Policy Monographs
A Streak of Hypocrisy: Reactions to the Global Financial Crisis and Generational Debt
This paper examines the policy challenges associated with the ageing of the Australian population through the prism of the global financial crisis. The paper observes that much of the commentary prompted by the financial crisis has featured a reaction against credit-driven consumption—the so-called ‘debt binge’ that has plunged household savings into the red in recent years—and a shift in sentiment that favours traditional values such as thrift.
There is a streak of hypocrisy about the reaction to the financial crisis because of what isn’t being said about the most important issues concerning the national saving culture or lack thereof.
A new era of thrift in health is overdue, and continuing to run the bulk of health spending through the inefficient public health system is the antithesis of thrift. Had HSAs existed during the last seventeen years of economic prosperity, individuals could have saved billions of wasted health dollars to cover their future health costs, and this would have reduced projected government health spending and the future tax burden on Generations X and YJeremy Sammut is a research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies. He has a PhD in history. This is his fourth contribution to the Papers in Health and Ageing series.
