From my perspective, the aging process is an incremental horror story.
Evidence supports the theory that the older you get, the more you'll be plundered. Usually ( more observation), until the pain of it exceeds the natural motivation to survive.

Don't wait for politicians to change the above towards a better world for the aging, since they represent the problem as usual.
The art of turning support services into a dogs breakfast for their capitilist mates, never reaches its ever heightening panicle.

To some of the aging, it's the anxiety of not living a life thrown out on the street, and starving themselves to pay the rent and power bills.
To others, it's an attack from the tax man, determined to drive the same aim with merciless effeciency.

I'm aware of two cases in front of my eyes, where this latter scenario plays out.
Both own multiple properties, and are severely cash-strapped from payments to local government through excessive rates, and astronomical land taxes. So don't feel cheated.

I go out into this world I don't recognise anymore, and constantly come back home shaking my head with disbelief!

Dan

On average, we're all living much longer than our grandparents and certainly our great-grand-parents. A century ago, people (on average) barely lived long enough to claim the age-pension. Two centuries ago, that would have been an impossible dream, with an average age at death of barely forty.

I hope that today's young people have long lives, with a fair share of contentment and achievement.

And that's all I hope for today's old people too. I'm not interested in some idiotic pitting of one against the other.

Maybe that's one problem with identity politics: that differentiated groups are perceived as being inherently in conflict, or even at war, with each other. Maybe anybody with their petty identities needs to be reminded that there are higher identities, that we are all equal human beings, not necessarily all that different., and go from there

Joe

Interesting.
Older folk didn't have access to electronic devices that meant, they had to read and remember stuff, do mental arithmetic and o on. Go into any supermarket and ask the assistant to make the change and count it back into your hand without the register telling them how much change you're entitled to. For most of us, we weren't exposed to illicit drugs that affected the development of the brain quite so much, as say Esmokes!

Little wonder older folk are preferred when it comes to professional appointments? They're still capable of using their own minds in problem-solving and innovation, without having to consult this or thal algorithm.

That said, recent surveys would seem to suggest, the average family wants but cannot afford one or two more kids! But cannot begin the family early enough given all the other impositions placed on them never ever visited on older folk, like HICS debt and having t save for forty years for a home deposit and even then being asked to carry a larger and larger share of the tax burden!

And to top it all off, being expected to put their lives on the line in any future conflict and for what, the rewards of being a good citizen and "homeowner" in a society that rewards their endeavour/enterprise and not one busy selling off their heritage at bargain-basement fire-sale prices.

So as to try and make a highly flawed ideological imperative work! Even though it never ever has and just as before, concentrating too much of our finite wealth in too few hands leads to quite massive economic downturns that included the Great Depression and the GFC!

The only lesson of history seems to be, that nobody, especially politicians, learns the lessons of history!
Alan B.

Oh I thought the planet wasn't going to be here in 12 years. Phew!

Jesus Joe.

That is infuriating soothsaying nonesense, straight from the halls of Sussex street.

That maybe the case for somebody living in an aboriginal community that wanders around with a bottle of coke in each hand and a fag dangling from the corner of their mouth, always demanding free services.

Out here in white town, it's entirely different. This is where the great divide was invented remember. And you may believe all is sweet now, we'll have a guess what. No it's not.

Out here it's a world ruled by the real estate market, where almost the entire wealth of the nation is traded away for profit. It has disasterous consequences for all in the end, And particularly the old, who are in need of more stable housing ( unavailable for a vast many). In need of health services, which are supplied in the most part, with upfront unaffordable costs. Huge costs for dental services without rebate at all. Obviously in your camp, nobody goes hungry for want of compassion.

A government on both sides which vacillates over how much bennifit they can both drag from welfare budgets and services, into a vote buying exercise aimed at the wealthy.
The tier of free or affordable welfare has been totally removed.

The missing link for the aged is extra cash to pay for the extra costs of aging, in a society built on the for-profit economic principal, where welfare services are also profit generating enterprises. Nobody does welfare for nothing. Turn onto Jacque Lambie for an update. Never have I seen any politician put life as it is for too many in our communities, in a nutshell better than she can.
It's blind logic, believing as you do, the divide which is large, is an imagined invention, engineered by the politically correct.

Dan

There is nothing nothing to say that anyone but the WW2 generation will be long livers; even they have been kept going - it couldn't be called living - by interference with nature. The baby boomers have already started dropping like flies.