Gen F’d? is not a breath of fresh air. It’s a cyclone to blow away cynicism and despair. A celebration of collective action to stop the theft, and return the future, stolen from young Australians.
If you haven’t read this short book yet, you likely will.
It documents how insecure jobs, unaffordable homes and punitive welfare humiliate and hurt the young. How big tech’s billionaire-freaks compound the misery; offering false promises of social connection through asocial media. And how successive Australian governments lost the courage to combat corporate corrosion of civil life.
Provocative and unsettling, economist Alison Pennington’s extraordinary Gen F’d? exposes intergenerational theft on a grand scale.
The ladder of opportunity ‘has been kicked away’ for young people. The most educated generation in Australia’s modern history is the first to become ‘downwardly mobile’.
With evidence, history, and insight – and a rage born of lived experience – the book articulates what many of us were too slow to admit. The wrecking ball of neoliberalism has smashed the future of too many young Australians.
F’d jobs
Deregulation starting in the late 20th century, bringing casualisation and job insecurity, has disproportionally hit the young, undermining their ‘financial capacity to build independent, adult lives.’
Australians can consent to sex at 16 and vote at 18. Yet employment laws don’t consider you an adult till 21. A 17-year-old can still legally earn just over $12 an hour.
‘Like vampires,’ Pennington writes, Woolies, Coles and McDonalds have ‘fed on millions of young workers for decades.’ And the bill for illegal wage theft across hospitality and other industries now totals hundreds of millions of dollars.
Contrary to the received wisdom that Australia emerged unscathed from the 2008 GFC, it made things even worse for youth jobs. Rates of full-time work plunged, and proportions of graduates getting jobs fell sharply.
Then came the pandemic, with hospitality, retail, and the arts – where half of young people work – among the sectors hardest hit. ‘We’ve generated a precarious lost generation’, writes Pennington, and we’re breaking the spirits of the young.
F’d housing
Before the neoliberal project of ‘upward wealth distribution,’ Australian governments actively engaged in providing affordable homes to buy or rent. But Gen F’d? shows how weakened lending regulations and obscene tax concessions overwhelmingly favoured older Australians, leaving millions of young people today in insecure, unaffordable rentals.
Figures from the Parliamentary Budget Office requested by the Greens and released last week estimate those property tax concessions now cost Australia $39 billion a year in lost revenue.
‘The real beneficiaries of intergenerational inequality,’ argues Pennington, ‘are the powerful networks of investors, developers, banks and their lobby groups who derive mega-profits from ever-rising prices, as well as from workers’ lifetime debt bondage.’
Misdiagnosed misery
Against a backdrop of F’d jobs, housing, and the climate catastrophe, almost a third of young people report having poor or very poor mental health.
But the virus of individualism has infected our medical system too. The misery of disempowered youth is too often misread as a dysfunction in brain chemistry.
Australia has among the highest rates of anti-depressants prescribing – but pharmaceuticals will never fix rising rents or precarious jobs. And nor will smartphones.
One of the most powerful sections of Gen F’d? is its searing critique of big tech’s brutality.
‘Passive and pacified, we stand by as our private lives are increasingly turned into commodities. We translate our joy, humiliation, anxiety, anger, and dreams into valuable data points to turn big profits’.
Many young people are already aware of the danger. One survey from 2021 found half believe ‘social media had a negative impact on their mental health.’
Fair go
Pennington’s prescription is youth-led collective action to take back their future. Which, she says, can only happen ‘in real life,’ in organisations like NGOs, political parties and unions. Especially unions. And she cites inspiring examples from history and the present where action brings change.
Her book closes with a bold ‘Fair Go’ agenda. Make jobs more secure, abolish ‘junior’ wages and dramatically expand public housing.
Stop subsidising property investors, reform social security, and make benefits liveable.
Extend the public sector to areas like regenerating ecosystems and forge a treaty with Indigenous Australians. All funded through increased taxes on corporations and the wealthy.
It’s no surprise the author is also a musician. Pennington’s anthemic Gen F’d? will help us rebuild a shared future from the rubble of neoliberalism. The book is a symphony, in the key of solidarity.
♦ Dr Ray Moynihan is an honorary Assistant Professor at Bond who’s worked at ABC Four Corners and Harvard. Currently a Greens volunteer, his views are his own. Alison Pennington is at the Byron Writers Festival this weekend.
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