The latest Intergenerational Report reveals life will look quite different. Here's what it tells us.
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00:00 Treasurer Jim Chalmers has just released the government's intergenerational report.
00:04 This is a really significant document looking at the state of the economy over the next 40 years.
00:09 Now there are a couple of main takeaways from the report, perhaps the biggest one being that we have
00:13 an ageing population. So what does this mean? Well it means that we are going to have an older
00:18 population, more people who are retiring, more people in aged care, more people relying on our
00:23 healthcare system. But it also means that we're going to have less working people who are paying
00:28 taxes to support older generations and support the services that they are relying on. And this
00:34 is something that has younger generations pretty worried at the moment. I think we need young people
00:39 in our society in order for society to evolve and continue to grow. So yeah it is quite alarming and
00:45 concerning for me. Now there are a couple of reasons behind an ageing population. Firstly,
00:49 people are just living for longer. But also younger generations are tending to have less
00:54 children. I think people are more reluctant to having children at the moment and for the last
00:59 few years and probably for the ongoing future because of the economic pressures that we are
01:04 having as young people. So barriers and challenges that we are facing that we haven't really faced in
01:10 the past, particularly housing crisis is really big. And I think people are trying to look after
01:16 themselves first and foremost before thinking about having children that they potentially
01:21 won't be able to look after as well as they would like to. Advocates say that we need bold reform to
01:26 meet these challenges. Think Forward, a non-profit advocating for intergenerational fairness,
01:31 says that we need to do things like abolish negative gearing, which they argue is giving
01:36 older wealthier generations tax concessions and locking younger people out of the housing market.
01:41 We really want to get away from this generational warfare thing because it's
01:45 completely unhelpful. It's not about us versus them, but it's sort of this return to a sense of
01:52 collective wellbeing and then a wholesale tax and economic reform to match that. Because we have to
01:59 look at the facts right now and the facts are that there is significant amounts of wealth that the
02:06 older generations have been able to accumulate through property investment. That younger
02:13 generations are never going to be able to access.
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