The Albanese government has done a lot to tease that [tonight’s] budget is going to address generational inequality. People younger than 45 are shaping up as the prized voter class, with gen X shifting into retirement and baby boomers moving into aged- care homes.
And largely, people under 45 do not care about the budget rules that have set coverage since the Howard years. They do not care about budget debt. They do not care about spending caps. They do care about cuts to services, and the unfairness of our tax and subsidy system, which allows some to hoard wealth and assets while others have none.
Telling someone under 45, who is struggling to pay their housing and other living costs, who is seeing no wage growth, who does not have a pathway to promotion because their industry is undercutting their work with AI or other tech advancements, that cutting the capital gains tax discount may cut investment isn’t going to get the sage nodding along that commentators usually expect.
Younger workers are savvy enough to know that government leg-ups for that sort of capital isn’t returned to the workers – it usually goes to shareholders. National debt doesn’t matter when you can’t see a way out of yours, let alone live a life unburdened by it…
It will take even longer for political and economic commentators to learn that what they think is “sensible” and “rational” doesn’t cut it with people who rightly don’t consider their own situations to be sensible or rational.
This sort of anger is usually dismissed as the folly of youth – or, worse yet, just another leftie rant – but it’s growing. And it’s feeding the overall feeling of discontent.
https://thepoint.com.au/opinions/260511-this-white-hot-fury-is-generational-and-it-wont-be-ignored
Like any other monetarily sovereign state, Australia never need incur debt for government spending, and should not balance its budget.
All Australian dollars are created by the Australian government, deciding (by passing law) that new money shall exist. Poof, now it exists, as a number in the central bank; from there it flows into the economy, until taxation destroys it again.
So younger people are quite right to be unconcerned by a deficit in the Australian budget. All of that is money that exists, and if there were no deficit then none of the rest of us would have any money: it would all have been returned to nonexistence by taxation.
Our government can fund any and all services they choose to, simply by passing law that says the money is available (thereby creating the money). We don’t want them to “balance” the budget, we want well-funded public services and (independent from government services) we want higher taxation on the wealthy, to reduce their spending power.
That they do not do this; that they pursue the phantom of a “balanced budget” for a monetarily sovereign state that creates its own money whenever it wants? Is a choice made by our government, every day, based on a flawed ideology that ignores the facts of the very system they govern.
This is one of the worst takes on monetary theory I have ever seen.
Taxation does not destroy money.
What you’re talking about would result in rampant inflation which has never been good for workers.
Taxation takes money out of circulation. It is required to prevent inflation after money creation. Lack of taxation is largely why asset prices rose after covid stimulus.
Money that is taxed is not destroyed, it goes back to the treasury for redistribution via the budget.
Printing money and increasing spending on social services will drive inflation.
It’s like you half read an economics book but put it down in favour of Atlas Shrugged.
That’s what I said you fuck wit. Redistribution is the whole point. And no I’m not an objectivist. The goal should be to prevent runaway wealth inequality like we have now.
Poof, now it exists, as a number in the central bank; from there it flows into the economy, until taxation destroys it again.
Say it with me slowly
Taxation does not destroy money
It removes money from circulation. Its the same thing you fucking moron.
I’m going to take those insults from someone who believes this
if there were no deficit then none of the rest of us would have any money
As a badge of honour lol
All Australian dollars are created by the Australian government, deciding (by passing law) that new money shall exist.
Weird as it sounds, most money is created by commercial banks making loans: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2014/q1/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy
heh you been reading about Modern Monetary Theory eh?
Modern Monetary Theory
For those not in the know, here’s a primer.
