I like the idea of working for the dole, but my understanding is that while it was a nice idea to get people working on the Great Ocean Road, most people who were unemployed didn’t manage to get that kind of employment. They queued up for their susso.

A person 18 in 1938 might well have had to leave school very early to try to help his family eke out a living. As for suicide, it is actually coming down quite sharply – or was when I last looked, but you are right that it is coming down from record highs and is still much higher than a while back. Still I’d rather take even a 40 in a 100,000 chance (mid 90s – it was down to around 25 at the end of the series I’m looking at around 2003 for males 20-24) than a 1000 in 100,000 chance of dying wouldn’t you?

Of course such a relatively high suicide rate speaks to us of a cultural malaise I guess. But really, I still think the comparison is pretty awful. Young people today get vastly more schooling, and much more help. They can start businesses and do all sorts of things much more easily than they could have in 1938. Of course they seem to be doing comparatively badly, and that’s the fact and the problem we’re confronted with – which makes it a bit silly getting too fancy about comparisons with other times. But I’m afraid your words don’t convince me.

For me I think of myself, and can imagine it being very hard to do OK and keep my head up high in the 1930s if a few things went the wrong way. It’s a bit of a ridiculous thing trying to ‘think’ ones way into another situation – in which I’d be a different person. But right now, I know lots of employers who are just screaming out for people with basic work discipline, turning up on time, doing the best they can, doing what they say they’ll do, getting on with other people.

I sent some design work to a uni student the other day who’d expressed an interest in part time design with the businesses we run. I enjoyed talking to him on the phone and it turned out he was also interested in copy writing and I said we could send him some work to do in that regard as the relationship developed. I sent him a small bit of work to do in lieu of an interview asking him to have a go at putting a word document in to the company style and we’d pay him at the advertised rate if we used his stuff.

I got no reply for about four or five days so I had to follow up and ring him again (I had told him in our phone interview that I was emailing him a task). The guy said he’d look at his email. A day later I got this email.

Hi Nicholas
Sorry for not having got back to you sooner. I’ve looked over the material that you sent me and I’ve decided that it’s not the right kind of job for me.
Regards

Now I have no real problem with this guy suiting himself. Why shouldn’t he? And good on him. (Though he could have been more thoughtful

The numbers are real – they wouldnt make much sense as nominal numbers – Earnings would have risen by a lot more than 40 odd percent in nominal terms.

Further they might look to you like everyone was paid the same back at the origin, but what the graph measures is the extent to which what was already a fairly wide gap has got larger.

So even if you read the graph naively to say that there was no gap in the mid 70s, you’re still getting the right message. Things have been stagnating for those of lower age and the older ones have been doing nicely.

But yes, in your last para you’re right. If you wait, you get the benefits of this bifurcation. By definition if people live to a similar age, there’s some levelling out of ultimate results. But the youngies have to wait longer (at the same time as funding much more expensive houses – with larger mortgages even taking into account lower interest rates.)

Then there are other things I failed to mention in my post, all of which do in the younger members of the workforce. I support most of them but they’re intergenerationally tough. Increased self provision for large dissaving episodes like expenditures such as retirement and for education.

Are these real or nominal FTE?

You also have to be careful in interpreting these charts. By converting the chart to an index it makes it look as if all age groups were getting paid the same at the start of the period and then a big gap opened up. Younger workers have always been paid substantially less than older workers.

It is also interesting that the gap appears to have opened up by just as much during the Labor Accord as during the later period when labour markets became more deregulated. And during the Accord, according to this chart, FTE for younger workers fell (hence my query abour whether the measure is real and nominal).

The charts also tells me that a 24 year old that was doing relatively badly in 1990 is a relatively prosperous 38 year old in 2004.

I still think that you’re overestimating the privations suffered by the parents-of-boomers generation (born c.1920) and underestimating those of GenX (*not* “Y”

In my view the idea of comparing the suffering of the Gen Y’ers to that of those who experienced anything substantial of the years 1914 to 1945 (I know you were talking of a sub-set of this) is obscene.

Those people really suffered.

I apologise re the above, if it’s my swear-word (sorta) that’s got your goat.

Otherwise, I stand by what I said, with the qualification (in case it’s needed) that what I’m talking about is the relative lifetime experiences of middle-classers born in Australia c. 1920 vs those born c. 1965.

Also, I am not talking about “post [1961-born] generations”, at large. On present indications, the post-1978-born appear to have it as good as boomers have had since childhood (and continue to have).

More generally, I’d prefer not to engage in stats-war to make my point about my generation’s disadvantage. Here then, are two recent, more-anecdotal pieces (not written by me!) about Living on the Xer Edge:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Opinion/Generation-X-all-grown-up-and-nowhere-to-go/2005/04/26/1114462036687.html

http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/so-where-are-the-debtfree/2006/05/12/1146940731658.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

Of course, the only place they represent a big voting bloc is in the inner cities in safe seats, one way or the other. Though Bennelong might be very interesting next time around the way things are going… (though that may have been exaggerated by Andrew Wilkie’s high-profile campaign in Bennelong).

Although they could just make all super contributions tax free if you earn less than, say, 70,000 a year.

Re Ken’s point, that people in my age cohort (I turn 42 next month) may be (surprise!) honorary boomers in the intergenerational equity stakes. The “male”

I’m forty, and got $87 dollars in super. Superannuation paying jobs avoid me like the plague.

An added factor would be that the lower the hours worked the more likely that you get no super at all for any work (i forget what the hours per month are to avoid this for casuals and parttimers).

People who do not have HECS will find Micallef funny, people who have HECS will find Hughsie funny.

(disclosure: I just sneak into the 35-44 age group)