4 thoughts on “The intergenerational report will try to scare us about ageing. It’s an old fear, and wrong”
Agree with all points. We have to ask ourselves why the federal government is fear-mongering with the intergenerational report on ageing while it is suppressing the report on the security dangers of climate change. The answer is they highlight what they want to act on and hide what they do not want to act on. They want to act on faux intergenerational concerns because this facilitates the arguments for a low taxes, low welfare regime. The don’t to act on the dangers of climate change because this would require a higher taxes, higher welfare regime and more market/financial regulation and state action. Policy is being made only for the rich oligarchs and powerful corporations, not for the masses and not for the environment.
Planning for 2040 or 2050 is so much nonsense anyway. Matters will be so radically different by then we have no way of projecting trends so far (other than projecting the purely physical system trends if we fail to take key actions).
Better would be to plan to be still alive and functional, as a nation, by 2030 or 2035. We have a chance of projecting alternative social policy outcome scenarios that far with some accuracy. We should also commit to major goals, final goals not interim goals, by those dates in matters from climate change action to social housing.
The powers-that-be think they can keep procrastinating and prevaricating on the key issues. It’s half past too late for that. Let us hope something positive happens soon.
The big intergenerational issues revolve around housing security. We have seen the slow but inexorable decline in affordability, but also in the rights of long term renters versus the landlords. Under the latter part of the Hawke-Keating Labor government, and then with sudden vroom vroom under Howard LNP and beyond, we have had the neoliberal formula for housing, i.e. a free market for something that is quintessentially a human right, the right to a place to live. We can argue the toss over just how expansive that right is, in terms of balancing the rights and needs of others, but basically in a first world economy, there isn’t any good excuse for rising homelessness, especially among people who have worked all their lives in jobs that make the world go on working for the rest of us. If we can’t promise lower income earning people a decent housing security in their retirement, we are pretty messed up as a country.
Because of a series of decisions that have increased the investment potential of housing stock, without an ameliorating consideration of the necessity for semi-permanent shelter for all our citizens and residents, we have crab-walked into a truly catastrophic situation.
A 20 year old single person might be able to survive for a while, living in their car, and working. What is a 70 year old with multiple chronic but common health issues to do in that scenario? They are royally screwed, to be blunt.
There are no magic pills we can take to unwind this disaster of a non-policy, a decision to do nothing except to pump the market during the election campaign periods, to make the middle class feel it is a wonderful investment to have three properties…with out a clear consideration of just why they are doing this. Leveraged capital gain, negative gearing, etc, are all part of the mix, as well as first home owner grants, stamp duty reductions, and immigration. We are now in the predicament that we have too few tradespeople to carry out the necessary work of building enough dwellings per annum, even if we ignore the sticker price of those dwellings (which are a function of all of the above stupidity of the past 30–40 years of non-policy).
Any government of the current epoch takes one look at housing and shelter security, and they say to themselves, no f**k**g way we get caught up in fixing that! No voter will love us (on the LNP side, and on the right wing side of the ALP).
Free markets and competition in some aspects of the economy is perfectly reasonable as the easiest and probably best manner of allocation of resources. Free markets always fall short on the necessities of life, as opposed to the niceties of life. The resource of having a secure shelter that you can claim as your own, in the sense of staying in a neighbourhood (where you most likely work, or nearby), where the kids can go to the same school, year on year, and where you can give your address to a government agency—at all—so that you can claim a benefit you qualify for (if not for being homeless, as is happening more and more); of course people would pay their gold teeth to secure that, in a free market. Those without gold fillings? Go to the back of the queue.
Economics is a vital science, but it cannot alone address the matters of human needs that somehow skate the science, that are, through no fault of the affected people, economic externalities. How can that work as a stable society? The answer is a bit like how did you go bankrupt, i.e. “Slowly, at first, then all at once.” Look to the subterranean reasons for people like Trump being able to rise to the top of the tree, despite being an almost obvious mirror opposite of the people he is claiming to defend; they rally to him, because they are downtrodden, they have all of the job and shelter insecurity, they get creamed by cancer, despite USA having the best treatments in the world, and so on. They get tanked to do a dime or two in slam, when a single Trump lawyer could have got them off all counts (but they obviously can’t afford such lawyers, hell, any lawyer). So, he says what they want to hear, and they realise no other presidential candidate has done that for a hell of a time. Trump relies on the fractured media universe to amplify his message. The point isn’t Trump per se, it is that the grievances that build up through us maltreating people—in the case of housing insecurity, everyone will soon know someone in that rut—and the way a single person or small group of people can milk it for advantage, as per Trump, as per Hitler did. No matter the economic equation, the political costs of failing to properly care for people (in the sense of security of shelter, food, health needs, etc.) that we so self-evidently can afford to look after is that gas bottle build up of grievance, seeking a means of explosive expression. Heat that bottle up at your own peril.
