Who are these people who "lived through war and depression"? Come on! if You are old enough to remember the Great Depression, you'd have to be well into your nineties. If you were old enough to fight in the Second World War, you're at least 90 now.

The defenders like Mercer of ever-increasing amounts going into super are talking their own book and pushing an idea of "old people" that is at least 30 years out of date. The fact is Australian home-owning retirees are more than well-catered for by the tax and transfer system. The people doing it tough are young people saddled with student debt, paying through the nose for everything and shut out of the housing market.

Grattan is right. The rules have been written by the superannuation industry, which has been living off the subsidy of the superannuation guarantee for too long and has grown fat, lazy and with its snout in the trough of public funds.

Fatcat old 'self-funded' retirees have come to see their super as an estate planning device and won't give an inch to the generations coming after them. There's a generational war coming, but unfortunately the bludgers now calling everyone else 'socialists' won't be around to see it.

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