New research from the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) released on Wednesday shows that intergenerational financial support — flowing from older, wealthy family members to younger ones — is increasingly driving inequality.
New research from the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) released on Wednesday shows that intergenerational financial support — flowing from older, wealthy family members to younger ones — is increasingly driving inequality.
I’ve been thinking this for a while, it’s difficult to think about transitioning to a system like this from inside a system that we’re in now. We’re all hardwired to take advantage of anything we can get, because basic necessities are held hostage.
To start with on social change like this, I think we’d need to induce a feeling of safety in the general person. Everyone should have a baseline of their food, shelter, basic needs being met. Only after we have a generation freed from that fear of scarcity can we start making societal changes as large as this, or if we’re lucky it’ll occur by itself as a social movement.
Agreed, there’s a great deal of distance between this and that, and realistically it seems unlikely that it would ever be possible. But it sure is nice to imagine, no need or desire to accumulate more than you need in one lifetime, and nobody starting 10 steps ahead or behind.