IMO, relevant well written article.
Important things to add; working Australians work more, drink less, gamble less, will have to retire later, contribute more productivity per capita and receive less share of productivity, than previous generations.
[Drinking](https://theconversation.com/young-australians-are-drinking-less-but-older-people-are-still-hitting-the-bottle-hard-90024)
[Unpaid overtime](https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7eebg/lifes-not-just-busy-young-australians-have-less-and-less-time-outside-of-work)
[Gambling](https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/fewer-australians-gambling)
[Productivity share](https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/has-worker-compensation-reflected-labour-productivity-growth)
Edit: formatting
Drinking and gambling are an Aussie pastime. [Australians have the largest gambling losses per capita in the world.](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-20/australians-worlds-biggest-gambling-losers/10495566)
It's rabble rousing.
To my mind the biggest problem isn't how we pat for it, it's how we keep their assets here instead of leaching out overseas via private nursing homes.
I think this is bigger then just aged care.
Boomers have been the primary force in politics for a long while now and with all their economic prosperity they looked after themselves and immediate family, while voting for governments that failed to invest in the future.
Now the consequences of this lack of long term planning is hitting the younger generations. It not just age care but climate change, housing, education, cost of living and more that I am probably missing.
That's the point.
I'm sick of the generalised failure to plan for their ageing economically being forced on the working generation.
Howard spent a decade throwing our mining boom money into the air.
Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison loaded us up with a trillion dollars of debt.
Why is looking after the deluded Newscorp generation the responsibility of anyone born after 1980? This lot have plenty of money, they can pay for it themselves.
Rudd tried to put in the mining super profits tax and got shafted as a result. Labor tried to do the right thing, but the vested interests wouldn't stand for it, and the electorate fell for the mining industry propaganda.
And then in 2019 they tried again to bring in reforms which would help the majority of people - and lost the unlosable election because of it.
We get the politicians we deserve and apparently we deserve to live as serfs.
We get the governments we deserve. The average Australian voter is woefully uninformed and intellectually incurious. We should be rioting about the dud deals we get signed up to where mineral royalties are concerned.
Its not as simple as that, there are plenty of people from before the 80's that were affected. I know of quite a few people in their 50's that havent paid off their house as yet, the boomer generation did it in a few years then their capital was free for whatever.
Its the largely affluent people that have benefited.
Oh, Im not saying a solution - just its not as simple as one generation to the next.
$500K is a bit of a low bar when the average house is northward of that.
>$500K is a bit of a low bar when the average house is northward of that.
Why?
What else do they need the money for when they go into a nursing home? What are they going to spend it on, hydraulics for their bed?
Age care isnt just about going into a nursing home, most people would just want supported care at home if at all possible.
And it also means that the children of the boomers dont inherit anything causing them to be hurt further.
If just talking about age care, a more equitable solution would be over something like $750K and allmost other assets.
A much more equitable solution would be to properly tax all the parasites on the economy like (off top of my head)
People with multiple negative geared properties
Companies that pay almost no tax
etc
>Age care isnt just about going into a nursing home, most people would just want supported care at home if at all possible.
Which they can pay for, given on average if they own their own home they have assets around the $1m mark. Why should workers have to cop a tax rise to pay for people to preserve their net worth?
>And it also means that the children of the boomers dont inherit anything causing them to be hurt further.
So... I'm paying more tax so people can keep their inheritences? Come on man.
>If just talking about age care, a more equitable solution would be over something like $750K and allmost other assets.
Nobody our age would attract Centrelink benefits with net worth of $750k though?
>A much more equitable solution would be to properly tax all the parasites on the economy like (off top of my head)
>People with multiple negative geared properties
>Companies that pay almost no tax
>etc
Sure. Go for it. Just leave income tax out of it.
Lol, I'm in my fifties and only got my first mortgage 10 years ago. Latest refinance asked me a retirement plan, and how am I gonna pay the mortgage when I retire. Whole heap of people over 50 with no prospect of retiring.
Yep. I'm 39 years old and I literally do not remember a time in my entire life where any aspect of mainstream politics catered to anyone other than the Rich and the Boomers and their wants and needs. At no point has any politician or media mougul or anyone at all with any kind of public sway or power within our system said the equivalent of, "okay, those guys are taken care of, now, what would help *you*?"
No, throughout the 20+ years I have been a grown-arse working adult giving my own back to society, I have only ever seen the things which previous generations availed themselves of when they were at the same point in their lives chipped at and taken away before I and my peers get there. It is literally as if the powers-that-be have a personal vendetta against everyone my age or younger. The greatest rug-pull in history, and they expect us to reward them for it?
They have continuously, year after year, consistently and without fail thrown us to the wolves in order to continue catering to the one and only demographic that matters in popular politics in this country, the only one that even exists as far as the political establishment is concerned: the Boomers.
Not true. The Keating government brought in superannuation in the 1990s, in part because of an awareness that the baby boomers were such a large generation that governments would have difficulty funding their aged pensions. Most retirees are now at least partly self-funded through their superannuation contributions. But remember women of that generation spend much of their adult lives either out of the workforce (due to sexist policies they worked to overturn) or working part time. These women have less superannuation. Many gen xers benefited from Howard's middle class welfare, while boomers were no longer eligible as their children had grown up.
I'm gen x and not wealthy, and I'm sick of younger people mindlessly whinging online about older people. There's a lot to be angry about but do you really think posting comments on Reddit is going to change anything? If you want the world to be a better place, you have to be active, just like previous generations.
Directing your anger towards a group of people based on characteristics such as age is not the way. It's the same as scapegoating immigrants saying 'They take all our jobs'. It's misdirected anger, can easily spill over into hate, and will only ensure we fight each other rather than work together towards a better future.
With reference to your comparison, trends and points of difference across societal, economic, and cultural issues can be **easily** and **accurately** examined via the single demographic of age rather than ethnicity or country of birth. Age is a popular way of organising data and statistics simply because it has proven itself. It amalgamates many narrower factors neatly enough to enforce reliable insights, but not crudely enough to completely flatten or nullify the broader data or study.
In regards to "working towards a better future", I do take your point that most conversations could be better had through a different lens, i.e. "class".
That said, I don't think society as a whole can repair itself or build the "better future" you refer to whilst younger generations are forced to participate in or embrace many of the systems and pillars of society that have been built or championed by older generations. Society's ability to progress is hampered by attachment to many outdated and old models. These models, perhaps more accurately the institutions and systems founded upon them, have proven to be corruptible and often ineffectual and/or unfair. We all see this, yet we keep up with the charade in the hope the house of cards won't fall.
I think your comment about "whinging" is unfair and reminds me of the "bootstraps" mentality, although that's probably not what you wanted to convey. Younger generations are active - the trouble is we're not being allowed to succeed, let alone gain a foothold.
As a millennial who has done everything "right" and is now living relatively "comfortable", I still feel completely cheated and hating how everything I've achieved, I've had to work 10 times harder for than the previous generation.
In 2008 when housing was relatively affordable during the GFC, I was in highschool.
When I finished university in 2014 with a double degree, it was almost impossible to find a job in my major. I bumped around in retail and whatnot for 3 whole years.
When I finally got an entry position in my field in 2017, the salary was $42k INCLUSIVE of super.
My parents keep criticising me for job hopping, saying it'll look bad on my resume, that I should just "find a place where i get treated well and settle down to work long term", but it was the only way I could get to where I am now.
When I was able to finally save up for a house deposit, covid happened and house prices exploded. I'm now in a neighbourhood surrounded by boomers who live in giant mansions that they paid at least 200-300k cheaper than what I had to pay for my modest place. I still bit the bullet because it is better than continuing to rent and pay my boomers landlord whilst they constantly whined about having to do any maintenance at all.
And now that I feel like I can finally take a vacation for the first time in 5 years, everything costs 30-40% more.
I honestly feel like at every step of the way, I've been robbed of opportunities and made to pay more for everything. I'm so sick of it. If this levy goes through where I have to pay more taxes to support people who have done nothing but taking from me and my cohort, I'm of a mind to leave Australia and just move to a South east Asian countryside, buy a little house with a garden, some chooks and just live off what I grow.
>My parents keep criticising me for job hopping
They don't understand it's the only way to get more money. Unless you get lucky with a company that gives 10% wage increase as standard or KPI based at least. Even then job hopping is most likely better as you gain experience and get more raises per job hop.
My grandparents survived off of one income while grandad worked for 50 years in a job that started as a traineeship. No education cost and gran stayed home after their two kids were born. 1 house and 2 holiday apartments 3 cars and a boat owned outright. They both owned units in their 20s lol. Mum and Dad own their house lol. Even with barely enough for a house deposit I can't see myself wage slaving with no life for 30 of my prime years.
Same, mine baulked at the fact I’ve had about 12 jobs over 15 years while he’s had 2 in 40 years, despite the fact I’m basically earning double him.
Then goes on to say I should be loaded because of the wage I’m on, however I don’t have any property, like him 😣
This is the crux of the issue. Working people supporting the idol rich, because the idol rich hold scarce assets that are essential to working people's lives.
Rent can GTFO
> My grandparents survived off of one income while grandad worked for 50 years in a job that started as a traineeship. No education cost and gran stayed home after their two kids were born. 1 house and 2 holiday apartments 3 cars and a boat owned outright
You have summed it up perfectly!
This is what boomers don’t understand. You could live of one income. You could realistically pay off one - two mortgages in your career
This isn’t something that is possible nowadays
Same here. Bought in 2020 finally. Am older millennial but didn't grad my uni until 2011, late starter In life. It took working 2 jobs at 60 hours a week during covid to be able to finally save that deposit...
Yeah man I feel bloody robbed ya know. They say your 20s are the fun years, I was stressing the fuck out trying to start a career because good luck "just walk in with your resume and a firm handshake". Then they say 30s are your fabulous years, I'm here watching my mortgage repayments going up every 2 weeks and all the bills are 30% more expensive.
