This discussion seems to be splitting into the two factions that tend to crop up around generational issues - the die-hard believers and the steadfast refuseniks. It doesn't need to.

You might think that's hypocritical from someone who wrote a book whose title tells Boomers to "F Off" - but there is a reasonable middle ground. You do have to acknowledge some generational differences are possible though.

Firstly, it's worth noting that Boomers increasingly are seen as the 1945-57 group - because many people realise its unfair to lump people born in 1963 together with people old enough to be their parents.

Separate to that are the statistical facts. Like: many more Boomers own houses, on which they have made massive unearned capital gains, while other younger groups who work just as hard do not get access to such windfalls.

Not all boomers had it lucky or easy, but they did create a world of high expectations and ideals and find it uncomfortable to be told that they have to share it now that Australia and the whole world is getting more crowded and competitive.

Generations are just one small additional prism through which to analyse the world.

Ryan Heath

I was born in 1957, didn't ask to be, just was.
I lived the way I could in the times and circumstances in which I found myself, mostly, I've had a great time. I am quite astonished to be as old as i am now, and it is dawning on me that life rips past very fast.
There are many things I want to do, many dreams yet to be fulfilled because I've spent the last 20 years mostly being a parent, and, I'm sorry, i reckon that was doing my bit for coming generations and I'm not getting out of the way for anybody. If it isn't my turn now, when will it be?
Mind you, I don't ask you for any favours, I want you to follow your dreams too, but I don't for a moment see why that means I should stop following mine.
Indeed, the older I get, the less differences I see between generations. The journey through life, the realisations that only come as you move from one stage to another, happen to us all, whatever the accidental date of our birth. If young people -particularly young women - think they're impatient now, wait till 50 is breathing down their neck when they finally have time to think about what they want to do, rather than what they have to do. When they turn into themselves again rather than that wonderful but very constrained person called mum.

Anth,

By the Greatest Generation, I assume you mean the BB's parents? That generation lived in a period of turmoil: But also a period, when Australia succeeded in spite of itself. Physically, we were hardly touched by WWII, when Europe had been wiped off the map. In the 1950s, it was easy to succeed, when one faces so little competition.
We could take it easy and "live of the sheep's back".

Fortunately, the BBs pulled us out of this epoch of retardedness, with more than a little help from Britain going into the then Common Market.

Moreover, the GG's were too often Anglo-centic, too often agrarian socialists and far too unprepared for the modernity. The BBs set Oz straight, luckily. Which generation placed another country? Which generation exported iron ore to Japanese Fascists? Which generation would not let go of rural protectionism? Steotypical Australian GG's represented the "Branch Office of the Empire" at that Empire's death knell. In contrast, under the BBs, Australia now independently punches above its weight internationally and will soon pass the baton of progress to a new generation in better shape than it was received.

"Baby Boomers"; "Generation X"; "Generation Y" - are terms invented by marketeers to get one generation to purchase differently to another - capitalising on the innate desires to be different to our parents. Everything can be reduced to marketing these days.. Unfortunately, identifying with and buying into such silly concepts, encourages us to mortgage and waste the futures of our children and grandchildren. Hard and long-time won 'basic' conditions are now easily discarded.... as long as someone is making a fast buck.

Educating each other about the basics required for decent human habitation (air, water, food, shelter, companionship and collective responsibilty) and passing these skills from one generation to the next disappears as the marketeers "segment"(divide)us, isolate us and tap into our generational ego making us ever more addicted to and dependent on consumerism. One day... all will be consumed... and the poor kids of the "Z" generation wont know what hit them.
I wonder.. who they will be angry with?