Last week "they" (the government) announced that they are putting up the state pension age. The justification is "we are living longer and this retains the ratio of 1/3rd of our adult life in retirement."
The first thought I had was, when I started work in the 70's most people that retired were dead within two years. I don't remember anyone arguing to bring the retirement age down then. In fact pension funds were so cash rich that companies used to raid them for cash to put back into the business. That is until Robert Maxwell emptied the pension fund of the Mirror group and the law was changed.
Second thought came today, while listening to the news of the G8 summit on the need to solve the increasing numbers of people with dementia. Dementia is something that gets worse with age and as people are living longer the chances of getting dementia increase. If you need to keep people employed, paying taxes and acting like good little consumers you need them to be mentally able to keep going. So I'm not clear on the motivation here.
The odds are about 1 in 3 in getting some form of dementia before you die and are the same odds for getting cancer. While some unlucky sods with get both, that means that there will be very few pensioners well enough to enjoy their retirement and dent the pension pot.
Increasingly see that for most people life is unfair, not because they get ill (that is random chance), but that they have little choice in path of their life (dictated by politicians).
The first thought I had was, when I started work in the 70's most people that retired were dead within two years. I don't remember anyone arguing to bring the retirement age down then. In fact pension funds were so cash rich that companies used to raid them for cash to put back into the business. That is until Robert Maxwell emptied the pension fund of the Mirror group and the law was changed.
Second thought came today, while listening to the news of the G8 summit on the need to solve the increasing numbers of people with dementia. Dementia is something that gets worse with age and as people are living longer the chances of getting dementia increase. If you need to keep people employed, paying taxes and acting like good little consumers you need them to be mentally able to keep going. So I'm not clear on the motivation here.
The odds are about 1 in 3 in getting some form of dementia before you die and are the same odds for getting cancer. While some unlucky sods with get both, that means that there will be very few pensioners well enough to enjoy their retirement and dent the pension pot.
Increasingly see that for most people life is unfair, not because they get ill (that is random chance), but that they have little choice in path of their life (dictated by politicians).
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