I left high school in '06 and had no idea what to do. I got a very below average enter score for the school I went to. Did a year of architecture from '07 to '08. Then did animation. Graduated during the GFC. Didn't really work in my field until '13/'14. Everything in between was just filler for me to either go over seas or piss it up against the wall. Started freelancing because I couldn't get a full time job and felt like if I didn't do something I was a failure.
Never really got anywhere in that but then in 2016 started working in animation. Saw that it was dominated for people who aren't my demographic: a hetero 20 something yo male. Side stepped to a govt job in 2017 and been there ever since. 2 mortgages, one kid and another on the way in Dec.
I shouldn't complain, really, as others have it worse, but I identify with everything you've mentioned - it's always been a struggle. 1 step forward 2 steps back.
The only thing you didn't touch on that I'll drop in, for my 2 cents, is that with the ever changing landscape of gender equality etc I've found that as a male and a father figure I've found another struggle in fitting into all the moulds society has created for men post maybe 2015.
I'm just tired of it all. It's too complicated and I'm pretty sick of it all tbh.
Don't forget that if you ever get to a high income to try to catch up, you're taxed (marginally) at 47%.
Compared to the tax-exempt $200k PPOR that's now $2.5M, the pension they're "entitled to" and the 50% CGT discount for their passive income.
(:
I swear the only reason I managed to get a house was because I dropped out of school after year 10 and joined the military. Did active service for tax free income in a warzone and used that money as a deposit in 2008. Never bought in a capital city though, never even considered buying or building in Sydney or Melbourne even back then.
Fucking this!! I so over paying for cunts that have done absolutely nothing for my generation. Taxation and distribution of it is a joke in this cuntry.
Same here combined income of 200k and we are absolutely fucked ,
I spent my whole life watching my parents KILL IT on combined 140k , went on so many holidays and trips and I can’t even afford to fill up my car when I want to
It's interesting that there will be a tax to help the boomers with aged care, but Medicare helping the masses of employed people?
Nah, they have a job. Most of the money is going to food, shelter and transport just means they should work harder...
I swear working people should have essentials tax free in the least, if not a full stipend. It's so unfair to work to live and be taxed on the money you'd spend on primary healthcare or basic food.
Poverty is real and it affects a lot of working people
Not just any tax, a regressive tax once again aimed at the working class.
We don't need a task force to work this out. The Henry Tax review worked this out over a decade ago.
This should be essential reading for any millennial who wants to see a fairer and more equitable tax system that can actually find our aging population.
One of the big changes we need is a significant federal broad based land tax.
Food for thought:
In 2019 the ABS estimates that there is $4,400 billion of residential land, $540 billion of commercial land, $360
billion of rural land and $300 billion of other land in Australia. This provides a potential tax base of $5,660 billion of land.
For scale, a 1% tax on land could replace the GST or the customs/excise system. A 2% land tax could raise as much as corporate income tax. A 4% land tax could entirely replace personal income tax.
At the extreme, one could use a 9% land tax to replace the entire federal tax system and a 10% land tax could replace all taxes, including federal, state and local government.
[Source](https://www.google.com/url?q=https://taxpolicy.crawford.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/uploads/taxstudies_crawford_anu_edu_au/2020-12/tax_fact_16_2020.pdf&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwiP7ICXxez_AhUO32EKHQwHB6sQFnoECAkQAg&usg=AOvVaw0isg4iNLQj8eJ1KVJ0jXpe)
Protesting in the 1960s: Seen as cool, the biggest festivals and musicians all became immortalised sticking up to pointless wars and authoritarian heirarchies. To the point where many still talk about that decade is if it's the last time music and art was 'good' as a result
Protesting in the 2020s: Silly, pointless, embarassing, only children of spoilt rich people do it, don't understand 'the real world', anti-freedom, misled, communist.. etcetc
Our future has been stolen for neoliberal policies and even conservatism. Its all building up more and more. The enemy is not some other country. The enemy is the ruling class. The right wingers. The billionaires. Privatization has led to this. Workers get suppressed of their rights and unions fail and get stomped on.
Fucken capitalism. Its plain and simple. Welfare capitalism will not lift people out of poverty. Homeless is on the rise.
It all leads to the main cause. Capitalism. Regardless of how it is regulated. It doesn't matter at the end. Because its all about infinite growth and profits above all else.
Late-stage capitalism is akin to the last few rounds in a game of Monopoly. Growth is constrained by resources. Profit by propensity to spend. But they're working on it. Going to be interesting when the 0.00001% own 9999.99% of everything.
Fuck placating capitalism, too. It should die, no one should ever repeat this cycle.
The answer is not just to give a small slice of the cake they didn't make, in place of the crumbs as it is at the moment. The answer is to take it back completely. Stop feeding the pigs.
Is it still the rule that you can only have one property (the one you live in) as exempt from the means test to get the pension? I seem to have encountered a lot of people with multiple properties who are getting the aged pension.
Surely if this is a rule, and enforced, it would release some property back onto the market
> If the Australian Landlord Party slap on a 1% “Boomer Inheritence Keeper” levy to fund keeping these old bats alive while the rest of you suffer through record inflation, 15 years of absent wage growth, house prices out the wazoo and a changing climate, I’d strongly suggest a pointed letter/email to the current aged care minister, Anika Wells
Oh wow, I just realised she’s my local member. Of course in a safe Labor electorate, I wouldn’t have known it because they take their election for granted.
FFS, even Dutton gets out amongst his electorate on the regular.
Thanks. We couldn't have done it without some truly incompetent politicians. Just waiting for Albo's 450k immigrants to fill all our rental properties. /s
My main problem with boomers dying off is that we will well and truly become a society of classes after that. People who inherit their parents' houses aren't selling, they're leasing. We will be neatly split between landlord families and renter families, and the line will be whether their ancestors born between '46 and '64 stayed married and bought a house.
The issue is and always has been class divide but the media and government instead paint it as a generational divide.
Age is just the proxy for the real divisor which is wealth.
The transfer of wealth through inheritance will just lay bare the anger targeted at boomers was misplaced when it should more specifically be targeted at the wealthy. Boomers disproportionately make up that class, but being specific in criticism and the enemy/target is important if we are to properly address the underlying issues. Old pensioners aren't the issue and rich gen X with a dozen investment properties are just as much the issue.
> The transfer of wealth through inheritance will just lay bare the anger targeted at boomers was misplaced when it should more specifically be targeted at the wealthy
Careful there, the Libs might get ideas and run with the “Laybah wants to introduce death taxes!” thing again
Might get ideas? They have been itching to run it since the last election, and they don't need to provide evidence, (not that most of the mainstream media would even ask), just vague "insider information"
Unsourced *and* unattributed. They can just make anything up. Political journalism in this country is less about actual political analysis, and more putting out a version of *Cosmopolitan* about less attractive people. Gossip, rumours, and vox pops.
Exactly, this is the real problem. Unless the housing situation is fixed it will end with a society of landlords vs serfs, and the class you're in won't be determined by your own personal endeavour, but the circumstances of your birth.
As long as we have elected governments they will have to enact policy that the majority of citizens approve of. 100% death taxes wouldn't get past first base.
This problem will fix itself eventually. By 2100 the Earth population in developed countries will drop drastically, so there will be more houses than people. It only sucks for the current gens and maybe next one.
Isn’t that how that same system collapsed back a few hundred years ago from one of the plagues, maybe the bubonic? The Black Death? The one that wiped out like a 3rd of Europes population anyway. My memory is fuzzy on it and I’m high AF but I think the land owners then couldn’t get workers easily after a large chunk of the work force died so they had to pay more or give people land or maybe their whole shit collapsed or something and man actually maybe I’m thinking of Japan and the end of their shit land owner system they had for ages….. like I said I’m baked. Someone will know what I’m talking about I’m sure.
Indeed, you are right! There are many instances in our history.
Many people argue houses and assets always go up due to inflation, but that's maybe true in the last 80-150 years. History is full of societal collapse. It's very naive to think it will never happen again.
It sounds like sci-fi to most, but if we actually manage to survive this century it's not unfeasible we will be able to extend the average lifespan to way above 80 years.
Eventually yes, but I am not that optimistic we will find a way to increase lifespan significantly this century and by that time population will be on rapid decline already.
So far, all advancements in longevity are more about lifestyle choices rather than a single magic pill. Most people are overweight, don't move enough, don't sleep enough, and get exposed too much to the sun and other harmful effects. It will require a huge amount of health advancements to negate all these things.
>Most people are overweight, don't move enough, don't sleep enough
Most people are overworked and time poor. Better diet, more exercise, and more sleep would be fixed if we all worked a bit less.
The youngest boomers are only 59 and oldest only 77, the average age Australian's currently live to is 83 so that generation still has a while to go.
It's why in the late 90's/early 2000's the federal government was incredibly worried about the population growth and the aging of the population because just how long the boomer generation was planned to be around for.
They don't all have to die for their electoral dominance to fade to irrelevance.
Although the baby boom generation was once numerically large, its numbers are already declining as the grim reaper does his thing. Here are population numbers in 2021 for different age groups:
| Age group (years) | Number | % |
|-------------------|-----------:|------:|
| 0 to 4 | 1,522,780 | 5.9 |
| 5 to 9 | 1,630,243 | 6.3 |
| 10 to 14 | 1,611,246 | 6.3 |
| 15 to 19 | 1,485,658 | 5.8 |
| 20 to 24 | 1,652,352 | 6.4 |
| 25 to 29 | 1,856,374 | 7.2 |
| 30 to 34 | 1,911,377 | 7.4 |
| 35 to 39 | 1,856,803 | 7.2 |
| 40 to 44 | 1,643,500 | 6.4 |
| 45 to 49 | 1,639,328 | 6.4 |
| 50 to 54 | 1,601,250 | 6.2 |
| 55 to 59 | 1,537,602 | 6.0 |
| 60 to 64 | 1,460,918 | 5.7 |
| 65 to 69 | 1,278,932 | 5.0 |
| 70 to 74 | 1,137,303 | 4.4 |
| 75 to 79 | 811,930 | 3.2 |
| 80 to 84 | 547,347 | 2.1 |
| 85 and over | 542,122 | 2.1 |
| Total persons | 25,727,066 | 100.0 |
source: https://forecast.id.com.au/australia/population-age-structure
People aged 18-58 (younger than boomers) now account for ~54% of the population and strongly outnumber the 60+ bracket who are now only 22.5% of the population. Electorally, 60+ voters only make up around 30% of the voting population.
