Better to have them leading meaningful lives, using their life experience in work than in collecting these handouts which are really bribes from successive governments.

Jack Hackett

Your criticism of my comment suggests you believe people should be forced out of the work force at retirement age (whatever the age level might be). Many people already work past the age of 65 for precisely the reasons I outlined, and many more would if there wasn’t a bias in the employment market against older workers.

Of course people shouldn’t be forced to work if they are not healthy enough to do so. The same applies now and it always must. But even with further rises, the pension (whether it be Aged or Disability) is still hard to live on. Encouraging and supporting people to be able to earn more for themselves is surely a better thing.

You can ask “why stop at 70″, I can ask “why not lower than 65″? As has been widely noted, the age level of 65 was set over 100 years ago when life expectancy was far lower than it is now. Raising it to 70 slowly over the course of the next decade or two would still leave it clearly lower as a proportion of remaining life expectancy.

Yes, raising the qualifying to 70 would save money – I’m not sure why that’s a bad thing. It is clear that over the next few decades there will be a smaller proportion of the population in the paid workforce, which will mean a smaller pool of people (proportionally) from which to draw income tax to pay for things like pensions. Enabling people to stay in the workforce longer if they are willing and able is one way of expaning the paid workforce. It is not the only way, but there’s nothing magical about the number 65 which makes it fair, while 67 (where it is heading to anyway) or 70 is unfair – particularly if there is still similar assistance available for those unable to work who are younger than the qualifying age

The aged pension is a right and given the rights these overpaid, undertalented and sociopathic politicians like Abbott have in relation to their entitlements and their access to these entitlements, it is a bit rich of Abbott to be telling workers who are already underpaid and overworked to the point of exhaustion in this dog eat dog world that they have to work even longer.It all sounds rather Dickensian and I think Abbott is in danger of giving the game away, which is the view that the Liberal Party acts in the interests of all Australians. They don’t – they are and will always be the party of greedy big business and bloated corporations who want to wring out the last drop of blood sweat and tears that they can from as many workers as they can.

People like Abbott think that working people do not have the right to a meaningful existence and a meaningful retirement where they can enjoy life after contributing their lifeblood, sweat & tears to the economy. The share of tax paid by corporations and the rich has been shrinking and perhaps instead tax rates for the rich revertng back to the nineteenth century levels ie zero, the higher cost of the aged pension due to increased lifespans should be paid for by taxing the top end of town who are the ones who have benefitted the most from the contriobution of working people.

Perhaps Tony Abbott’s view of the role of working people in society can be summed up by the Title of a song by the rock band Painters and Dockers called Eat, Shit & Die.

Just a point on the baby bonus. Instead of giving a cash amount of $6,0000 to the parents. Wouldn’t this money be best spent by the federal government instead opening a superannuation account for the child and depositing whatever the baby bonus amount is into this account. In this way this bonus amount will have over 50 years to compound and by the time the child retires their super will be enhanced.

While we are at it, instead of having all these private superannuation company bloodsuckers taking out their fees and so on, wouldn’t a better idea be the establishment of a nationalised Superannuation scheme run by the Federal Government that invests the super funds of workers into government infrastructure projects that will provide benefits to future Australians. Such an idea has two benefits. The Australian government will not have to borrow as much on money markets and the superannuants investment will be more safe and less at risk from the boom and bust cycle of stock market speculation. At least under a scheme like this workers super will actually be used to create infrastructure which will make a contribution to the community.

Govt reasons for raising the pension age has nothing to do with this – it’s about saving money.
Your statement looks like a smelly “we’re doing this for your own good”

And why stop at 70?

There is some distinction between encouraging and forcing people to work later in their lives, I’m just not sure how that would translate into legislation. In the same way I imagine raising the Automatic qualification to age 70 could be fine, as long as the system allows for the complexity of individual circumstances and the government can explain that they aren’t forcing the non-able to work til that age.

Regardless our society does need to do something about the ratio of workers to non-workers as the population ages. Higher rates of university study and for more years is pushing back the starting date of work (also kids starting school at 5-6 rather than 4-5). A quick look at the ABS says 10.7M Australians out of about 21.7M are employed. Just under 50% of the population. With the effect of aging population can shift towards 40%. Each worker supports 2.5 people up from 2.

Personally, I will be very surprised if my super is worth anything when I retire, as the bloodsucking paper shufflers of the world will have extracted as much as they can, ably assisted by the industry “regulators” and the tax department.
As for the pension, I am planning on keeping as fit as I can so I can pick fruit and perform other menial tasks until I die on my feet. We Gen Xers don’t have the voting muscle of the Boomers, and I don’t trust the younger folk not to introduce some “Logans Run” style scheme to keep their lives as comfortable as possible.

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