Inferno
Some commentators just don’t get it. How these guys get paid good salaries for being so stupid is beyond me but I suspect it has something to do with the fact they are more willing to take liberties with reality than my humble self.
Today’s outrageous proposal; let ‘em work longer! Like this isn’t throwing gasoline on a blaze that is already out of control!
In context, this was put forth as a solution to the current administration’s perceived crisis looming over the future of Social Security.
Back in 1865 when Germany enacted its Social Security program, the retirement age was set to 65. When we enacted our plan (72 years later) we adopted their age 65 retirement guideline.
Today age 65 doesn’t seem ‘old’ but back when the social safety net was first unfurled, the generational mortality rate stood at 98%.
Statistically speaking, only two in one hundred people lived to see their 65th birthday. This has crept up to 72 years of age in our current society and you cannot currently collect your full benefit until age 70.
Remember, 72 is the AVERAGE LIFE EXPECTENCY. Most people die before age 72. Every year past the age of 72 and the number of survivors begins to drop geometrically.
The odds of you living to be 100 are more than a million to one against.
So this ‘crisis’ in Social Security is over paying people (that have paid into the system their whole lives) an average of $1,700 a month for TWO stinkin’ years!
Thus Bozo’s solution is to let ‘em keep working! Let ‘em keep paying in and never collect, that would solve the problem nicely, wouldn’t it?
Draconian as this is, it fails to take into account the real reason why it is such a stupid idea; there simply aren’t enough jobs.
America’s Job Bank boasts just over a million job openings nationwide…but there are eight and a half million folks (officially) on the unemployment lines.
The official figures choose to ignore at least that many again by speculating that these people are not looking for work. They are excluded from the real unemployment picture under a classification created during the Regan years called ‘not in the workforce’.
To make matters worse, a vast majority of these ‘million’ job listings are outdated. Those that aren’t either pay spit or make you wonder if anyone is qualified to fill the position by the way that the requirement is written.
If kids can’t find work (even at minimum wage) how is making people work into their eighties going to ‘solve’ our economic crisis?
Under the fluff this editorial was in reality a ‘shot’ at our age discrimination laws. The writer posits that if we were to make these laws more ‘employer friendly’ the aged might stand a better chance of finding work.
What this hopeful sentiment ignores is one of the primary practices used by corporate America to keep wages low and profits high, a practice commonly known as ‘churning’.
As a worker builds up service, gaining more vacation and sick days, companies routinely downsize them and hire new employees at half the wages and none of the benefits.
Companies defend this practice as a means of staying ‘competitive’ but I ask you once again, what good is a competitive marketplace when it impoverishes our society?
The only people who ‘win’ are the owners.
Remove the ‘profit motive’ (a.k.a. owners lining their pockets with whatever the market will bear) and the need for competition (to supposedly keep prices down) stops in its tracks.
It will also eliminate wasteful redundancy that is harmful to the environment.
You, good citizen, must wake up to the fact that your ‘shelf life’ is short and getting shorter. If you haven’t ‘made it’ by the time you are thirty-five, it’s not likely that you will.
The ‘solution’ to this problem lies in work sharing and reducing the number of hours in the standard shift to facilitate this. Unfortunately, this is not possible under pay as you go capitalism.
Work sharing would cut into what has traditionally been known as profits instead of increasing them.
Ironically, eliminating owners does away with the need for ‘profits’ altogether. Instead of some pie in the sky ‘dollar value’ our markets would be driven by the benefit reaped by society as a whole.
This is key. Money is make believe! It’s a human invention created to simplify barter but it has become a monster.
Be very afraid because at the end of the day MONEY IS WORTHLESS! Only labor counts for anything.
While labor driven society will still utilize ‘money’ its nature and the role that it plays in our society will be substantially altered.
Money will serve the purpose of regulating access to perishable/high demand goods and services. While most things in life will be free, there aren’t enough of some things to go around.
There will no cash or any cash substitutes. All funds will be electronic and there will be no way to transfer funds between individuals.
What that means is nobody gets your money, not even you.
When you ‘spend’ your money on a desired object it is merely erased from your account.
When you die, your money dies with you, your account is erased. Everybody makes their own way in labor driven society.
The basics in life will be free. No rent, no mortgages, free healthcare, free utilities, free education for life and no taxes.
You’ll use your salary to build the kind of life you want to live as you fulfill your social obligation to society by surrendering your labor to help build a better world for us all.
As for retirement, we are already at a point where we have more workers than things to do. While it remains to be seen how things will fall into place, retiring at age fifty isn’t as far-fetched as it would be under our current circumstances.