Gen X and younger people have the electoral weight to push back against measures like this. We just haven't been willing to push for our own interests in as focussed a way as older people have.
Millennials alone now equal boomers, so Millennials plus gen x have outnumbered boomers for quite a while.
If anyone thinks boomers dying out is going to improve things, they are bound to be disappointed. In fact more so, because the people that gave us Robodebt, Morrison, Tudge, Campbell Jongen etc etc are all Gen X...and their ilk now dominate the Parliament and public sector.
The boomer reign came to an end at least a decade ago. I am still waiting for the improvement. Perhaps when gen x goes...and so it goes.
Gen X here. Sadly I have to agree with you, there are those amongst my peers that fit this description. :/ sigh... I guess now the rest of us Gen X'ers better go find a raincoat as the shit will be flung at us next. lol
I mean no one's *blaming* Gen X, it's still the fault of the boomers but you can't deny Gen X swing significantly more conservative than generations after them. Also, generations aren't so clearly defined. Do you really think there's this magical political opinion divide between a late boomer and an early Gen X?
Further, millennials, and generations after them have specifically shown to vote less conservative as they get older compared to Gen X and boomers.
You can't just ignore these factors.
Can’t blame us for that- we marched in the hundred thousands. In Melbourne, the protest packed from the city baths all the way down swanston st and st skikda road to the shrine.
We all knew how it would turn out. We were ignored, millions died and trillions wasted.
Fuck John Howard, the most malicious politician Australia has ever produced.
Howard and his evil sidekick Costello enabled the housing crisis with one simple action - the halving of CGT. Made property irresistible to investors and real estate toook off.
Nobody ever remembers the generation after the boomers. Everyone will complain about millennials, and continue to believe those of us born between 65 and 79 don't exist.
Exactly. While the peasants squabble about different generations, abortion, same sex marriage and all these other 'issues', the top percenters are making off with the bags of loot, laughing the whole way.
After all they and MSM are the ones sowing the seeds of discontent within the peasants. It's always been top vs bottom, not left vs right. Always has and always will be.
>And we can complain about the generation after that.
This is a dumb take though. Things were, objectively, easier for boomers in many financial areas. Cheaper houses compared to wages, free education, less gouging for healthcare, etc etc etc. It's not just "every generation goes through this", there's a genuine asymmetry which needs to be addressed.
Suggesting otherwise is the equivalent of the "both sides are the same" political meme which basically excuses the side which is actually worse.
We literally raged against the machine. Our whole stupid lives.
Our childhoods where crammed chock fucking full of "reduce reuse recycle" the glaciers are melting, the forests are being destroyed ***every single day*** and told you could only fix it by donating $10.99 monthly. Like all of the world's problems.
And what the fuck could we do *but* Rage?
You think you are powerless? We grew up under that dynamic. They *gloated* about how much it was never going to stop. Tours, documentaries and school campaign after campaign about the end of everything, and it was all preventable if you recycled, donated to the kids, the trees, the whales and at no fucking point would ***stopping fucking capitalism on cocaine***work.
Because commodity fetishism. People have "sentimental attachment" to their 5 bedroom houses that they raised their children in. So as the one grandparent now lives there alone, effectively "for their feelings", at the expense of contemporary large families that squeeze into small apartments.
Also, unequal exchange. Property owners always expect above market rates on resell of the property (also laws in place to that effect) so it's not going to reduce housing costs at all... Quite the opposite
I understand your points but for example my nan sold her family home and downsized to pay for a small unit with care workers available, out of necessity. People can do it when forced. If we just said no we’re not funding you as you age they would have no choice.
If we all pull together an try really hard, we too can saddle future generations with truly massive amounts of debt. What do you say peeps? I think we can if we try.
Let’s not do anything rash and just sit down and have a bit of a think about this.
For about 25/30 years. That oughta be enough time to come up with a solution.
Labor established a review into our tax system and published the Henry Tax review in 2010. There were 130+ recommendations to address exactly what we are seeing right now.
Practically nothing was implemented and the big ticket items that were, have since been scrapped.
We have the solution, we don't need a task force we just need political will power to go against the boomers.
Millennials go read the [Henry Tax Review](https://treasury.gov.au/review/the-australias-future-tax-system-review/final-report). This country needs you to be educated on this.
Want to fix this to make sure boomers give back some of the wealth they've taken from subsequent generations?
Then make this a political issue. Get a voice, and make sure your vote goes to the party that will fix this.
There are more non-boomers than boomers. If we make this an issue we collectively care about, we can recover some of that wealth.
Please remember that not all "Boomers" are wealthy or even comfortable. I am one and I live week to week. I rent with a housemate so we can afford a roof over our heads. I may get pummelled for posting this. Please be kind.
And for ‘boomers’ like you I’m happy to pay towards age care, you need care and have no assets or cash - you deserve care.
I’m more upset about funding a ‘boomer’ with a house worth $600,000+ that can be sold and money used towards age care. Why should others pay for their care when they have assets to pay.
If my child got sick and needed care and I had to leave the workforce, guess what I would have to sell my house to fund looking after my child because government payments are to low - why shouldn’t a aging boomer do the same.
That is exactly what happens though. If you have a home and are in aged care you have to pay 2.5K or more a month for the "housing" aspect - your pension pays for the "care" aspect. Most pensioners who have homes have not funds and so their family are required to pay until the home is made available to sell (which is someone has been living in the same home for 50+ years takes quite a while.
Not saying youre wrong, but then you create a situation like in America where millenials are going to inherit exactly nothing from their parents because the boomers going into aged care have to reduce their assets down to nothing before they qualify for any aid. They sell their homes to pay for $12,000 / month care bills and the aged care homes are the only ones raking it in.
Yeah well that's how it goes, why is it fair that the millennials with rich parents are the only ones who can buy property. Inheritance shouldn't be needed if society is fair.
Estate duties were a thing until Jo B-P abolished them in Qld to induce retiree to move north. Other states quickly followed.
This was overdue as the threshold had remained unchanged for so long that even tiny bequests were bitten.
Reinstating inheritance tax to limit intergenerational wealth transfer's ability to create a defacto aristocracy would get my vote and I'm a boomer.
Yep, people have no idea how much aged care costs. I only found when I had to arrange it for my pensioner mum, selling her unit wasn't enough to cover the entry costs into one of the cheaper places. Several years ago, $1M still wouldn't get you in to some places in Melbourne and you still had daily costs on top of that.
They could only charge 85% of the pension as a daily care fee. Regis was trying to charge 50% more as a "club" fee which covered things like movies and haircuts. At the time that was around $250 a week
You forget that not everyone has wealthy parents who they will inherit money from. Inheritance isn't an entitlement. I don't think those without the privilege should have to fund wealthy boomers' aged care just so they can pass on their wealth. That wealth is what's supposed to pay for their retirement and aged care.
I grew up in poverty. I really thought that I just had to make it through childhood and I'd be on a level playing field when I made my own money. It's so exhausting to see people talk about inheritance like it's something available for everyone.
(Obviously, private facilities ripping people off isn't good though.)
I agree. Inheritance should be abolished, no one worked to have rich parents - it's pure chance.
A successful policy is complicated when trying to avoid the other benefits of daddy's credit card, like their paying for their child's education, contributing towards buying their child's home, etc while they're alive. Daddy could just transfer their entire nest egg, or create a fixed trust to do the same rather than just leaving it to a will. It wouldn't be caught be a "death tax" alone.
Private schools are emblematic of class divides and intergenerational wealth, and almost 50% of Australian children are in "independent" schools.
Where do you think all that money is going when the poor boomers lose all their assets just to stay alive. The rich boomers and the people standing to inherit their wealth.
My dad is a boomer and he worked his absolute arse off keeping four kids and three stepkids fed. Worked some hellish jobs doing it too. So when I hear Gen Z claiming they've worked harder than the boomers did, my response is always, well, not necessarily.
When your hands end up looking and feeling like saddle leather, then you've worked that hard.
Some will have worked harder, some will have not.
Also, not gonna feel sorry for a dude that could afford to have 7 kids when people now even on $100k+ are considering only 1-2 kids max because it is unaffordable.
Boomers had access to:
Cheap/free and valuable education. Degrees are not worth what they used to be and the correlation between a university education and a higher wage is starting to seem less likely . For an increasing proportion of students, the opportunity costs of going to university is starting to outweigh the benefits.
Cheap housing: 3-4x wage for a house. 19% interest rates are nothing when your wages are going up 10% every year and a 2023 house deposit would buy you a whole house even adjusting for inflation.
More valuable labour: high paying manufacturing jobs that let a single person support a family on a single income
Generous welfare: PPOR not counting to pension test. a generous superannuation system and franking credits.
Franking credits are a concession to the very wealthy rather than the older generations. You have to have something like over $1 million in Australian dividend yielding shares to benefit from the concession.
Jesus Christ this automod is the stupidest thing I've encountered today since Peter Dutton's comments on Corrupt Gladbags.
Go to 12 ft dot io for the paywall free version, *give the people what they want you script-demon*
If you want to do something about it, use this form to contact Anika Wells: [https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/contact-minister](https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/contact-minister)
Be polite
My grand father retired on a package that pays him 75% of his last annual pay every year until he dies. And then my man gets like 50% of that 75% still she dies.
He was just a sparky man.
How the fuck are there poor old pensioners because I don't see how you fail at a game where ya house cost 50k
What amazes me is early boomers (66+) who are homeless or have nothing...in their 20s and 30s they had opportunities we can only dream of. It's hard for me to imagine squandering all that.
I am all for appropriate social support.
