If I told you someone, especially a politician, wasn’t acting their age, you might safely assume that’s a bad thing. What childish behaviour have they indulged in this time, you might ask.
But this week, it’s a compliment. The fountain of youth still evades us, and there’s no great anti-ageing commission – AAC, not to be confused with the ACCC – on the way. But the focus in Canberra has switched, at least for a minute, to something that’s flown under the radar for too long.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers on Thursday – at last – said something a lot of us, especially young people, have lived and known well: “there is an element of intergenerational unfairness in our economy”.
Tax as it stands now stacks the cards against young people.Credit: Jessica Hromas
The culprit? A three-letter word that sends most of us to sleep, but here it is: tax. No one really likes it, but there’s a collective understanding – served with a hearty side of grumbling – that it’s a necessary part of our economy.
A good tax system, however, is supposed to be fair. And it’s meant to make our country fairer, too.
Tax as it stands now stacks the cards against young people: the very people we need to be supporting to become the backbone of our economy – including hospitals, aged care homes, and schools – as the rest of the country ages.
What’s unfair about our tax system? Didn’t generations before us get put through the same wringer? Well, not really.
If our economy is a board game, the rules have changed. So has the starting point for our newest players.
Young people today graduate university or TAFE with bigger study debts than their parents, face house prices more than 16 times the average household income (rather than nine times the average household income 25........