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Generation Less: How Australia is Cheating the Young

(Redback Quarterly #9)

Jennifer Rayner

3.69 · Rating details · 93 ratings · 14 reviews

A country that makes no room for the young is a country that will forfeit a fair future. This must not become Australia.

Today's young Australians are the first generation since the Great Depression to be worse off than their parents. And so, just as we have seen the gap between rich and poor widen over recent decades, we're beginning to see young and old pull apart in ways ...more

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Paperback, 192 pages

Published April 2016 by Redback Quarterly

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· 93 ratings · 14 reviews

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Jan 20, 2017 Ietrio rated it did not like it

Shelves: junk

A white spoiled child has a good life. An fairy tale life compared with most of the world around. But the rich white spoiled child has discovered that the whole generation might not be able to be even richer than the previous generation of rich white spoiled children. This is not a book about reason, it is practically a tantrum throwing numbers and quotes. And the solution? Vote Jennifer Rayner! Now with your wallet. But given the rise in populism, who knows, a political career is quite natural ...more

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Jan 01, 2018 Sonia Nair rated it liked it

I can't help but compare Generation Less to Adult Fantasy because they both tread similar ground in charting how screwed we as millennials are due to a combination of increasingly unaffordable housing prices, escalating job insecurity and casualisation of labour, and a political process that actively excludes us. Generation Less is more heavily researched than Adult Fantasy and reads less like memoir, but while Briohny Doyle was able to capture the shifting goalposts of adulthood with anecdotal I can't help but compare Generation Less to Adult Fantasy because they both tread similar ground in charting how screwed we as millennials are due to a combination of increasingly unaffordable housing prices, escalating job insecurity and casualisation of labour, and a political process that actively excludes us. Generation Less is more heavily researched than Adult Fantasy and reads less like memoir, but while Briohny Doyle was able to capture the shifting goalposts of adulthood with anecdotal narratives that I greatly resonated with (being a childless, unmarried 20-something myself), a conservative streak runs through Rayner's book that's hard to move past, evidenced by lines such as this on having children: "But there's no surer way to feel part of something beyond yourself than taking care of a small being who turns to you as if to sunlight...To put off having kids is to hold at a distance the deep satisfactions and webbed bonds of connection they bring with them." Such lazy justifications play into the reductionist view that women can't attain fulfillment without having children of their own, and blames the malaise engulfing our generation on the fact that we're waiting until later in life (or not at all) to have babies. There is no space within this critique for a feminist interrogation on why divorce rates are rising and why women are increasingly choosing to be childless, neither of which I necessarily see as a bad thing. Rayner's arguments are also rife with contradictions. After dedicating several pages to the precarious material conditions that greet many young Australians, Rayner goes on to say this about the lack of entrepreneurial culture in Australia: "It's more than a little embarrassing that so many Australians would rather push paper at a big bank than be their own bosses because they're scared of the risk involved." After reading Rayner's dissection into how we will be the first generation to be worse off than the generation before us, it's no wonder we're less willing to sacrifice whatever little life savings we have on setting up our own businesses. The book is a fast enough read and arms you with useful statistics that you can wield whenever the next smashed avocado debacle takes place, but it didn't quite hit the mark for me. ...more

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Jan 06, 2018 Ellen rated it liked it

Anyone who talks to young Australians knows that they're incandescent with barely contained rage about woes like climate change and housing unaffordability – issues largely exacerbated by previous generations.

Here, Rayner compiles the data that supports the case for that sense of injustice. And yes, I've no doubt there are people queuing up to pooh-pooh the facts.

But surely a normal human being in possession of a shred of empathy can remember how difficult it was to be a broke student or a nervo ...more

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Feb 20, 2018 Timothy rated it really liked it

Some elements could be more fleshed out, and while I appreciated the accessibility, I think better judgment could be used for the choice of colloquial tone in some parts. Nonetheless, this is an important book, and a great overview and starting point for taking seriously the concerns of young Australians.

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Apr 08, 2016 Peter Geyer rated it really liked it

Shelves: australian, culture, economics, owned, politics, society

Jennifer Rayner is an Australian woman under 30 who is angry about how the older generations (of which I am a part) have cheated and are cheating her age group and those younger and presents a cavalcade of evidence to back up her contention from various statistical and research sources, to personal experience, as well as the situations of friends and colleagues. Her intellectual background is economics, in which she has a PhD and she writes incisively and intelligently with sharp wit and cynicis Jennifer Rayner is an Australian woman under 30 who is angry about how the older generations (of which I am a part) have cheated and are cheating her age group and those younger and presents a cavalcade of evidence to back up her contention from various statistical and research sources, to personal experience, as well as the situations of friends and colleagues. Her intellectual background is economics, in which she has a PhD and she writes incisively and intelligently with sharp wit and cynicism thrown in.