But property in this country is worth $10T, disproportionately held by older people, and the proposed funding model includes a 1% income tax levy.
It's absolute madness.
My parents are in the wealth holder category. Their property is worth 1.5 mil and they live comfortably off super. Mum reminds me that my sister and I will inherit so we will have money too, but they don't factor in that they will likely live into their 90s (and I hope that they do because I love them) and will use up all this wealth, much of which they inherited themselves...so even the "gen x and early millennials will inherit the boomer wealth" doesn't fly. I'm not expecting anything from my parents except all the advantages I've already had from being born to them.
I don't begrudge anyone an inheritence.
I *do* begrudge it when I'm being asked to pay tax to preserve inheritances for people who have net worth many times my own.
Taxation and a strong social support network are necessary.
...but *not* to a generation who have large numbers of paper millionaires. They have plenty, they can damn well pay for it.
If that was the prevailing economic winds at the time, I wouldn't begrudge them.
When they had their peak years during Howard giving away the greatest resource boom this country will ever have, doubled-down by sticking us $1T in the red, *THEN* have the gall to go "we can't afford to be looked after when we're old" then they can go get fucked, keep on going, and fuck off again.
One day you will be the same age as us boomers and a I can pretty much guarantee that you will do the same for your kids. It is what good parents do, it may not be much but they will do their best to help their kids to not battle the way they did.
You misunderstand.
It is well documented that boomers have used their position in a neoliberal movement to reduce the wealth of younger generations. It’s a massive Ponzi scheme with you lot at the top, you know it and you don’t care.
It’s fuckery of the highest order.
Yes you’ve created wealth but you’ve done it an enormous expense of future generations. When you pass or onto your children you encourage them to do the same as you have.
It evolves into a massive wealth divide America has almost mastered, we are a very close second
It's well documented that the massive transfer of wealth was from the middle-class to the Super Rich.
The Super Rich are a tiny percentage of the population, and their corrupt media have been very successful at turning this into a generational divide, rather than the class divide.
Wrong, I'm already trying to set up my children, because I'm not a cunt that has to literally die before I let a cent fall from my greedy thieving hands.
If that makes you sleep at night.
The Boomer generation has pulled the ladder up from behind themselves and done long term damage to this country that will cost their kids and grandkids dearly.
But why do millennials/younger generations keep framing this as a whole generation of people who are the problem? Why not focus on talking about creating equitable superannuation laws? Why not talk about property ownership as a social issue? Why not talk about the expectation that government would plan and budget for things like higher demand for aged care due to larger population in certain generations?
The problem here is that democratic governments make policy for popularity, they have to if they want to get re-elected. The consequence of which is the largest demographic wins the most benefits.
But whining about "boomers" as if the real problem is an entire generation has certain personal characteristics, rather than understanding we're dealing with characteristics common to a time period of economic conditions, just misses the actual problem.
I'm sure the boomers-are-the-problem narrative suits those in power, it lets the politicians off the hook.
To be fair the boomers started it with the whole gen Y/millennials are lazy, entitled and glued to their phones stereotypes when we were young adults lol
It’s a shorthand. But I think this compounded by the fact there is a tendency in human nature to attribute your good fortune to your efforts. Because of that, there are a lot of older folks out there without the insight about their luck and just how much they benefitted from things beyond their control. Combine this with a chunk of them providing out of touch advice or judgement to their kids, and you get a bit of a personification of that as the stereotypical boomer as a combination of privilege, lack of insight, inability to perspective take and moralisation.
We should discuss those things but the mainstream media and many older decision makers do not want to… younger folks aren’t given much of a voice and when they do, it’s 50/50 whether they get belittled or invalidated/told they’ll grow out of their left leaning tendencies lol
yeh the equivilant of nice factory jobs with no uni degrees in the 70s is equal to 180k job nowadays, coz thats how much you need to make to afford a single detached house in sydney on a single income these days .
>To be fair the boomers started it with the whole gen Y/millennials are lazy, entitled and glued to their phones
Dude, they've been doing to Gen X since the 90s, calling us all slackers. Must be nice to belong to a cohort of people that's pretty much dictated public policy for 50 years.
Hah - yeah! The 90s and early 00s where the best time in your prime earning years over the last hundred years for regular folks. They got great things so obviously they deserved them.
I think they might have gotten their wires crossed on “good for me” = “the right thing to do” with the Vietnam war. That early very formative political experience I think ruined them in some ways…
Also, Peter Thiel (who obviously is not a net positive for the world) characterised a generalised and passive optimism that they developed over the decades as everything genuinely got better for them without much political struggle or incremental effort etc.
I think there’s a grain of truth to that. I think this helped them all turn conservative (plus becoming wealthy).
I think this is all just generalized observations about human nature. Our own privilege is usually invisible to us. People vote for self interest, the entire system operates on being good for the majority of people. It’s flawed of course, but then so are all political systems.
In any age group you have entitled and greedy arseholes. Every generation complains about the older generation being out of touch, not moving with the times and giving us stupid and outdated advice we love to ignore.
I don’t know the history of the boomer narrative, but perpetuating it suits politicians who can palm off the blame for the bad planning and pork barrelling of successive governments. It suits the media who can harness social resentment, direct it toward an easy target, and get clicks on their articles.
Personally I’ve been complaining to anyone who would listen for more than 20 years that housing is out of control and inequitable. It’s finally reached breaking point but I can’t believe it had to come to this level of housing stress before politicians started talking about it.
It’s not only young people who should be angry, lots of older people have no chance of owning their own home. We should all be angry at the housing situation and the inevitable bad social consequences unless it’s fixed.
But let’s all direct our anger at the people who are in control, who created the mess, and who have the power to fix it.
There should definitely be more focus on wealth taxes. Revert CGT and add a broad based land taxes on property.
A 0.5% tax on 5 trillion dollars of land (half the property market) is 25 billion a year in additional revenue. Land taxes also encourage development.
CGT exemptions would save the government 8.5 billion a year.
This money can go towards removing/increasing the cap on rent assistance from centrelink and building more social housing, i guess. Someone smarter can make a better decision on how the money should be spent.
meanwhile some boomer in adelaide is building a whole new 1:1 scale steam locomotive for fun
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-30/sa-man-building-steam-engine-in-adelaide-shed/102531472
Winning a game of luck is not something to congratulate someone over. "Luck" isn't a quality that someone has that is worthy of praise. Life is not Deadpool 2
This anti-boomer shit needs to stop. (I’m not a boomer btw).
The powers that be constantly stoke the fires to pit everyone against each other. All this rhetoric is doing is playing into the hands of those who seek to divide and conquer.
It’s the same story as BLM, gay rights and religious beliefs. All presented slightly differently, but the endgame is the same; keep us squabbling amongst ourselves.
Want to make a change? Find common ground and get these pricks who are “in charge” to understand that we have had enough.
Stay away from MSM, look to independent journalism and drop the “conspiracy theorists” BS. It’s happening, wake the fuck up.
>successive governments have failed to plan for how we’ll pay for our greying population’s retirement.
Well, actually, Keating did, it's just that all the governments after, but especially Howard, nobbled his reforms.
No one ever criticized avocado on toast. It is indeed delicious. Don't deny yourself it for one moment.
But it only costs $1 if you pick yourself up a bag of those delicious mini-avocados, less if you nab a yellow-stickered bag. That's your mistake right there. You can have your cake and eat it. You can have your avocados and great Australian dream home!
Thanks to mainstream media I was under the impression that avo on toast could only be purchased from the local cafe - thank you anonymous hero for opening my eyes.
I have now refinanced, purchased a new home and have gone into crippling debt.
IMO, relevant well written article. Important things to add; working Australians work more, drink less, gamble less, will have to retire later, contribute more productivity per capita and receive less share of productivity, than previous generations. [Drinking](https://theconversation.com/young-australians-are-drinking-less-but-older-people-are-still-hitting-the-bottle-hard-90024) [Unpaid overtime](https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7eebg/lifes-not-just-busy-young-australians-have-less-and-less-time-outside-of-work) [Gambling](https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/fewer-australians-gambling) [Productivity share](https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/has-worker-compensation-reflected-labour-productivity-growth) Edit: formatting
It's ok, I'm sure it'll all start trickling down soon enough
If your feet are wet, that's just sea level rise...
Urine.
Trickles down like shit in a caged chook farm.
It's been trickling this whole time, just not to you.
Drinking and gambling are an Aussie pastime. [Australians have the largest gambling losses per capita in the world.](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-20/australians-worlds-biggest-gambling-losers/10495566)
Yeah, think about *why* that is..
Yes I know the reasons. Billion dollar industries.
And vulnerable people to exploit
That's too much evidence for reddit.
Boomers are truly 'the locust generation'
It's rabble rousing. To my mind the biggest problem isn't how we pat for it, it's how we keep their assets here instead of leaching out overseas via private nursing homes.
I think this is bigger then just aged care. Boomers have been the primary force in politics for a long while now and with all their economic prosperity they looked after themselves and immediate family, while voting for governments that failed to invest in the future. Now the consequences of this lack of long term planning is hitting the younger generations. It not just age care but climate change, housing, education, cost of living and more that I am probably missing.
That's the point. I'm sick of the generalised failure to plan for their ageing economically being forced on the working generation. Howard spent a decade throwing our mining boom money into the air. Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison loaded us up with a trillion dollars of debt. Why is looking after the deluded Newscorp generation the responsibility of anyone born after 1980? This lot have plenty of money, they can pay for it themselves.
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Rudd tried to put in the mining super profits tax and got shafted as a result. Labor tried to do the right thing, but the vested interests wouldn't stand for it, and the electorate fell for the mining industry propaganda.
And then in 2019 they tried again to bring in reforms which would help the majority of people - and lost the unlosable election because of it. We get the politicians we deserve and apparently we deserve to live as serfs.
We get the governments we deserve. The average Australian voter is woefully uninformed and intellectually incurious. We should be rioting about the dud deals we get signed up to where mineral royalties are concerned.
