Perhaps if the young were prepared to accept the sacrifices and major inconveniences their parents went through in order to buy their first house they wouldn't be complaining so much.
My parents lived in a single room with 3 children for years whilst they saved for a house deposit.
I didn't buy my first dwelling, a tiny 2 bedroom unit, until I was 50.
Hardly the life of privilege we keep being accused of.

An interesting slant on the topic:

"Grattan estimates that older Australians (aged 65 or older) receive more than $30,000 a year in government transfers, up a staggering 50 per cent since 2004. Those aged 25 to 55 pay all of these costs."

No consideration, I notice, of the contributions made by those "older Australians" through the taxes they paid when they themselves were aged 25 to 55.

The problem is that governments - all governments - have forever treated taxpayers' money as a pot with which to bribe their way into office at the next election. We should not then be surprised to find that they have pissed it all up against the wall, and there's nothing left but to lean on the youngsters.

But of course, this is The Australian, where every problem automatically becomes Labour's fault. But these days there does seem to be a touch of desperation creeping into the Murdochian narrative, as their chosen hero continues to display ineptitude at every turn.

Hmmm, is the writer arguing that the Coalition's policies will actually help younger folk?

In fact, younger generations will be asked to carry almost exclusively (at present indicators in the Fed Budget) the cost of their ageing parents and grandparents pensions and healthcare on the back of a shrinking tax base and ballooning HECS debt. Chances of owning a house before they're 50? Forget it. If ever there was a case of rising intergenerational tension, the current government is fuelling it, rather than taking preventative action.

Why is Angus Taylor, and the Coalition trying to push this young vs old agenda? This divisiveness is politicking at its worst.

"the truth is morality - namely, addressing gross unfairness dealt to younger Australians - is entirely on the government’s side"

How does this match up with Government policy to make people under 30 wait six months for the dole if they weren't earning or learning? At the very time when youth unemployment is hitting 20% in some regions. And when TAFEs are being defunded across the country, and the Coalition have plans to make tertiary education vastly more expensive. This was a big surprise for a government that said it would be a "no surprises" government.

"Yet Labor refuses to accept the need to tighten our belts"
It was the Coalition that gave $8 BILLION to the RBA that it didn't need or ask for. It was the Coalition that scrapped the Carbon Tax and the Minerals Resource Tax on super-profits. It is the Coalition that has quietly backflipped on its promise to go after multi-national tax cheats.

We need to have a discussion about why those with so much (like the banking sector) get given more, while those with so little like the sick, pensioners, the unemployed, students, are the ones who are getting punished by this Government?

Angus Taylor, like many others before him, is trying to turn a class issue into a generational issue. Most of the older people he attacks, like most people in all the generations before them, have worked hard all of their lives for modest rewards and had very little say in anything. They may well have bought a small house when they were going for 3-3.5 times the median wage. For the vast majority, nearly all of that increased wealth Taylor talks about is in the land that their house sits on, and this increase is entirely due to government policies intended to restrict the supply of housing and boost demand. The house itself may have negative value because a new owner would have to pay to have it demolished.

That wealth cannot be easily realized if they intend to stay in the city because house prices have gone up all over the Metropolitan area. Moving to the country is usually not a viable strategy, because most country towns don't have enough jobs for the children of the people who live there. Retired people are reluctant to move away from their family and friends, who also constitute their support network, and the services that elderly people are likely to need. If you have a heart condition, moving to a town with no doctor or one doctor for 3,000 people is not an option. In any case, their children are going to inherit that house, unless the nursing home gets it first.

If the Coalition were serious, it would be looking at such things as superannuation tax concessions as a tax rort for rich people and negative gearing for existing housing, as well as the issues raised by BJelly. If people could see some equality of sacrifice, it might then get some traction.

No balance here at all, at the political level; it's all Labor's fault.
What neither side has the balls to canvas is the obvious need to raise taxes, beginning with the wealthy and working down. We don't need cuts, we need higher, indeed progressive, taxation.
Fat chance of that, so raise the GST and raise the top tier of private taxation. The conservatives could also cut the massive perks to the wealthy in the form of superannuation.
Also, get rid of negative gearing and house prises would likely drop dramatically.
On the medical front, cut back on expensive procedures on the elderly that more often than not don't improve quality of life or life expectancy.
We are a wealthy country and that money should not be left in the deep pockets of the disgustingly rich. Tax them down to size!

