Those ageing lecturers - and spare a thought for them - will try to ingratiate themselves by telling their new charges that they are winners already since the government's higher education reforms are still in gridlock. It means that the HECS will not be going up just yet. It's a throwaway line though.

Chris Richardson of Access Economics said last month that the young generation need to wake up, or look up from their i-Phones, and realise that they are being taken to the cleaners by their elders. He was not referring to HECS or the public debt, rather that the older generation are appropriating a growing share of Australia's wealth while the young are falling behind.

A Melbourne thinktank, the Grattan Institute, issued a report, The wealth of generations, suggesting that today's young generation might end with lower living standards than previous generations had at the same age. Put another way, your children will not be as rich as we are. Alarmingly the report found out the basis of the generational contract where each generation supports retirees while still enriching themselves is being eroded. The dynamics at play are that those who own lucrative real estate tend to be the middle aged and the elderly. Moreover, tax concessions on superannuation along with a disproportionate share of welfare and health expenditure are lavished on the elderly.

The escalating price of houses in the inner suburbs of our capital cities mean that even those young corporate wannabes will be buying a house in the outer burbs rather than Ainslie or O'Connor. Such is the scale of intergenerational iniquity, the young should be reading Karl Marx or Thomas Piketty and storming the barricades. Maybe that old anarchist Proudhon was right to say that "property is theft". Of course, the oldies will pass their wealth down to their children but not before partying on it. In the 1970s the universities were a hotbed of revolutionary protest; there was even a fair bit of ageism around.

A Melbourne radio station, known as 3XY, that played rock music boasted it was the place "where no wrinklies fly". Today there is not much militancy among the young. In fact, the one predominant feature of the young is just how submissive and meek they are. The only outrage they express is if you take their phones. They are self-obsessed and think nothing of a selfie with a celebrity. Any will do. Shyness is a disability long gone. One can see this lack of militancy in looking at the preferred career destinations of graduates. Those well-known private consultancy and accounting firms like PriceWaterhouseCoopers are in the top 10 of desired career paths. Sheesh! That's the same mob who ask their employees to account for every seven minutes of their working day.

The young, too, will bear the brunt of the long-term consequences of correcting Australia's structural budget deficit, of having to raise taxes and cut outlays. The Baby Boomers have also left them with a clapped out infrastructure though the communications networks are pretty good

However, in the intergenerational battle the young still have it over us. The young have the allure of beauty and, boy, how the media worships it. Just check out who was on the red carpet at the Oscars; the average age seems to be getting lower and Jack Nicholson no longer turns up. The oldies, thanks to modern medicine, are going to live longer and longer and can only drool and admire those peerless faces and streamlined bodies as the young go about their business. As we stare at the young, some will set off on reveries recapturing glimpses of their own youth. Of regret and gladness, of the what could have beens. That youthfulness is priceless but Oscar Wilde was surely right when he said "Youth is wasted on the young".

Alex Millmow teaches economics at Federation University Australia.