner, who in fact spent most of her 30s writing for local papers for peanuts, or nothing, while she raised a child on her own).

I'd also like to know what your definition is of Boomers. And I'd like to know why people don't realise that Mark Davis' carefully marketed 'Gangland' belongs to the genres of opinion and polemic, not to that of history. The notion that Boomers 'had it all' is rubbish. Never mind Mark Davis, read some real history by some real historian.

I'll be 52 in a couple of days, which qualifies me as a younger-end Boomer, and your account of the struggles of young academics describes exactly, almost item for item, my own experiences as an untenured academic in the early 1980s. What you are describing is not a generation gap but a profession whose trajectory, from your description, has changed very little since then -- except that the pay and conditions are better, and the women don't have to put up with a quarter of the appalling cr*p that we did. (And you know why? Because the struggle and determination of Boomer academic feminists who kept pushing it uphill until some of it stuck.)

I am allowed to say all this because I did indeed walk away from a tenured academic job (far from clinging on to it with my teeth, which incidentally are all still mine so far) when I was 44, thereby making room for a Gen-X replacement, and guess what: several young female academic Gen-Xers immediately castigated me for bailing out of my alleged responsibilities as a role model. Since then I have seen two of my former students publish books whining about how much they blame the Boomer feminists who told them they could Have It All, and now that reality has set in they're just, like, SO disappointed!

Sorry, Natasha, I never thought I'd hear myself say this ... but wait until you're 50 and then see what you think.

I am a baby boomer, 54 years old. I agree that we have to do something. I can remember prior to 1972. There was a balance then. We paid for university education (unless you were smart and got a govt scholarship), we paid to go to the doctor, but 90% of us had medical insurance anyway, we paid less tax as a proportion of average earnings. Its pretty sinmple....we have allowed ourselves to be seduced by successive governments starting with Gough's, that "Its time" for the welfare state to take over our responsibilities.

It will be a brave government that reverses this trend. Of course, the answer is in the budget papers. Nearly 38% of Federal government expenditure is in actually running the system, not delivering programs. If we went back to the mix in 1970, we could slice $60b off government expenditure, give it back to the states and individuals, who could then spend it in a discretionary way. We would take responsibility.
The other side benefit would be that we could reintroduce a properly funded, realistic aged pension, which would solve the problem of an ageing population with no means of support.
Its all very well though to say to us....fix it! We will represent 60% of voters in 10 years time. And if presented with an election policy which says "vote for me and I will look after you in retirement"...just who do you think will get me vote?

SteveA,I knew a teacher who kept his first group certificate from 1951,he flashed it around the staffroom on the day of his retirement and posed us with the question of how much tax he paid that year.It was 11% of his gross income.Today we have taxes coming out of all our bodily orifices and still in NSW it is not enough.While John Howard gives us $6.00pw in tax cuts,he will take ten times this amount in bracket creep as wages and salaries increase.The opposition however are an even worse alternative.

The problem of our "Nanny State" will take years to fix since millions receive benefits and Govts realise their voting power.

Only when situations become dire,will Govts make the really hard decisions that will benefit us all.