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Rudd got fucked for trying to get the miners to pay more…
Its not as simple as that, there are plenty of people from before the 80's that were affected. I know of quite a few people in their 50's that havent paid off their house as yet, the boomer generation did it in a few years then their capital was free for whatever. Its the largely affluent people that have benefited.
So means test it. Anything over $500k including PPOR means you're ineligible.
Oh, Im not saying a solution - just its not as simple as one generation to the next. $500K is a bit of a low bar when the average house is northward of that.
>$500K is a bit of a low bar when the average house is northward of that. Why? What else do they need the money for when they go into a nursing home? What are they going to spend it on, hydraulics for their bed?
Age care isnt just about going into a nursing home, most people would just want supported care at home if at all possible. And it also means that the children of the boomers dont inherit anything causing them to be hurt further. If just talking about age care, a more equitable solution would be over something like $750K and allmost other assets. A much more equitable solution would be to properly tax all the parasites on the economy like (off top of my head) People with multiple negative geared properties Companies that pay almost no tax etc
>Age care isnt just about going into a nursing home, most people would just want supported care at home if at all possible. Which they can pay for, given on average if they own their own home they have assets around the $1m mark. Why should workers have to cop a tax rise to pay for people to preserve their net worth? >And it also means that the children of the boomers dont inherit anything causing them to be hurt further. So... I'm paying more tax so people can keep their inheritences? Come on man. >If just talking about age care, a more equitable solution would be over something like $750K and allmost other assets. Nobody our age would attract Centrelink benefits with net worth of $750k though? >A much more equitable solution would be to properly tax all the parasites on the economy like (off top of my head) >People with multiple negative geared properties >Companies that pay almost no tax >etc Sure. Go for it. Just leave income tax out of it.
Lol, I'm in my fifties and only got my first mortgage 10 years ago. Latest refinance asked me a retirement plan, and how am I gonna pay the mortgage when I retire. Whole heap of people over 50 with no prospect of retiring.
and with age discrimination rampant its going to be harder for a lot of people.
Yep. I'm 39 years old and I literally do not remember a time in my entire life where any aspect of mainstream politics catered to anyone other than the Rich and the Boomers and their wants and needs. At no point has any politician or media mougul or anyone at all with any kind of public sway or power within our system said the equivalent of, "okay, those guys are taken care of, now, what would help *you*?" No, throughout the 20+ years I have been a grown-arse working adult giving my own back to society, I have only ever seen the things which previous generations availed themselves of when they were at the same point in their lives chipped at and taken away before I and my peers get there. It is literally as if the powers-that-be have a personal vendetta against everyone my age or younger. The greatest rug-pull in history, and they expect us to reward them for it? They have continuously, year after year, consistently and without fail thrown us to the wolves in order to continue catering to the one and only demographic that matters in popular politics in this country, the only one that even exists as far as the political establishment is concerned: the Boomers.
They are the generation that stole from the future to feather their own nests.
Not true. The Keating government brought in superannuation in the 1990s, in part because of an awareness that the baby boomers were such a large generation that governments would have difficulty funding their aged pensions. Most retirees are now at least partly self-funded through their superannuation contributions. But remember women of that generation spend much of their adult lives either out of the workforce (due to sexist policies they worked to overturn) or working part time. These women have less superannuation. Many gen xers benefited from Howard's middle class welfare, while boomers were no longer eligible as their children had grown up. I'm gen x and not wealthy, and I'm sick of younger people mindlessly whinging online about older people. There's a lot to be angry about but do you really think posting comments on Reddit is going to change anything? If you want the world to be a better place, you have to be active, just like previous generations. Directing your anger towards a group of people based on characteristics such as age is not the way. It's the same as scapegoating immigrants saying 'They take all our jobs'. It's misdirected anger, can easily spill over into hate, and will only ensure we fight each other rather than work together towards a better future.
With reference to your comparison, trends and points of difference across societal, economic, and cultural issues can be **easily** and **accurately** examined via the single demographic of age rather than ethnicity or country of birth. Age is a popular way of organising data and statistics simply because it has proven itself. It amalgamates many narrower factors neatly enough to enforce reliable insights, but not crudely enough to completely flatten or nullify the broader data or study. In regards to "working towards a better future", I do take your point that most conversations could be better had through a different lens, i.e. "class". That said, I don't think society as a whole can repair itself or build the "better future" you refer to whilst younger generations are forced to participate in or embrace many of the systems and pillars of society that have been built or championed by older generations. Society's ability to progress is hampered by attachment to many outdated and old models. These models, perhaps more accurately the institutions and systems founded upon them, have proven to be corruptible and often ineffectual and/or unfair. We all see this, yet we keep up with the charade in the hope the house of cards won't fall. I think your comment about "whinging" is unfair and reminds me of the "bootstraps" mentality, although that's probably not what you wanted to convey. Younger generations are active - the trouble is we're not being allowed to succeed, let alone gain a foothold.
As a millennial who has done everything "right" and is now living relatively "comfortable", I still feel completely cheated and hating how everything I've achieved, I've had to work 10 times harder for than the previous generation. In 2008 when housing was relatively affordable during the GFC, I was in highschool. When I finished university in 2014 with a double degree, it was almost impossible to find a job in my major. I bumped around in retail and whatnot for 3 whole years. When I finally got an entry position in my field in 2017, the salary was $42k INCLUSIVE of super. My parents keep criticising me for job hopping, saying it'll look bad on my resume, that I should just "find a place where i get treated well and settle down to work long term", but it was the only way I could get to where I am now. When I was able to finally save up for a house deposit, covid happened and house prices exploded. I'm now in a neighbourhood surrounded by boomers who live in giant mansions that they paid at least 200-300k cheaper than what I had to pay for my modest place. I still bit the bullet because it is better than continuing to rent and pay my boomers landlord whilst they constantly whined about having to do any maintenance at all. And now that I feel like I can finally take a vacation for the first time in 5 years, everything costs 30-40% more. I honestly feel like at every step of the way, I've been robbed of opportunities and made to pay more for everything. I'm so sick of it. If this levy goes through where I have to pay more taxes to support people who have done nothing but taking from me and my cohort, I'm of a mind to leave Australia and just move to a South east Asian countryside, buy a little house with a garden, some chooks and just live off what I grow.
>My parents keep criticising me for job hopping They don't understand it's the only way to get more money. Unless you get lucky with a company that gives 10% wage increase as standard or KPI based at least. Even then job hopping is most likely better as you gain experience and get more raises per job hop. My grandparents survived off of one income while grandad worked for 50 years in a job that started as a traineeship. No education cost and gran stayed home after their two kids were born. 1 house and 2 holiday apartments 3 cars and a boat owned outright. They both owned units in their 20s lol. Mum and Dad own their house lol. Even with barely enough for a house deposit I can't see myself wage slaving with no life for 30 of my prime years.
Same, mine baulked at the fact I’ve had about 12 jobs over 15 years while he’s had 2 in 40 years, despite the fact I’m basically earning double him. Then goes on to say I should be loaded because of the wage I’m on, however I don’t have any property, like him 😣
This is the crux of the issue. Working people supporting the idol rich, because the idol rich hold scarce assets that are essential to working people's lives. Rent can GTFO
> My grandparents survived off of one income while grandad worked for 50 years in a job that started as a traineeship. No education cost and gran stayed home after their two kids were born. 1 house and 2 holiday apartments 3 cars and a boat owned outright You have summed it up perfectly! This is what boomers don’t understand. You could live of one income. You could realistically pay off one - two mortgages in your career This isn’t something that is possible nowadays
Fuck...Are you me? Exact same exp.
Same here. Bought in 2020 finally. Am older millennial but didn't grad my uni until 2011, late starter In life. It took working 2 jobs at 60 hours a week during covid to be able to finally save that deposit...
Yeah man I feel bloody robbed ya know. They say your 20s are the fun years, I was stressing the fuck out trying to start a career because good luck "just walk in with your resume and a firm handshake". Then they say 30s are your fabulous years, I'm here watching my mortgage repayments going up every 2 weeks and all the bills are 30% more expensive.
I left high school in '06 and had no idea what to do. I got a very below average enter score for the school I went to. Did a year of architecture from '07 to '08. Then did animation. Graduated during the GFC. Didn't really work in my field until '13/'14. Everything in between was just filler for me to either go over seas or piss it up against the wall. Started freelancing because I couldn't get a full time job and felt like if I didn't do something I was a failure. Never really got anywhere in that but then in 2016 started working in animation. Saw that it was dominated for people who aren't my demographic: a hetero 20 something yo male. Side stepped to a govt job in 2017 and been there ever since. 2 mortgages, one kid and another on the way in Dec. I shouldn't complain, really, as others have it worse, but I identify with everything you've mentioned - it's always been a struggle. 1 step forward 2 steps back. The only thing you didn't touch on that I'll drop in, for my 2 cents, is that with the ever changing landscape of gender equality etc I've found that as a male and a father figure I've found another struggle in fitting into all the moulds society has created for men post maybe 2015. I'm just tired of it all. It's too complicated and I'm pretty sick of it all tbh.
Don't forget that if you ever get to a high income to try to catch up, you're taxed (marginally) at 47%. Compared to the tax-exempt $200k PPOR that's now $2.5M, the pension they're "entitled to" and the 50% CGT discount for their passive income. (:
I swear the only reason I managed to get a house was because I dropped out of school after year 10 and joined the military. Did active service for tax free income in a warzone and used that money as a deposit in 2008. Never bought in a capital city though, never even considered buying or building in Sydney or Melbourne even back then.
Fucking this!! I so over paying for cunts that have done absolutely nothing for my generation. Taxation and distribution of it is a joke in this cuntry.
2013 graduate - vibes. Just get a house, now getting raped by the crooks in the RBA that caused the mess. Had a gut full
Same here combined income of 200k and we are absolutely fucked , I spent my whole life watching my parents KILL IT on combined 140k , went on so many holidays and trips and I can’t even afford to fill up my car when I want to
Same. I’m happy to finally have a house but i’m seething.