Well spoken BJelly and Divergence. The more said about fair tax the better. The Coalition has done very little about it so far.

Fair taxation can be summed up as 'tax unproductive income - e.g. speculation, pollution, carbon, traffic congestion - and 'reduce taxes on the productive - businesses and wages/ salary income' . The other key word is 'revenue neutral'

Surely that's not too hard for a political party to sell as a package. List what will be taxed (or brought back to reasonable levels of tax):

-Housing speculation (phase out negative gearing)

-Profits on speculation (shares and property) - make all profits taxable

-Carbon

-Minerals - excessive profits

-Remove the tax breaks for rich superannuants.

Then emphasize that taxes on Australian businesses will be reduced as will be the lower levels of income tax. And show the public approximate numbers - how it will all work out - where the money will go.

By the way I'm a 61 y/o self funded retiree, albeit a 'low middle income' one. I've ridden the boom, own my home and a rental flat and have reasonable superannuation invested - most of it accrued by luck of circumstances.

Angus has missed one very important point, inheritance. Provided I can stop their mother spending it all on round world trips & such if I go first, [joke Poirot], my kids will inherit at least $250,000 each from my estate. They would get at least another $50,000 from their mothers.

Their mother will inherit another $2/300,000 from her mothers estate, most of which will be passed on, so although I agree our kids are having to pick up much more burden of the elderly than my generation, Many of them are doing pretty well in the lump sum injection stakes.

Our younger 2 missed the property boom so are well behind their older sibling, but also don't have as much to lose in a property downturn.

Interestingly on a couple of other web sites it is the left oldies who are most resistant to any reduction in their "entitlements". There are continual cries for more pension, greater services, more public housing, & definitely no reduction in gravy train for retired bureaucrats & academics. If anything it is the collation supporters most amenable to reductions in government spending.

I think it is with out doubt that we are going to have to seriously reduce the range of medical procedures the tax payer funds for us oldies. Another thread is suggesting we often keep oldies alive past what they desire, I know it was so with my mother. Perhaps we should be making hugely expensively procedures such as transplants user pay. Then the oldie could decide whether to spend the kids inheritance on a new heart, or leave the money to their kids.

Extremely disingenuous article!

In reality there's no intrinsic conflict between Keynesianism and Rationalism: the former's a macroeconomic policy; the latter microeconomic. Both are desirable. You appear to be using the false dichotomy to paint Keynesianism as irrational, but in reality there's nothing irrational about the government borrowinng more when the private sector borrows less and vice versa. If you want to see irrationality, have a look at your own policies:
The young, who can generally afford less, will be slugged with more (and higher) charges. Unemployment, already higher than under Labor, will be increased by your unnecessary belt tightening. You treat the environment contemptuously. And at a time when the younger generation's own budgets are stretched, you want to impose on them an additional obligation to pay off more of the nation's debt!

If you really want to help the younger generation, you should replace the GST with a broad based land value tax to slow the rise in house prices.

My eldest at 27 owns her own unit in a capital city, my next eldest drives a car double the value I have ever driven and owns a home much better than I have ever had. My third, a trainee doctor is in France having travelled overseas many times. I rejoice in my childrens success but find this sort of article nausiating. The making of victims for political purposes is self destructive.

The only reason many can't afford a home as already stated is because they want a four by two close to the city. Travel a little out and you find many affordable places. Rockingham just 30 kilometres from the centre of Perth has always had houses (even during boom) around the 300k mark.

The lifestyle of many older Australians is going backwards, just like the wealth and future of this whole nation.

Media driven focus in Australia is all about CO2 trading schemes, pink batts, solar and wind power, fuel excise, with no talk about new productivity to drive employment and exports to generate income and revenue.

Innovation is being held back due to politics bigotry and greed.

Many kids are doing it tough just like many old people are.

The author of the article here has a hide accusing older people in general of bludging.

