If you spend any time talking about the depressing state of home non-ownership in Australia you’ll be used to being admonished by older Australians for indulging your selfish air of millennial-style entitlement dagnabbit.

We have the message hammered home again and again. Why, the insecurity of renting, in a world of endless hikes, limited rights and short-term leases, is merely an incentive for aspiration!

Get a good job with a good income. Sacrifice the cafe breakfasts and overseas trips. Scrimp and save for a deposit to buy that smaller, further-away place than you’d like, then scrimp and save to eventually upgrade to something better.

Struggling to break into the market? As the Smiths once so rightly sang, “You just haven’t earned it yet, baby”. And this is great advice, provided that – like the Smiths – you’re having this conversation in 1986.

So here’s a fun question to ask such people: when are today’s young people expected to start … you know, living?

See, here’s an uncomfortable fact to keep in mind: we’re all going to die. And even if it turns out that reincarnation is a thing, or that one of the implausible-sounding afterlives turn out to be real, none of us are going to be able to bring any of our hard-sacrificed earnings with us.

So let’s say you’ve just finished school and you ultimately plan to achieve the modestly standard ambitions of Australian adulthood: a family, a career, and a place to live.

Well, first off you need a job – and in today’s ultra-competitive job market (especially for young people) you probably need a degree or a trade. So that’s three or four years, assuming you don’t fail anything and don’t need further training – and, under the federal government’s proposed changes to HECS, you’ll be paying more for your education and also paying it back earlier, so at best you’re now 22 and already have a reasonable debt hanging over you. Congratulations!

Ready to start saving for a house? Well, on an average income – and let’s assume you’ve met that special someone that wants to share your financial burdens with you – you’ve got seven years of saving ahead, so you’re now 29. Oh, there’s that extra HECS debt: let’s say at least 31. If you’re single, it’s closer to 40.

Oh, and that assumes you’ve been earning solidly with no periods of unemployment or sickness or injury. Also, if you’re female, you’ll also have the fun game of Being Judged No Matter What You Do. Want to have a baby? What, isn’t it financially irresponsible to do that before establishing your career, you thoughtless slattern? Oh, so you’re focusing on your career? What, don’t you want kids, you self-obsessed harpy? Tick tick tick!

But in the best-case scenario, you’ve somehow bought that small place you can afford that’s not your dream house, and now… well, you need to keep saving.

After all, whatever you sell the place for is only going to net you enough money to buy a place as crappy as yours – so if you want to get that dream house you need to keep putting off those holidays and brunches and time with your kids and doing creative stuff so that one day you’ll be able to afford a place big enough for everyone to have their own room – probably around the time the kids move out. Assuming they ever can, of course.

So instead an increasingly large number of Australians are looking at life as lifelong renters – and aside from the whole nothing-to-retire-on thing, it affects day-to-day quality of life.

Look around your room, dear renting reader, and ask yourself this question: “Am I surrounded by meaningful things I love and value, or am I surrounded by cheap, barely-functional crap that I can easily throw into a van when the lease is up or the owner abruptly sells, where I’m not going to have my heart broken when it gets smashed or scratched or doesn’t fit in the next inevitably smaller place?”

It even affects things like our civil involvement and guarantees that government is decided by vested financial interests. After all, what’s the point of running for local council if you may not even live in the district in three months’ time?

If we aspire to a society where people live lives of value and meaning, which seems like a pretty cool sort of thing to aspire to, we either have to find a way to make living – including getting into stable accommodation – a hell of a lot cheaper, or we have to find a way to extend human life by another 50-odd years to factor in heavier debt burdens.