Essay

THE LUCK OF THE DRAW: GENERATIONAL LOSS AND THE YOUNG’S VANISHING FUTURE

By Tom Foster - December 2025

I was born in 1966, placing me at the older end of Generation X. That makes me one of the lucky ones. When I enrolled at university in the mid-1980s, tuition was free. Like Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, a young representative of the Baby Boomer generation, I received a tertiary education with no tuition fees, only textbooks and living costs to worry about. My brother, just two years younger, wasn’t so lucky. By the time he graduated, HECS had been introduced, saddling him with debt simply because of his birth year. That difference in timing, mere luck, meant starting our working lives under very different financial circumstances. In contrast, today’s young people face a perfect storm of insecure, casualised work, rising rents, and decades-long HECS repayments [1]. A free university education might now sound radical, but it existed well within living memory. Albanese’s federal government has rightly expanded access to fee-free TAFE places, which have proven wildly popular [2], and they have also applied a one-off 20% debt reduction measure for students and graduates with student loan debts, benefiting over three million people. But why not extend that same principle of free access to university, just as he once received? Or has the ladder been permanently pulled up? The Housing Unaffordability Young People Inherited Housing, too, was once within reach. When I entered the workforce in the late ’80s, the median house price in Sydney was around $170,850 [3], while average full-time earnings were about $500 per week [4]. Put simply: a professional on a single income could realistically buy and pay off a home and still enjoy a dignified and prosperous life. Fast forward to today: in Sydney, the median house price has climbed to over $1.21 million [5], while average weekly full-time earnings now sit around $1,976 [6]. The house-price-to-income ratio has doubled in my working life, from around 6 to nearly 12 today. Home ownership is now out of reach for most young people, especially in cities. As prices rise in urban centres, younger buyers are pushed into regional markets, exporting city unaffordability to those areas [7]. Yet many in my generation now own multiple properties. Their wealth, in no small part, stems from affordability conditions they did not create, but benefited from purely through the fluke of birth year. AI, Job Insecurity, and Generational Inequity Meanwhile, the rise of AI is already displacing white-collar entry-level jobs, but not evenly. Emerging research suggests senior roles remain relatively protected while job losses are concentrated among younger workers, whose tasks are easier for AI to replace. The same senior decision-makers who introduce AI for “efficiency”, often a euphemism for reducing wage bills to boost profits and shareholder value, are rarely replacing themselves. It is, once again, younger generations who bear the brunt of technological disruption [8]. Thus, for many young people, a future is taking shape in which a freshly earned degree - often burdened by a large HECS debt - becomes obsolete early, ushering in years of involuntary unemployment. And with it comes a punitive social mindset: unemployment is seen as a personal failure rather than what it really is, a structural feature of a system designed not to provide enough jobs for everyone who wants one. Yet other societal and economic models exist, ones that design out unemployment entirely, and with it the inequality, social stigma and fear it creates. Runaway Crises, Shrinking Time When I was growing up, the big fear was nuclear war. That threat hasn’t gone away; if anything, it has intensified. The Doomsday Clock is now set at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to global catastrophe [9]. But now we’ve layered on more crises: climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, resource overshoot, and destabilisation of Earth systems. In September, up from six, scientists confirmed we had overshot seven of the nine planetary boundaries that underpin a safe operating space for humanity [10]. And in its first major act after being re-elected, in May Australia’s federal government approved new liquefied natural gas projects extending through to 2070 [11]. In the same week, the World Meteorological Organization warned of a 1% probability of temporarily exceeding 2 °C of warming within five years [12]. If we were genuinely on track to meet the Paris Agreement’s climate targets, such odds would be unthinkable. But we’re not. The Ecological Limits We Blew Past When I was born, humanity was still consuming natural resources within Earth’s regenerative capacity; we were in ecological surplus. But by the early 1970s, for the first time in human history, we had entered ecological deficit, consuming at a rate equivalent to one Earth per year. Over 50 years later, this July the Global Footprint Network estimates human consumption increased from 1.7 to 1.8 Earths per annum, and if everyone lived like Australians, we’d need four to five Earths [13]. There is no sign this trend is slowing. Yet governments and mainstream economists still treat year-on-year GDP growth, including “green growth”, as the unquestioned path to prosperity, as though continuously increasing material throughput can expand indefinitely on a finite planet. And in what seems to have become the last refuge of green-growth believers, ‘techno-optimism’ - the idea that new technologies will somehow transcend physical limits - has become the number on the roulette wheel where all bets are being placed. It serves to justify business-as-usual practices geared toward maximising profit and consumption, all while sustaining a wilful disregard for science’s warnings about non-negotiable ecological limits. Meanwhile, in July the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion confirming nations have an obligation to prevent climate harm, and outlining potential legal consequences for those that fail to act. The case was brought by young Pacific Island advocates from Vanuatu, yet the opinion is not binding on Australia, despite our responsibility for roughly 4.5 per cent of global emissions once exports are included [14]. The Generational Injustice at the Heart of It All The injustice is staggering. Young people didn’t cause the climate crisis. They didn’t design an economic and political system that locks them out of housing, secure work, or democratic decisions that entrench older