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