Lifting Australia’s retirement age happened with little protest. But it hits some more than others: especially Indigenous men and women, and tens of thousands of older people pushed onto JobSeeker.
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.
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.