generations’ lifestyles and accumulated wealth, all at their expense. As the eminent Australian economist Professor Bill Mitchell recently observed, this is “the first generation in modern history to be worse off than its parents.”That’s a stark, short-sighted legacy today’s older generations are leaving behind. The stable, life-supporting systems younger generations should inherit are being liquidated in real time. And all wealth - financial, material, cultural - ultimately relies on those ecological foundations. What’s the point of saving and building your superannuation if the biophysical foundations of civilisation - the very systems that enable and sustain your wealth and wellbeing - are being steadily eroded to the point of ecological and societal collapse? And What Are the Oldies Doing? Some of my peers are now entering early retirement. Yet their plans include high-emissions international travel and consumption-heavy lifestyles, behaviour utterly at odds with their professed climate concerns, and seemingly hellbent on exhausting the remaining global carbon budget, which at current emissions rates will be gone in under three years [15]. One of my climate-conscious friends recently starting retirement said, “Well, it’s too late to change anything now, so I’m just going to enjoy myself.” That, right there young people, is how your future gets sacrificed on the altar of self-indulgent nihilism. Then, given our ageing society, when they’re too old to travel, they’ll expect you to care for them in aged care. So, you’ll end up juggling three casual gig-economy jobs just to afford renting one of their investment properties for a roof over your head, until it’s your time to wipe their bottoms in an aged care facility. It’s a grim farce built entirely on the privilege of birth year. And it’s not as though the warnings weren’t there. The famous 1972 study The Limits to Growth cautioned that unchecked economic growth would trigger ecological and societal collapse by the 2030s or ’40s [16]. A 2021 scientific review found that real-world data still tracks closely with the original collapse scenario [17]. The oldies ignored that warning then, when we had 50 years to act. Now, potentially teetering on the brink - only a few years out from the 2030s - most still do. So, Where Does That Leave Younger Generations? I recommend you do not take your cues from older generations. Their worldview was shaped by an economic and geopolitical order now rapidly unravelling, one that insisted, and still insists, that there is ‘no alternative’ to the system that served them so well. Suggest anything different from the economic status quo and you’ll often hear some version of: “That’s anti-growth,” “That’s government overreach!” or “That sounds like Communism!” But fairer, saner, genuinely workable economic alternatives do exist, fit for all 8 billion of us who share this planet. And they’re nothing like those tired caricatures. You just won’t hear about them from those who believe they have the most to lose from a more equitable world. As one of the so-called lucky ones, I feel a responsibility to be honest: older generations are not going to make the necessary transformations. Oldies like me are willing and able to help, but we are the minority. The majority will not lead this shift. There is simply too much vested interest in coasting through comfortable retirements while leaving the fallout to you. Too many are too comfortable. After all, most of their lives are behind them. Yours are still ahead. I won’t pretend to offer a list of silver-bullet solutions. But I urge you to explore. Seek out thinking grounded in ecological realism, intergenerational justice, and global equity. Investigate the growing ‘post-growth’ movement; post-growth being the umbrella term for concepts including ecological economics, steady-state economics, Doughnut Economics, Degrowth and Wellbeing Economics. Some of the policy ideas in this space once struck me as radical or politically unpalatable; now I see them as essential, more ethical, more intelligent, and far better suited to our 21st-century realities than the frameworks that created this mess. And to break through those ‘intractable’ political barriers, I strongly recommend investigating new understandings of money - its nature, history, and societal purpose - and how this public tool can be brought back under democratic control for our collective benefit. Expect Pushback - It Means You’re On-Target You’ll face pushback, especially from older generations, from the reputable, the powerful, and those offering sage advice to “give the markets time to adjust” and urging patience, even as politicians, mostly from those same older generations, tighten restrictions on climate protest [18]. But as Martin Luther King Jr. said, “This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilising drug of gradualism.” [19] This moment is not about politeness; it is about safety and transformation, yours, your children’s, and humanity’s. Pushback, paradoxically, is a good sign. It means you’re challenging the comfort of those who benefit from the status quo. The more people who explore and embrace these new ideas, the easier, and safer, it becomes for those already in positions of influence to openly support and advocate for them. Broader support across society helps to de-stigmatise views that are currently considered “career-limiting” and opens the door to real change. A Final Word: The Future Is Still Yours There is good news: the demographic tide is shifting. With each year, more young people become voters. With each year, more oldies exit the stage. Soon, in as little as a couple of election cycles, your generations will be the majority, and with that comes the power to reshape this country’s laws, policies, and values toward a just transition to a more equitable, dignified, and prosperous world that lives within Earth’s ecological boundaries. But don’t wait. Start now. Begin imagining a world worth inheriting, and the policies required to build it. Become active in whatever field calls to you, but ensure your activism includes engagement with federal politics, where the heaviest policy levers of a just transition lie, both domestically and globally. After all, democracy is a participation sport, it only works when we show up. Learn. Speak. Share. Make the oldies uncomfortable. That’s how the change you need will happen. Urgency is now the name of the game.Turn your year of birth into a lucky one, by shaping a future where luck no longer determines who wins and who loses.

