Chamber of Commerce wants to restrict age pension, page-70

I absolutely understand how emotionally charged the topic is. My home is my home, the
the market says it is worth $500k, $750k, $1.2m but to someone it is priceless.

However it is an asset (see my example at the bottom). People are also aware of that and are all too happy to see its price go up. Sometimes they have borrowed against it via a line of credit to buy a car or pay for the kids education whatever it might be. They use it as an asset (even though you can't deduct some of its maintenance costs - but that s another debabe).

In a lot of instances people have seen the value of that asset absolutely skyrocket, while the next generation is locked out and is the one paying for this so called budget emergency. Now I am not laying any blame here, but previous generations didn't pay enough taxes compared to current retirement costs, it is absolutely not their fault, previous governments didn't anticipate the current demographic trend. I am certainly not arguing that past generation didn't contribute or pay their fair share, I am just saying that a decreasing tax payers base compared to an increasing amount of pensioners cannot be expected to pick up the tab.

Younger generations are expected to be self sufficient by the time they reach retirement, I doubt there will be much of an age pension in 30 years. So it seems to me that tax payers have a certain % of their taxes paying for a something they themselves will not enjoy.

I don't know what the exact fair threshold is, but the proposition of a 0% loan against that asset to be repaid by selling the house once a person dies or moves to age care is not that drastic.

$10000 per year for 25 years on a $800k home still leaves you with $550k, and that's before any capital gains. If your house increases in value by just 3% per year it is now worth $1.675m (conpound interest is just wonderful) minus the $250k you owe the government. You can still pass on something to your kids. I don't understand the uproar. In principle it is just an already existing financial product scheme run by the government.

We have to be able to debate the idea.