Baby boomer claims it has ‘become a crime to be born’ in their generation – and busts ‘toxic’ myths

A prominent author and baby boomer has hit out at young Australians who blame his generation for their economic woes.

Clive Hamilton, 70, and his daughter Myra, told readers it had “become a crime to be born within 20 years of the Second World War”, saying “generational warmongers” were targeting baby boomers.

The Hamiltons used this opinion piece to debunk many of the “toxic” myths surrounding baby boomers, revealing how many of them actually received a free college education and demonstrating that a large majority are not squandering their legacy. their children as is often claimed.

They also refuted claims that baby boomers are responsible for the state of the housing market, fueling inflation and rising rents.

Mr Hamilton is a professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University and a Member of the Order of Australia, while his daughter is an associate professor at the University of Sydney, where she studies gender, aging and care .

The Hamiltons told their readers that less than 10 percent of his generation benefited from the “legendary free college education”, most of them from upper- and middle-class families at a time when school-leaving standards 12th grade schooling was still low.

Gough Whitlam’s Labor government abolished tuition fees for undergraduate degrees in 1974 to make education more accessible to the working class, at a time when middle-class baby boomers benefited from scholarships.

“This was the whole point of HECS, so that low-income people would no longer subsidize middle-class children to get well-paid jobs,” the newspaper’s opinion piece wrote. Sydney Morning Herald bed.

In 1989, Bob Hawke’s Labor government replaced free higher education with HECS, also known as the Higher Education Contribution Scheme, which meant graduates paid for their education after earning above a certain threshold .

Baby boomers, particularly those in their late 60s and belonging to the “builder subgeneration,” still have the lowest rate of college graduates at less than 10 percent.

Each generation following the baby boomers has continued to increase the number of college graduates, with half of Generation Z earning a degree in the future.

The Hamiltons then shattered the “toxic SKI myth,” arguing that baby boomers, vilified for hoarding financial resources, are instead responsible for a massive transfer of wealth between generations.

“Over the next two decades, baby boomers will bequeath $3.5 trillion in assets to their children, the same children they so recklessly oppressed,” he wrote.

A 2021 Productivity Commission report found that around $3.5 trillion, mostly from assets and superannuation, would be passed on through inheritance by 2050.

This figure will only increase over time, with the current $120 billion inherited per year expected to reach $500 billion by the same year.

The Hamiltons also noted that while the housing market is “shockingly unfair,” the fastest-growing demographic group becoming homeless is not twenty-somethings, but rather “the women over 55, baby boomers.

“There are rich boomers and poor boomers, and many more in between. This false conflict is responsible for enormous bitterness,” they wrote.