6th Intergenerational Report [2022] Thoughts

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  Sinnerator on 21/08/2023 - 08:50

  +6

  The govt wants BIG Australia, so they import from cultures that have higher birth rates.
  The rich want an oversupply of labor to keep wages down.
  These 2 forces combined will keep a constant supply of high birth rate people FLOODING into Australia.

  • 

    Trying2SaveABuck on 21/08/2023 - 08:59

    +1

    My question is - where will all these people live?

    The Federal government is full of MPs with multiple investment properties and mansions they reside in which is great for them but what about 'us and future plebs'

    • 

      Malik Nasser on 21/08/2023 - 09:09

      Multi-generational living, increasing dwelling density.
      Look overseas and see how they do it.
      People just need to lower their expectations, and not expect to have everything (and have it right now).

  • 

    Captain Cook on 21/08/2023 - 09:44

    +5

    Import the third world, become the third world.

  • 

    freefall101 on 21/08/2023 - 10:39

    +2

    This isn't true. The majority of immigrants to Australia come from India, China and the UK, all of which have birth rates below 2.2 (the replacement rate) as of 2022.

    And the rich want more people to grow their businesses more than cheap labour. Labour prices haven't gone up despite the current shortage of employees - however for places like Woolies and Coles doubling the population of Australia means doubling their profits.

    The article also points out the key problem here - aging population. The aging population costs a fortune and is growing very quickly. If we were to keep Australia's population fixed we'd wind up with no way to pay for all these old people, an even higher portion of taxes going into healthcare and the country basically turning into a giant hospital. We've dug ourselves a healthcare hole, old people expect higher quality than their predecessors had and vote in hordes to protect it. But it's not sustainable at all without population growth.

• 

  GordonD on 21/08/2023 - 09:11

  +1

  The three areas that will gradually take up more and more of the revenue available to government are the NDIS, the military, and interest that has to be paid for increasing debt.

  We simply can't afford the NDIS that Julia Gillard stuck us with. Expenditure on it is huge enough now, and looks like increasing 10% a year, year after year. We just can't afford to be as generous and helpful to all the people who have any sort of disability.

  We simply can't afford the role in the world that the friends of Washington in this country want us to have. This is not about defence. It is about helping Washington act as world policeman. Spending more and more and more on weapons to impose its power and interests on everyone else. Rational countries spend about 1% of their GDP on defence. We are up to 2.3%. And huge amounts of it go to Washington's war industry buying the latest most powerful weapons, like the billions for long range missiles announced today … after the Labor National Conference. We don't need 1500 km range missiles to defend Australia. We only need them to attack other peoples countries.

  And if we can get things like those under control we won't have increasing debt to pay interest on.

  We aren't as rich as we want to think we are. It is natural that everyone thinks that the area they are responsible for is really really really important, more important than everyone else thinks it is, that's the problem with experts, but we just can't afford to give them all what they think their area needs.

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  Jimothy Wongingtons on 21/08/2023 - 09:47

  +3

  Declining birth rates mean few younger people to take there place in the workforce

  gestures vaguely at everything

  can ya really blame them

• 

  EightImmortals on 21/08/2023 - 11:16

  Aren't they planning another 'pandemic'? Next time it will probably be a real one. Problem solved.

• 

  bohn on 21/08/2023 - 11:47

  +4

  That population increase is the equivalent in adding another Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide to Australia’s existing population, but obviously without the required housing and infrastructure.

  Let’s get real: Australia will never be able to provide enough houses and infrastructure to accommodate the population equivalent of another Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide in just 40 years. We are already suffering chronic shortages of both.

  Let alone reach any decarbonisation goals

  https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2023/08/jim-chalmers-launch…

  Bloody Albo has no mandate to do this.. I really hope it becomes a public issue and we can push these (profanity) off this course.

• 

  bohn on 21/08/2023 - 12:09

  +5

  Also , the 2002 Intergenerational Report projected Aus. to be 26m in 2042, but we beat it by 20 years, in part thanks to the more than doubling of the immigration rate.

  Net overseas migration was 89,000 between 1991 and 2004, and jumped to 235,000 between 2005 and 2020 thanks to the never-ending skills shortage. Yes, we do have some skills shortages, but some of it is just bullshit.

  • 

    Malik Nasser on 21/08/2023 - 16:51

    +1

    We need to be able to service our ever growing debt.
    If we let more people into the country, we have more people to tax, so greater government income.
    Only problem is you need to keep it going ad infinitum, or otherwise the house of cards collapses:
    https://mahb.stanford.edu/blog/australias-population-ponzi-s…

    • 

      bohn on 21/08/2023 - 17:12

      +1

      Yes, there are a few reasons. It makes the government look good with GDP, big business wants it (keeps wages lower), big property wants it, and universities want it.

  • 

    Ugly on 21/08/2023 - 19:11

    The problem being our population made it 20 years early, but our infrastructure is still on the original timeline.

• 

  GordonD on 22/08/2023 - 08:59

  +1

  The intergenerational report we are getting this week is a con job. Its a whole bunch of dodgy predictions about the future chosen to create an argument for measures like increased immigration.

  It predicts a low immigration rate over the next 40 years. That allows it to predict a huge aging of the population, with the costs associated with that, like insufficient workers to pay for the aged. And while it keeps the retirement age at 65 it predicts a substantial increase in average age of death, to inflate the number of unproductive aged. The retirement age is already actually being increased. And it retains the current age where people start needing a lot more years of expensive health care, when the way it actually works is that most people stay relatively up until a few years before they die, so if you die at 80 now, you're healthy until you're 70, but if in the future you're going to die at 85, you'll probably be pretty healthy until you're 75.