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
Today’s outrageous proposal; let ‘em work longer! Like this isn’t throwing gasoline on a blaze that is already out of control!
In context, this was put forth as a solution to the current administration’s perceived crisis looming over the future of Social Security.
Back in 1865 when Germany enacted its Social Security program, the retirement age was set to 65. When we enacted our plan (72 years later) we adopted their age 65 retirement guideline.
Today age 65 doesn’t seem ‘old’ but back when the social safety net was first unfurled, the generational mortality rate stood at 98%.
Statistically speaking, only two in one hundred people lived to see their 65th birthday. This has crept up to 72 years of age in our current society and you cannot currently collect your full benefit until age 70.
Remember, 72 is the AVERAGE LIFE EXPECTENCY. Most people die before age 72. Every year past the age of 72 and the number of survivors begins to drop geometrically.
The odds of you living to be 100 are more than a million to one against.
So this ‘crisis’ in Social Security is over paying people (that have paid into the system their whole lives) an average of $1,700 a month for TWO stinkin’ years!
Thus Bozo’s solution is to let ‘em keep working! Let ‘em keep paying in and never collect, that would solve the problem nicely, wouldn’t it?
Draconian as this is, it fails to take into account the real reason why it is such a stupid idea; there simply aren’t enough jobs.
America’s Job Bank boasts just over a million job openings nationwide…but there are eight and a half million folks (officially) on the unemployment lines.
The official figures choose to ignore at least that many again by speculating that these people are not looking for work. They are excluded from the real unemployment picture under a classification created during the Regan years called ‘not in the workforce’.
To make matters worse, a vast majority of these ‘million’ job listings are outdated. Those that aren’t either pay spit or make you wonder if anyone is qualified to fill the position by the way that the requirement is written.
If kids can’t find work (even at minimum wage) how is making people work into their eighties going to ‘solve’ our economic crisis?
Under the fluff this editorial was in reality a ‘shot’ at our age discrimination laws. The writer posits that if we were to make these laws more ‘employer friendly’ the aged might stand a better chance of finding work.
What this hopeful sentiment ignores is one of the primary practices used by corporate America to keep wages low and profits high, a practice commonly known as ‘churning’.
As a worker builds up service, gaining more vacation and sick days, companies routinely downsize them and hire new employees at half the wages and none of the benefits.
Companies defend this practice as a means of staying ‘competitive’ but I ask you once again, what good is a competitive marketplace when it impoverishes our society?
The only people who ‘win’ are the owners.
Remove the ‘profit motive’ (a.k.a. owners lining their pockets with whatever the market will bear) and the need for competition (to supposedly keep prices down) stops in its tracks.
It will also eliminate wasteful redundancy that is harmful to the environment.
You, good citizen, must wake up to the fact that your ‘shelf life’ is short and getting shorter. If you haven’t ‘made it’ by the time you are thirty-five, it’s not likely that you will.
The ‘solution’ to this problem lies in work sharing and reducing the number of hours in the standard shift to facilitate this. Unfortunately, this is not possible under pay as you go capitalism.
Work sharing would cut into what has traditionally been known as profits instead of increasing them.
Ironically, eliminating owners does away with the need for ‘profits’ altogether. Instead of some pie in the sky ‘dollar value’ our markets would be driven by the benefit reaped by society as a whole.
This is key. Money is make believe! It’s a human invention created to simplify barter but it has become a monster.
Be very afraid because at the end of the day MONEY IS WORTHLESS! Only labor counts for anything.
While labor driven society will still utilize ‘money’ its nature and the role that it plays in our society will be substantially altered.
Money will serve the purpose of regulating access to perishable/high demand goods and services. While most things in life will be free, there aren’t enough of some things to go around.
There will no cash or any cash substitutes. All funds will be electronic and there will be no way to transfer funds between individuals.
What that means is nobody gets your money, not even you.
When you ‘spend’ your money on a desired object it is merely erased from your account.
When you die, your money dies with you, your account is erased. Everybody makes their own way in labor driven society.
The basics in life will be free. No rent, no mortgages, free healthcare, free utilities, free education for life and no taxes.
You’ll use your salary to build the kind of life you want to live as you fulfill your social obligation to society by surrendering your labor to help build a better world for us all.
As for retirement, we are already at a point where we have more workers than things to do. While it remains to be seen how things will fall into place, retiring at age fifty isn’t as far-fetched as it would be under our current circumstances.
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
posted by Gegner at 9:20 PM
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