Out with boomers, in with zoomers
My previous life in the shearing sheds taught me many life lessons, but one that stands out in that pressure cooker environment was that inevitably the old will give way to the young. Time and tide wait for no-one.
I was reminded of this golden rule recently, as media and conversations had many of my fellow boomers screaming blue murder over extensions to the bright-line test for investment properties, and interest costs no longer being tax-deductible.
This issue is symptomatic of far greater political change – it is out with the boomer and in with the zoomer as increasingly the political will and needs are passed to the next generation.
There may still be a sting in the tail, but this train is heading in only one direction.
My wife and I have for several years owned rental properties, which creates internal conflict.
It’s hard to be a walking oxymoron capitalist with a conscience, but in our defence the playing field has been so one-sidedly skewed in investors’ favour that if New Zealanders could invest, we would.
In fact, the last year or so has been so ridiculously in investors’ favour – with unprecedented capital gains and a corresponding rapid increase in rents charged – that I’m developing an overwhelming urge to apologise every time I look a young person in the eye, knowing their hopes of seeing the fruits of their labour materialise into a haven for their family have diminished at an astonishingly fast pace.
It’s fair that the family home/ farm are out of bounds. There is a case to argue there, but invariably the motivation to acquire additional properties is wealth generation, which struggles to muster legitimate defence as to why it should be treated any differently than other investments.
History has proven that any long-established culture develops entrenched class societies.
Up until recent times New Zealand’s egalitarian foundations would have led most to believe that we were hundreds of years away from suffering this ignominy.
Recent times may require a quick recalibration of those time frames.
Our generation’s legacy to the next is already distorted by greed. We have done a pretty good stitchup job, but we need only look at another of life’s lessons, the game of Monopoly, to see what happens when you are circling round the board of life with no real chance of getting past Go.
From memory, in the Cadogan family the game usually ended up with Tim crying – but the young are not going to lose this time.