Pericles makes no mention of why our taxes are growing and are killing off our economies. It is the Central bankers who conned our pollies into selling of 4 State Govt Banks and the Commonwealth. They used to create infrastructure debt free but now we are slaves to private banks that create both inflationary money and money for growth as debt.

The result is that exponentially more debt money must be created today,to pay for the debt of yesterday. It is like using a new credit card to pay off the old one. This system has now reached the point of total collapse.

Arjay,
<<Pericles makes no mention of why our taxes are growing and are killing off our economies.>>
Probably because they're not!

<<It is the Central bankers who conned our pollies into selling of 4 State Govt Banks and the Commonwealth.>>
Considering you're so ignorant about central banks that you think they're in the private sector, that claim is rather dubious.

<<They used to create infrastructure debt free>>
When did they do that? Things like the Sydney Harbour Bridge took decades to pay off. The difference back then wasn't a lack of debt but rather a fear of debt!

<<but now we are slaves to private banks that create both inflationary money and money for growth as debt.>>
No more so than before.

<<The result is that exponentially more debt money must be created today,to pay for the debt of yesterday. It is like using a new credit card to pay off the old one. This system has now reached the point of total collapse.>>
First you worry about inflation, then about too little increase in the money supply. Make your mind up!

Well, we all need to do some belt tightening
Particularly the wealthy who can better afford it.
Rather than 50 something Grandmas, supporting/raising a couple of grandkids/orphans.

These sacrifices must include the preferential tax treatment of super, for millionaires, who arguably, need this government subsidized largess, far less than the struggling, trying to just survive in struggle street!

Ditto family trusts and negative gearing!

Real tax reform would end the need of any and all these tax minimization schemes!

As for bludging off of the Kids, who was it that went without and struggled to raise them and send them to university, to give them the advantages most of the parents never ever enjoyed!

Yes housing was once far more affordable!
But its not the baby boomers who have forced house prices to go way up relative to real incomes, but policy making politicians?

And arguably because too many pollies have too many bricks and mortar investments?

And attested to, by the very decisions of most governments, who are the ones who create housing affordability, via the policy paradigms.

The apparent wealth of the badly maligned baby boomers just didn't drop in their laps; but took real money earned by the sweat of the brow, or personal endeavor, and at some risk.

What's missing in the endlessly complaining x and y generations, is the toughness and a willingness to rough it just to earn a quid, or the money needed to buy houses

Nobody paid for the baby boomers investments except the baby boomers, and while they paid a far higher level of personal tax; as memory serves, as much as 68 cents in the dollar.

Who and what did those dollars pay for?
How about a highly profitable bank, a telco and numerous other profit earning entities, That if retained would've paid for all those now dependent baby boomers!
Rhrosty.

Roses 1, you forgot to add... Then sit back and watch the economy crumble.

When ever I ask an opponent of NG, where will the renters live, not one can provide an answer, Are you any different?

Now there are this who say Tax the rich. Are they aware that out of every ten people here in Oz, seven rely on the other three for their financial support. And they want the three to do even more. Unbelievable!

Inheritance. I say we should reintroduce an inheritance tax, one that taxes any inheritance over and above $500 K per beneficiary and, if the assets of the estate were held in trust, then the tax breaks have been had so they should all be taxed.

Why should any person be left with so much simply because they were born lucky. BTW, my kids would pay tax under such a scheme, so I am not biased in my thinking.

Probably the best quote I have heard about gen Y, is that they want to start from where we finished, and that pretty much sums it up.

Finally, this is the first down turn many gen y'ers have encountered, while we baby boomers have seen several. So suck it up princesses cause life wasn't meant to be easy, it's just that nones doing the heavy lifting any more.

Yep..I think that the bulk of the problem is kids want to live the lifestyles of the rich and famous on average incomes.
Kids also seem to have a problem understanding that leaving uni hocked up to the eyeballs with a degree will not bring instant success.

Most of us baby boomers started modestly and built ourselves up over many decades while learning more from our failures than our successes.

Life is all about give and take.

This generation is all about take. Handouts from the government are taken as granted, but the moment that any belt tightening is required because the revenues are reduced, everyone screams blue murder that it is unfair.