There’s been little protest about lifting Australians’ retirement age. But it hits some harder more others: Indigenous men and women, and the growing number of older people pushed onto JobSeeker.
Just because something is worse somewhere else doesn't mean you should be happy when things only get slightly worse where you are. They are angry because not only they are historically againt pension reforms, and the way the government forced through the bill by bypassing parliament in a legal method, but one that shows they are really just forcing this down despite popular opinion being very, very against it.
My mum has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer aged 61. I know people lose their parents much earlier, but I am furious that she worked so hard her entire life just to die before she reached retirement.
You work work work to barely afford necessities like shelter and food and when you finally can enjoy your life, you’re old and still can't afford shit. Brilliant system.
You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter, don't you call me, 'cuz I can't go. I owe my soul to the company store.
It depends, right? There are lots of people who enjoy working, but the problem is that the work that people want to do isn't the work that bosses want them to do. In studies on UBI, very few people choose to become couch potatoes.
Cost of living is so shit here that most people can't afford to retire at that age anyway. There might be some older Gen-Xers who complain, but they're not exactly known for protesting.
Because of all the advances over the past generation from email to AI have all combined to make the economy at least twice as productive as it was 30 years ago but we aren't seeing any benefit.
The years of leisure workers get at the end of their career should be increasing, not decreasing. Where are all the productivity gains going?
"Oh, but people are living longer" OK, but we're also generating twice as much wealth over our careers than the generation before us, and instead of more retirement years or shorter working weeks all we see is billionaire pricks buying up media conglomerates.
I mean if it were for the government they would put old people in an island and nuke it from time to time.
Enjoying the fruits of your labor? How dare you.
It's also true that population is living longer and younger generations are not having kids. I mean there's a little trick most don't know is that those contributions in the form of taxes that you made all your life towards retirement, most of it gets spent immediately by the government. So if younger generations don't have kids to keep the ponzi running the whole thing falls apart, and one of the symptoms is this, the need to raise retirement age.
It's good to know that in France, there is a required number of "working years" next to the retirement age. So for many people 64 is already not an option as they went to university for example. I often hear people argue that the French shouldn't complain because in country X it's age Y, but for a lot of French it's already Y or >Y (I don't know the exact details though as I'm not French, but have family there. So feel free to add or correct me)
IIRC (haven't looked into the details recently) in France you can have full pension from 64yo IF you've worked every year from 18yo. You can retire earlier, but your pension will be cut down for each month not "cotisé" up to 64.
I think years of high school don't typically count, but there are ways to "convert" or "buy" those years back for the calculation of your pension. Parental leave also can be converted.
So yes, the less you work, the longer it takes to unlock 100% of your pension funds.
EDIT: I just checked. To be eligible for full pension at 64 in France (full pension is 50% of the average of the best 25 years salaries) you need to have "cotisé" for 498 or 516 months (depending on your year of birth). Missing months can be bought back, or you can take a lower pension.
Assumimg four weeks in a month, that's 2,064 weeks/43 years. In Mexico, you "only" need 1,250 weeks, or 25 years or work (although the pension is locked until you're 65 years old.
I really fucking hope we can muster up at least 2 more terms of democratic majority in the US as my ass creeps toward taking "early" retirement at 62. Republicans have a hard on for stripping every social program, and Social Security is the most socialist thing they want to strip and give to the War Machine.
It's pretty unlikely to get two more terms of a democratic presidency. Biden wasn't VP when he won. The last VP to be elected was Bush 1. Before him, LBJ, special circumstances. Truman, also special circumstances. That takes us back nearly 100 years.
Maybe if Kamala were to step aside we could get a governor as the nominee, but that seems unlikely even though governors have better records in presidential elections. Biden didn't run when he was VP, but I don't remember another VP that stepped away from the ticket voluntarily.
We've been producing more and more year after year, the working hours have practically not changed in 50 years. And somehow we have no money to put in any social platform and we have had austerity measures for decades at this point. And now we have to work for longer. All the while billionaires exist and are getting richer by the second, yet a lot of people struggle to eat or retire decently.
The world population has also exploded over the last 50 years, which is something nobody takes into account.
1973 - 3.92 billion people
2023 - 8 billion people
For 1968, so 65 years ago, when people at retirement age today were born, the population was 2.9 billion people. So from birth to retirement, a freshly retired person today has seen 5 billion more people get added to the world.
With increasing population you need more resources to fund social platforms. We have been producing more and more but we have also consumed more and more. Not just food, but planned obsolesence for things like phones and washing machines and whatever else has guaranteed that there will always be a need to consume, therefore a need to produce - hence the working hours staying the same while productivity increases.
But, with increased production and consumption you stimulate the economy, so you get growth. In theory. The fact that that growth gets hoarded by the dragons you also mentioned is an unfortunate phenomenon.
But I digress. My point was that increased productivity is not the only variable at play here.
I still don't agree with the increased pension age, though.
That's pretty f*cked up. Sure, there are some jobs where you can make a decent contribution at that age – historian? librarian? sure, why not. But please don't force bus drivers to keep working until that age
The US has guns, and also get as fucked by their government as characters in the tentacle hentai they can consume there. It's probably more the Rupert Murdoch media empire's influence and the disillusionment from their corrupt government.
I think weak labor protections for a people that commonly live paycheck to paycheck with health insurance from those jobs, poor social programs should they lose those jobs and a police force that has a robust history of violently shutting down protests might also have a hand
They have plenty of fight in them to not have taxes snuck in on a price or hijack of an airplane or fuck around on public transit. Or kicking out a PM.
All things I see other countries pretty much bend over and take it like it’s medicine.