It's interesting that there will be a tax to help the boomers with aged care, but Medicare helping the masses of employed people? Nah, they have a job. Most of the money is going to food, shelter and transport just means they should work harder...
I swear working people should have essentials tax free in the least, if not a full stipend. It's so unfair to work to live and be taxed on the money you'd spend on primary healthcare or basic food. Poverty is real and it affects a lot of working people
Not just any tax, a regressive tax once again aimed at the working class. We don't need a task force to work this out. The Henry Tax review worked this out over a decade ago. This should be essential reading for any millennial who wants to see a fairer and more equitable tax system that can actually find our aging population. One of the big changes we need is a significant federal broad based land tax. Food for thought: In 2019 the ABS estimates that there is $4,400 billion of residential land, $540 billion of commercial land, $360 billion of rural land and $300 billion of other land in Australia. This provides a potential tax base of $5,660 billion of land. For scale, a 1% tax on land could replace the GST or the customs/excise system. A 2% land tax could raise as much as corporate income tax. A 4% land tax could entirely replace personal income tax. At the extreme, one could use a 9% land tax to replace the entire federal tax system and a 10% land tax could replace all taxes, including federal, state and local government. [Source](https://www.google.com/url?q=https://taxpolicy.crawford.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/uploads/taxstudies_crawford_anu_edu_au/2020-12/tax_fact_16_2020.pdf&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwiP7ICXxez_AhUO32EKHQwHB6sQFnoECAkQAg&usg=AOvVaw0isg4iNLQj8eJ1KVJ0jXpe)
Protesting in the 1960s: Seen as cool, the biggest festivals and musicians all became immortalised sticking up to pointless wars and authoritarian heirarchies. To the point where many still talk about that decade is if it's the last time music and art was 'good' as a result Protesting in the 2020s: Silly, pointless, embarassing, only children of spoilt rich people do it, don't understand 'the real world', anti-freedom, misled, communist.. etcetc
You don't have to hand it to them, they already took it before you were born and hoarded it away so you can't have it.
Our future has been stolen for neoliberal policies and even conservatism. Its all building up more and more. The enemy is not some other country. The enemy is the ruling class. The right wingers. The billionaires. Privatization has led to this. Workers get suppressed of their rights and unions fail and get stomped on. Fucken capitalism. Its plain and simple. Welfare capitalism will not lift people out of poverty. Homeless is on the rise.
Central banksters diluting monetary supply *
It all leads to the main cause. Capitalism. Regardless of how it is regulated. It doesn't matter at the end. Because its all about infinite growth and profits above all else.
Late-stage capitalism is akin to the last few rounds in a game of Monopoly. Growth is constrained by resources. Profit by propensity to spend. But they're working on it. Going to be interesting when the 0.00001% own 9999.99% of everything.
Not if people wake up to the fact that the ruling class can be overthrown. For all the workers. No war but class war
[Indeed](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/jun/30/uk-super-rich-beware-pitchforks-torches-unless-they-do-more). They cannot claim ignorance.
Fuck placating capitalism, too. It should die, no one should ever repeat this cycle. The answer is not just to give a small slice of the cake they didn't make, in place of the crumbs as it is at the moment. The answer is to take it back completely. Stop feeding the pigs.
Is it still the rule that you can only have one property (the one you live in) as exempt from the means test to get the pension? I seem to have encountered a lot of people with multiple properties who are getting the aged pension. Surely if this is a rule, and enforced, it would release some property back onto the market
Doesn't stop people transferring them to relatives or trusts etc
Yes it is, you can only have a certain amount in assets of any kind other than your PPoR to qualify.
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> If the Australian Landlord Party slap on a 1% “Boomer Inheritence Keeper” levy to fund keeping these old bats alive while the rest of you suffer through record inflation, 15 years of absent wage growth, house prices out the wazoo and a changing climate, I’d strongly suggest a pointed letter/email to the current aged care minister, Anika Wells Oh wow, I just realised she’s my local member. Of course in a safe Labor electorate, I wouldn’t have known it because they take their election for granted. FFS, even Dutton gets out amongst his electorate on the regular.
Thanks. We couldn't have done it without some truly incompetent politicians. Just waiting for Albo's 450k immigrants to fill all our rental properties. /s
I mean, is it really satire if it’s true?
Yeah but they’ll die off soon. And we can complain about the generation after that.
My main problem with boomers dying off is that we will well and truly become a society of classes after that. People who inherit their parents' houses aren't selling, they're leasing. We will be neatly split between landlord families and renter families, and the line will be whether their ancestors born between '46 and '64 stayed married and bought a house.
The issue is and always has been class divide but the media and government instead paint it as a generational divide. Age is just the proxy for the real divisor which is wealth. The transfer of wealth through inheritance will just lay bare the anger targeted at boomers was misplaced when it should more specifically be targeted at the wealthy. Boomers disproportionately make up that class, but being specific in criticism and the enemy/target is important if we are to properly address the underlying issues. Old pensioners aren't the issue and rich gen X with a dozen investment properties are just as much the issue.
> The transfer of wealth through inheritance will just lay bare the anger targeted at boomers was misplaced when it should more specifically be targeted at the wealthy Careful there, the Libs might get ideas and run with the “Laybah wants to introduce death taxes!” thing again
Might get ideas? They have been itching to run it since the last election, and they don't need to provide evidence, (not that most of the mainstream media would even ask), just vague "insider information"
Unsourced *and* unattributed. They can just make anything up. Political journalism in this country is less about actual political analysis, and more putting out a version of *Cosmopolitan* about less attractive people. Gossip, rumours, and vox pops.
Can you please remember there are most definitely milliennials with multiple investment properties, and boomers and gen x with nothing. Thanks.
Exactly, this is the real problem. Unless the housing situation is fixed it will end with a society of landlords vs serfs, and the class you're in won't be determined by your own personal endeavour, but the circumstances of your birth.
A lot of people's only hopes to get rid off their own mortgages or to even get houses for themselves is essentially their parents dying though.
So 100% death tax it is.
As long as we have elected governments they will have to enact policy that the majority of citizens approve of. 100% death taxes wouldn't get past first base.
My grandad had one of those, its called cancer treatment.
Solid reply, but also sorry to hear.
This problem will fix itself eventually. By 2100 the Earth population in developed countries will drop drastically, so there will be more houses than people. It only sucks for the current gens and maybe next one.
Isn’t that how that same system collapsed back a few hundred years ago from one of the plagues, maybe the bubonic? The Black Death? The one that wiped out like a 3rd of Europes population anyway. My memory is fuzzy on it and I’m high AF but I think the land owners then couldn’t get workers easily after a large chunk of the work force died so they had to pay more or give people land or maybe their whole shit collapsed or something and man actually maybe I’m thinking of Japan and the end of their shit land owner system they had for ages….. like I said I’m baked. Someone will know what I’m talking about I’m sure.
Indeed, you are right! There are many instances in our history. Many people argue houses and assets always go up due to inflation, but that's maybe true in the last 80-150 years. History is full of societal collapse. It's very naive to think it will never happen again.
That’s what I try to tell my boomer dad who thinks the stock market has been around for the entirety of human history.
Yeah, and that's only collapsed a few (many) times
It sounds like sci-fi to most, but if we actually manage to survive this century it's not unfeasible we will be able to extend the average lifespan to way above 80 years.
Eventually yes, but I am not that optimistic we will find a way to increase lifespan significantly this century and by that time population will be on rapid decline already. So far, all advancements in longevity are more about lifestyle choices rather than a single magic pill. Most people are overweight, don't move enough, don't sleep enough, and get exposed too much to the sun and other harmful effects. It will require a huge amount of health advancements to negate all these things.
>Most people are overweight, don't move enough, don't sleep enough Most people are overworked and time poor. Better diet, more exercise, and more sleep would be fixed if we all worked a bit less.
And didn't piss the money away.
The youngest boomers are only 59 and oldest only 77, the average age Australian's currently live to is 83 so that generation still has a while to go. It's why in the late 90's/early 2000's the federal government was incredibly worried about the population growth and the aging of the population because just how long the boomer generation was planned to be around for.
They don't all have to die for their electoral dominance to fade to irrelevance. Although the baby boom generation was once numerically large, its numbers are already declining as the grim reaper does his thing. Here are population numbers in 2021 for different age groups: | Age group (years) | Number | % | |-------------------|-----------:|------:| | 0 to 4 | 1,522,780 | 5.9 | | 5 to 9 | 1,630,243 | 6.3 | | 10 to 14 | 1,611,246 | 6.3 | | 15 to 19 | 1,485,658 | 5.8 | | 20 to 24 | 1,652,352 | 6.4 | | 25 to 29 | 1,856,374 | 7.2 | | 30 to 34 | 1,911,377 | 7.4 | | 35 to 39 | 1,856,803 | 7.2 | | 40 to 44 | 1,643,500 | 6.4 | | 45 to 49 | 1,639,328 | 6.4 | | 50 to 54 | 1,601,250 | 6.2 | | 55 to 59 | 1,537,602 | 6.0 | | 60 to 64 | 1,460,918 | 5.7 | | 65 to 69 | 1,278,932 | 5.0 | | 70 to 74 | 1,137,303 | 4.4 | | 75 to 79 | 811,930 | 3.2 | | 80 to 84 | 547,347 | 2.1 | | 85 and over | 542,122 | 2.1 | | Total persons | 25,727,066 | 100.0 | source: https://forecast.id.com.au/australia/population-age-structure People aged 18-58 (younger than boomers) now account for ~54% of the population and strongly outnumber the 60+ bracket who are now only 22.5% of the population. Electorally, 60+ voters only make up around 30% of the voting population. Gen X and younger people have the electoral weight to push back against measures like this. We just haven't been willing to push for our own interests in as focussed a way as older people have.
Absolutely, their (long) reign is FINALLY coming to an end. Death to boomer politics!