Economics is not a dismal science. I just feel we get a bit too out there, applying it to what is perhaps beyond the very edges of what could be reasonably considered sound economics. Politics, the nature of civil society, and how we want to live as a big tribe, these are very complex aspects of human existence that are only incorporated into economic theory via seriously limiting assumptions. As neoliberal economics of late Hawke-Keating/Keating, and then the many years of Howard have amply demonstrated.
I am not being nostalgic here: I think we need to anticipate the way things could go, should we fail to address the systemic issues that are (often policy issues or non-policy issues) driving increased homelessness. Not one single person in Australia *deserves* being homeless; they never did. Howsoever this is done, it must have the human person’s fundamental needs as central, and go a bit beyond that. Nobody wants to be shunted from one homeless shelter to another, for that is failing to address the value of a person having a stable home address (such as for job applications), and so on.
Right, got that out of my system. Assail away, ye all!
[…] Source link […]
Don,
I agree with you. The Australian fire chiefs. retired and active, have expressed serious concerns about this coming fire season, never mind 2024/25 etc. From Albo and Co. we have heard nothing and no initiatives…oh except for more coal mine licenses.
We have a housing crisis and a cost of living crisis. Again, there is nothing worthwhile from the government. They want to talk about 2060 in the intergenerational report when the pantry is empty in 2024 for significant numbers of people. More to the point, the pantry for some people is the glove-box of their old car, a cardboard box in a tent or a trash can in the park.
The Intergenerational Report report is not about the future. It is actually an elaborate justification for an eternal neoliberal present. In this eternal neoliberal present, we crab-walk into disaster and catastrophe as you accurately put it .
John Quiggin 
Agree with all points. We have to ask ourselves why the federal government is fear-mongering with the intergenerational report on ageing while it is suppressing the report on the security dangers of climate change. The answer is they highlight what they want to act on and hide what they do not want to act on. They want to act on faux intergenerational concerns because this facilitates the arguments for a low taxes, low welfare regime. The don’t to act on the dangers of climate change because this would require a higher taxes, higher welfare regime and more market/financial regulation and state action. Policy is being made only for the rich oligarchs and powerful corporations, not for the masses and not for the environment.
Planning for 2040 or 2050 is so much nonsense anyway. Matters will be so radically different by then we have no way of projecting trends so far (other than projecting the purely physical system trends if we fail to take key actions).
Better would be to plan to be still alive and functional, as a nation, by 2030 or 2035. We have a chance of projecting alternative social policy outcome scenarios that far with some accuracy. We should also commit to major goals, final goals not interim goals, by those dates in matters from climate change action to social housing.
The powers-that-be think they can keep procrastinating and prevaricating on the key issues. It’s half past too late for that. Let us hope something positive happens soon.
The big intergenerational issues revolve around housing security. We have seen the slow but inexorable decline in affordability, but also in the rights of long term renters versus the landlords. Under the latter part of the Hawke-Keating Labor government, and then with sudden vroom vroom under Howard LNP and beyond, we have had the neoliberal formula for housing, i.e. a free market for something that is quintessentially a human right, the right to a place to live. We can argue the toss over just how expansive that right is, in terms of balancing the rights and needs of others, but basically in a first world economy, there isn’t any good excuse for rising homelessness, especially among people who have worked all their lives in jobs that make the world go on working for the rest of us. If we can’t promise lower income earning people a decent housing security in their retirement, we are pretty messed up as a country.
Because of a series of decisions that have increased the investment potential of housing stock, without an ameliorating consideration of the necessity for semi-permanent shelter for all our citizens and residents, we have crab-walked into a truly catastrophic situation.
A 20 year old single person might be able to survive for a while, living in their car, and working. What is a 70 year old with multiple chronic but common health issues to do in that scenario? They are royally screwed, to be blunt.
