Death taxes are no way to deal with intergenerational inequality

Ms. Wood seems to be cut from a similar soft-left cloth. Under her leadership, Grattan has continued to make soothing misleading noises about the energy transition, and while it was influential during the COVID crisis its advice was mostly wrong.

In her Giblin Lecture, delivered in Hobart two weeks ago, she gives us some ideas about what she will push.

The lecture is entitled "Creating a better Australia for Generation Next."

As intergenerational equity is one of the concerns of the Productivity Commission, so far, so good.

A section of the Queensland Alumina Refinery in Gladstone, Queensland, Australia, on Jan. 18, 2012. The Refinery which opened in 1967 is one of the largest by Alumina production in the world. (AAP Image/Dave Hunt)

A list of bad ideas

Ms. Wood quickly got herself into hot water with a number of her prescriptions.

She wants to reintroduce death duties; tax retirees at higher rates, including their superannuation earnings; abolish dividend franking; reduce the capital gains discount; and tighten the assets test on the pension.

I'm sure her motivations are good but with one exception, which I won't outline here, these are all terrible ideas and don't address the underlying problems, which she analyses in some depth.

She points to the fact that increased interest rates disproportionately affect young people and that their living standards, compared to older Australians, have declined.

Housing affordability is in crisis, and the ability to buy a first home, absent a rich benefactor to help with the deposit, has never been worse.

In addition, government costs, particularly in aging and health are increasing faster than economic growth, and so consuming more and more of tax revenues, which are increasingly paid by the young and not the old.

This leads her to some Pikettian Hell where eventually all the assets of the world will be owned by a concentrated gerontocracy, freezing the young and unconnected out of a secure life and home ownership forever.