Australia’s widening generational gap of wealth and inequality could reach record levels within years, suggests recent research. This tension is playing out in national debates over the budget and the housing crisis, as well as provocative new books and films taking aim at baby boomers.

But centuries ago, Anglo–Irish politician Edmund Burke painted a very idealistic picture of the generational social contract. He described society as a partnership not only among the living, but between those who are living, dead and yet to be born.

It is a comforting idea: that each generation, with no unlimited authority vis-à-vis another, stewards the world on behalf of the next. But as Burke himself warned, those who have held power rarely relinquish it willingly. The idea of a stable generational social contract may be elegant in theory. In practice, it runs headlong into human nature.

Review: Going On and On: Why Our Longevity Threatens the Future – Lucinda Holdforth (Summit Books)

Author and former Labor speechwriter Lucinda Holdforth’s Going On and On lands squarely in this uncomfortable space. As a young researcher interested in generational politics, I found her book both a breath of fresh air and an affront.

There is something quietly disarming about a Boomer so candidly and polemically siding with younger generations – it almost makes me more generous towards older people. But youth is not a monolith, and neither is old age.

The book asks a confronting question: what price will younger citizens pay for the rest of us living longer? Its core argument is that extended longevity produces a structural challenge that risks distorting democracy, economic priorities and generational fairness.

The problem, as Holdforth frames it, is that those living longer are not willing to give up power – and that power is not being relinquished at the pace required to represent younger generations.

Longer lives are a political problem

Like most advanced democracies, thanks to advancements in medicine, population ageing is accelerating in Australia, and........

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