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The Forum > Article Comments > Never mind the bollocks! (Growing old disgracefully) > Comments

Never mind the bollocks! (Growing old disgracefully) : Comments

By Ross Elliott, published 11/9/2014

If you were aged 25 when The Sex Pistols first crashed onto the music scene in 1975, you'll be 65 years old next year. This isn't so much a lesson in demography but one of attitude.

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The thing that strikes me about the aging population crisis,
is that it is at least 15 to 20years in the future when they predict
it. A lot of those now in their 50s, 60s,70,s will be
dead by then.

It is actually the generation after the baby boomers that is going to really cause the problem because for what- ever reason,economic,the falling out of favour of marriage and wanting to live a full life without the cares and worries of too many children, which is perfectly understandable, the later baby boomers and the generation after them just don't have the same amount of children as the early baby boomers had after the war, when families of 4 were still common.
Also the early baby boomers had their children years earlier & few
went on to university.
Their children were ready to step into the work force as much as a decade earlier to compensate for the ranks of the aging who were leaving the work force.

This younger generation points the finger at us, but they should
have a better look at the prediction years for the crisis, it
is they who will be a burden on society.

With the aged being predicted to be 1 in 4 to the workers at that point, I wonder how many out of that 4 they will require for nursing jobs to look after them.

I laughed at the shock of some of the ones always pointing the
finger at those in their 60's and 70's now and calling them a burden when they realised that Abbott was talking about their generation instead. Hope they enjoy being a burden the way they always said the present aging contingent of the baby boomers were.
Cheery thoughts to all
Posted by CHERFUL, Sunday, 14 September 2014 5:01:42 PM
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Through voluntary work I encounter plenty of people over sixty, many well into their eighties and some in their nineties who are living independent lives in their own homes. It makes very good economic sense for government to let them be and provide the few services to support them in their own homes.

There are two flies in the ointment though:

-first, rapacious property development entrepreneurs who want their properties to gentrify inner city suburbs in particular and make squillions from the deal. They want the oldies dislodged from their homes of a lifetime; and

-secondly, State and especially local government who have different priorities to the federal government, and whose council rates, taxes and user pays are impacting severely on the elderly and quickly reducing previously self supporting retirees to become Centrelink clients as well.

It is as though the different layers of government are adversaries, each trying to scuttle as many policies of the other as possible and all vying to pluck the taxpayer goose to the max before the other gets a shot. In any event, politicians are in the grip of bureaucrats who have always found it to their advantage to dispute territory and duplicate what is provided already. Why do we have so many public servants? That is worth several PhD dissertations. Or just a few terse words from a frustrated taxpayer.

tbc..
Posted by onthebeach, Monday, 15 September 2014 5:51:05 AM
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contd.

Concerning council rates for example, it is easy to understand why the elderly become exasperated with ramped up council rates to assist developers to make larger profits, while the said developments and over-enthusiatic immigration by the federal government force up land values, adding 10-30% annual increases to council rates. How can self-supporting retirees afford those increases? Any complaints are met with the insult that they can always sell and buy into some developer's blue-board hot-box in a less satisfactory suburb built on a reclaimed bog.

There is much that all layers of government can do to keep the costs of the 'age burden' low by keeping people in the homes where they raised their family and everything is familiar to them. Small things like ensuring that road laws and road planning, town and city planning too, have as much regard for the over-60 as they do for those in the young prime of life. Remembering too that families with young children would have similar priorities in town and road planning.

There is no reason to suggest that the elderly will ever become a voting bloc. It is more than frivolous to suggest that they might be able to represent their own interests. What, people in their eighties?! It usually indicates that the person saying that the old can stand up for themselves is concerned lest government have a real minister for the aged, one that takes his/her job seriously.

Sure there is the occasional single interest protest, from age pensioners for example. However mature age voters will never get together to soar with the eagles and arrive at a different way of regarding old age and policy to suit. That is necessary but it will not happen. Any such suggestions in the past have always been stymied by short-sighted jealousy from age pensioners directed against 'well off'(?!) part- or fully self supporting retirees. Old political bigotry, the class war, is sadly carried to the grave.
Posted by onthebeach, Monday, 15 September 2014 5:57:07 AM
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