Thread started: Mar 5 2008, 12:50 AM EST
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I know - none of us want to work forever, but with huge increases in life expectancy over the last 100 years, it's time to increase pension age for men from 65 to somewhere nearer 70. We have an aging population, and can't afford not to look at this.
This could be phased in over 10 or 20 years to ease the pain.
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RE: Phase in a higher pension age
By: ,
Apr 22 2008, 11:17 PM EDT
Though I appreciate your sentiments and your reasons for promoting it, Full Employment is, however, a means to an end - not an end in itself. What will we have achieved if every person is working their butts off until they die if no-body can afford to stop? Is this the real reason why we think we want a "higher pension age"? C.H. Douglas called this the tragedy of human effort.
Don't lose sight of the fact that if full automation and efficiency were realised and we could produce all we required without labour (an unrealisable utopia, I know, but nevertheless all advancement brings it closer), then we would all be free to do something else - like enjoy eachother's company (God forbid!). The end itself - the goal if you like, is not anything to do with employment, but that every person would have the means by which to sustain a comfortable life (without witholding the same right from anyone else). THIS is the goal of association, and employment is merely the means by which we hope to attain it. Capitalism and the laissez-faire market (which I think you are particularly referring to), is not the problem here, it is the advantage taken in exploitation of the system by the control of the distribution mechanism (money) by those who have used their power and influence to do so. Capitalism and the Industrial & Technological revolution has provided for us a veritable "Heaven on earth", but forever active along side of the development has been the subjugation of all but a meagre portion of the wealth by the financial elite - maginalizing every advancement we make. It amounts in pertinent terms to 100 steps forward, and 96 steps back. The RBA and the like have seduced us into believing that this is 4% progress! See the maths? We live in an age of poverty amidst plenty - enough to feed and shelter the whole world, but the cashmongers have paralysed us with their lies.
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