Entitlements A lifetime of paying taxes should not entitle one to a pension in old age -- in fact baby boomers will retire effectively still owing something.

To my fellow mature Australians, I'd like to explain something. We are not entitled to an age pension merely because we have paid taxes all our life. Pensions are not for everyone; fundamentally they are welfare, reserved for the poor.

Like many others, I have been in continuous employment since 1974 and paid my taxes each year, increasingly fairly considerable sums. But governments have not saved my taxes to pay for my retirement. Instead, those sums were spent each year. In fact, our taxes haven't even covered each year's government spending. Over the past 40 years, budget deficits have been the norm, with the country now in debt to the tune of $245 billion. If anything, I and my fellow baby boomers should pay the rest of Australia a lump sum when we retire, to cover the debt we are leaving.

And it's not as though my taxes have been devoted to buying assets that will be in service for decades to come. Successive Commonwealth governments have been selling off these assets for much of my taxpaying career. Rather, my taxes have been devoted to providing services to the voters of the day, including many from which I've benefited, such as medical services, university studies and opera performances.

It is true my taxes have also funded the welfare state. But that doesn't represent a down‑payment on a pension. The welfare payments were primarily to parents, the sick, the disabled and the unemployed.

It is also true that my taxes funded age pensions, but this has been a small part of my tax bill. When I started in the workforce, there were more than seven working age Australians for every Australian aged 65 or over. There are still about five working age Australians for every older Australian now. But at some point during my retirement, this ratio will probably fall to less than three.

More to the point, my taxes have not helped every older Australian, because the age pension has never been a universal entitlement. Eligibility has been income‑tested since 1909, and asset‑tested from 1909 to 1976 and then since 1985. This is different from Britain and New Zealand, where pensions are not means tested and funded from special tax contributions.