This essay was originally published in the July 2025 edition of the Finding Nature substack. It has been updated for publication here.

Tom Foster is the founder of EcoProsper Consulting. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical) (Honours) from UNSW, a Graduate Diploma in Management (MGSM), and is currently completing a Master of Economics of Sustainability. He provides consulting and workshops - including Climate Fresk and Doughnut Design for Business - to commercial and mission-led organisations seeking to navigate the transition to operating within social foundations and non-negotiable ecological limits, and in doing so help build a safer, saner, and fairer world.

References:
1. The Australia Institute (2024). The crushing cost of a university education: Hungry, sleep-deprived students loaded with debt. 2. The Australian Government (2025). Free TAFE numbers continue to build as new milestones reached.3. Soho Real Estate (2025). Sydney median house price in 1980 and 1989.4. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) (1987). Average Weekly Earnings, Australia.5. YourMortgage.com.au (2025). Median house prices in Sydney.6. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) (2025). Average Weekly Earnings, Australia.7. ABC News (2024). Regional house prices boom as city buyers move outwards.8. Maasoum & Lichtinger (2025). Generative AI as Seniority-Biased Technological Change: Evidence from U.S. Résumé and Job Posting Data.9. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (2024). Doomsday Clock remains at a minute and a half to midnight in 2024-closest ever to apocalypse.10. Stockholm Resilience Centre (2025). Seven of nine planetary boundaries now breached.11. ABC News (May 2025). Australia just approved Woodside's gas project until 2070. How could it happen?12. The Guardian (May 2025). WMO warns of high chance of temporary 2 °C warming in next five years.13. Global Footprint Network (June 2025). Earth Overshoot Day 2025 falls on July 24.14. ABC News (July 2025). ICJ advisory opinion on climate change obligations. 15. The Conversation (July 2025). Only 3 years left – new study warns the world is running out of time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. 16. Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J., & Behrens III, W. W. (1972). The Limits to Growth. New York: Universe Books.17. Herrington, G. (2021). Update to Limits to Growth: Comparing the World3 model with empirical data. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 25(3), 614–626.18. Human Rights Law Centre (2023). Protest in Peril: Our shrinking right to protest in Australia. 19. Martin Luther King Jr. (1963). I Have a Dream speech, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 28 August 1963.