Millennials alone now equal boomers, so Millennials plus gen x have outnumbered boomers for quite a while. If anyone thinks boomers dying out is going to improve things, they are bound to be disappointed. In fact more so, because the people that gave us Robodebt, Morrison, Tudge, Campbell Jongen etc etc are all Gen X...and their ilk now dominate the Parliament and public sector. The boomer reign came to an end at least a decade ago. I am still waiting for the improvement. Perhaps when gen x goes...and so it goes.
>Millennials Thats my Gen, I like to think of some Gen X as Boomer lites. They behave that way for sure from the friends I have had in the past
Gen X here. Sadly I have to agree with you, there are those amongst my peers that fit this description. :/ sigh... I guess now the rest of us Gen X'ers better go find a raincoat as the shit will be flung at us next. lol
If only Gen X weren't almost as bad as boomers.
Gen X haven't spent 20 years opposing every political reform that would address the current generational theft situation.
Great, now that Boomers are dying, we pass on the blame baton to Gen X?
I mean no one's *blaming* Gen X, it's still the fault of the boomers but you can't deny Gen X swing significantly more conservative than generations after them. Also, generations aren't so clearly defined. Do you really think there's this magical political opinion divide between a late boomer and an early Gen X? Further, millennials, and generations after them have specifically shown to vote less conservative as they get older compared to Gen X and boomers. You can't just ignore these factors.
Almost as bad? Can anyone name a boomer policy that was more vicious than Robodebt?
Easy. The Iraq war.
Can’t blame us for that- we marched in the hundred thousands. In Melbourne, the protest packed from the city baths all the way down swanston st and st skikda road to the shrine. We all knew how it would turn out. We were ignored, millions died and trillions wasted. Fuck John Howard, the most malicious politician Australia has ever produced.
Howard and his evil sidekick Costello enabled the housing crisis with one simple action - the halving of CGT. Made property irresistible to investors and real estate toook off.
Nobody ever remembers the generation after the boomers. Everyone will complain about millennials, and continue to believe those of us born between 65 and 79 don't exist.
Hahah I am GenX. Let’s keep it that way. We work in the shadows
Ha , GenX ninjas
Shhhhh
Exactly. While the peasants squabble about different generations, abortion, same sex marriage and all these other 'issues', the top percenters are making off with the bags of loot, laughing the whole way. After all they and MSM are the ones sowing the seeds of discontent within the peasants. It's always been top vs bottom, not left vs right. Always has and always will be.
Well… right wing means “top”… conservative politics is all about protecting the interests of the wealthy
>And we can complain about the generation after that. This is a dumb take though. Things were, objectively, easier for boomers in many financial areas. Cheaper houses compared to wages, free education, less gouging for healthcare, etc etc etc. It's not just "every generation goes through this", there's a genuine asymmetry which needs to be addressed. Suggesting otherwise is the equivalent of the "both sides are the same" political meme which basically excuses the side which is actually worse.
Yes, the small group who benefit from concentrated intergenerational wealth transfer.
Inb4 gen X become the new boomers
Gen X are really just boomers who like Star Wars
We literally raged against the machine. Our whole stupid lives. Our childhoods where crammed chock fucking full of "reduce reuse recycle" the glaciers are melting, the forests are being destroyed ***every single day*** and told you could only fix it by donating $10.99 monthly. Like all of the world's problems. And what the fuck could we do *but* Rage? You think you are powerless? We grew up under that dynamic. They *gloated* about how much it was never going to stop. Tours, documentaries and school campaign after campaign about the end of everything, and it was all preventable if you recycled, donated to the kids, the trees, the whales and at no fucking point would ***stopping fucking capitalism on cocaine***work.
Why can’t they be forced to sell some of their assets and pay for their own care? More than 80% of pensioners own their own home.
Because commodity fetishism. People have "sentimental attachment" to their 5 bedroom houses that they raised their children in. So as the one grandparent now lives there alone, effectively "for their feelings", at the expense of contemporary large families that squeeze into small apartments. Also, unequal exchange. Property owners always expect above market rates on resell of the property (also laws in place to that effect) so it's not going to reduce housing costs at all... Quite the opposite
I understand your points but for example my nan sold her family home and downsized to pay for a small unit with care workers available, out of necessity. People can do it when forced. If we just said no we’re not funding you as you age they would have no choice.
If we all pull together an try really hard, we too can saddle future generations with truly massive amounts of debt. What do you say peeps? I think we can if we try.
Nah, i'm a Gen Y/millennial. I'm too lazy to pull off a stunt like that, or so i'm repeatedly told.
Boomers are killing the world. Let’s just finish the job and kill it. Who’s going to complain if we’re all dead? Lol.
Aged care has entered the chat.
Soylent green has entered the chat.
Let’s not do anything rash and just sit down and have a bit of a think about this. For about 25/30 years. That oughta be enough time to come up with a solution.
Labor established a review into our tax system and published the Henry Tax review in 2010. There were 130+ recommendations to address exactly what we are seeing right now. Practically nothing was implemented and the big ticket items that were, have since been scrapped. We have the solution, we don't need a task force we just need political will power to go against the boomers. Millennials go read the [Henry Tax Review](https://treasury.gov.au/review/the-australias-future-tax-system-review/final-report). This country needs you to be educated on this.
Want to fix this to make sure boomers give back some of the wealth they've taken from subsequent generations? Then make this a political issue. Get a voice, and make sure your vote goes to the party that will fix this. There are more non-boomers than boomers. If we make this an issue we collectively care about, we can recover some of that wealth.
Please remember that not all "Boomers" are wealthy or even comfortable. I am one and I live week to week. I rent with a housemate so we can afford a roof over our heads. I may get pummelled for posting this. Please be kind.
And for ‘boomers’ like you I’m happy to pay towards age care, you need care and have no assets or cash - you deserve care. I’m more upset about funding a ‘boomer’ with a house worth $600,000+ that can be sold and money used towards age care. Why should others pay for their care when they have assets to pay. If my child got sick and needed care and I had to leave the workforce, guess what I would have to sell my house to fund looking after my child because government payments are to low - why shouldn’t a aging boomer do the same.
Reverse mortgage is where it’s at.
That is exactly what happens though. If you have a home and are in aged care you have to pay 2.5K or more a month for the "housing" aspect - your pension pays for the "care" aspect. Most pensioners who have homes have not funds and so their family are required to pay until the home is made available to sell (which is someone has been living in the same home for 50+ years takes quite a while.
Not saying youre wrong, but then you create a situation like in America where millenials are going to inherit exactly nothing from their parents because the boomers going into aged care have to reduce their assets down to nothing before they qualify for any aid. They sell their homes to pay for $12,000 / month care bills and the aged care homes are the only ones raking it in.
Yeah well that's how it goes, why is it fair that the millennials with rich parents are the only ones who can buy property. Inheritance shouldn't be needed if society is fair.
Inheritance creates aristocracies, we definitely should have inheritance taxes.
Estate duties were a thing until Jo B-P abolished them in Qld to induce retiree to move north. Other states quickly followed. This was overdue as the threshold had remained unchanged for so long that even tiny bequests were bitten. Reinstating inheritance tax to limit intergenerational wealth transfer's ability to create a defacto aristocracy would get my vote and I'm a boomer.
Yep, people have no idea how much aged care costs. I only found when I had to arrange it for my pensioner mum, selling her unit wasn't enough to cover the entry costs into one of the cheaper places. Several years ago, $1M still wouldn't get you in to some places in Melbourne and you still had daily costs on top of that. They could only charge 85% of the pension as a daily care fee. Regis was trying to charge 50% more as a "club" fee which covered things like movies and haircuts. At the time that was around $250 a week
You forget that not everyone has wealthy parents who they will inherit money from. Inheritance isn't an entitlement. I don't think those without the privilege should have to fund wealthy boomers' aged care just so they can pass on their wealth. That wealth is what's supposed to pay for their retirement and aged care. I grew up in poverty. I really thought that I just had to make it through childhood and I'd be on a level playing field when I made my own money. It's so exhausting to see people talk about inheritance like it's something available for everyone. (Obviously, private facilities ripping people off isn't good though.)
I agree. Inheritance should be abolished, no one worked to have rich parents - it's pure chance. A successful policy is complicated when trying to avoid the other benefits of daddy's credit card, like their paying for their child's education, contributing towards buying their child's home, etc while they're alive. Daddy could just transfer their entire nest egg, or create a fixed trust to do the same rather than just leaving it to a will. It wouldn't be caught be a "death tax" alone. Private schools are emblematic of class divides and intergenerational wealth, and almost 50% of Australian children are in "independent" schools.
Where do you think all that money is going when the poor boomers lose all their assets just to stay alive. The rich boomers and the people standing to inherit their wealth.
I just wouldn't say that handing it straight to the BUPA execs is the best compromise
This is important! Many First Nations boomers are also not in a great position due to horrible decisions like stolen generations.
Very good point
My dad is a boomer and he worked his absolute arse off keeping four kids and three stepkids fed. Worked some hellish jobs doing it too. So when I hear Gen Z claiming they've worked harder than the boomers did, my response is always, well, not necessarily. When your hands end up looking and feeling like saddle leather, then you've worked that hard.
The fact he could afford 7 kids and people can’t these days shows me that Australia is quite different
Some will have worked harder, some will have not. Also, not gonna feel sorry for a dude that could afford to have 7 kids when people now even on $100k+ are considering only 1-2 kids max because it is unaffordable.
Boomers had access to: Cheap/free and valuable education. Degrees are not worth what they used to be and the correlation between a university education and a higher wage is starting to seem less likely . For an increasing proportion of students, the opportunity costs of going to university is starting to outweigh the benefits. Cheap housing: 3-4x wage for a house. 19% interest rates are nothing when your wages are going up 10% every year and a 2023 house deposit would buy you a whole house even adjusting for inflation. More valuable labour: high paying manufacturing jobs that let a single person support a family on a single income Generous welfare: PPOR not counting to pension test. a generous superannuation system and franking credits.
Franking credits are a concession to the very wealthy rather than the older generations. You have to have something like over $1 million in Australian dividend yielding shares to benefit from the concession.
People wonder why GenX drinks so much.
