Lourne Visser/UnsplashAustralia’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. Lucinda Holdforth’s book siding with younger generations is ‘both a breath of fresh air and an affront’. Monash University Press Longer lives are a political problemLike most advanced democracies, thanks to advancements in medicine, population ageing is accelerating in Australia, and with it, the numerical and political weight of older cohorts. The 2023 Intergenerational Report underscores the scale of the issue: demographic ageing alone is estimated to account for around 40% of the projected increase in Australian government spending over the next four decades. As more Australians live longer, governments will be required to devote increasing resources to health, aged care and income support. This will inevitably crowd out spending on the future, from education and innovation to climate transition.This is where Holdforth’s argument sharpens into something more unsettling. Longevity is not just a fiscal problem, but a political one. If older cohorts both live longer and dominate the electorate, then generational turnover is delayed. The “passing of the baton” becomes deferred, and with it the capacity for renewal. Burke himself understood that a society without the means of change is a society that risks stagnation. Holdforth pushes this further: when generational transition is postponed too long, progress is ultimately denied.There is something compelling (and unsettlingly plausible) about this. Neoliberalism is part of the storyYounger Australians today face a markedly different economic reality to their parents: precarious work, unaffordable housing and the increasing burden of funding a system from which they may never fully benefit. In a recent commentary on the implications of Labor’s recent tax reform on intergenerational equity, I pointed out that younger workers are being squeezed from both sides: paying relatively more tax on their labour while missing out on asset-based advantages, and then inheriting the fiscal burden of an ageing society.At the same time, the pipeline of future taxpayers is narrowing. Australia’s fertility rate has fallen well below replacement level, sitting at around 1.5 births per woman in recent years. This is not simply a matter of preference. As emerging evidence shows, many Australians are having fewer children than they would like, due to structural barriers: housing affordability, economic insecurity, gender inequality and climate anxiety. Many Australians are having fewer children than they would like, due to structural barriers. Phototribbiani/Pexels Perhaps neoliberalism forms part of this story. Over recent decades, the shift towards privatisation, lower taxation on wealth and a reduced role for the state has eroded public investment in the very supports that make family formation possible, from affordable housing and secure employment to accessible childcare and social protection. As risk has been individualised and economic life made more precarious, younger generations have been left to navigate an increasingly fragile pathway to adulthood. With a simultaneously ageing population, a shrinking base of working-age people are tasked with supporting an expanding cohort of retirees. It has become a self-reinforcing loop: fewer children lead to higher tax burdens and greater economic strain, which in turn further discourages the next generation from having children at all.Generational conflict or a question of power?Holdforth is at her most provocative when she moves from diagnosis to prescription. She suggests, among other reforms, lowering the voting age to 16 while making voting optional for those over 70, in order to rebalance democratic influence towards those with the greatest stake in the future. The argument is clear: if younger generations will inherit the long-term consequences of political decisions, they should have a greater share in shaping them. Yet it is here that the book becomes more contentious. Framing politics as a conflict between “the young” and “the old” risks oversimplifying a far more complex reality. Age is not the only axis of power. Wealth, class, and institutional position matter just as much, if not more. Older Australians are not a monolith. Nor are younger Australians uniformly powerless. There is a danger that in critiquing ageism, the book veers towards reproducing it – albeit in reverse.There is also a deeper ethical discomfort at the heart of the argument. It is one thing to call for institutional renewal. It is another to imply that individuals should willingly relinquish not only power, but perhaps even life itself. Holdforth’s reflections on prolonged dying – where Australians now spend, on average, many years in chronic ill health – raise important questions about dignity, medical intervention and the limits of longevity.But they also sit uneasily alongside the human instinct to survive. It is difficult to criticise people for wanting more time, even if that time comes at a collective cost.If the book sometimes overreaches, it is in its tendency to attribute too much to age and too little to the structures that shape behaviour. Older people may resist change not simply because they are old, but because they are more likely to hold assets, benefit from existing rules and have influence over institutions. A younger cohort in similar positions might behave in much the same way. What appears as generational conflict may in fact be a question of power.A valuable provocation And yet, for all its provocations, Going On and On does something important: it forces a conversation that is too often deferred. It challenges the assumption that longer life is automatically better life, and that the benefits of longevity are evenly distributed across society and across time. It asks us to reconsider not just how long we live, but how we organise power, resources and responsibility across generations.Perhaps the most productive way to read the book is not as a literal blueprint, but as a provocation. It is less convincing in its prescriptions than in its insistence that the current trajectory is unsustainable. The intergenerational social contract, if it ever existed as Burke imagined it, is under strain. Restoring it will require more than simply shifting voting rights or accelerating generational turnover. It will require addressing the deeper structural conditions that have made the future feel so precarious for younger Australians in the first place.In the end, I think, the challenge is not simply that we are living too long. It is that we have failed to renew the conditions that make life worth beginning, and worth handing on.Intifar Chowdhury does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.