There are no magic pills we can take to unwind this disaster of a non-policy, a decision to do nothing except to pump the market during the election campaign periods, to make the middle class feel it is a wonderful investment to have three properties…with out a clear consideration of just why they are doing this. Leveraged capital gain, negative gearing, etc, are all part of the mix, as well as first home owner grants, stamp duty reductions, and immigration. We are now in the predicament that we have too few tradespeople to carry out the necessary work of building enough dwellings per annum, even if we ignore the sticker price of those dwellings (which are a function of all of the above stupidity of the past 30–40 years of non-policy).
Any government of the current epoch takes one look at housing and shelter security, and they say to themselves, no f**k**g way we get caught up in fixing that! No voter will love us (on the LNP side, and on the right wing side of the ALP).
Free markets and competition in some aspects of the economy is perfectly reasonable as the easiest and probably best manner of allocation of resources. Free markets always fall short on the necessities of life, as opposed to the niceties of life. The resource of having a secure shelter that you can claim as your own, in the sense of staying in a neighbourhood (where you most likely work, or nearby), where the kids can go to the same school, year on year, and where you can give your address to a government agency—at all—so that you can claim a benefit you qualify for (if not for being homeless, as is happening more and more); of course people would pay their gold teeth to secure that, in a free market. Those without gold fillings? Go to the back of the queue.
Economics is a vital science, but it cannot alone address the matters of human needs that somehow skate the science, that are, through no fault of the affected people, economic externalities. How can that work as a stable society? The answer is a bit like how did you go bankrupt, i.e. “Slowly, at first, then all at once.” Look to the subterranean reasons for people like Trump being able to rise to the top of the tree, despite being an almost obvious mirror opposite of the people he is claiming to defend; they rally to him, because they are downtrodden, they have all of the job and shelter insecurity, they get creamed by cancer, despite USA having the best treatments in the world, and so on. They get tanked to do a dime or two in slam, when a single Trump lawyer could have got them off all counts (but they obviously can’t afford such lawyers, hell, any lawyer). So, he says what they want to hear, and they realise no other presidential candidate has done that for a hell of a time. Trump relies on the fractured media universe to amplify his message. The point isn’t Trump per se, it is that the grievances that build up through us maltreating people—in the case of housing insecurity, everyone will soon know someone in that rut—and the way a single person or small group of people can milk it for advantage, as per Trump, as per Hitler did. No matter the economic equation, the political costs of failing to properly care for people (in the sense of security of shelter, food, health needs, etc.) that we so self-evidently can afford to look after is that gas bottle build up of grievance, seeking a means of explosive expression. Heat that bottle up at your own peril.
Economics is not a dismal science. I just feel we get a bit too out there, applying it to what is perhaps beyond the very edges of what could be reasonably considered sound economics. Politics, the nature of civil society, and how we want to live as a big tribe, these are very complex aspects of human existence that are only incorporated into economic theory via seriously limiting assumptions. As neoliberal economics of late Hawke-Keating/Keating, and then the many years of Howard have amply demonstrated.
I am not being nostalgic here: I think we need to anticipate the way things could go, should we fail to address the systemic issues that are (often policy issues or non-policy issues) driving increased homelessness. Not one single person in Australia *deserves* being homeless; they never did. Howsoever this is done, it must have the human person’s fundamental needs as central, and go a bit beyond that. Nobody wants to be shunted from one homeless shelter to another, for that is failing to address the value of a person having a stable home address (such as for job applications), and so on.
Right, got that out of my system. Assail away, ye all!
[…] Source link […]
Don,
I agree with you. The Australian fire chiefs. retired and active, have expressed serious concerns about this coming fire season, never mind 2024/25 etc. From Albo and Co. we have heard nothing and no initiatives…oh except for more coal mine licenses.
We have a housing crisis and a cost of living crisis. Again, there is nothing worthwhile from the government. They want to talk about 2060 in the intergenerational report when the pantry is empty in 2024 for significant numbers of people. More to the point, the pantry for some people is the glove-box of their old car, a cardboard box in a tent or a trash can in the park.
The Intergenerational Report report is not about the future. It is actually an elaborate justification for an eternal neoliberal present. In this eternal neoliberal present, we crab-walk into disaster and catastrophe as you accurately put it .