Intergenerational inequity? The young have never had it so good

The Albanese government's latest budget has been partly framed to promote "intergenerational equity" and is aimed at skewing policy to the young as they are supposedly worse off compared with previous generations who now owe them extra support through additional taxes on their past earnings, investments and alleged accumulated wealth.

Yet, the premise of intergenerational equity is flawed as the "young" – thanks to real reforms by previous governments – "have never had it so good" to borrow former UK prime minister Harold Macmillan's phrase about Britain's prosperous 1950s.

Indeed, young people today from when they are born, start school, attend university in increasing numbers, leave home, form relationships, and enter the workforce, enjoy living standards, benefits, personal freedom, and independence greater than any previous generation.

Their world is very much the result of their choices and the opportunities they take.

A well-funded national health scheme has provided young people (and the older generation too) with unprecedented access to services to ensure their well-being. While the older generation is living longer, the expectations for the young will surpass them.

Modern housing means young people have enjoyed accommodation that is bigger, warmer and cooler, and full of every conceivable modern appliance.

Yes, buying your own home is not easy, but there is now so much you have to buy. And was it ever easy? The post-war generation had to scrimp and save to buy a home and move to the new, raw outer suburbs.

"While Macmillan was right that people had 'never had it so good' he also warned it was 'too good to be true'."

Massive record education spending during the past thirty years has manifested in smaller class sizes, which have almost halved since the 1960s.

School buildings are more comfortable and there are special programs for every imaginable learning difficulty and every type of student.

University is now more open to all talents and every disadvantage. That education standards have declined and that a university education no longer offers the automatic ride to job security or increased income, however, is another issue that no government wants to address.

And when it comes to personal and sexual freedom, young people win the trifecta. Contraception is easier and safer and sex education is open compared to previous times – all accompanied by a relaxation of religious, family and social prohibitions, neatly enwrapped in talk of rights and personal fulfilment.

Nurturing all this has been the expansion of the welfare state to which the young, and others, can now access in so many new ways.

Australia's once taut welfare net that was targeted, means-tested and capped, has become bigger, universal and stretched to meet the latest "need" whose definition is never static.

And young people have benefited from the technological developments, which given their complexity and newness, have put them ahead of the game at work and at home.

Moreover, their access to networking means they can operate very much in their world and know how best to exploit the latest developments.

Going overseas, once only for the very few, has in the past few decades with cheaper and faster international air travel opened the door to more young people as well as the destinations they can choose.

Australia's lack of direct involvement in large-scale wars has thankfully meant the young have avoided the wounds of battle and the intrusions of conscription.

While the concerns by previous "Cold War" generations of nuclear annihilation have dissipated, it is nevertheless true that young people are not without their own terrors such as climate change.

The Albanese government's catchcry of "intergenerational equity" should be rejected. It should be seen for what it really is – an attempt to identify another societal victim that government, or more specifically, the Labor Party, can "rescue" to gain votes through increased public spending, special programs and policy distortions.

Indeed, "intergenerational equity" is just another distraction from needed reform.

It will result in more public debt, which ironically the young will ultimately inherit, and more waste as the policies will have little lasting impact in ameliorating the underlying causes of the real problems facing the young today.

While Macmillan was right that people had "never had it so good", he also warned it was "too good to be true" and "too good to last" as Britain's economic prosperity was thinly based on Keynesian pump priming, and was threatened by inflation.

This realisation has not yet dawned on either the Albanese government or the opposition, which have both failed to articulate the needed policies of reform for the whole nation.