There are lots of comparisons between the situation of her parents' generation and her cohort, regarding employment issues like wages, job security and career to the ability to save, price and availability of housing, mortgages and renting, to differing political perspectives, political power and interest in democracy. She unpacks stereotypes applied to her generation, and discusses their well-being, an important topic that seems not to get the prominence it deserves. Some suggestions are presented towards the end of the book regarding how to address these issues.

Rayner's depiction of older people doesn't fit me as an individual, but then I'm a kind of outlier, as others would be. But her material presents the current situation extremely accurately. There are a number of overlapping issues for the whole of society that need serious attention; they impact on the old as well as the young, and so both cohorts' issues need to be addressed. However, the issue of younger generations is crucial for the future of the country and deserves much more than variants of discipline and punish, whether it be in the job market, housing, education or anywhere else. There doesn't seem to be a social strategy from anyone.

The solutions put forward by Rayner are mostly economics-based, which is not a favoured field as I think the person can be left out all too easily in economic modelling, as well as some social realities missed; nonetheless the ideas are mostly with merit, even for me.

She also suggests lowering the voting age to 16, partly on the basis that they can be registered to vote more easily because they're likely to be at school and at home. It's an interesting notion. Civics classes get a mention as well, which seem to have disappeared since the 1960s when I learned about how parliament etc worked and my sister as well in a different format. Rayner also advocates raising the fines for not voting. Australia has compulsory voting, which I support, seeing it as a minimiser of corruption and a way of expressing your responsibility as a citizen.

This is another train travel book, which makes me think about locating the other texts Redback Publishing has put out. If you're not an Australian, or haven't visited, this book should still be of interest as it references other countries and is dealing with general problems in western societies.

You might like the writing style, too; I wish I could have written that well at 29. It's only a 4 because I don't give out 5 stars if I can help it.

...more

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Nov 18, 2017 Dawn rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Oh what a bitter young woman the author is. The language used towards our elderly is quite horrid. It assumes the premise that all older people are loaded with money, own multiple houses and have stacks of super with well paying stable and secure jobs. It assumes all young people have casual low paying jobs with huge university fees and no chance of ever getting their own homes. This is not what I see in my circle of people. I would only agree with her on one point being the high cost of propert ...more

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May 19, 2016 Em rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: australian, politics, current-affairs

Fascinating book. I liked the writing style, and the premise seemed fair and supported by evidence.

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Jun 13, 2018 Greta rated it it was ok

Pretty bog standard book about inter generational income inequality written with young people in mind. Not that exciting or nuanced.

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Dec 31, 2017 Emilia rated it really liked it

3.8 stars

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Nov 30, 2017 Elizabeth Tai rated it really liked it

3.5 stars. It's not just happening in Australia, sadly, but all over the world too. ...more

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Mar 23, 2017 Sarah Nosworthy added it

It's a short book, and very self deprecating. I don't think there were any revelations but it was researched to explain things.

I came away more interested in how she's (personally) financially struggling after being married with a mortgage and now being separated with a child, and how her income has changed in that period and impacted her choices or decisions in housing. ...more

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May 18, 2016 Loki rated it it was amazing

Shelves: economics, non-fiction, politics

A thoroughly enraging read, Jennifer Rayner's "Generation Less" picks apart the lazy rhetoric criticising 'kidults' to examine the very real structural and demographic changes that make it so very much harder for anyone in Australia born after about 1965 to obtain the house, the family, the job, and so on - all those markers of adulthood that they are so roundly criticised for not having. It ends with some ideas about fixing the issues it raises, but notes that even these fixes will likely be to ...more

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Mar 13, 2016 Christina rated it it was amazing

An excellent analysis of the current state of wealth, work and wellbeing of young Australians. Written in a very approachable style with facts and figures utilised to drive home the author's arguments clearly and without any wonkish waffling on. Actually very entertaining! And the author is obviously highly intelligent - she really gets policy and politics and explains them in a way that any layperson can understand. More from Jennifer Rayner please! ...more

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Jun 23, 2016 Mike Sill rated it it was amazing

Relevant, insightful and at time humorous.

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About Jennifer Rayner

Jennifer Rayner

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Jennifer Rayner was born into the aspirational suburbia of the Hawke years, and came of age in the long boom of the Howard era. Her lifetime has tracked alongside the yawning inequalities that have opened up across the Australian community in the past 30 years. She has worked as a federal political adviser, an international youth ambassador in Indonesia and a private sector consultant, and holds a ...more