There has been a lot of talk lately about "intergenerational inequality". And I agree that there is, but it has nothing to do with some implied unfairness but simply with the difference in age between the younger and the older generation.
Older people have always had more wealth because they had more time to accumulate it by dint of hard work and the magic of compounding. When I was young, I had no wealth either, no house, not even a car.
I didn't buy my own house until I was well into my thirties, and then I couldn't afford to live in it. So I went back overseas to pay it off. I lived in construction dongas and other company-supplied accommodation to save the money to be able to return to a paid-off house and an ordinary job. I never bleated "intergenerational inequality". Instead, I went on with my work because, with patience, I, too, would be wealthy one day.
When I look at my own generation, I don't see people who have had an unfair advantage. I see people who worked hard, who built businesses and careers, who took risks, paid their taxes, raised families, and quite literally helped build the kind of Australia we all benefit from today.
They didn’t have perfect conditions either. They grew up in the aftermath of a war, suffered depressions and recessions and high interest rates, had limited access to information, and none of the leverage we have today with tech, capital, and global opportunity.
And now we have this Canberra narrative floating about that they should be penalised because of "intergenerational inequality". What a lot of bullshit! This is the first generation that has produced self-funded retirees who didn't rely on the system but actually contributed to it, and yet somehow they have now become the villain in the story.
We should be studying these people. Learn from them. Be grateful to them. There is a quote in G. Michael Hopf's 2016 postapocalyptic novel "Those Who Remain" which goes something like this:
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Hard times create strong people.
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I think we are somewhere in that third phase right now. A lot of noise. A lot of blame. Not taking personal responsbility. After all, it is so much easier to point the finger at the generation before, instead of looking in the mirror and ask, "What am I doing with the opportunities I have got?"
