About every five years The Treasury produces a report looking well into the future of Australia. These reports project outlooks for the economy and the Australian Government’s budget over the next 40 years. They examine the long-term sustainability of current policies and how demographic, technological and other structural trends may affect the economy and the budget. The 2021 report was handed down earlier this week. The link to the report is provided below.

There are three key findings that are of great interest;

1. Population growth is expected to decline from the 2015 projections, 38.8 million by 2060/61, previously 40 million by 2056. With people living longer and a much older population than today. The economy will be smaller with less employed to service the aged and unemployed. The number of Australians aged 65 and older will double to 8.9 million, 1 in 3 adults, down from 1 in 6 today.

2. Climate change will have a real and significant impact on the Australian economy. There will be a need for a transition in Australia’s carbon intensive economy, where “some sectors will need to adjust to falling demand for some exports, while new opportunities will be created in other sectors”.

3. Long Covid with its lingering repercussions, with a slow economy, deficit budgets and high debt are here to stay, at least for the next 40 years.

http://treasury.gov.au/publication/2021-intergenerational-report

This is the bloke who says I'm boring, but who continues to reel off, word for word, dreary predictions anyone can see in the media, which are based on the same computer models that got climate change so wrong, and scared the living daylights out of everyone with the predictions of thousands of deaths in Australia from the WuFlu. There are no crystal balls; nobody knows what's going to happen 20, 30, 40 or 50 years from now. What happens with Communist China in the immediate future is the thing that should be occupying the minds of these modern day Nostradamuses.

Dear Paul,

Thank You for this discussion.

What's the point of an Intergenerational Report?

As explained on the web:

In simple terms it's supposed to show everyone what
Australia could look like in 40 years if the current
policy settings remain the same. It is designed to be
a wake up call to what needs to be changed. It looks
at current trends in population growth, ageing, and
government spending and projects them forward to see
what the impact they will have on federal government
figures in four decades.

This way it gives policymakers time to make corrections
if necessary.

I imagine that our ageing population will have a big
impact on the economy and that will necessitate adjustments
to be made in so many areas - from jobs, new skills,
health, education, population size, and much, much more.

Just go back to what all these reports stated before COVID !
What they should be saying is that by 2050 it doesn't matter what happens because if today's trends continue, people will be so dumb that everything will be irrelevant !
I'm talking about average white people !

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Dear ttbn,

.

You wrote :

« There are no crystal balls; nobody knows what's going to happen 20, 30, 40 or 50 years from now. »

No doubt about that, ttbn.

Projections are not predictions. They are suppositions. Intelligent guesses based on previous experience.

In my view, the only interest in projecting current trends into the future is simply to look ahead to try to see where we are going instead of just staring at our feet.

Of course, we may not see the lion hiding in the bushes, waiting to pounce on us as we walk by, or the hunter who is about to shoot the lion, but our chances of reaching our destination by staring at our feet are minimal. We have a far better chance of reaching our destination by looking up to see what lies ahead despite the fact that we can’t see either the lion or the hunter.

Better to look ahead than to look at your feet, ttbn – especially when you’re driving your car or your motorbike or whatever.

That’s about the best you can do, but you might still get it wrong. You might still have an accident.

As you say : "there are no crystal balls".

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There are some things to take from these reports, an analyse of present government polices and where they are taking us. There seems to be little political will to set new objective in the areas of taxation, job creation and social welfare. Calls to lower taxation whilst creating a growing government debt, with the government relying on economic growth to service that debt. Treasury indicated future economic growth will be sluggish under the present policies. There is no strong plan for job creation in newly developed cutting edge industries. The government seems to be paralysed into believing new jobs will simply grow from traditional economic activity, and there is no need for innovative development.

The growing number of Australians within the aged population will create ever increasing social welfare concerns, reasonable support for older Australians in the future, even at present levels, is not sustainable, and a new productive system replacing aged welfare needs to be introduced as a matter of urgency. During the pandemic the government allowed people to access superannuation which in itself will have negative consequences long into the future.