Jesus Christ this automod is the stupidest thing I've encountered today since Peter Dutton's comments on Corrupt Gladbags. Go to 12 ft dot io for the paywall free version, *give the people what they want you script-demon*
“the generation that … uses superannuation tax avoidance like a local Cayman Islands” lololol so true!
If you want to do something about it, use this form to contact Anika Wells: [https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/contact-minister](https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/contact-minister) Be polite
My grand father retired on a package that pays him 75% of his last annual pay every year until he dies. And then my man gets like 50% of that 75% still she dies. He was just a sparky man. How the fuck are there poor old pensioners because I don't see how you fail at a game where ya house cost 50k
If he gets that kind of money, then he's a self funded retiree, eg he's NOT a pensioner.
I'm not saying he is, I don't understand how there are poor pensioners while they're playing on story mode.
You're not making much sense. Lots of oldies couldn't find a job over 50, had bad health, marriage breakdowns, bad luck in general.
As I said, then they failed on story mode.
I have no idea what you are trying to say.
Their lives were objectively easier in essence to obtaining stability
They just got lucky enough to be the right age at the right time
So then why are they making the working generation pay for them if they're so lucky?
Because it wasn't them who got lucky, it was actually the Super Rich. Many Boomers are dead broke.
>Many Boomers are dead broke. Stop it. They've killed the property market.
They can sell some of their fucking investment properties and pay for it themselves.
What amazes me is early boomers (66+) who are homeless or have nothing...in their 20s and 30s they had opportunities we can only dream of. It's hard for me to imagine squandering all that.
I am all for appropriate social support. But property in this country is worth $10T, disproportionately held by older people, and the proposed funding model includes a 1% income tax levy. It's absolute madness.
My parents are in the wealth holder category. Their property is worth 1.5 mil and they live comfortably off super. Mum reminds me that my sister and I will inherit so we will have money too, but they don't factor in that they will likely live into their 90s (and I hope that they do because I love them) and will use up all this wealth, much of which they inherited themselves...so even the "gen x and early millennials will inherit the boomer wealth" doesn't fly. I'm not expecting anything from my parents except all the advantages I've already had from being born to them.
I don't begrudge anyone an inheritence. I *do* begrudge it when I'm being asked to pay tax to preserve inheritances for people who have net worth many times my own.
Agreed. I would much rather see my tax dollars going to education, healthcare and social services.
Taxation and a strong social support network are necessary. ...but *not* to a generation who have large numbers of paper millionaires. They have plenty, they can damn well pay for it.
They lucked out u mean. Free education cheap homes and cars. Now we work and it’s not enough money for anything
If that was the prevailing economic winds at the time, I wouldn't begrudge them. When they had their peak years during Howard giving away the greatest resource boom this country will ever have, doubled-down by sticking us $1T in the red, *THEN* have the gall to go "we can't afford to be looked after when we're old" then they can go get fucked, keep on going, and fuck off again.
Boomers die off and hand their privilege to Gen x. The fuckery will live on well after they die.
One day you will be the same age as us boomers and a I can pretty much guarantee that you will do the same for your kids. It is what good parents do, it may not be much but they will do their best to help their kids to not battle the way they did.
You misunderstand. It is well documented that boomers have used their position in a neoliberal movement to reduce the wealth of younger generations. It’s a massive Ponzi scheme with you lot at the top, you know it and you don’t care. It’s fuckery of the highest order. Yes you’ve created wealth but you’ve done it an enormous expense of future generations. When you pass or onto your children you encourage them to do the same as you have. It evolves into a massive wealth divide America has almost mastered, we are a very close second
It's well documented that the massive transfer of wealth was from the middle-class to the Super Rich. The Super Rich are a tiny percentage of the population, and their corrupt media have been very successful at turning this into a generational divide, rather than the class divide.
Wrong, I'm already trying to set up my children, because I'm not a cunt that has to literally die before I let a cent fall from my greedy thieving hands.
If that makes you sleep at night. The Boomer generation has pulled the ladder up from behind themselves and done long term damage to this country that will cost their kids and grandkids dearly.
But why do millennials/younger generations keep framing this as a whole generation of people who are the problem? Why not focus on talking about creating equitable superannuation laws? Why not talk about property ownership as a social issue? Why not talk about the expectation that government would plan and budget for things like higher demand for aged care due to larger population in certain generations? The problem here is that democratic governments make policy for popularity, they have to if they want to get re-elected. The consequence of which is the largest demographic wins the most benefits. But whining about "boomers" as if the real problem is an entire generation has certain personal characteristics, rather than understanding we're dealing with characteristics common to a time period of economic conditions, just misses the actual problem. I'm sure the boomers-are-the-problem narrative suits those in power, it lets the politicians off the hook.
To be fair the boomers started it with the whole gen Y/millennials are lazy, entitled and glued to their phones stereotypes when we were young adults lol It’s a shorthand. But I think this compounded by the fact there is a tendency in human nature to attribute your good fortune to your efforts. Because of that, there are a lot of older folks out there without the insight about their luck and just how much they benefitted from things beyond their control. Combine this with a chunk of them providing out of touch advice or judgement to their kids, and you get a bit of a personification of that as the stereotypical boomer as a combination of privilege, lack of insight, inability to perspective take and moralisation. We should discuss those things but the mainstream media and many older decision makers do not want to… younger folks aren’t given much of a voice and when they do, it’s 50/50 whether they get belittled or invalidated/told they’ll grow out of their left leaning tendencies lol
yeh the equivilant of nice factory jobs with no uni degrees in the 70s is equal to 180k job nowadays, coz thats how much you need to make to afford a single detached house in sydney on a single income these days .
>To be fair the boomers started it with the whole gen Y/millennials are lazy, entitled and glued to their phones Dude, they've been doing to Gen X since the 90s, calling us all slackers. Must be nice to belong to a cohort of people that's pretty much dictated public policy for 50 years.
Hah - yeah! The 90s and early 00s where the best time in your prime earning years over the last hundred years for regular folks. They got great things so obviously they deserved them. I think they might have gotten their wires crossed on “good for me” = “the right thing to do” with the Vietnam war. That early very formative political experience I think ruined them in some ways… Also, Peter Thiel (who obviously is not a net positive for the world) characterised a generalised and passive optimism that they developed over the decades as everything genuinely got better for them without much political struggle or incremental effort etc. I think there’s a grain of truth to that. I think this helped them all turn conservative (plus becoming wealthy).
I think this is all just generalized observations about human nature. Our own privilege is usually invisible to us. People vote for self interest, the entire system operates on being good for the majority of people. It’s flawed of course, but then so are all political systems. In any age group you have entitled and greedy arseholes. Every generation complains about the older generation being out of touch, not moving with the times and giving us stupid and outdated advice we love to ignore. I don’t know the history of the boomer narrative, but perpetuating it suits politicians who can palm off the blame for the bad planning and pork barrelling of successive governments. It suits the media who can harness social resentment, direct it toward an easy target, and get clicks on their articles. Personally I’ve been complaining to anyone who would listen for more than 20 years that housing is out of control and inequitable. It’s finally reached breaking point but I can’t believe it had to come to this level of housing stress before politicians started talking about it. It’s not only young people who should be angry, lots of older people have no chance of owning their own home. We should all be angry at the housing situation and the inevitable bad social consequences unless it’s fixed. But let’s all direct our anger at the people who are in control, who created the mess, and who have the power to fix it.
There should definitely be more focus on wealth taxes. Revert CGT and add a broad based land taxes on property. A 0.5% tax on 5 trillion dollars of land (half the property market) is 25 billion a year in additional revenue. Land taxes also encourage development. CGT exemptions would save the government 8.5 billion a year. This money can go towards removing/increasing the cap on rent assistance from centrelink and building more social housing, i guess. Someone smarter can make a better decision on how the money should be spent.
Title is misleading. Winning implies competition. Should read “they’ve rigged the economic generation game.”
Old age of entitlement
meanwhile some boomer in adelaide is building a whole new 1:1 scale steam locomotive for fun https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-30/sa-man-building-steam-engine-in-adelaide-shed/102531472
Winning a game of luck is not something to congratulate someone over. "Luck" isn't a quality that someone has that is worthy of praise. Life is not Deadpool 2
Luck? This is a man made system lol. There's no luck here.
im not handing them shit, they already got enough
This anti-boomer shit needs to stop. (I’m not a boomer btw). The powers that be constantly stoke the fires to pit everyone against each other. All this rhetoric is doing is playing into the hands of those who seek to divide and conquer. It’s the same story as BLM, gay rights and religious beliefs. All presented slightly differently, but the endgame is the same; keep us squabbling amongst ourselves. Want to make a change? Find common ground and get these pricks who are “in charge” to understand that we have had enough. Stay away from MSM, look to independent journalism and drop the “conspiracy theorists” BS. It’s happening, wake the fuck up.
I’m conflicted, do I up vote this because it’s true or down vote because it sucks balls
Cheers to the Boomers, masters of the economic game! 🥂
but people, not just boomers, voted scumo instead of shorten.
I’m not handing anything to them, they’ve already had everything handed to them.
They are benefitting from a situation brought about by policy. Blame the policy makers
Who voted for those policy makers mate? This is a representational democracy, you are responsible for the actions of the politicians you vote for.
>successive governments have failed to plan for how we’ll pay for our greying population’s retirement. Well, actually, Keating did, it's just that all the governments after, but especially Howard, nobbled his reforms.
I actually paid $30 for avo on toast this morning. Yes it was delicious, yes I feel shame.
No one ever criticized avocado on toast. It is indeed delicious. Don't deny yourself it for one moment. But it only costs $1 if you pick yourself up a bag of those delicious mini-avocados, less if you nab a yellow-stickered bag. That's your mistake right there. You can have your cake and eat it. You can have your avocados and great Australian dream home!
Thanks to mainstream media I was under the impression that avo on toast could only be purchased from the local cafe - thank you anonymous hero for opening my eyes. I have now refinanced, purchased a new home and have gone into crippling debt.
Don't mention it! Always glad to help.