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This.

"Someone else has it worse" is the cry of someone who wants you to have it worse, too. It's just promoting a race to the bottom.

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.

With your permission...

You work work work to barely afford necessities like shelter and food and when you finally can enjoy your life, you’re old. 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.

Aussies aren't big on protesting against anything. They just grumble and get on with it. Wouldn't want to be called a whinger.

That's not entirely true.

Lot of CEOs LOVE their job, bankers too.

It's just the people doing actual work who tend to hate their jobs.

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.

This is the real question.

“Why are the rich so upset about paying a living wage?”

H

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.

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.

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

hey no fair. you're comparing a fascist shit hole

73 for me in the US! I'll likely be dead before I get to see retirement...

I should note, that's tge projected date for my retirement plan. The "official" age is still 65...

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.

TIL hentai is banned in Australia lol

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.