It's more than just a matter of discrimination and abiding by the law. It's gradually becoming a life and death scenario. With each passing year, indeed month, the problem is getting personal. More and more 50-somethings (and 40- and 60-somethings) are being laid off as the world economy contracts, but are finding themselves unemployable in a political climate that is increasingly unforgiving and punitive towards anyone who, for whatever reason, cannot find work.

Add to that the zealous war on the welfare state, combined with hyper-superannuated politicians continually driving up the pension age (What am I bid? 70? Do I hear 70?), combined with a bleed-out of boomers' net equity due to a plummeting real estate sector and share market, working till you drop is getting to be the norm.

While some lucky retired boomers , especially the earlier ones, are able live the airbrushed lives of the average superannuation ad, many of the later boomers (late 50s) are facing a very desolate future. Unless our values on unemployment, welfare and age discrimination undergo some fundamental changes, the number of homeless elderly people is set to escalate as the years go on.

The problem with this article is that it doesn't say what's wrong with age discrimination, or preference.

Quoting the Fair Work Act doesn't prove it's unfair, prejudiced or irrational. Besides, the government discriminates against people all the time on the ground of age, sex, race, civil status, sexual relationships, income and anything you care to mention. Who are they to be saying what discrimination is unfair? They are far less representative of society than the mass of consumers and employers whose values they are trying to forcibly override.

Why should employers focus on "skills, competencies and capabilities"? And what makes Malcolm King think he's a better judge of employers' needs than employers?

King and Killarny have got it back-to-front. The purpose of a job is to produce something that other people want. It's not to employ people per se. If it was, we could solve the problem by getting old people to dig holes and fill them in again.

"Malcolm King works in the area of generational workforce change. He works in DEEWR Labour Market Strategy. He was the senior communications strategist at Carnegie Mellon University and the director of the RMIT writing programs. He was also a senior media adviser for the ALP and Democrats."

Notice that everything the author has done has been in the parasite industries?

He has never produced anything that anyone voluntarily pays for and is therefore not qualified to comment on what preferences are or are not legitimate.

If his argument were valid, he has the remedy himself. He should risk his own money and employ all the old people he wants. According to him, they are undervalued in the market, so he'll be doing well at the same time as doing good.

Of course the fact he doesn't do this is because he knows he's wrong, he wants to force others to pay for what he won't pay for voluntarily, and he's parading a fake moral superiority while actively promoting anti-social violence and lying about doing so. A truly pathetic piece of hypocrisy.

Well said, congratulations Peter!

<<How important is dignity or self-respect? Everyone deserves that. It doesn’t matter if you’re 16 or 65.>>

So to force yourself on an employer who doesn't want you there, who holds you in contempt and keeps you grudgingly only because she would otherwise be dragged away in cuffs and see the sky through iron bars; or to call an agency who doesn't want you to call them, who see you as nuisance (and do so every day - now you'll really need a job to pay your phone bill), that's very dignified and respectful - right, Malcolm?

That's an interesting perspective Peter Hume. Thank God I don't work for you.

One of the reasons national productivity is falling is that we don't have enough people working fulltime. One of the core reasons that older people drop out of the workforce is through age prejudice. That costs the Australian economy about $10 billion a year through lost productivity.

It's astounding that Hume does not recognise the importance of skills ad competencies in a global market. He is typical of the type of Cro Magnon thug that believes the whole direction of modern capitalism is to bully and cajole workers to 'build something' when 60 per cent of the Australian economy is based in the service industry.

Hume is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Peter

‘The purpose of a job is to produce something that other people want. It's not to employ people per se.’

No. I’m afraid YOU’VE got it back to front. The purpose of a job IS to employ people ‘per se’, so that everyone is actively contributing to society and earning their own living. This can be done via both profit-based enterprise and service-based public enterprise. The great lie that has gained far too much traction throughout history, especially in recent times, is that only profit-based enterprise can provide jobs and that public sector jobs are little more than an expensive charity.

There are plenty of jobs for everyone – it depends on how they are distributed. A society that fails to do this adequately is a failed society, regardless of whether its economy is in surplus or deficit.

Cheryl, Killarney

Employers are no more guilty of failing to provide jobs for old people than you are. In fact you're more guilty of it than they are because you're actively saying people should do it, even at a loss to themselves, which employers are not. You are disproving your own case. There's "plenty of jobs" that you and everyone who agrees with you, could be providing for old people, at a loss. Why aren't you doing it?

As for the Cro Magnon jibe, it's you guys who advocate threatening to taser and cage people to force them to obey your opinion. I'm in favour of consensual relations, remember? Yours is the law-of-the-jungle school of thought, not mine.

Unfortunately feeling entitled to have a big teat express warm milk into your squalling mouth, or believing that people contribute to society by some people being forced at gunpoint to pay for other people to dig holes and fill them, only shows that your argument is at the moral and intellectual level of an infant.

The concept missing from your mental universe is that other people are not your property, and someone needs to engage in productive activity to pay for your slave philosophy.

You still haven't explained why people's age preferences should be criminalised. How do you know it's prejudice? How do you know it's not justified? How do you know the government isn't wrong? Then what about the government's own age discrimination? Should the government be thrown in prison too? If not, why not? What gives you the right to tell other people what their values should be? Why don't other people have an equal right to tell you what your preferences should be? Why should age preference be criminalised just for "jobs"? Why shouldn't age discrimination be illegal for everything else such as choosing a partner as well? How do you know what wants customers are trying to satisfy by patronising a business, and therefore what are the appropriate characteristics of employees?

You won't answer these because you can't.